International corporations such as Apple, Starbucks and Amazon have for years successfully avoided paying tax on their corporate profits. Aided by tax competition between nations, they shift their money to countries that have low tax rates and that guarantee that only domestic profits will be taxed. Our author explains why it is far from easy for the international community to counter these tricks.
Life is motion and interaction with the environment. This is equally true of cells within an organism, but for cells to get from one place to another, they not only have to be able to move, they also have to interact with their environment. Joachim Spatz and his team at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg are studying how cells manage this. In his search for answers, the winner of the 2017 Leibniz Prize puts cells through their paces on catwalks and obstacle courses to test their adhesive properties.
The discovery that small organic molecules are excellent catalysts makes Ben List, Director at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung, one of the pioneers of a new research field in chemistry. His life, however, has been shaped just as much by a life-changing vacation experience.
Over 50 million genes and 40,000 proteins: combing through international databases for likely candidates, Tobias Erb and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg were faced with an overwhelming choice. In the end, the scientists picked out just 17 enzymes for the first synthetic metabolic pathway that is able to convert carbon dioxide into other organic molecules. Now they have to show that the cycle they sketched out on the drawing board also works in living cells.
The Spanish Conquistadors found it surprisingly easy to conquer the New World. However, it required more than violence and cruelty to rule the territory. A team of researchers headed by Thomas Duve at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History is investigating the media through which the Spanish crown consolidated its dominion. Meanwhile, an international research group led by Carolin Behrmann at the Max Planck Institute for Art History in Florence is studying the importance of images in the consolidation and legitimation of law with a focus on Early Modern European history.
