Admission criteria, distribution plans, or asylum procedures at the EU’s external borders: the adopted EU asylum reform aims to clarify many aspects. Ulrich Becker and Constantin Hruschka call for effective and legally secure border procedures.
Silke Britzen moves between two spheres. As a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, she analyzes the epitome of darkness. That is to say, she studies black holes with telescopes that nearly span the globe. As an artist, she paints pictures bursting with color. Her approach to both research and painting is unorthodox.
Finding applications for scientific discoveries that hold promise for medicine and technology is the goal of Max Planck Innovation. The agency for technology transfer was a global pioneer in helping researchers patent and license inventions and found startups. Its history includes many successes, a financial crime thriller, and a major crisis.
Every living creature has to gather materials from the environment and convert them into the materials it needs to live. Without metabolism, there would be no life on Earth. Tobias Erb, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg, wants to reprogram metabolic pathways so that raw materials can be produced more sparingly and efficiently. His latest coup? A metabolic cycle driven by electrical energy.
Extreme mining, huge dams, spreading infrastructure: when economic development endangers the habitat and culture of Indigenous and other local communities, environmental rights appear to offer a solution. But how can such human rights or rights of nature really help? A legal and anthropological research team from the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology seeks answers in Mongolia, Ethiopia, Ecuador, and Colombia.
Max Planck researchers work with partners in more than 120 countries. Here they write about their personal experiences and impressions. Jozefien Van de Velde from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne traveled to Australia for two months in search of frogs in the outback. This was no easy task, as her study subjects are nocturnal, hide underground in dry conditions, and only emerge after heavy rain.
