Max Planck Institutes and Experts

Many chemical or biophysical processes involve molecules that are insoluble or non-crystalline. Consider, for instance, the functional control of membrane proteins by external ligands or the formation of protein aggregates in the context of Alzheimer´s or Parkinson’s disease. In such systems, solid-state NMR can offer unique possibilities to elucidate structural or dynamic parameters at atomic resolution.

Circadian clocks regulate a plethora of physiological processes including the sleep/wake cycle, blood pressure and body temperature. Such clocks enable organisms to adjust to the 24-hour day/night cycle resulting from the rotation of the earth. Virtually all living beings have a circadian clock and in the case of multicellular organisms, most cell types house such a clock. The clock mechanism consists of a stable network of genes and proteins that mutually regulate each other, thereby not only establishing a self-sustaining clockwork but enabling this clock to adjust to periodic environmental changes such as availability of light and access to food.

Massive stars are much rarer and they form much faster than low-mass stars – which is why it is quite unlikely to be able to observe their early stages. In addition, all regions with massive young stars are at a greater distance from our solar system, resulting in stringent requirements for the resolution and sensitivity of the instruments used for observation. However, today the new interferometers in the sub-millimeter and millimeter range enable the investigation of more distant star formation regions at high spatial resolution and sufficient sensitivity. An international team lead by MPIA managed to gain interesting insights into several massive star-forming regions, including the famous Orion KL region.

Scientists at Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA) have performed detailed computations of the highly redshifted radiation that is released during the epoch of cosmological hydrogen recombination. Progress in the development of radio detectors may render these small deviations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) spectrum from a perfect blackbody observable, thereby offering a complementary way to measure the exact value of the CMB temperature, the entropy of the Universe, and to provide direct evidence about how our Universe became transparent.

Three years since its completion, the Millennium Run remains the largest simulation of cosmological structure formation. Over 100 papers [1] have been written based on its numerical data. More than half of these are by authors who have accessed the data through a web service of the German Astrophysical Virtual Observatory (GAVO). This is the most complete application yet of Virtual Observatory techniques to the publication of theoretical data.