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2.2016
MaxPlanckResearch
Language
THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE CHEMISTRY ASTRONOMY ENVIRONMENT
Leaves Trio with an A Dark World Thaw in the
of Truth Extensive Repertoire of Ice Climate Model
Dossier – Innovation at Siemens
How Innovations are generated – from
initial idea to market launch.
siemens.com/pof-innovations
ON LOCATION
Photo: Michael Gebhardt / Environmental Research Station Schneefernerhaus
High above the Clouds?

No – right in the middle is the place to be! This is because both the global climate and local weather events are extremely
dependent on cloud formation. Located just under the peak of the Zugspitze mountain and frequently cloaked in dense
cloud, the Schneefernerhaus provides the perfect conditions for scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and
Self-Organization to study clouds from a direct and immediate perspective. Operating as a hotel until the early 1990s, the
Schneefernerhaus is now Germany’s highest environmental research station. Here, the researchers from Göttingen aim to
measure how, in the turbulent flows of a cloud, tiny droplets of water collide with one another before combining to form
larger droplets and, ultimately, rain. It is precisely this phase of droplet formation that is very difficult to reproduce in
laboratory conditions or to numerically simulate.
After four years of preparatory work, 6.5 tons of equipment were transported from Göttingen to Garmisch-Parten-
kirchen, at the foot of the Alps, and, using a special heavy-load helicopter, installed on the tower terrace of the Schnee
fernerhaus. The heart of the measurement apparatus is the “seesaw,” which basically allows a sled to “ride along” in the
main flow of a passing cloud. Four high-speed cameras photograph the cloud particles, which are illuminated with a
powerful laser. This makes it possible to track the path of a single droplet over a relatively long time interval.
In the high-pressure wind tunnel in the laboratory in Göttingen, the scientists can generate models of virtually any
type of turbulent flows, while their work on the Zugspitze allows them to precisely observe natural turbulences. It is hoped
that the combination of these approaches will help unlock the secret of clouds – for a better understanding of these
nebulous beauties that are so important for the climate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4KFgg4OMQY
2 | 16 MaxPlanckResearch 3
Contents
18 48
Wanted materials: Solid state
LANGUAGE
researchers are testing new alloys
designed to replace rare earths.
Cover illustration: Dorothea Pluta; photos this page: Valentin Rodriguez/agefotostock/Avenue Images (large photo), Sven Döring (right)
18 Without a Sound PERSPECTIVES
During language acquisition, gestures seem vital to learning how to
06 Chancellor Pushes the Red Button
speak. But were gestures an evolutionary precursor of human language?
To investigate this question, Simone Pika at the Max Planck Institute for 06 New Network for Alumni
Ornithology in Seewiesen studies the communication strategies of great 07 “The end product is what matters”
apes in natural environments, but also corvids and human infants. 08 Leibniz Prizes Awarded to Three
Max Planck Researchers
26 Talk First, Think Later
08 HIV Scissors to Combat AIDS
During everyday conversations, we often begin to speak before we have
09 Exchange of Talent with Dutch
decided exactly what we want to say. Antje Meyer and her team at the
University
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen are investigating
how we plan sentences and what obstacles may stand in the way. 09 On the Net
34 Digital Storytellers
Movies with audio descriptions help blind people understand the VIEWPOINT
storyline. Could computers take over the task of transforming moving
10 Leaves of Truth
images into natural language? Anna Rohrbach, a scientist at the Max
Objectivity ranks as one of the high-
Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken, and her husband, Marcus
est ideals in research, but that wasn’t
Rohrbach, are working on just that. They aim to develop a computer that
always the case. It wasn’t until the
can automatically generate and read out film descriptions.
19th century that it began to vie with
the centuries-old principle of natural
truth. Even today, the two concepts
still come into conflict.
ON THE COVER Even if we sometimes talk past one another, natural language is our FOCUS
central means of communication. But how did this instrument develop over the
course of evolution? And what goes on in our minds when we hold a conversation? 18 Without a Sound
Language is proving to be an extraordinarily complex topic – and one that holds
great interest not only for classical linguists and computer scientists, but also for 26 Talk First, Think Later
psychologists and behavioral researchers. 34 Digital Storytellers
4 MaxPlanckResearch 2 | 16
56 62 70
Successful shots: Images from Shrinking polar cap: Popular analyses: Ayelet Shachar
special cameras reveal the secrets Measurements in the Arctic explain researches the legal aspects of the
of Ceres, a dwarf planet. the rapid melting of the sea ice. refugee crisis.
SPECTRUM MATERIALS & TECHNOLOGY ENVIRONMENT & CLIMATE

42 E xtreme Energy Source at the 48 A Trio with an Extensive 62 Thaw in the Climate Model
Heart of the Milky Way Repertoire Nowhere does climate change make its
42 Blood Test for Tuberculosis Technological advances are fre- presence felt more strongly than in the
43 Compass in the Eye quently possible only with the Arctic. The volume of sea ice there has
Photos: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA, Leif Riemenschneider, Frank Vinken (left to right)
development of new materials. fallen drastically in recent decades. What

43 E xtortioners at the Negotiating Table
This is true whether we are talking processes influence the formation and
44 Animation Made Easy about energy supply or information melting of this ice?
44 A Hammer for Molecule Swapping technology. Heusler compounds
45 Cuddle Hormone Relieves Pain are a rich source of new materials.
45 Testing the Response Time CULTURE & SOCIETY
of Electrons
PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY 70 Mediator between Worlds
45 Immune Genes from Neanderthals Personal Portrait: Ayelet Shachar
46 Dark Taiga Lightens Up 56 A Dark World of Ice
46 Speedy Birth of a Planet A space probe has journeyed to
47 Ciliates as Models Ceres for the first time. Scientists REGULAR FEATURES
are using its two onboard cameras
47 Hardship Increases Risk-Taking 03 On Location
to explore the dark surface of the
in Old Age
dwarf planet. They have already 16 Post to – Calcutta, India
47 Fighting for the Host discovered signs of frozen water – Education is a Valuable Commodity
but is there also an ocean slumber- 78 Flashback
ing deep below the craters? Hunting for Particles Underground
80 Max Planck Community
80 New Open Access Initiative Launched
81 Kick-off for Cooperation in Hong Kong
81 Alumni Symposium Holds Premiere
in Berlin
82 Diverse Objectives – Diverse Careers
83 Research Establishments
83 Publisher’s Information
PERSPECTIVES
Chancellor Pushes the Red Button

High-level visit to the control room of
the Wendelstein 7-X nuclear fusion re-
actor: Chancellor Angela Merkel, a
physicist herself, visited Greifswald in
early February to switch on the first
hydrogen plasma at the fusion reactor.
“Every step we have taken toward the
fusion power plant over the course of
a century represents a success,” under-
scored Merkel before a large audience
from the realms of science and politics
before getting down to action. For the
all-important push of the button, em-
ployees from the Max Planck Institute
of Plasma Physics had a glass cube
structure with the silhouette of the fu-
sion reactor specially constructed and
positioned on a steel column. Shortly
after Angela Merkel spiritedly pressed
the button, a bright light flickered on
the monitors. These screens provided
a glimpse inside the plasma vessel,
where the brief fusion reaction the
Chancellor had set in motion via the
2-megawatt pulse of microwave heat
could be seen. Reaching a temperature
of 80 million degrees and lasting a
quarter of a second, the first hydrogen
plasma in the system fully met the ex-
Before the start: Project manager Thomas Klinger, Managing Director Sibylle Günter,
pectations of scientists and engineers Helmholtz President Otmar Wiestler, Chancellor Angela Merkel, Max Planck President Martin
at the Institute. Stratmann and Erwin Sellering, Minister President of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (from left).
New Network for Alumni

Former Max Planck scientists join together
Every year scientists from many different countries visit the sizes that: “Their skills are nevertheless important to the Max
Max Planck Institutes and, conversely, many head off to all Planck Society as a whole, across institute boundaries.”
parts of the world as alumni. For some time now, the Max This was reason enough for him and five other alumni
Planck Society has endeavored to cooperate with them in es- from different institutes to establish the Max Planck Alum-
tablishing a global, cross-disciplinary network. The alumni ni Association e.V. This new union will enable all alumni to
Photo: Norbert Fellechner/IPP
work has thus far focused on former working locations. “Max work on independent projects autonomously and for the
Planck alumni feel an affinity primarily with their institute,” benefit of the entire organization and its scientists – for in-
said Filippo Guarnieri, who previously worked at the Max stance to foster knowledge sharing, career development
Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics. But he also empha- and recruiting.
PERSPECTIVES
“The end product is what matters”

Detlef Weigel, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, explains why
genome editing offers a targeted way of breeding better crops
Greater resistance to pests, less sensitivi- DNA with a protein at a predefined loca-
ty to drought, higher yields – this is just a tion. The genome editing method known
small selection of the requirements that as CRISPR/Cas9 has become the most
crops will have to fulfill in the future. Hu- common method. We can then modify the
manity needs new crops that can with- DNA at the interface or insert new sec-
stand the changes arising from global tions. So genome editing should be viewed
warming and meet the growing demand as a variant of mutation breeding, with the
for food. With the help of a new method difference that the generation of particu-
called genome editing, scientists are seek- lar mutations is targeted.
ing to develop new crop varieties more ef- The major advantage here is that these
ficiently than before. If no foreign genes modifications can be obtained in the same
are inserted into these plants, they can’t way as they are made in traditional breed-
be distinguished from plants that have ing and crossing experiments. For exam-
been bred using traditional methods. For ple, individual letters of the genetic code
this reason, Detlef Weigel from the Tübin- can be exchanged. This corresponds to a
gen-based Max Planck Institute for Devel- modification that can also arise through Detlef Weigel is in favor of
classifying genome-edited plants
opmental Biology, together with col- natural mutation. Short sections of DNA
as traditionally bred plants.
leagues from the US and China, is asking can also be inserted and, in this way, genes
for genome-edited plant varieties of this from a species can be replaced with genes
kind not to be classified as genetically from its other varieties or from closely re- nome was altered through breeding. At
modified plants. lated species – something that is also done the end of the process, there is nothing to
in traditional cross-breeding. indicate how the new variety arose.
Mr. Weigel, how are new varieties bred from
crops today? The criticism regarding genetically modified So genome-edited plants shouldn’t be
Detlef Weigel: It’s important to realize plants is aroused by the aforementioned treated like genetically modified plants if
that traditional breeding also aims to alter “foreign genes” in particular. Do genome-edited they don’t contain any foreign DNA?
the DNA of the plants. For example, if you plants also contain such foreign DNA? Exactly! This is why we are asking for them
would like to obtain a new plant that can The genetic information for the cutting to be classified as traditionally bred plants.
withstand drought and produce high protein is usually inserted into the plant’s In our view, how a plant variety came into
yields, you can cross existing varieties that DNA so that it can be formed in the plant being doesn’t make any difference; the end
are resistant to drought or produce partic- cells. This gene doesn’t arise naturally in product alone is what matters. In my view,
ularly high yields. The genes for these traits plants and is, therefore, foreign DNA. Fol- it doesn’t make any sense to classify plants
are newly mixed in the descendants’ DNA, lowing the successful modification of the as different if it isn’t possible to say how
and some plants receive the genes for both genome, however, it can be completely they came into being.
traits. Chemical substances or radiation removed. Using the analysis methods
can also be used to generate mutations available today, it is possible to ensure Is this possible from a legal point of view, or
somewhere in the genetic code. Plants that a genome-edited plant no longer would it require a change in the law?
with new traits can also arise in this way. contains any foreign DNA. Genome edit- The German Genetic Engineering Act states
Photo: Jens Abendroth for the MPI for Developmental Biology
However, it is very time-consuming and ing can also be used to insert completely that the descendants of a genetically mod-
complicated to seek out plants with the de- foreign genes into the genome – as is the ified plant must also be classified as genet-
sired traits from thousands of mutants. case in traditional genetic engineering. ically modified. So the fact that genome-ed-
However, this kind of genome editing ited plants temporarily contained the gene
What is the difference between genome-edited should be subject to different regulations for the cutting protein would make them
and genetically modified plants? than the kind that is used to make minor and their descendants genetically modified
With traditional genetic engineering, modifications. plants forever – despite the fact that the for-
genes are often introduced into a plant’s eign gene was removed without trace. This
DNA that do not arise naturally in the spe- Is it possible to distinguish at all between was certainly not the intention of the legis-
cies, for example genes for resistance to a genome-edited and traditionally bred plants? lator, as genome engineering didn’t yet ex-
herbicide. Different processes exist for If no foreign genes are inserted, then, no, ist when the Genetic Engineering Act was
this: for example, the genes can be “shot” it isn’t possible. A plant that has been passed. So we suggest that the Genetic En-
into the plant cells using a kind of “gene modified using genome editing doesn’t gineering Act should not be applied to ge-
gun.” With genome editing, we cut the differ in any way from a plant whose genome-edited plants. Interview: Harald Rösch
PERSPECTIVES
Leibniz Prizes Awarded to Three Max Planck Researchers

Prestigious award presented to Marina Rodnina, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Benjamin List
The Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize,

awarded annually by the German Re-
search Foundation, is one of the most
prestigious scientific prizes in Germa-
ny. The prize is endowed with up to
2.5 million euros, and once again,
three Max Planck Directors received
the award in March 2016.
Marina Rodnina from the Max
Planck Institute for Biophysical Chem-
istry was honored for her pioneering
efforts on understanding the function
of ribosomes. She succeeded in shed- Great honor: The winners of this year’s Leibniz Prizes include Max Planck Directors Marina
ding light on the fundamental princi- Rodnina, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Benjamin List.
ples of how ribosomes – the protein

factories of living cells – function. Em- bacteria, can be deployed as a high-pre- the prize for establishing an entirely
manuelle Charpentier, Director at the cision tool to investigate the function new field of catalysis research. List dis-
Max Planck Institute for Infection Bi- of genes and to manipulate genetic covered one of the foundations of or-
ology, was presented the award for de- material. Benjamin List, Director at ganocatalysis, which allows natural
Photos: MPI for Biophysical Chemistry, Hallbauer & Fioretti, Jörg Baumann (top, left to right), Olivier Schwartz, Pasteur Institute, Paris (bottom).
veloping the CRISPR/Cas9 technique. the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlen- substances rather than metals to be
This mechanism, which stems from forschung (Coal Research), received used as catalysts for the first time.
HIV Scissors to Combat AIDS

Enzyme removes the genome of the AIDS pathogen from infected cells
To date, no cure has been found for infection with HIV. The of the disease. In 2007, a team of researchers headed by Joa-
drugs that infected patients must take for the rest of their chim Hauber from the Heinrich-Pette Institute in Hamburg
life suppress the spread of the virus and thus the outbreak and Frank Buchholz from the Max Planck Institute of Mo-
lecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden succeeded for
the first time in cutting out HIV genetic material from hu-
man cell cultures using an enzyme. Scientists have now tak-
en an important step forward: they have developed the
gene scissors to the point where over 90 percent of the HIV
genotype can be removed from the human genome.
The scientists have proven the effectiveness of their
technique in cell cultures and animal research. The num-
ber of viruses fell below the detection limit in animals re-
ceiving this treatment. Frank Buchholz, now a professor at
the Technische Universität Dresden, believes this represents
a medical milestone: “The creation of molecular scalpels
will change medicine. It’s not just HIV patients who will
benefit from this development, but also many others with
genetic diseases.”
Burgeoning HIV: Up to ten billion virions are newly formed from

activated T-cells every day. After a short time, these virus particles
are ready to infect the next cells.
PERSPECTIVES
Exchange of Talent with Dutch University

Max Planck Society and Radboud University agree on joint program
Soon, up to 100 master’s degree students from Radboud

University in the Netherlands will be able to undertake in-
ternships each year at the Max Planck Institutes. Gerard
Meijer, the University’s President, and Martin Stratmann,
Max Planck President, concluded an agreement at the be-
ginning of March. “This presents us with a great opportu-
nity to establish ties with young talent who will become
the cutting-edge scientists of the future,” emphasized Strat-
mann when signing the agreement. Meijer highlighted the
opportunities for students to gain research experience at
one of the prestigious Max Planck Institutes.
The internships will last 6 to 12 weeks, with the partic-
ipating institutes providing supervision, workplaces and
equipment. The remaining costs will be covered by Rad-
boud University and the Erasmus program. A further frame-
work agreement between the two scientific institutions also
enables Max Planck scientists to obtain lecturing experi-
ence at Radboud University. This will be particularly bene-
ficial to young researchers seeking a university career.
Research cooperation is also to be stepped up. The collab-
orative program will initially run for five years.
Invaluable cooperation: Max Planck President Martin Stratmann (left) and
University President Gerard Meijer seal the launch of new joint activities
between the two institutions with their signatures.
On the Net
CV of Failures A Quantum Future Fascinating Insights

We all experience failures in our careers, Researchers are seeking to make quan- The Wellcome Image Awards for the
but we tend to keep quiet about them. tum communication tap-proof, en- best scientific photographs of the year
Not so Johannes Haushofer, a 36-year- abling message recipients to deter- in the field of biology and medicine
old assistant professor from Princeton mine whether a transmission has been were presented on March 15. Twenty
who recently shared his “CV of failures” tapped. This is made possible by the un- spectacular images were honored, in-
for all the world to see on his Twitter ac- certainty principle that Werner Heisen- cluding a submission by Alfred Anwan-
count. The CV includes sections entitled berg described back in 1927. Our new der from the Max Planck Institute for
“Degree programs I did not get into,” educational video (“Quantum physics – Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in
“Research funding I did not get,” and tap-proof through randomness”) for Leipzig. Wellcome Image is an exten-
“Paper rejections from academic jour- upper secondary school students clear- sive image database that provides un-
nals.” Haushofer’s intention was to pro- ly explains what lies behind this prin- restricted access to photographs and il-
Photo: Radboud University
vide some perspective on failure by ciple and how it can be applied to copy lustrations from the history of medi-
making it visible – and with great suc- protection. cine to current biomedical research. A
cess, as his post very quickly went viral. www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sheEy1rNGI team of scientists, artists and journal-
www.princeton.edu/~joha/Johannes_ ists select the best scientific photo-
Haushofer_CV_of_Failures.pdf graphs each year.
www.wellcomeimageawards.org/2016
VIEWPOINT_History of Science
Leaves of Truth
Objectivity ranks as one of the highest ideals in research, but that wasn’t always the
case. It wasn’t until the 19th century that it began to vie with the centuries-old principle
of natural truth. Even today, the two concepts still come into conflict. As the author
explains, some scientific controversies are more easily understood through a closer look
at the history of science.
TEXT LORRAINE DASTON
W
hy does society need the history of certain issues (and not to others); why certain meth-
science? And why does science, in ods (and not others) have become indispensable;
particular, need the history of sci- why some discoveries are hailed immediately while
ence? In the fast-moving, pressur- others languish in obscurity for decades, or even cen-
ized world of present-day research, turies; why one discipline flourishes while another
scientists often wish for something that the history is neglected; why a scientific career follows certain
of science can’t deliver: they want to know where stages (and not others); and ultimately why scientif-
and when the next breakthrough is coming, and ic careers exist – something that, from a historical
perspective, is anything but self-evident.
Above all, the history of science provides an ex-
planation of the varying time scales of science, each
Science has different time with a tempo of its own – and each with transforma-
tive potential.
scales, each with its own tempo There are three clocks that measure the pace of
science. Empirical discoveries move at the fastest
pace – the research results that appear in the next is-
which research program will fulfill its promises and sue of S cience, N ature and other journals. This clock
more besides. These things can’t be prophesied – for- is calibrated in weeks and months; it ticks allegro.
tunately. Science that relies on its past to extrapolate The tempo of the climate for empirical research,
its future would lack creativity. on the other hand, is andante. By climate, I mean
What the history of science can provide is an ex- the synthetic theories – the different questions em-
planation of why present-day research is devoted to bodied within a theory – but also the material con-
SUB Göttingen, Gr 2 Cod Ms. H NAT 94
Painting over photography: Botanists in the past

preferred, and today still prefer, painted pictures, such
as this late 18th century watercolor by Franz Bauer.
In contrast to photographs, which necessarily depict
an individual specimen, the painter can emphasize the
typical characteristics of plants.
ditions for science: the invention of new instru- idealized graph curves and techniques of illustra-
ments, the level of social support and appreciation tion are all examples of how the abstract-sounding
of research, the ability to attract the finest minds to categories take on concrete form in everyday scien-
this career rather than any other. This clock ticks tific practice.
slower, in units of years and decades. The three time scales of science – allegro, andan-
The third clock is legato, advancing in units of te, legato – are interwoven like a triple fugue. Taking
centuries or even millennia. It measures the pace one of these concrete forms, imaging, I would like
of the fundamental epistemic virtues of science, the to flesh out two of these epistemic virtues – natural
truth and objectivity – and the resulting potential
for conflict. Let us consider two illustrations of
leaves, one a watercolor dating from the late 18th
Only experienced observers century and the other a so-called nature print from
the mid-19th century. Both were created for botan-
are capable of distinguishing ical purposes.
The leaves in the watercolor were depicted very
signal from noise naturalistically by a master of botanical art named
Franz Bauer. However, the painting doesn’t depict
particular characteristics that define the science of real leaves, but rather idealized leaf types: cordate
a specific era as science (as opposed to knowledge, (heart-shaped), trilobate (having three lobes) and
opinion or belief): certainty, truth, precision, ob- sagittate (arrow-shaped).
jectivity. It is this third clock, the history of the The leaf in the nature print, in contrast, is an
seemingly self-evident in science, that I focus on imprint of an individual oak leaf, pressed between
in my research. copper and lead plates until it made an impression
Given that these categories develop so slowly in the soft lead. Although this process was lauded
and are anchored so deeply in the identity of sci- by its originator as the third great moment in cul-
ence, they appear to have no history. But let us take tural history – following the invention of writing
an example – certainty: For almost 2,000 years, from and Gutenberg’s movable type – botanists remained
antiquity until the end of the 17th century, this was unconvinced. Neither the meticulously accurate re-
the sine qua non of science. Episteme in ancient production of details nor the immediacy of the
Greek, scientia in Latin, the concept was defined as method impressed them. Photography also found
certain knowledge that not only accorded with the little use in tomes devoted to plants. Botanists pre-
facts, but could be proven by axiomata, in the same ferred, and still prefer, natural truth over accuracy
way as a syllogism in logic or a mathematical proof. and objectivity.
Even Isaac Newton still clung to this vision: he What, exactly, is natural truth? Under which
described his laws of motion as axiomata sive leges circumstances is this epistemic virtue better suited
motus. Redefining the concept of science as proba- to scientific purposes than any other? Particularly
ble and even revisable knowledge was a slow but in the sciences given to classification – botany, zo-
revolutionary transformation. ology, anatomy, crystallography – natural truth
Certainty, truth, precision, objectivity – they all aims to capture the typical: not this or that human
sound so abstract. In reality, however, these goals skeleton with all its idiosyncrasies, but the human
are tangibly expressed in scientific practice. Error skeleton – or the gladiolus, the elliptical galaxy or
bars for measurements, Monte Carlo simulations, the isometric crystal.
Natural truth fights not only against natural variabil- posite of what we understand the words to mean
ity, but also against the spread of all kinds of data. today: “objective” referred to things as they appear
Astronomers, physicists or psychologists, suddenly to the conscious mind, whereas “subjective” re-
confronted with a data point that refuses to fit the ferred to things themselves.
pattern, must decide whether or not it is meaning- But it wasn’t just the meaning of the words that
ful to include it in their calculations. If an astrono- turned 180 degrees around the year 1840. Objec-
mer, for example, is trying to determine the orbit of tivity and subjectivity, once of purely philosophi-
a comet, and all of his observations bar one single cal interest, became increasingly relevant for the
exception point to a parabola, does it make sense, is
it right and proper, to ignore this aberration?
Natural truth would say “yes,” whereas objectiv-
ity would say “no.” Natural truth recognizes sym- An objective researcher
metries and regularities among a seething mass of
variability, thus opening the way for classification must resist the temptation
and mathematical models. Even though natural
truth is inclined to idealize, it promotes the high-
to embellish nature
est empirical efforts.
Only the most experienced observers are capa- empirical sciences in some very specific cases. From
ble of distinguishing the typical from the atypical the middle of the century, scientists in a wide va-
– the signal from the noise. This ability requires ma- riety of disciplines – physiology, astronomy, chem-
ture powers of judgment. And assertive interven- istry, physics, bacteriology and even philology –
tion in images and data. were becoming concerned about a new obstacle on
Natural truth is an age-old epistemic virtue and the path to knowledge: the obstacle that they
is still regarded as an ideal any time scientists in a themselves presented.
wide variety of disciplines attempt to recognize The researchers feared that their subjective self
symmetries, regularities and types (such as the gen- was inclined to embellish, idealize and, in the
era of organisms) under conditions of variability, worst case, regularize observations in order to make
data spread, and noise of all kinds. them fit theoretical expectations – to see what it
However, it was probably from the mid-16th to hoped to see. For the adherents of the new epistem-
the mid-19th century that natural truth experi- ic virtue of objectivity, the interventions by the
enced a golden age, in the era of Vesalius’ Canon of proponents of natural truth were scandalous – they
the Human Body and Linnaeus’ “plant archetypes.” were the subjective projections of the researchers
From the early to mid-19th century, natural truth themselves.
came into increasingly frequent conflict with a new What form did the difference between natural
epistemic virtue: objectivity. truth and objectivity take? Often it was a contrast
At first glance, it seems surprising that objectiv- between drawing and photography, as in the case
ity, perhaps the central epistemic virtue of modern of British physicist Arthur Worthington, who, after
science, should be so late in making an appearance. 20 years studying the splashes of drops, was forced
The word objectivity is indeed much older, de- to admit that his earlier drawings were too fine, too
riving from the late scholastic Latin term objectivus, symmetrical – a projection, he felt, of his expecta-
frequently paired with subjectivus. These famil- tion that he would indeed find nature to be perfect.
iar-sounding terms, however, signify the precise op- It was only with the introduction of photographic
methods that Worthington recognized that his ide- The consequences can be devastating. Let me cite
al, the “autosplash of his mind’s eye,” didn’t exist. just one example from the US – without mention-
Photography, however, can serve both natural ing any names, although biologists will probably
truth and objectivity. There are, for instance, some immediately recognize the case. A young postdoc-
microphotographs of snowflakes dating from the
end of the 19th century that are quite revealing in
this regard. They were taken in Vermont around
1885 by Wilson Bentley, who edited the pictures to Misconduct proves
eliminate any irregularities. Richard Neuhaus also
published images of snowflakes in Berlin in 1893, to be a case of colliding
but his show asymmetries, broken or missing arms, epistemic virtues
and other deviations from geometric perfection.
While scientists since Kepler had regarded snow-
flakes as proof of the mathematical structure of na- toral student was working with an experienced sci-
ture and very openly removed “damaged” or “ab- entist in the laboratory of a Nobel laureate. The stu-
normal” examples as being atypical, Neuhaus crit- dent was unable to replicate the scientist’s results
icized Bentley’s embellishment of his photos as despite adhering meticulously to the textbook
“entirely gratuitous.” The objective researcher had methods; she also noticed that the published mea-
to exercise self-discipline and resist the temptation surements didn’t always coincide with those record-
to portray nature as more beautiful, more symmet- ed in the scientist’s lab diary.
rical or more regular than it actually was. The student became a whistleblower and ac-
There is no mistaking the moral overtones of the cused her colleague of falsifying data. Because the
accusations Neuhaus leveled at Bentley. Objectivi- research was being funded by the National Insti-
ty wasn’t only a methodological dictate, but also a tutes of Health, this episode became a national
moral one. Almost all epistemic virtues have a sim- scandal, with hearings in congress, secret service in-
ilarly moral tone. How could it be otherwise? This vestigations and ruined careers. After more than ten
is determined not only by practical considerations years of investigation, the scientist was exonerated
– whether, for example, an aberration may be dis- by the Office of Research Integrity.
carded or not – but also by a professional ethos that Other experienced scientists were ultimately
must be internalized. The ethos of natural truth able to replicate her results: precisely because they
doesn’t always coincide with that of objectivity: all were experienced, they were willing – as the ac-
scientists serve the cause of truth, but they have dif- cused researcher had been – to sometimes refrain
fering assessments of the obstacles. from including aberrant data in their published
Where is the risk of misjudging the truth great- analyses. What the press and congress had inter-
er: in the variability of nature or in the subjectivity preted as a case of scientific misconduct appears in
of the scientist? Given that differing epistemic vir- retrospect to have been an example of colliding
tues such as natural truth and objectivity also have epistemic virtues: the objectivity of the postdoc
different histories, it’s no surprise that these histo- who followed the methods precisely and wanted to
ries sometimes collide. But precisely because the dif- include all of her measurements in her analysis,
ferences in the course of history aren’t apparent to versus the natural truth of the scientist who mod-
scientists, such collisions are frequently interpret- ified her methods on an ad hoc basis and ignored
ed as scientific misconduct, even to this day. implausible data.
Please don’t misunderstand me: genuine cases of data

falsification and scientific misconduct do, unfortu-
nately, exist. But there are also genuine collisions be-
tween epistemic virtues – just as ethical virtues some-
times collide. Justice and mercy aren’t always recon-
cilable, any more than honesty and courtesy.
The initial reaction on both sides is frequently
an outburst of moral indignation directed at the
other party, as if virtue were to be found on one
side only. But the historic perspective shows that
both parties have virtue on their side – albeit dif-
ferent virtues, with different histories. Because the
third clock that measures scientific development
ticks so slowly, these histories remain invisible for
most scientists.
This is where the history of science can facili-
tate a completely different discussion that doesn’t THE AUTHOR
focus on who is right and who is wrong, but instead
asks: which goals do we wish to pursue in this spe- Lorraine Daston (born in 1951) is a Director at the
cific case, and where does the greatest risk of fail- Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin,
ure lie? a visiting professor on the Committee on Social Thought
at the University of Chicago, and an honorary professor of
the history of science at Humboldt University in Berlin.
She was born in the US, where she was awarded a doctor-
ate at Harvard University in 1979 and taught at Harvard,
Princeton and Göttingen Universities, among others.
The main focus of Professor Daston’s research is on the
ideals and practices of rationality. She has also published
papers on numerous topics relating to the history of
science, such as the history of probability and statistics,
wonders in early modern science, and the history of scien-
tific objectivity.
Photo: Skúli Sigurdsson
Post to Calcutta, India
Education Is a Valuable
Commodity
Scientists from 55 countries around the globe work at the Max Planck Institutes.
Here they relate their personal experiences and impressions. Suhrid Ghosh from
India spent considerable time in the Himalayas researching hoverflies, and
recently took up a doctoral position at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell
Biology and Genetics in Dresden. The 24-year-old hopes to one day return to his
home country as a teacher.
I love hiking and camping, and living and working in nature. If I had the choice, I’d always
prefer field work in the jungle to working in the lab. But some things just can’t be studied
in the jungle, which is why I came to the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology
and Genetics a couple of months ago as a Ph.D. student.
Education is a privilege in the tiny Himalayan village where I was doing field work for my
master’s degree: I frequently saw the children gathering in front of their teacher’s house in
the early morning hours to pick her up for the hike to the schoolhouse – a cumbersome
journey over hill and dale. They marched 12 kilometers uphill in the morning and back
down in the evening just to be able to go to school. Curiosity was their sole motivation –
and maybe the hope for a better life.
Graphic: iStockphoto
In the afternoons, they would visit us researchers, asking about our experiments. We were
studying hoverflies and how they orient themselves in the mountains to find their flowers.
The village children intuitively knew why this is important, and had their own unspoiled
perspective on the topic – much better than grown-ups.
Suhrid Ghosh, 24
, studied microbio
logy
(MSc) in Vadoda
ra, India from 20
12
until 2014 before
conduc ting proje
ct
studies on hoverfl
ies with Shanno
n
Olsson at the Na
tional Centre for
Biological Science
s in Bangalore, Ind
from 2014 to 2015. ia
Since 2015, he ha
s
been conduc ting
doctoral research
with Suzanne Ea
ton at the Max Pla
nck
Institute of Mole
cular Cell Biology
and Genetics in Dr
esden.
It is indeed a great gift when nature is so tangible for kids. I grew up on a small farm close
to Calcutta. My ancestors were traditional dairy farmers. I knew exactly how to wash a cow,
how to milk her and how to keep the barn in check. At the same time, however, I was very
lucky to have had direct access to education, which is not the norm in populous India.
There are so many people here with great ideas, but many of them have never actually at-
tended school, despite education being one of the most fundamental human rights.
When my time as a scientist is over, I’d like to get involved in this very issue and work as
a teacher in India – I imagine this to be very fulfilling, because teachers have an important
function in Indian society. After all, it was a teacher at my high school who told me about
the Max Planck Society as a research organization. He had once had a very bright student,
named Rupak Majumdar, he said, who is now even a Max Planck Director.
Photo: Private collection
So Rupak became sort of a role model for me, since he came from the same city and was now
an internationally recognized scientist. Many years later, when I was doing my master’s de-
gree, I remembered the name Max Planck and I applied in Dresden. Of course it was a big
transition for me, but my colleagues at the Institute are very friendly and helpful. And they
told me that there are really great opportunities for hiking and climbing in the Elbe Sand-
stone Mountains, also known as Saxon Switzerland. I hope to try that out very soon.
FOCUS_Language
Without a Sound
During language acquisition, gestures seem vital to learning how to speak. They help us emphasize and
structure what we say. Simone Pika from the Humboldt Research Group at the Max Planck Institute
for Ornithology in Seewiesen wants to know whether gestures were an evolutionary precursor of
human language and how they develop. To investigate this question, the researcher studies the com-
munication strategies of great apes in natural environments, but also corvids and human infants.
TEXT CATARINA PIETSCHMANN
A
n incredible cacophony starts making begging and appease- the highly-aroused situation of hunt-
of vocalizations echoes ment gestures: he ducks down, sways ing, do they not increase their distance
through the rainforest, backwards and forwards, whimpers like from the animals when it falls below
followed by hectic scurry- a chimpanzee child, and makes a facial this minimum.
ing. Chaos is in the air. Ba- expression called a fear grin. The mes- Yet Pika doesn’t need to get any
boons have hunted down a small ante- sage: Don’t hurt me, but give me some closer to film the gestures that are ex-
lope, but a group of chimpanzees im- of that delicious stuff. And it works! changed between the animals. The
mediately snatches away their prey. As Bartok tears the antelope apart and 43-year-old is the Leader of the Hum-
Bartok, the alpha male, lugs the carcass shares small pieces of the meat with boldt Research Group “Evolution of
around, some members of his group both of them. Communication” at the Max Planck In-
beg him to share some of the meat. stitute for Ornithology in Seewiesen.
Bartok, however, wants to be the RESEARCHERS KEEP THEIR She wants to solve one of evolution’s
first to eat, so he settles down with the DISTANCE biggest mysteries: how did human lan-
dead animal less than four meters away guage evolve?
from the blonde woman. Simone Pika “When you actually get to see some- According to one theory, our ances-
has been following the chimpanzees for thing like this in the wild, you can’t tors initially gesticulated with each
quite some time during her daily treks help sitting in the camp that night and other before using speech. That means
through Uganda’s Kibale National Park, just smiling from ear to ear,” says Pika, they could have communicated simple
and she can hardly believe that Bartok thinking back to that day. Because un- information using gestures. “But, like
Photo: Simone Pika/MPI for Ornithology
is sitting so close to her now. like in the days of the young Jane many of my colleagues, I now believe
Two males have the courage to ap- Goodall, scientists no longer lure wild this to be a rather unlikely scenario,
proach Bartok and the scientist. While chimpanzees with food, but instead because individuals use gestures to
one of them simply sits down next to track them down in the rainforest day communicate with each other mainly
the alpha male, opens up his out- after day, guided by the animals’ nests,
stretched hand and then gently starts feeding grounds and calls, all the while
Like all great apes, gorillas also communicate
plucking at the antelope, the other making sure to keep an observer dis- via gestures. The animals use this form of
male is less self-confident. Although he tance of at least seven meters. Only in communication mainly in relaxed settings
also sits down next to Bartok, he then very rare and specific contexts, such as and across short distances.
FOCUS_Language
when they are in a relaxed setting and

can touch or at least see each other,”
says Pika.
But what if an animal wants to warn
other members of its group of a preda-
tor, and the group is far away in the
dense rainforest? “Then vocalizations
are, of course, much more effective
than gestures.” That is why most re-
searchers now believe that calls and
gestures evolved in parallel.
While writing her doctoral thesis
under the supervision of Michael To-
masello at the Max Planck Institute for
Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig,
Pika studied the gestures used by go-
rillas and bonobos in various wildlife
parks and zoos across Europe. But is
their behavior similar to that of their
fellow apes living in the wild? Or do gestures. In a new study being conduct- Today, there is a scientific consensus
animals in captivity gesticulate primar- ed with her postdoctoral fellow Dr. Eva that apes use gestures to communicate
ily because they lack a natural environ- Luef, the researcher is therefore aiming with each other. Pointing gestures,
ment and are constantly in each oth- to find out whether chimpanzees, like however, were considered to be an ex-
er’s presence? humans, have certain greeting customs, clusively human trait until recently. Yet
To find answers, the young research- and if so, whether these greetings vary chimpanzees living in zoos have been
er had to observe her subjects in their depending on an individual’s social observed to clearly point to highly de-
natural habitats. “In 2005, when I was rank within the group. Consequently, sirable food, such as grapes and banan-
given the opportunity to study a group gestures would be relevant in situations as, indicating to their keepers: I want
of chimpanzees in Kibale National in which humans, too, would talk to that! It appears that chimpanzees and
Park, nothing could hold me back. I each other: in direct exchanges, when bonobos in captivity learn that they
will always remember that very first individuals are in very close proximity can bring a human’s attention to a par-
day: Not a single chimpanzee anywhere to each other. ticular object by pointing at it, and that
in sight, but the forest was filled with In 2010, Pika received the Alexan- they will ultimately receive the object.
their calls, which are known as pant- der von Humboldt Foundation’s Sofja This kind of exchange has only rarely
hoots and can be heard hundreds of Kovalevskaja Award, which is endowed been observed in nature, and only be-
meters away. The wild chimpanzees with 1.65 million euros. She uses these tween friends or between mothers and
called out much more frequently than funds to study the evolution and devel- their offspring.
their counterparts in captivity, indicat- opment of communication in three dif-
Photo: Marlen Fröhlich/MPI for Ornithology
ing to us that calls play a very different ferent model groups: in children grow- GROOM ME HERE!
role in natural habitats,” Pika explains. ing up in different cultures; in great
Pant-hoots let chimpanzees know apes, our closest living relatives; and in The pointing gestures that have been
who is in which part of the forest and species that have a similarly complex observed in chimpanzees living in their
with whom. The animals also use these social structure – corvids. Using this ap- natural environments mostly occur in
characteristic calls to claim rich feeding proach, Pika aims to determine the de- the context of animals grooming each
grounds for themselves. When greeting gree to which our ancestors had devel- other. Grooming is more than just a hy-
each other, they use quieter pant- oped communication skills, and which gienic behavior: it plays an important
grunts. Pika has observed that some an- factors are responsible for the fact that role in establishing and maintaining
imals also accompany these grunts with only humans are capable of speech. social relationships. Simone Pika dis-
Left The more independent young
chimpanzees become, the less their
mothers carry them around. By
stretching out her arm and making
eye contact, this chimpanzee mother
is telling her child that it’s time to
go to one of the safest places in the
rainforest of Uganda’s Kibale National
Park: onto mom’s back.
Right Chimpanzees use more than
100 different types of gestures.
Some gestures are used by only one
single member of a group. The male
chimpanzee Dolphi, for example,
raises his arms vertically above his
head to signal to the alpha male (front)
that he should follow the group.
covered that chimpanzees use distinct

scratching gestures to let others know
that they want to be groomed, but
more importantly, they use them to sig-
nal where. “This means chimpanzees
know that their counterpart under-
stands the meaning of the gesture,”
says the Max Planck researcher.
Many species of birds also use refer-
ential gestures when performing court-
ship displays – despite the fact that
birds and humans sit on two very diver-
gent branches of the evolutionary tree.
Ravens are a prime example: not only
are they intelligent and capable of
learning, but they also use objects as
pointing tools. Pika discovered that ra-
vens pick up objects with their beaks
Photo: Kevin Langergraber/MPI for Ornithology
with the intention of offering or show-

ing them to other group members, or
to attract the attention of a potential
mate. And sometimes they just want to volve objects,” says Pika. This indicates own reach. They do so by scooting clos-
scuffle with each other for it. that apes use pointing gestures only to er to their partner and presenting the
“Children do that too – and chim- attract the attention of conspecifics, but part of their body that itches. Young
panzees, surprisingly, don’t. They do never to inform them of something go- birds also enjoy spreading their wings
scuffle for things, but they don’t hold ing on in their immediate surroundings. and sliding down a snowy slope on
up objects to show or offer them to oth- Just like apes, ravens also groom their backs. Normally, birds only lie on
ers. In the case of chimpanzees, most each other – called preening – but only their backs when they are dead. Yet a
gesture-based interaction doesn’t in- on the body parts that are out of their raven lying on its back is sending a dif-
ferent message: I can afford to lie in this do was necessarily done by our com- That’s why, four years ago, when she
crazy position because I am strong and mon ancestors,” says Simone Pika. started to work at the Max Planck Insti-
healthy! Ravens are also known to Humans use vocalizations to com- tute in Seewiesen, she set up a play-
make kicking gestures with their feet. municate from the day they are born – room for toddlers in a lakeside building
The pointing gestures displayed by sometimes much to the chagrin of ex- that legendary behavioral scientist
ravens and apes are therefore a typical hausted parents. But even for babies Konrad Lorenz once used to observe
case of parallel evolution, because the and toddlers, gestures are a key commu- wild geese. Together with the members
two different species can’t have learned nication tool before they learn to speak. of her working group, Pika studied how
this behavior from a common ances- To date, though, very little research has toddlers communicate with their par-
tor. “Studying ravens helps us uncov- been conducted in this area. Pika, now ents from the age of five and a half
er such examples of similar yet inde- the mother of an almost two-year-old months until the time at which they
pendent evolution and understand the daughter, was sensitized to this topic are capable of saying three words.
reasons why gestures evolved. After all, as a result of her work with great apes Very early on, children utter sounds
not everything that humans and apes and wanted to find out more. that appear to be questions. At the age
of nine to twelve months, most tod-
dlers start using pointing gestures.
Photo: Valentin Rodriguez/agefotostock/Avenue Images
“Initially, they point at something

PARENTS, JOIN IN THE RESEARCH! without making sure that others at-
tend to their gestures. Maybe they do
First sounds, then gestures, and then finally the first words! Simone Pika and it because the gesture helps them in-
her assistant Monika Krug developed a speech calendar for parents who wish ternalize something and structure
to record the stages of their child’s language development from the ages of 0 their thoughts,” says Pika. Only later
to 24 months. Parents interested in participating in this study have the option in their development do children also
of anonymously taking part in the “Milestones of Language” study, which start- establish eye contact with their par-
ed in November 2015 and runs until the end of 2017. ents when pointing to an object they
want, as if to say: This teddy bear, I
For more detailed information and the download version of the language
want, Mommy!
calendar, please visit www.orn.mpg.de/milestones
Gestures help children learn to speak.
But why do adults gesticulate? For one
FOCUS_Language
Left Ravens are very social animals.

Similar to apes, these birds also
strengthen and nurture social
relationships by preening distinct
body parts.
Right Simone Pika studied the
gestures used by individually marked
ravens living in a raven colony at the
Cumberland Wildlife Park in Grünau,
Austria. In Seewiesen, she works
with captive and hand-raised ravens
to find out more about how their
communicative signals evolve.
thing, we talk with our hands to help The first researcher to compare the evo- own to form new meanings: the first
our conversation partner visualize what lution of communication in humans time she saw a duck, for example, she
we’re saying. “But we also do it for our- and apes was Russian scientist Nadezh- signed “water” and “bird.”
selves. This is evident from the fact that da Ladygina-Kohts. She discovered that The gorilla Koko and the orangutan
gestures are always formed before or a child’s first attempts at speaking in- Chantek also learned sign language. A
while the respective word is being ut- clude gestures and facial expressions bonobo named Kanzi is able to use a
tered. Our hands communicate an idea that are surprisingly similar to those of keyboard with symbols that stand for –
faster than our mouth does,” the scien- baby chimpanzees. At that time, sever- but do not resemble – particular ob-
tist explains. Gestures help us structure al attempts were made to raise baby jects. When he is in the mood for piz-
our thoughts. This is commonly ob- apes like human children in a normal za, for example, he presses the pound
served in toddlers: the more difficult household. A gorilla named Toto, for symbol. The key with the triangle on it
the subject, the more illustrative ges- example, lived with a family in Central stands for “banana.”
tures they use. Africa for nine years. Yet all efforts were “But these are isolated cases. Very
From 2003 to 2005, Simone Pika in vain – none of the animals ever rarely did the animals create new words
studied an interesting phenomenon at learned to speak. Today we know that using the basic vocabulary they were
Edmonton University in Alberta, Can- the anatomy of the larynx and its neu- taught. Furthermore – and I believe this
ada: gestures used by bilingual adults. ral connections with the tongue pre- is highly significant – most of their
Do people gesticulate differently in vent monkeys and apes from produc- communication dealt with themselves
their mother tongue than they do in ing complex sounds, let alone words. in the present moment in time: I want
their second language? Yes – especial- to eat, I want to play, let’s go out to the
ly when they are more fluent in their PIONEERS OF THE FIELD garden,” says Pika. Unlike humans, she
native language. In that case, people explains, chimpanzees and other great
tend to use more visual gestures when In the late 1960s, scientists were able to apes don’t communicate their thoughts
Photo: MPI for Ornithology
speaking their second language. The teach a female chimpanzee named about what happened yesterday or
study also revealed that, when learn- Washoe more than 300 signs in Amer- what will happen tomorrow.
ing a language that traditionally uses ican Sign Language. Washoe used sign So anatomical features aren’t the
a lot of gestures, a person will soon start language to communicate not only with only reason apes are incapable of speech.
gesticulating more in his or her moth- her trainers, but also with her adopted They don’t seem to possess a world of
er tongue, as well. son. And she combined signs on her thought that they can or want to pass
FOCUS_Language
» A comparison of the complexity of vocalizations and gestures produced

by great apes doesn’t help explain the evolution of language.
on using language. For them, gestures and sounds, such as mobile phone ring- words, the recipient of the gesture re-
are thus an efficient form of commu- tones or the noise of a revving engine. sponds even before the entire message
nication without symbolism. Howev- However, birds don’t appear to use has been conveyed.
er, it does bear a certain resemblance their songs to communicate something In the case of chimpanzees, in con-
to human language and human com- new to their conspecifics. “The main trast, communication between mother
munication in terms of the underlying message of birdsong is: ‘This is my ter- and child is often characterized by long
structure of communication, which in- ritory!’ and ‘Look how impressive I er negotiations: the mother turns to-
cludes cooperation, turn-taking behav- am!’” says Pika. Consequently, this is ward her child and extends her arm in
iors and negotiation. another communication structure that its direction. They both look at each
In the animal kingdom, it is bird- differs significantly from human lan- other. The mother moves her arm in the
song that comes closest to the complex- guage in many respects. offspring’s direction once again, but this
ity of human language, especially as re- time faster and using a shorter range of
gards the ability to learn and form new BONOBOS COMMUNICATE motion. Only now does her child walk
combinations: Songbirds and parrots FASTER THAN CHIMPANZEES up to her and climb onto her back.
are able to recombine individual notes These observations may indicate
and note sequences to create new vers- Back to gestural signaling of great apes: that bonobos anticipate their counter-
es. Moreover, they imitate notes, voices in a comparative study into the commu- part’s actions much more quickly than
nication strategies of wild chimpanzees chimpanzees. Or that they can simply
in Uganda and Ivory Coast and bono- afford to react more quickly, thus pos-
bos in the Democratic Republic of the sibly choosing a “wrong” response, be-
Congo carried out with her doctoral stu- cause their society is more tolerant and
dent Marlen Fröhlich and other col- less aggressive. Furthermore, the fe-
leagues, Pika discovered that there are males have greater influence. These dif-
even differences in the way closely relat- ferent communication styles corre-
ed species – such as chimpanzees and spond to the results of comparative
bonobos – communicate. The scientists studies that focus on the structure of
discovered that bonobo mothers and the brain: the regions that play an im-
their children exchange information portant role in the ability to feel empa-
faster and more fluently than chimpan- thy are more developed in bonobos
zee mothers and their offspring. than in chimpanzees.
Temporal relationships between so- In light of her findings, Simone Pika
cial actions involved in bonobo gestur- concludes that, “The similarities and
al sequences are more similar to social differences between the vocalized
actions in human conversations than sounds and gestures of our closest ex-
to those of chimpanzees. For example, tant relatives won’t help us solve the
when a bonobo mother wants to get up mystery of how language evolved. Lan-
and leave, she turns toward her child guage is based on a range of cognitive
Photo: Catherine Delahaye/Mauritius Images
and holds out her outstretched arm in skills that already existed before the ad-
the child’s direction. Almost simulta- vent of speech.”
neously, the offspring walks up to her One of the prerequisites for acquir-
and climbs onto her back. In other ing language is what is known as inter-
active intelligence. When we talk to
When toddlers point at something, they each other, we continuously alternate:
initially do it for themselves. A little later in one person speaks, the other listens,
their development, they learn that gestures
can convey distinct messages to others. They
then the listener replies, and so on. A
then start making eye contact with their conversation is like a game of ping-
parents to make sure they have their attention. pong, where questions and answers fly
Simone Pika studies the development of
communication in individuals from three
model groups: human children from
different cultural backgrounds, several
species of great apes (bonobos, chimpan-
zees and gorillas) and corvids (crows and
ravens). Her findings show that gestures
are particularly developed in social
animals that cooperate with members of
their own species.
back and forth; a game based on a spe-

cific set of rules as regards the roles of
the participants and the temporal se-
quence. The speaker and the listener
cooperate with each other – otherwise,
their communication would fail.
Can precursors of this type of coop- it grows from generation to generation. skill before we did? Is the thought of a
eration be observed in apes? “Clearly, “There’s no doubt about it: language distant planet in another galaxy where
yes,” says Pika. When a mother plans makes us humans one of the most pow- apes actually are in charge really just
to leave and wants her child to come erful species on earth,” Pika emphasizes. science fiction? If not, we can only
with her, she must make it clear that But what if evolution had taken a hope that they treat their closest rela-
the gesture is directed at her infant, and slightly different course? What if goril- tives with greater respect than we treat
also make sure that her offspring under- las and chimpanzees had acquired this them here on earth.
stands what she intends to communi-
cate. Without such communicative co-
operation between mother and child,
such an interaction would not work. TO THE POINT
So animal communication is essen- l Gestures foster human language: they help babies learn to speak. Adults use
tially not all that different from human gestures to emphasize what they say and to structure their thoughts.
communication with regard to the type l Gestures alone are not the precursors of human language.
and purpose of the exchange. Yet ani- l Many different species of animals also communicate using gestures. Great apes
mals appear to manage just fine with- and ravens even point at things to draw the attention of other members of
out language. Would it even be advan- their species to particular objects.
tageous for chimpanzees if they could
speak? Simone Pika nods. “Of course.
Language has virtually catapulted us GLOSSARY
into a new universe: We can think about Bonobos: Along with chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), bonobos (Pan paniscus) are our
Photo: Jens Küsters/Humboldt Foundation
symbols and exchange information closest extant relatives. Although they are also called pygmy chimpanzees, they are
about objects that aren’t in our immedi- almost the same size as chimpanzees. However, their body and head are more graceful,
their face is darker, and the mouth of bonobo children has a more reddish hue than
ate vicinity or that don’t even exist, that of young chimpanzees. Bonobos are found only in the Democratic Republic of the
about things that happened yesterday or Congo, south of the Congo River.
that might happen tomorrow.” Pant-hoots: These particularly loud calls emitted by chimpanzees can be heard in the
Moreover, language is the founda- rainforest from miles away. The calls generally consist of several elements, which
tion of writing. Writing allows us to re- can vary in their structure. Chimpanzees can recognize each other by their pant-hoots
cord our experiences and pass them on and use this distinct call in different contexts, such as when traveling through the
rainforest or arriving at rich feeding grounds.
to our descendants. This ensures that
our knowledge doesn’t get lost, and that
Talk First,
Think Later
During everyday conversations, we often begin to speak
before we have decided exactly what we want to say.
Antje Meyer and her team at the Max Planck Institute
for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen are investigating how
we plan sentences and what obstacles may stand in
the way. To this end, the researchers test volunteers on a
treadmill, construct virtual environments and travel to
India to study whether illiterate individuals process
language differently. Photo: Mauro Rodrigues/Fotolia
FOCUS_Language
TEXT STEFANIE REINBERGER
A
cartoonish sketch flickers hand. In fact, many speakers start their biting a mailman, the camera system de-
on the monitor. The image sentences before they know precisely tects which section of the image she is
shows a dog biting a mail- what they want to say. This is possible gazing at most intensely before express-
man. Click. Next image: because we plan speech faster than ing the scene in words. This, in turn, re-
this time, a girl is pushing we’re able to articulate the words. For veals what information she has given
a boy on a sled. Then: a woman giving example, as one says “The young girl the most attention to while preparing
a boy a cookie. The volunteer stares in- ...,” there is ample time to prepare the her sentence.
tently at the screen and tries to describe second part of the sentence in the back- In simple situations such as “The
the brief, changing scenes as quickly as ground: “... throws the ball.” dog is biting the mailman,” the eye
possible. Her head rests on a chin sup- movements of most subjects follow
port to prevent it from wobbling. While “UMS” AND “ERS” HELP IN the same pattern: after a brief orienta-
the volunteer describes the images, a PLANNING SENTENCES tion phase, during which the subjects
scientist, using a special eye-movement often look at the center of the image,
camera, follows her gaze as it scans the But how does this work exactly? Do we they gaze at the sections of the image
drawings. In this way, Antje Meyer and have general strategies for language in the order in which they appear lat-
her team in the Psychology of Lan- planning that help us formulate answers er in the sentence. In other words, the
guage Department at the Max Planck without having to give them much eye wanders from the dog to the place
Institute for Psycholinguistics hope to thought? The scientists are seeking to at which the dog sinks its teeth into
discover how people plan sentences. answer this question with the help of ex- the mailman’s leg, and finally, to the
During a conversation, questions periments using an eye-movement cam- mailman’s face.
and answers often follow each other era. The device determines precisely, to However, when subjects are called
seamlessly. We appear to form sentenc- within a millisecond, where the viewer’s upon to describe more complex situa-
es effortlessly – evidently without tak- gaze lingers. For example, while the vol- tions, or when descriptions are longer,
ing much time to plan them before- unteer is looking at the picture of a dog their eye movements increasingly vary.
The very same person may then pro-
ceed extremely flexibly in describing
different scenes – and variations are
particularly pronounced between dif-
ferent speakers. Ultimately, a certain
amount of flexibility probably helps
people plan and choose their words in
order to express themselves quickly and
appropriately.
But not everyone is able to describe
a scene or answer questions with equal
speed and fluency. “Many factors
come into play, such as how well an
individual masters a particular lan-
guage,” Meyer says. Those speaking a
foreign language will have to break
sentences into smaller bits while plan-
ning them. This reduces the speech
rate, forcing the speaker to introduce
brief pauses that are then often filled
with “ums” and “ers”.
“We should therefore never con-
clude that non-native speakers (speak-
ers not using their mother tongue) are
unable to take in a situation just be-
cause they take longer to formulate
their answer,” the researcher cautions.
“The delay is not in their thought pro-
cess but in their ability to express them-
selves in a foreign language.”
Antje Meyer cites another real-life
example: “In school, pupils are expect-
ed to process sentences they’re unable
to comprehend because they don’t
have the requisite vocabulary and lan-
guage skills.” Textbooks for vocation-
al schools, for example, are often for-
mulated in a style normally found in
scientific papers – replete with long,
convoluted sentences, technical terms
and the like. “So it’s no wonder that a
young woman who wants to be a hair-
dresser mentally blocks out the mate-
rial,” the Max Planck Director says,
with a note of criticism. Yet vocation-
al students probably wouldn’t have
any trouble following relevant materi-
al if it were expressed using words
Photo: Frank Vinken
they’re familiar with.

Such findings may sound mundane,
but that’s precisely what piques Antje
Meyer’s interest. The psychologist
FOCUS_Language
Speaking time in the laboratory:

An eye movement camera (right)
pinpoints exactly where the subject
looks before speaking. Normally, any
distraction should be avoided while
speaking. However, experiment
participants on a treadmill (left) are
able to name images more quickly
than participants who are sitting.
wants to know how language works in fully follows the speaker through the “It’s not a good idea at all to encourage
natural contexts, such as in normal top row and then jumps to the lower our students to think of clever ques-
conversational situations when an in- row just before the end of the first tions during a lecture,” Meyer says. In-
dividual responds to what has just been speaker’s utterance. The temporal stead, the motto should be: listen be-
said. “You might think that listeners overlap of listening and preparing fore formulating your own thoughts
use the time during which their coun- one’s own articulations is less than and questions. Anything else will be to
terparts are speaking to prepare their half a second. the detriment of our ability to assimi-
own response,” the researcher says. late the information. “In fact, you
“That may be possible sometimes, but THE RESEARCHER THINKS LITTLE shouldn’t write anything down either,”
comprehension suffers as a result.” OF MULTITASKING says Antje Meyer, looking at the jour-
To prove it, the team in Nijmegen nalist diligently taking notes during
again uses an eye-movement camera. Another experiment provides the ex- this conversation.
This time, two volunteers sit in front of planation. When volunteers are shown In general, the psycholinguist thinks
a monitor on which two rows of objects images of objects to name while listen- little of multitasking, because it’s im-
are displayed. The task is simple: the ing to words read aloud through head- possible to give one’s full attention to
first speaker names the objects in the phones, they are usually unable to re- more than one activity. The only excep-
upper row, and the second, those in the member later what they heard. The tion is moderate exercise. Subjects
lower row, doing so one after the oth- only exceptions are words that are walking on a treadmill were able to
er, as in a question-and-answer pattern. played back while the subjects are look- name images faster than subjects sitting
While subject number one is “reading at “scrawled” images containing no on a chair. “That surprised us,” says the
ing out” the first line, the researchers identifiable objects. When the speaker scientist. “We had originally assumed
Photos: Frank Vinken (3)
track the eye movements of the “re- then – necessarily – inserts a pause, that running would distract people
sponder.” If he were preparing his ut- their mind registers the auditory input. from verbal tasks and that the subjects
terances early on, his eyes would tend This means that our capacity for listen- would therefore do more poorly.”
to dwell on the bottom row – but that ing is severely hampered while plan- But exercise appears to act as a stim-
is not the case. The listener first duti- ning our own speech. ulus and thus enhances alertness. “It’s
The search for variety: Antje Meyer
and her team make a point of
seeking out a variety of participants
for their experiments. One study is
investigating how reading affects
speech among members of the
Dalits, the “untouchables,” in India.
This allows the researchers to
compare illiterates and literates
from the same social class.
FOCUS_Language
also likely that the subjects notice the ronment as possible – for instance in Paris. Together with international col-
distraction and therefore try harder to a virtual cafe. This has the advantage leagues, Dehaene published a highly
solve the task well,” says Meyer, adding that the scientists can control the acclaimed paper in the journal Science
with a smile: “That’s also why we’re speech patterns of the avatars down to in 2010. In the paper, the researchers
standing here while we’re talking.” the smallest detail, and the virtual ac- compared the brain activity of illiter-
But be careful: not all types of move- tors never act unpredictably. ates with that of literate participants.
ment are equal, and they don’t always To study speech in its natural con- Using imaging techniques, the re-
enhance concentration. The team in text, it’s important to involve as broad searchers observed that reading influ-
Nijmegen is currently carrying out a se- a range of subjects as possible. “Most of ences the network in the brain that is
ries of tests in which the treadmill ro- what we believe we know about the responsible for spoken language.
tates at a slower rate than the subjects’ psychology of language has only been They also discovered that, with
normal walking pace. They have to pay investigated with students, most of readers, certain areas in the brain are
attention in order not to stumble and whom were female,” says Antje Meyer. more strongly activated – not only by
are therefore forced to divert capacities It’s virtually impossible to extrapolate written words, but also by images and
from the verbal task. findings from such an elite group to the symbols – than is the case with illiter-
However, tests with human subjects general population. ate individuals. However, the region re-
in front of monitors and on treadmills sponsible for recognizing faces ap-
model only a relatively artificial situa- READING AFFECTS VISUAL peared to be diminished in literate
tion in the laboratory. And while it’s CONCENTRATION participants compared with their illit-
true that this can answer basic ques- erate counterparts. Could this mean
tions about attention and language The scientist has therefore taken great that reading has an adverse effect on fa-
planning, a real dialogue consists of far pains to set up heterogeneous groups cial recognition?
more than a string of objects named of subjects – for example in the NEMO The problem with Dehaene’s study
sometimes simultaneously and some- Science Museum in Amsterdam. The is that the participants came from di-
times in succession. Conversation part- participants were mainly parents with verse cultural and socioeconomic back-
ners interact and have to respond spon- their children. This was an opportuni- grounds – even from different conti-
taneously to what has been said. On ty to conduct dialogue experiments nents. Moreover, the study compared a
the one hand, the speaker commands with people of various ages and from relatively small group of illiterate indi-
Photos left page: Frank Vinken (top), brianindia/Alamy/Mauritius images (bottom)
the listener’s attention, so that she is various social groups. The data has viduals with individuals who only
unable to consider her response during not yet been fully analyzed, but re- learned to read and write as adults. The
this time. On the other hand, sentence gardless of the scientific result, Meyer control group was also very mixed and
planning is supported by what was said is heartened by the enormous interest largely comprised of academics. “Too
before, because the responder can refer the museum’s visitors have shown in many potentially confounding vari-
to thoughts and phrases the previous the research. ables are at work, such as significant
speaker used. For example, when one Another research field of the Psy- differences in all areas of general edu-
person asks: “What’s your favorite chology of Speech Department largely cation, as well as the participants’ so-
food?”, the other buys time by respond- requires participants outside universi- cial background,” Huettig criticizes.
ing: “My favorite food? It’s pizza.” ties: studies on cognitive processing in “Differences in vocabulary, for in-
A virtual reality laboratory is cur- illiterates. Falk Huettig, who heads his stance, as well as poverty and poor ac-
rently being built in the basement of own research group in the department, cess to basic healthcare, can have an
the Max Planck Institute for Psycho- is focusing on this topic. Specifically, he impact on networks in the brain.”
linguistics to simulate situations that is delving into the question of whether The psychologist therefore set out
more closely approximate the natural and, if so, how literacy affects the brain, to find study participants from the
conditions of interactive conversa- speech and cognition. same social group. This would allow
tion. Here, instead of speaking to a One of the pioneers in this field is him to investigate the influence of
monitor, subjects will talk to project- French neuroscientist Stanislas De- reading skills more directly. And he was
ed 3-D avatars in as natural an envi- haene from the Collège de France in successful: in a small village in the In-
FOKUS_Sprache
dian state of Uttar Pradesh, among participants with reading and writing sentence and looks at a monitor show-
members of the Dalits – often referred skills scored better in certain search ing images representing how the sen-
to as “untouchables” in the West – a tasks than illiterates. tence might be continued. For his Hin-
traditionally disadvantaged class in In- di-speaking volunteers, Huettig chose a
dian society. “In this group we find PREDICTIONS HELP US SPEAK sentence construction that accounted
both people with reading and writing EFFICIENTLY for the specific syntax of this language.
skills and illiterates, but all from the Applied to an English example, the
same social and cultural background,” For instance, when participants were experiment might look as follows: The
says Falk Huettig and adds: “On top of asked to select the green or the thin subject hears “The boy will eat …”
that, we have the opportunity to carry chicken from a flock of dissimilar chick- while a cake and a chair appear on the
out longitudinal studies on a large sam- ens, the literate individuals proved to screen. Those who predict the continu-
ple to test how speech, cognition and be significantly faster. They scored par- ation of the sentence in their mind are
the brain are influenced when illiter- ticularly well when the animals sought more likely to look at the cake than the
ates learn to read.” were located in a section of the image chair. Whereas the gaze of literate par-
These studies are possible only to the right of the center. Huettig sus- ticipants does indeed tend to move to
through collaboration with scientists pects that this could have something to the cake before the word is spoken, the
at Lucknow University in the capital do with the horizontal left to right di- researchers found no such tendency in
of Uttar Pradesh. Huettig and his col- rection in which Indian script is read. the group of illiterates. The latter’s eye
leagues can also use functional mag- Stanislas Dehaene, too, had already movements only moved to the cake
netic resonance imaging (fMRI) there found that literate subjects are able to when it was mentioned. Although the
to investigate processes in the partici- process visual stimuli better horizontal- illiterate participants were able estab-
pants’ brains. ly, namely in rows, than illiterates. lish a link between the spoken sentence
Spoiler alert: Falk Huettig’s team In addition, Huettig discovered that and the displayed symbols, they had
was unable to confirm Dehaene’s hy- literacy has had a direct impact on his great difficulty predicting the continu-
pothesis that literacy adversely affects participants’ ability to anticipate up- ation of the sentence.
facial recognition. Nor was the alleged coming language input. For example, il- Moreover: further investigations by
positive effect of literacy on the phono- literates are evidently less able to predict the Max Planck researchers showed
logical processing of speech verified. what their conversation partner will say that the ability to predict increases with
Photo: Frank Vinken
On the other hand, the scientists dis- next. To arrive at this conclusion, the re- literacy skills. They compared people
covered a number of other differences searchers once again used a camera sys- with dyslexia, a reading disability, with
between the two groups – including ef- tem to record eye movements. The par- participants with average reading skills,
fects on visual attention. For example, ticipant hears the beginning of a or second graders who could read well
FOCUS_Language
First listen, then discuss: Antje Meyer follows this principle when conducting
meetings with her team. Their experiments have shown that people are unable
to follow a lecture and formulate their own thoughts simultaneously.
with second graders with reading diffi- erate individuals. But it’s almost impos- “The first outcome of our research is that
culties. The effect was significant, even sible to determine the cause and effect we can advise dyslexics to practice read-
among students: those who could read of the reading disability with this ap- ing as much as possible, even if they find
well were also able to predict spoken proach. However, if you compare illiter- it difficult,” Huettig says. “The more one
language faster and more reliably. ates with individuals with reading and reads, the more his or her visual atten-
However, this difference is barely writing difficulties, it’s possible to iden- tion, for example, improves.” And so sci-
noticeable in everyday life. Poorer tify the characteristics the two non-read- entific curiosity and basic research merge
readers do not necessarily respond ing groups share. This can then be used again at the heart of everyday life – where
more slowly to a question than adept to narrow down the search for causes. speech occurs under natural conditions.
readers – as long as they understand
the content. And illiterates are not
necessarily limited in their everyday
conversation. It appears that predic- TO THE POINT
tion is just one of many strategies the l People are unable to listen and plan a response simultaneously when conversing.
brain uses to make language and Instead, the content of what is said often emerges only during the act of speaking.
speech as efficient as possible. l The ability to read has a significant influence on information processing in the brain.
In any case, Falk Huettig’s investiga- l Those who can read score better in image search tasks and are better able to predict
tions have confirmed that reading has the content of conversations.
a significant impact on information
processing and networks in the brain.
He hopes to shed further light on the GLOSSARY
phenomenon with the help of brain Imaging methods: In the neurosciences, these special techniques allow researchers to
imaging studies, which he is currently watch the brain at work. The most commonly used techniques include positron emission
carrying out with colleagues in India tomography (PET), which uses a weakly radioactive substance distributed in the body to
among illiterate individuals who are provide sectional images of the brain, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
learning to read. Dyslexia: International term for an intelligence-independent reading disability. It is usually
The scientist is already convinced of used synonymously with legasthenia. It is characterized by severe, persistent problems with
reading and writing at the word level.
one thing: “Our research and findings
have revealed great potential for dyslex- Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRT): This technique is used to visualize per
fusion changes in areas of the brain. Based on such changes, scientists can identify which
ia research.” So far, he says, much has areas of the brain are activated during specific tasks.
been reported about what people with
dyslexia can do worse or better than lit-
FOCUS_Language
Digital
Storytellers
Movies with audio descriptions help blind people understand the
storyline. Could computers take over the task of transforming
moving images into natural language? Anna Rohrbach, a scientist
at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken, and
her husband, Marcus Rohrbach, who conducted research at the
same Institute until recently, have made it their mission to make
that possible. They aim to develop a computer that can automa
tically generate and read out film descriptions.
TEXT TIM SCHRÖDER
T
he Pianist,” “Gandhi,” “Men quick! It’s about to get really exciting!”
in Black,” “X-Men” – Anna When a gangster in a movie raises his
Rohrbach owns a sizeable weapon or the police chase a killer
collection of movies and through dark alleyways, human view-
blockbusters. Her office shelf ers know exactly what’s going on.
is filled with around 200 DVDs, neatly But a computer? First, a computer
sorted in rows. While most people col- would have to be able to tell that a gun
lect DVDs with the intent of spending in a person’s hand is a weapon and not
a cozy movie night on the couch, for a TV remote, that a hug has nothing
Anna Rohrbach they mean, above all, to do with hand-to-hand combat, and
a lot of work. that a fencing match isn’t a matter of
Anna Rohrbach is a computer scien- life and death. That in itself is a chal-
tist. Together with her husband, Mar- lenge. Then the moving images would
cus, she is trying to teach computers need to be translated into comprehen-
Photo: MPI for Informatics
something that might sound impossi- sible and grammatically correct natu-
ble at first: to watch videos and describe ral language.
what is happening on screen. This is a Anna and Marcus Rohrbach are ex-
trivial task for humans; at some point perts in computer vision, which deals
or other, we have probably all called with automatic image recognition and
out to the next room: “Honey, come analysis. Significant progress has been
Cooking on screen: Marcus Rohrbach set up a kitchen at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics
and equipped it with video cameras. A computer program he developed is able to describe the
cooking scenes being filmed here.
Software that learns: Marcus Rohrbach taught the computer program to recognize different activities being carried out in the kitchen
by having assistants first describe the scenes. Here he is being assisted by doctoral student Siyu Tang.
made in this field over the past decade. respectively, and the Department of understand human actions and con-
Computers today can recognize faces in Computational Linguistics at Saarland verse with humans using natural lan-
photographs and match them with dif- University, which is headed by Man- guage. They could answer a user’s ques-
ferent people. They can even correctly fred Pinkal. tion as to where he left his glasses, for
interpret pictures of landscapes. Reddish The researchers envision several ap- example, or discuss what he should
light, sails, horizontal lines? Sure thing: plications for their project. In the fu- cook for dinner – after all, they ob-
a sunset on the ocean. “But using clear ture, computers could automatically served which meals were served over
words to correctly describe moving im- generate and read out film descriptions the past few days.
ages in a movie scene is something else for blind people. By today’s standards, Around five years ago, Marcus
entirely,” says Anna Rohrbach. this is still a pretty costly and time-con- Rohrbach began teaching computers
suming process, because the voice- how to describe videos – a major goal
ONE APPLICATION IS IMAGE overs for movies need to be recorded by that requires many small steps. “After
DESCRIPTIONS FOR THE BLIND professional voice actors. A second pos- all, you can’t expect a software pro-
sible application could be to automati- gram to recognize the entire world
The scientist conducts research at the cally describe videos posted on online with all its imaginable scenarios,” the
Max Planck Institute for Informatics platforms. With the help of these short scientist explains. “That’s why we de-
in Saarbrücken. Marcus Rohrbach texts, Internet users could find relevant cided to start out by limiting ourselves
worked there too, before his recent videos more quickly without first hav- to one easily understandable scene – a
switch to the University of California ing to click through numerous clips. kitchen, where we filmed people as
in Berkeley for a postdoc position, A third application seems a bit more they cooked.” To this end, Marcus
where he remains in close contact futuristic. If a computer is able to inter- Rohrbach had a modern kitchen with
with his colleagues back in Saarbrück- pret movie scenes and describe them in a ceramic-glass cooktop and elegant
Photo: MPI for Informatics
en. Yet the Rohrbachs aren’t the only natural language, then it can also com- cabinets specially set up at the Max
ones involved in this project. The idea prehend events unfolding in the real Planck Institute.
originated from a collaboration be- world and render them in spoken Unlike a normal home kitchen,
tween the Max Planck working group words. That’s why the Rohrbachs be- this one is fitted with several cameras
led by Bernt Schiele, in which Anna lieve that, in just a few years, service ro- that record what goes on in the room.
and Marcus Rohrbach work or worked, bots or smartphone apps will be able to The first step was to film volunteers as
FOCUS_Language
» The most important step: Marcus Rohrbach had to link the knowledge
about movements and objects with activity descriptions – a complex process
that is carried out in several stages.
they performed different tasks – peel- want to comprehensively describe an rithm learns what an object looks like
ing an orange, cooking spaghetti or activity,” Marcus Rohrbach explains, and can later recognize it accordingly.
slicing a cucumber. Next, he gave his “because they contain the key ele- In the end, it computes probability
assistants the task of describing these ments of a sentence, such as the verb values, such as, “This is 94 percent
film sequences using natural words – or object; for example: man – knife – consistent with a banana.”
for example: “A man is standing in the slice – cucumber.” Of course recognizing a video se-
kitchen and slicing a cucumber with quence also requires correctly identi-
the knife.” SOFTWARE TRACKS THE fying and interpreting movements. A
Since these descriptions are freely MOVEMENTS rhythmically moving hand could be
worded and have no fixed structure, cutting, peeling a carrot or beating
the data then had to be annotated with Yet before a computer can describe ob- egg whites. The computer must be
comments that follow a fixed pattern. jects, it first needs to learn what they able to distinguish between these dif-
For example, the assistants noted down look like. For this, Marcus Rohrbach ferent actions. Marcus Rohrbach
information pertaining to the follow- used a software program that automat- taught it such activities using tracking
ing categories: object (such as a cucum- ically learns the different parameters. software. This software tracks the
ber), activity (for instance peeling or The software is based on algorithms movement of individual pixels in a
slicing), tool (knife), location (counter- that are fed with a set of training data video image, essentially “freezing”
top) and destination (salad bowl). – in this case the video clips recorded the entire motion sequence. The re-
“These categories are essential if you in the kitchen. Step by step, the algo- searcher then fed this tracking data
Tool Tuple
Activity
CRF Destination take out hand knife drawer

Adaptation
Object of words and
Location phrases
gets out the person a knife the drawer
Rearrange-
Classifiers ment via a
model
the person gets out a knife the drawer
Language
model
the person gets out a knife from the drawer

Jointly
Video Trajectory-based Conditional Description optimized
image and video random field (CRF)
Graphic: MPI for Informatics
characteristics
The software developed by Marcus Rohrbach analyzes a video by first determining the image and video characteristics along the trajectories.
Classifiers then identify objects, activities and tools as well as locations and destinations. Next, a model known as a conditional random field
(CRF) creates a correlation between these parameters. This results in a tuple containing words and phrases that are first adapted to common
wordings, for example by adding articles. The words and phrases are then rearranged before a language model adds any missing prepositions
to form the final description.
Left Anna Rohrbach has collected around
200 DVDs in order to teach a software to
describe the content of any given video.
Right In order to correctly describe a scene,
a software must also be able to detect the
subtext of the images. Otherwise it will
mistake a hug for a wrestling match or the
other way around, and it won’t be able to
distinguish between an Olympic fencing
match and a historical duel.
into the algorithm as well, so that the This probabilistic model learns a cor- the software rearranges the concepts
computer learned to differentiate be- relation between the object, activity, linked in the tuple to create a reason-
tween cutting and peeling. tool and location. In other words, it able sequence, such as: “Hand put on-
“These types of algorithms are predicts a group of categories, called a ion board.”
known as classifiers,” says Marcus Rohr- tuple; in this case, an object-activi- Next, a language model adds any
bach. Depending on the probability ty-tool-location tuple. As with the oth- missing articles or prepositions to the
value, they weigh different options to er methods, the conditional random words and phrases to form a semanti-
decide which action is being per- field model is also taught using train- cally correct construct – in other words
formed – for example cutting or stir- ing data. a sentence with a reasonable structure,
ring – or which object is involved – a The next step is the most important such as: “The hand puts the onion on
cucumber or a banana. In order to do one. Marcus Rohrbach had to link this the board.” In addition, it replaces cer-
this, the classifier already has to take a knowledge about movements and obtain terms with more commonplace
range of characteristics, such as color, jects with activity descriptions – a com- wording that the language model is
shape and size, into account when plex process that is carried out in sever- more familiar with – for instance “per-
identifying the object. al stages. First, the classifier identifies son” instead of “hand.” Each compu-
the probability of individual elements. tational step put together ultimately
A CONDITIONAL RANDOM FIELD When a person puts an onion on the leads to the formation of a grammati-
PREDICTS THE ACTION cutting board, the classifier will con- cally correct sentence, such as: “A per-
clude that the following elements are son puts an onion on the board.”
It’s also important to model the inter- the most probable: “hand”, “put”, “on-
action between various objects and ac- ion”, “board”, “countertop”. The clas- DETAILED DESCRIPTIONS
tivities. It’s unlikely, for instance, that sifier excludes concepts that appear VS. SHORT SUMMARIES
a person would peel a cucumber in a less probable, such as “spoon” or “pot”.
pot using a spoon; rather, you’d expect Next, the conditional random field “The kitchen project was actually the
someone to stir zucchini in a pot us- computes which tuple best describes topic of my Ph.D. thesis a while ago,”
ing a wooden spoon, even though the given scenario – in this case, for in- Marcus Rohrbach explains. “This vid-
both scenarios might appear similar at stance: hand, put, onion, board. eo description technique worked pret-
first glance. “In order to then transform these ty well and correctly translated the
Photo: Oliver Dietze
In order to predict which motion tuples into natural language, we used scenes into natural language.” Anna
or activity is most likely being carried an approach that translates texts, for Rohrbach then expanded the model in
out, Marcus Rohrbach uses what is example from English into German,” such a way that it was able to describe
known as a conditional random field. says Marcus Rohrbach. As a first step, scenes using different degrees of detail
FOCUS_Language
or abstraction – a feat that no other these data sets to train a special soft- goal of reducing the video description
working group had accomplished be- ware tool: a long short-term memory process to a single step. The LSTM, too,
fore her. This method is thus capable (LSTM) network. uses probabilities. Its input is visual data,
of both describing the individual steps which in turn is supplied by classifiers.
of an activity in detail, such as: “A THREE CLASSIFIERS RECOGNIZE In order to fully recognize an entire
woman takes spaghetti out of a cup- ONE SCENE scene, the scientist uses three different
board, gets a pot out of the drawer and classifiers, which provide information
fills it with water,” and summarizing This tool is an artificial neural network about the following three aspects: the
the entire action in one concise sen- that, like all software of this kind, mim- activity being performed, the objects in
Photos: gruizza/iStockphoto, PaSta77/shutterstock, katatonia82/shutterstock (from left to right)
tence: “A woman cooks spaghetti.” ics the functions of the human brain. view, and the location in which the par-
Yet this first project had its limita- Unlike other artificial neural networks, ticular scene is taking place.
tions, says Marcus Rohrbach. After all, however, an LSTM remembers previ- Anna Rohrbach also incorporates el-
the video analysis system was limited ously processed data over a longer pe- ements developed by other working
to the kitchen setting. The whole sys- riod of time, which also allows it to pro- groups, such as a classifier created by re-
tem was also much too complex, in his cess the input data more reliably when searchers at the Massachusetts Institute
opinion. The entire process of analyz- key signals (for example during scene of Technology in the US. By feeding it a
ing scenes, creating tuples, semantical- recognition or speech) come in at irreg- lot of data, the classifier was taught to
ly correlating concepts and finally ular intervals. recognize settings and environments –
forming the finished sentence just Provided that such an LSTM is prop- a kitchen, a bathroom, or a restaurant,
seemed to take too long. “That’s why erly fed with training data, it can draw for example. As usual, the classifiers
we’ve set ourselves two new goals: we on its experience to independently de- supply probability values, which are
want to be able to analyze scenes in cide which information is relevant and then linked to form a probability vector
any given setting, and we want to re- must be stored in the system, and which – a cloud of probability values, if you
duce the whole process of turning a information can be deleted. This means will – before being fed into the LSTM.
scene analysis into natural language the LSTM is capable of assessing the rel- The LSTM converts this visual infor-
output down to a single step.” evance of information. Today, LSTMs mation directly into natural language
This is where Anna Rohrbach’s im- are often used for translating speech or descriptions. “One of the strengths of
pressive film collection comes into recognizing handwriting. this LSTM is that it can assess a se-
play. She has analyzed 202 movies An LSTM is the centerpiece of Anna quence of words to predict which
and 118,000 video clips to date. Each Rohrbach’s work. It links the visual in- words are likely to follow,” says Anna
of these clips includes a natural lan- formation – the input – directly with the Rohrbach. It is very efficient at decid-
guage sentence description. She uses language generation, thus achieving the ing which word must follow another
The neural network (LSTM) developed by able to describe a scene with greater ac- es the weaknesses of Anna Rohrbach’s
Anna Rohrbach describes video sequences
curacy and more nuances than the system. After all, the LSTM didn’t reveal
such as a dance scene more accurately than
other computer programs, but not quite as other methods. that this scene took place in a ballroom.
well as a human just yet. “It’s true that this method isn’t one hun-
THE LSTM DELIVERS BETTER dred percent reliable yet. Grammar mis-
RESULTS THAN OTHER METHODS takes keep slipping in. And in some cas-
word, and at filtering out irrelevant es it doesn’t correctly recognize scenes,
data. The LSTM adds articles and prep- For example, a movie scene depicts a especially when they are particularly
ositions, thus generating meaningful, person leading a blonde woman onto complex,” says the researcher.
natural language. the dance floor and then spinning her. One such example is a video se-
“It basically uses the same tech- Anna Rohrbach’s LSTM described the quence showing a young person in
nique we humans do. We also remem- scene as follows: “Someone is in a sports clothing running away. This
ber which words we just said and for- white dress, smiling with a smile and scene was manually described for blind
mulate the next part of our sentence white hair.” A different software of- people as follows: “He runs up the steps
accordingly.” Anna Rohrbach’s LSTM fered a considerably less detailed de- of the stand and away.” The LSTM in-
has also developed what you could call scription: “Someone glances at some- terpreted: “Someone is running in the
a feeling for language. It no longer re- one.” The software developed by a middle of the road.”
quires tuples that first string words to- third team against which Anna Rohr- This shows that the LSTM still has
gether and then rearrange them step by bach compared her LSTM even provid- certain limitations, especially when it
step to form a complete sentence. ed an unintentionally comic descrip- comes to recognizing abstract content.
Ultimately, the LSTM uses probabil- tion of the two actors looking at each The LSTM wasn’t able to make out that
ities to decide which word will come other: “Someone glances at someone. the young person is running away, and
next. Apparently it does this very well: Someone glances at someone.” it also ignored the fact that he is run-
Photo: Oliver Dietze
in a direct comparison, Anna Rohr- The comparison clearly shows that ning up a set of steps. “In other cases
bach’s technique produced better re- the LSTM analyzes the scene more accu- the system wasn’t able to recognize that
sults than other video description meth- rately than other methods. At the same a person was fleeing from the police,”
ods. Among other things, her LSTM was time, however, this example also expos- says Anna Rohrbach.
FOCUS_Language
LSTM Someone
Actions Action classifiers
LSTM enters
Objects Object classifiers
LSTM the
Locations Location classifiers
LSTM room
Video Image and video Recurrent Generated

characteristics neural description
network
Anna Rohrbach’s software learns to recognize actions, objects and locations depicted in a video
using different classifiers, each of which is specific to one of these three categories. In a series of cycles,
a recurrent neural network (LSTM) then uses these image characteristics to create a word-for-word
description of the video.
“It’s difficult to teach a computer to es-

tablish such thematic relationships be-
tween different pieces of content.” Yet TO THE POINT
that is exactly what Anna Rohrbach has l Over the past decade, significant progress has been made in the field of computer
set out to achieve in the near future. vision, which deals with automatic image recognition. For example, today’s
She would also like to teach the com- computers are able to recognize faces in photographs and attribute them to
puter to interpret actors’ emotions. different people.
That would significantly improve the l Describing film scenes, on the other hand, is a much more complex process.
analysis method and bring video de- l Nevertheless, scientists hope to enable computers to automatically generate and
scriptions to a whole new level. read out video descriptions.
Rohrbach can’t yet say exactly l To achieve this goal, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics are
when her video description system using a special software tool known as a long short-term memory (LSTM).
will be ready to market. “But remark-
able progress has been made in the
field of image recognition over the
past few years. So sometimes things GLOSSARY
can happen very quickly,” she says. Algorithm: A clear set of operations to be performed in order to solve a problem or
But she doesn’t want to commit to class of problems. Algorithms consist of a finite number of individual steps and can
anything just yet. The benefit for users be executed by being implemented in a computer program, for example.
would be substantial. Videos could be Computer vision: The computer-aided approach of solving problems relating to
enhanced with text for the blind in no the abilities of human vision. Possible applications include industrial production
Graphic: MPI for Informatics
processes and traffic engineering.

time at all. And Internet users could
quickly skim through the content of Long short-term memory (LSTM): An artificial neural network that mimics the
functions of the human brain and remembers previously processed data over a
online videos using either the concise- comparatively long period of time. When fed with training data, an LSTM can inde
ly summarized description – “A wom- pendently decide which information is relevant and must be stored in the system.
an cooks spaghetti” – or the extended,
fully detailed text version.
SPECTRUM
Extreme Energy Source at the Heart

of the Milky Way
H.E.S.S. telescopes observe cosmic radiation accelerated by giant black hole
The Earth is constantly bombarded years ago, but now they have identi-
with high-energy particles from space. fied for the first time a source capable
The particles in question are protons, of radiating energy in the petaelectron
electrons and atomic nuclei, and are volt range (PeV = 1015 eV). The scien-
referred to as cosmic radiation. Ener- tists suspect that what is involved here
gy-rich gamma light is generated when is the Sagittarius A*, a supermassive
the particles are accelerated. This pro- black hole at the heart of the galaxy;
cess also takes place in the central area this monster mass would be identical
of our Milky Way. With the help of the to the compact point source in the
H.E.S.S. telescopes in Namibia, re- teraelectron volt range. Moreover, its
searchers – including scientists from gamma rays could interact with molec-
the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear ular clouds and thus also generate the
Physics – have been observing the diffuse band of gamma rays. The as-
gamma rays transmitted in this way for tronomers have eliminated other ob-
a decade. They had already detected a jects, such as a supernova remnant, a
highly compact point source and ex- pulsar wind nebula and a compact clus-
tended band of diffuse gamma radia- ter of massive stars, as possible energy
tion with energy levels in the tera sources in the petaelectron volt range.
electron volt range (TeV = 1012 eV) some (www.mpg.de/10390310)
Extraterrestrial particle accelerator: This artist’s depiction illustrates the processes that
contribute to the formation of the high-energy gamma radiation. Protons (blue spheres), which
are accelerated by the Sagittarius A* black hole (bright source in the center), interact with
molecular clouds in the surroundings. This generates pions, among other things, which almost
immediately disintegrate into gamma radiation photons (yellow waves). An image of the
Milky Way in visible light is shown in the background.
Blood Test for Tuberculosis
Photos: Dr. Mark A. Garlick/H.E.S.S. Collaboration (top), Jonas Steengaard (bottom)

Biomarkers may one day be able to predict the risk of developing tuber-
culosis. Between 1.5 and 2 million people die of tuberculosis every year,
making it one of the infectious diseases with the highest global mortali-
ty rate. However, not everyone infected with tuberculosis becomes ill: few-
er than 10 percent of those infected with the pathogen actually contract
the disease. Up to now, it has not been possible to identify which of those
infected would develop the disease. An international team of scientists,
including researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biolo-
gy in Berlin, have now developed a tuberculosis test that can predict with
a reliability rate of around 75 percent whether an infected individual will
go on to develop the disease. The results show that certain genes are ac-
tive in the immune cells in the blood of those infected with tuberculosis
who then later develop the disease. The blood test is expected to detect
the activity pattern typical of potential tuberculosis patients, and could
predict the onset of the disease as early as over a year before it develops.
The researchers now plan to carry out clinical trials to test whether, once Early prognosis: It is hoped that molecules in the blood
predicted, the onset of the disease can be prevented with the help of tar- will one day indicate to doctors whether a patient will
geted treatment. (www.mpg.de/10377384) develop tuberculosis.
SPECTRUM
Compass in the Eye

Some mammals may be able to use the Earth’s magnetic field for orientation, similar to birds
Foxes are more successful at catching mice if they pounce on malian species that can also register changes in the Earth’s
their prey in a northeasterly direction. Scientists from the magnetic field. Dogs, wolves, bears, foxes and badgers have
Max Planck Institute for Brain Research may have found an the molecule cryptochrome 1, while feline predators, such
explanation for this extraordinary observation. They discov as cats, lions and tigers, do not. In primates, the molecule is
ered light-sensitive molecules in the retinas of several mam found in the eyes of orangutans and some macaque species,
for example. The researchers presume that,
like some bird species, the animals in ques
tion use the cryptochrome 1 to sense the
Earth’s magnetic field. Migratory birds also
have cryptochrome molecules in their
eyes, allowing them to perceive the incli
nation of the magnetic field lines relative
to the Earth’s surface. However, the mole
cules react to the magnetic field only if
they are simultaneously excited by light.
In addition, birds also have microscopic
ferrous magnetic particles in their cells to
enable them to orient themselves based on
the magnetic field. This kind of magne
tite-based magnetic sense is also found in
some mammals, such as Fukomys, a genus
of common mole rats. (www.mpg.de/10319591)
Telltale magnetic field: Foxes may be able

to locate their prey based on minute changes
in the Earth’s magnetic field.
Extortioners at the Negotiating Table

Participants in major political confer- minimum, force others to compensate for
Photos: David Havel/shutterstock (top), dpa-picture alliance (bottom)
ences could write a book about it: nego- any deficits through steadfast stonewall-
tiations consistently fail due to the unco- ing and ultimately benefit most when the
operative and selfish behavior of individ- collective target is reached. The research-
ual participants. This can be observed in ers discovered this with the help of a cli-
the often fruitless attempts to reach an mate game and a model derived from
international climate agreement over the game theory. In the experiment, 40 per-
years, as well as the current difficulties in cent of the participants resorted to extor-
getting the EU countries to agree on quo- tion. The findings give grounds for cau-
tas for the acceptance of refugees. Ac- tious optimism: extortion ultimately
cording to scientists from the Max Planck leads to a successful outcome in negotia-
Institutes for Meteorology in Hamburg tions. All of the parties involved benefit
and for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, this when the objective of the negotiations is
is due to the fact that people prefer to reached – the extortioners a great deal
have representatives who use extortion and their victims only marginally, but Political conferences are often the scene of
as a negotiating strategy. Such represen- still. Despite the Machiavellian nature of fierce negotiations, with agreement often
tatives keep their own contribution to this strategy, it could help in mitigating reached only at the last minute.
the attainment of a collective target to a climate change. (www.mpg.de/10347602)
SPECTRUM
Animation Made Easy

Computer scientists in Saarbrücken produce realistic face models for films from video recordings
Today’s film industry no longer relies solely on the skills of which, up to now, have been created using complex mea-
actors – when shooting has finished, the images of their fac- suring techniques and manually inserted into the film
es are often edited on a computer. Such computer animation scenes. Together with his team, Christian Theobalt, Leader
requires three-dimensional facial models known as face rigs, of the “Graphics, Vision and Video” Research Group at the
Max Planck Institute in Saarbrücken,
has developed a new method that
speeds this process up considerably. All
the team needs are recordings from a
standard video camera. The researchers
use mathematical models to estimate
the required parameters, such as facial
geometry, reflection characteristics and
scene lighting. Based on this, they can
reconstruct an individual face on the
computer so faithfully that it works like
a complete face rig. With mathematical
processes alone, the computer scientists
can then give the actors different facial
expressions. (www.mpg.de/10364192)
Suitable expressions: Based on ordinary video

recordings like these images of US President
Barack Obama, researchers at the Max Planck
Institute for Informatics can create realistic facial
models for computer animation and avatars.
With the help of the models, they can also make
the faces express emotions that were not shown
in the original video.
A Hammer for Molecule Swapping

Chemists develop a versatile tool using a safe variant of hydrocyanation
Chemistry is like a toolbox. To synthesize drugs, plastics and ample, required the use of toxic prussic acid (hydrogen cya-
dyes, chemists reach for various reagents in the same way nide). The new reaction is also easily reversible. The new
that tradespeople reach for their tools. Scientists from the hammer in the chemical toolbox not only prevents bruised
Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung (Coal Research) thumbs, it also doubles as a pair of pliers. (www.mpg.de/10325265)
now present a new chemical tool that facilitates an import-
ant step in the synthesis process – hydrocyanation – and is
less dangerous than the current standard method. What they
have done is akin to inventing a hammer that can’t hit the Catalyst
user’s thumb. With the help of a suitable catalyst, the re- CN CN +
Photos: MPI for Informatics
R + R‘ R R‘
searchers succeeded in transferring one cyanide group – a
functional group that creates numerous possibilities for the
further processing of a substance – from one molecule to an-
Molecular swap: Chemists from the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlen
other. The donor molecule receives a double bond from its forschung (Coal Research) have found a safe way to transfer the cyanide
partner in the reaction. Up to now, this step in the synthe- group (CN) from one molecule (R’) to another (R). The donor molecule
sis process, which arises in the production of nylon, for ex- receives a double bond (=) from its partner in the reaction.
SPECTRUM
Testing the Response Time

Cuddle Hormone
of Electrons
Relieves Pain Visible attosecond pulses can be used to measure the delayed
reaction of electrons to light
The name of the hormone oxyto-

cin, which is derived from the Light could be the driving force that
Greek for quick birth, reflects one soon makes electronic components op-
of its important functions: during erate even faster. Physicists are there-
childbirth, oxytocin triggers the fore aiming to control electric currents
contraction of the uterine muscles in circuits in time with the light fre-
and initiates labor. Because oxyto- quency. Insights gained by Eleftherios
cin also plays a role in the regula- Goulielmakis and his research team at
tion of social bonds, it is generally the Max Planck Institute of Quantum
referred to as the cuddle hormone. Optics may soon make it possible to
The hormone is formed exclusive- control electrons more accurately us-
ly in the hypothalamus in the brain ing light. As the scientists discovered,
and is released into the blood- electrons don’t follow the electromag-
stream via the pituitary gland. Re- netic forces of light immediately, but
searchers from the Max Planck In- with a delay of 100 attoseconds. They
stitute for Medical Research in determined this response time by ex-
Heidelberg have now discovered, citing electrons in krypton atoms us- Electronic response time: Attosecond-long
in the hypothalamus of rats, a ing attosecond pulses of visible light. flashes of light make it possible to measure
small group of around 30 neurons By taking this delay into account, it the delay with which electrons respond to the
stimulating light due to their inertia. The
that coordinate the release of oxy- may be possible to develop even more
characteristic form of the light wave arises
tocin into the blood and also stim- precise optical-electrical components. because the attosecond pulse is formed from
ulate cells in the spinal cord. The (www.mpg.de/9978880) light of different wavelengths.
nerve endings of the cells extend
into the spinal cord, where they re-
lease oxytocin as a neurotransmit-
ter. As the scientists have now es-
tablished, the hormone reduces
the sensation of pain in this way.
They assume that these cells also Immune Genes from Neanderthals
exist in the human brain. The hu-
man oxytocin system, however, Early humans boosted the immunity of Homo sapiens
probably consists of more cells.
(www.mpg.de/10353789)
People who travel in foreign countries gy in Leipzig have shown that people
often find themselves fighting infec- living outside Africa today inherited
tions. This is because the immune sys- three immunoproteins from other ear-
Photos: Christian Hackenberger (top), Eliava et al., 2016 (bottom)
Targeted release of hormones: A small

group of oxytocin-producing neurons
tem encounters pathogens there that ly humans: two from Neanderthals and
(red) coordinate the release of oxytocin are still unknown to it. The same prin- one from Denisovans, another early
into the blood and spinal cord. ciple applied to modern humans when human species. The immunoproteins
they migrated from Africa to Europe in question are known as toll-like re-
around 50,000 years ago. The migrants ceptors, which are expressed on the
clearly benefited from the local inhab- surface of immune cells and can detect
itants who had lived there long before components of bacteria, fungi and par-
them: they mixed with the Neander- asites. The gene variants of early hu-
thals who had already been living in mans reacted particularly sensitively to
Europe for 200,000 years and adopted contact with pathogens. As a result, the
from them gene variants that gave migrants’ descendants benefited from
them greater resistance to the local better protection against infection.
pathogens. Genetic analyses carried However, the genetic legacy of early hu-
out by researchers from the Max Planck mans also makes us more susceptible to
Institute for Evolutionary Anthropolo- allergies today. (www.mpg.de/9819763)
SPECTRUM
Dark Taiga Lightens Up

Researchers predict that more deciduous trees will grow in boreal forests due to global warming
An international team headed by Susanne Tautenhahn from “Due to climate change, fires caused by lightning, for exam-
the Max Planck Institute of Biogeochemistry examined how ple, are becoming more common and severe, and natural re-
boreal forests are changing as a result of global warming. generation processes are being thrown off balance,” explains
Tautenhahn, who now works at the Universi-
ty of Jena. This sets a chain of events in mo-
tion: After a fire, it is difficult for coniferous
trees to recolonize, as their relatively large
seeds are limited in their capacity to disperse.
Deciduous trees, in contrast, have relatively
small seeds that are easily dispersed by the
wind. This means that they can recolonize
burn zones after large-scale fires considerably
faster and, over the long term, become the
dominant species in these areas. The reduc-
tion of the typical conifers, which store high
levels of moisture at ground level, in turn fur-
ther increases the likelihood of forest fires – a
self-perpetuating cycle that results in lasting
change in the ecosystem. (www.mpg.de/10315240)
The taiga transforms: Forest fires in boreal
coniferous forests are set to increase due to global
warming. Deciduous trees, which are currently
found there only as pioneer species, could
dominate in the long term.
Photos: S. Tautenhahn/MPI of Biogeochemistry (top), Carrasco-Gonzalez et al.; Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF (bottom)
Speedy Birth of a Planet
Astronomers observe a clump of dust in the disk around star HL Tauri
Planets form in disks of gas and dust. Images recorded using arise from certain flow patterns of the disk gas. Thus, plane-
the VLA radio telescope array in New Mexico show the inner- tary formation can unfold much faster there than in a homo-
most parts of a planetary birthplace around the young star geneous disk. The dense dust rings in which fragments like
HL Tauri in unprecedented detail. A gigantic clump of dust the aforementioned clumps can form are external indicators
with three to eight times the solar mass of the star is clearly of this process. (www.mpg.de/10400125)
visible. In the opinion of researchers from the Max Planck In-
stitute for Astronomy, the existence of this clump of dust pro-
vides an answer to a fundamental question: How can planets
form in the relatively limited period of time available for their
Clump
growth? The new images point to a considerably faster birth
process, as regions with a particularly high density of dust
Cosmic delivery room: The protoplanetary dust disk around the young
star HL Tauri. Left: earlier observations with the ALMA Observatory,
which showed bright areas separated by gaps. Right: the new VLA
images, in which additional structures of the inner rings are visible.
The object marked as a clump is probably a region in which a planet is
currently forming.
SPECTRUM
Ciliates as Models
Swimming microrobots move through water like single-celled organisms
Ciliates can do amazing things: Be- constructing their swimming micro-

cause they are so tiny, the water in robots, the scientists working with
which they live appears to have the Peer Fischer used liquid crystal elasto-
consistency of thick honey to them. mers that expand when exposed to
Despite this, they are able to propel green light: a peristaltic movement re-
themselves through water thanks to sults that propels the artificial ciliate
the synchronized movement of thou- when slivers of green light move over
sands of extremely fine filaments, it. Although a mini-submarine that
called cilia, on their outer skin. Re- can navigate autonomously through
searchers from the Max Planck Insti- the human body and detect and treat Light-driven microswimmers: The material
tute for Intelligent Systems in Stutt- diseases may still be the stuff of sci- used in the nearly one-millimeter-long
gart have now developed minute ence fiction, the use of a more devel- swimming body was specifically chosen for
its ability to expand when exposed to light.
robots that, like the organisms on oped version of these robots as tiny
This causes wave-shaped protrusions to
which they are based, are barely visi- medical assistants at the end of an en- form along the microswimmer and drive it
ble to the naked eye and can move doscope is entirely conceivable. (www. in the opposite direction when green slivers
through liquids in a similar way. In mpg.de/10327369) of light move over its surface.
Hardship Linked Fighting for the Host

to More Risk-Taking
With the exception of the intrepid Jer- researchers discovered this by studying
in Old Age ry in the “Tom and Jerry” cartoons, no parasitic tapeworms and threadworms,
mouse would ever dream of voluntari- which first infect copepods and then
ly remaining in the immediate vicini- fish. This behavior could also have
In most Western countries, peo- ty of a cat. Some mice, however, do just medical consequences, for instance if
ple’s propensity to take physical, that, and even appear to be drawn to parasites circumvent the manipulation
social, legal or financial risks de- cats. Behind this strange behavior lies programs of pathogens, thus hindering
creases with age. In countries like a parasitic protozoan called Toxoplas- their spread. (www.mpg.de/9958046)
Nigeria, Mali and Pakistan, in con- ma gondii, which alters the mouse’s be-
trast, risk behavior remains con- havior to its own ends: foolhardy mice
Graphic: Alejandro Posada (top); photo: N. Hafer/MPI for Evolutionary Biology
stant into old age. This is the find- are more likely to fall victim to preda-
ing of research carried out by scien- tors, and this boosts the spread of the
tists from the University of Basel parasite. Other parasites also manipu-
and the Max Planck Institute for late the behavior of their host. But
Human Development in Berlin. A what happens when parasites at differ-
comparison of data from 77 coun- ent stages of development, or even dif-
tries revealed a clear correlation ferent species of parasites with com-
between risk behavior and such peting objectives, infect a single host?
factors as low per-capita income, Scientists from the Max Planck Insti-
greater income inequality and a tute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön
high murder rate. The researchers have discovered that parasites sabotage
suspect that this is because people each other and disable the other’s ma- Conflicting goals: Several parasites often infect
in countries where resources are nipulation programs – even if they one and the same host, as shown here in a
scarce have to compete more fierce- originate from different species. Ac- copepod, which is infected with the tapeworm
ly with each other than people in cording to the researchers, in the case Schistocephalus solidus (green) and the thread-
worm Camallanus lacustris (blue). If the parasites
wealthy countries and countries of conflicts of interest, the parasite that are at different stages in their development,
with good social welfare provisions. is in the infectious state and needs to they try to influence the behavior of the
(www.mpg.de/9818736) change hosts has the upper hand. The crustacean in opposing ways.
MATERIALS & TECHNOLOGY_Chemistry
A Trio with an
Extensive Repertoire
It is frequently only the development of new materials that makes technological advances
possible, whether in the areas of energy supply or information technology. With the
Heusler compounds, Claudia Felser, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical
Physics of Solids in Dresden, uncovered a rich source of materials that offer promising
properties for a variety of applications.
TEXT PETER HERGERSBERG
W
hether Germany The manufacturers of these wind gen- Chemical Physics of Solids in Dresden
can successfully erators were therefore understandably aims to achieve with her research into
achieve a turn- agitated when the Chinese govern- Heusler compounds is to find perma-
around in the ment placed limits on rare earth ex- nent magnets that don’t include rare
energy sector de- ports in 2010. Even though the quota earths. These compounds usually com-
pends on more has since been lifted again, the indus- prise three metals and crystallize in a
than just its utility companies, consum- try has undertaken a global search for characteristic structure. They are named
ers and politicians. To a certain extent, new sources. Better still, it would like after Fritz Heusler, a German mining
the Chinese government, too, must dis- to find alternatives so that it will no engineer and chemist. Back in 1903, he
play its good will – at least as regards longer be at the mercy of exporters’ determined that a compound compris-
the current state of technology. After whims. Moreover, while the metals are ing copper, manganese and aluminum
all, China exports around 90 percent of not as rare as their name would sug- behaves like a magnet, or more precise-
the rare earth metals. These metals, gest, the process by which they are ob- ly, a ferromagnet, despite its compo-
which bear archaic-sounding names tained is complex and harmful to the nents not exhibiting at least this form
like promethium, samarium, neodym- environment – the official reason cit- of magnetism.
ium and dysprosium, are used in nu- ed for China’s export limits. Thereafter, for many years, hardly
merous high-tech applications. Some of anyone paid any attention to the com-
them are responsible, for instance, for COMBINING RESOURCES LIKE pounds. It wasn’t until the 1980s that
the particular attraction of the strong BUILDING BLOCKS someone took interest again, as it was
est known permanent magnets. The then gradually becoming clear that
generators in modern wind turbines, Claudia Felser may be able to offer a they offer much more than just magne-
Photo: Sven Döring
especially those in offshore installa- solution, at least as far as permanent

Versatile apparatus: Roshnee Sahoo
tions, use these powerful magnets to magnets from these controversial met-
examines the sputtering system that she
produce the electricity Germany is us- als are concerned. One thing the Direc- and her colleagues use to produce thin
ing to counter climate change. tor at the Max Planck Institute for films of various materials.
Above Claudia Felser and Gerhard Fecher continually develop ideas for new Heusler compounds.
Below In the crystal of a compound comprising manganese (Mn), platinum (Pt) and gallium (Ga), manganese atoms occupy a variety of
positions (right). The magnetic moments at the different manganese positions have opposing orientations and essentially hold each other
in place, making it very difficult to reverse the polarity of this substance. Since there is more of one kind of manganese (red) than of the
other (blue), the substance ends up having a low magnetic moment (left).
repertoire: some Heusler compounds

are metallic conductors and others are
Mn2PtGa semiconductors. Now, it’s not as if the
Ga industry suffers from a shortage of good
conductors or semiconductors. After
Pt all, copper, silicon and the like have
been doing a fine job for decades. “But
the electronics industry is looking for
Mnl
materials with more options for differ-
Photo: Sven Döring; graphics: nature materials/2015/Macmillan Publishers

ent settings,” explains Claudia Felser.
Mnll And that is precisely what the three-el-
ement combinations offer. They also
include, for instance, half-metals, which
tism. Around 1,500 of these com- of the Max Planck Director, where it is are not to be confused with semicon-
pounds are known, in which 52 – and easily visible for referencing. ductors and could be very popular par-
thus the majority – of the existing met- Mixing these chemical building ticularly for the electronics of the fu-
als are combined in various ways. blocks together yields materials with a ture – but more on that later.
“The good thing about Heusler com- variety of properties that are of interest Furthermore, the different kinds of
pounds is that we can combine all kinds to both science and technology. As a re- conductivity in Heusler compounds are
of elements like building blocks,” says sult, Felser speaks almost as frequently coupled with other interesting proper-
Claudia Felser. And because the proper- of patents she has applied for – or ought ties, of which various forms of magne-
ties of the individual chemical compo- to apply for – as she does of publica- tism are just a few. But some Heusler
nents can largely be derived from their tions in scientific journals. compounds also have magneto-optical
positions in the periodic table of the el- The metallic trio with the ever- capabilities, meaning they offer the
ements, this chart – the basic law of her changing composition owes its scientif- possibility to influence the magnetic
work – adorns the wall behind the desk ic and technical appeal to its extensive properties with light. Others exhibit
thermoelectric behavior, where a tem- understanding,” says the researcher. we want to overcome our dependence
perature difference creates an electric She is most satisfied when, in the end, on these metals. The ferromagnet with
potential in the material. A couple of there is a simple rule that makes it pos- the strongest magnetic moment that
the substances are also materials that sible to state whether a material will Claudia Felser’s team has thus far found
remember their shape: if you deform have a certain property or not. among the Heusler materials is known
them and then subsequently heat For some properties of Heusler com- as cobalt iron silicon, which is com-
them, they return to their original pounds, the simple basic rules work prised of two parts cobalt, one part iron
shape. Some Heusler compounds also very well – for magnetic materials, for and one part silicon.
offer rather exotic properties – more on example. “We have been particularly
this point later, too. interested in magnetic Heuslers for a A SOFT MAGNET IS PRACTICAL
Claudia Felser discovered the chem- few years now,” says Claudia Felser. In FOR TRANSFORMERS
ical toolbox of Heusler compounds in this context, magnetic can mean many
the 1990s when she was looking for a things: ferromagnetic or ferrimagnetic; However, the magnetization disappears
superconductor – which she also found soft magnetic or hard magnetic; having when even a relatively low magnetic
among the Heusler compounds. Super- a low magnetic moment or a high mag- field with the opposite polarity of the
conductors transport electricity with netic moment. original field is applied, and then forms
no electrical resistance at all, but to What all magnetic materials have in in the opposite direction. Such a mate-
date, unfortunately, only at tempera- common is that their atoms have un- rial is referred to as soft magnetic. It is
tures well below freezing. As Claudia paired electrons that act like tiny bar practical for the core of an AC trans-
Felser soon found out, this also applies magnets. In ferromagnets, which in- former, where the polarity is reversed
to the superconducting Heusler com- clude bar and horseshoe magnets as well in rapid succession. The material is not,
pounds she first discovered. as, for instance, magnets for pinboards, however, suitable for a good permanent
While this didn’t offer any pros- the tiny bar magnets of the individual magnet, which must not only be able
pects for loss-free electricity transport atoms all align the same way with their to be strongly magnetized, but must
and thus contributed nothing to ener- north and south poles. In this way, a also be hard magnetic. Hard magnetic
gy conservation, it opened up a re- magnetic field develops in them that is is the term used for materials that can’t
search field for the chemist in which outwardly perceptible. This makes it easily be demagnetized or have their
she is still reaping success. “Sometimes possible to use a bar magnet to magne- polarity reversed. As a physicist would
I also ask myself whether I can devote tize one iron nail after another until, in say, they have a high coercivity.
my entire research life to the Heuslers,” the end, an entire chain of nails dangles The best known permanent magnets
she says. “But there is simply so incred- from the permanent magnet. combine high magnetization and high
ibly much to discover here.” Her exper- Whether a Heusler compound is fer- coercivity: alloys of cobalt and the rare
tise in this field has even garnered her romagnetic can be determined based on earth metal samarium, as well as of iron
a nickname among materials scientists: the number of a certain kind of elec- and neodymium. But these properties
Mrs. Heusler. trons: valence electrons. These sit closer actually appear to be mutually exclusive
to the outside edges in the atoms and de- in materials that don’t include rare
BASIC RULES FOR MAGNETIC termine the atoms’ chemical and phys- earths. “The strength of the magnetiza-
MATERIALS ical behavior. “I’m a chemist,” says Fels- tion and the coercivity determine the
er, “I like counting electrons.” Ferromag- overall magnetization energy,” explains
Her group has continually added new netic Heusler compounds have to have Gerhard Fecher, who leads a working
specialties to the array of capabilities more than 24 valence electrons. And the group in Felser’s department. “Although
that Heusler materials can take on. further over this limit the number of va- it hasn’t yet been possible to prove this,
Claudia Felser always has her eye on lence electrons lies, the greater their it appears that a material is able to ab-
potential technical applications, but magnetic moment is, and the more sorb only a limited amount of magnet-
she is less concerned with a specific ma- strongly the material can be magnetized. ic energy.” Limit or no, the researchers
terial that she and her colleagues want In practice, ferromagnetic Heusler would be happy just to discover a Heus
to position for one application or an- compounds contain manganese or co- ler compound that absorbs as much
other. “We are interested in discovering balt, but they also form with rare earths. magnetic energy as the best permanent
new principles and gaining a deeper The latter, however, are of little use if magnets containing rare earths.
First calculate, then bake: Binghai Yan (left) first uses models to simulate the properties of materials and gives the experimenters
suggestions as to which elements they should combine in, for instance, the arc furnace (right).
The maximum magnetization possible num-gallium compound, they come num-gallium unsuitable as a candidate
can be influenced by the choice of in- from the same atoms, namely those of for a good permanent magnet, it is vir-
dividual elements – manganese and co- the manganese, which take up different tually predestined for magnetic storage,
balt, in particular, stand out, alongside positions in the crystal structure. such as hard drives. While these are
a couple of rare earths. Coercivity, how- The elementary magnets of the var- gradually giving way to other storage
ever, depends on the interaction be- iously positioned atoms don’t align media in laptops, for instance, they still
tween all the elements, as it deter- their poles in the same direction, or take up enormous amounts of data in
mines, among other things, what parallel, but rather in opposition to one the globally distributed cloud comput-
crystal structure a compound forms. To another, or antiparallel. ing environment.
obtain a hard magnet, its smallest com- “Strong magnetization is problem-
ponents – which we can certainly also HEUSLER COMPOUNDS FOR atic in magnetic memory only because
think of as building blocks – must not SPINTRONICS it produces a large stray magnetic field
be cubic. Unfortunately, they often are. that makes it difficult to read out neigh-
Instead, for a hard magnet, these unit Since the manganese-platinum-gallium boring storage points,” explains Clau-
cells, as they are known, must have the contains more manganese atoms with dia Felser. “So with low magnetization,
shape of an elongated cuboid. “This re- the one magnetic polarity than with it’s possible to pack the individual stor-
sults in a preferred direction for the the other polarity, a low magnetic mo- age points much closer together.” But
magnetization, which leads to high co- ment results. However, by varying the it will presumably take some time be-
ercivity,” explains Gerhard Fecher. mixing ratio of the three elements, the fore ferrimagnets like manganese-plat-
One material the Dresden-based re- researchers can further reduce the mag- inum-gallium find their way into stor-
searchers recently presented has pre- netic moment and even make it com- age media, and along the way, we
cisely the right structure for a hard pletely disappear. In this case, the sci- should surely also find a less expensive
magnet. It consists of manganese, plat- entists refer to a fully compensated alternative for platinum.
inum and gallium, and it is very diffi- ferrimagnet. But magnetic Heusler compounds
cult to demagnetize. This owes, howev- Whether fully compensated or not, are interesting not only for storing in-
er, not only to its crystal structure, but in both cases, the antiparallel-oriented formation, but also for processing. This
also to another characteristic – one that elementary magnets provide each oth- is what spintronics does – a for-
additionally gives it a very low magnet- er support. “This makes it very difficult ward-looking branch of electronics that
Photos: Sven Döring (2)
ic moment. This substance is a fer- to change the polarity of ferrimagnets,” has already produced the modern read
rimagnet. In these kinds of materials, says Gerhard Fecher. “They’re good heads for hard drives.
the basic magnetic moments originate hard magnets.” Spintronics components exploit not
either from different elements or, as in Although its low magnetic moment only the charge of an electron, but also
the case of the manganese-plati- makes a material like manganese-plati- its spin. This is a quantum mechanical
property that we can imagine as an them: in thin films. To this end, in a their specimens from countless combi-
electron’s direction of rotation. It turns side wing of their institute building, nations of elements in nearly any de-
the electrons into the tiny bar magnets they have already set up the majority sired thickness. They can even stack the
that, working together in a permanent of a new device that would hardly fit in metals in individual atomic layers to
magnet, generate the magnetic field most living rooms. It looks a bit like the produce Heusler compounds that don’t
that exerts an irresistible attraction on International Space Station (ISS) with- form in conventional synthetic pro-
iron and similar metals. In electronics, out the solar module, but instead with cesses. And by maneuvering the speci-
the spin provides an additional way to a visit from a flying saucer. And like the mens to different stations through a
store information: depending on which ISS, it, too, will continuously have new long vacuum tube, they can also imme-
direction the microscopic bar magnet components added to it. diately inspect the new materials with
points in, it stores a zero or a one. a variety of atomic force microscopes
The first promising Heusler com- A DEVICE FOR MANY and a scanning tunneling microscope,
pound Claudia Felser brought into play EXPERIMENTAL STEPS or use photoelectron spectroscopy to
for spintronics consists of four ele- determine the exact composition and
ments: cobalt, chrome, iron and alumi- The unit stands on a floor in which, the electronic structure of the material.
num, or CCFA. The material that Fels- here again, the periodic table of the el- The electronic structure, which is a
er discovered back when she was still a ements is depicted in colorful tiles – the product of the composition and the
researcher at Johannes Gutenberg Uni- universe in which Claudia Felser’s and structure of a material, is as important
versity Mainz is likewise magnetic and her colleagues’ research takes place. The to solid state researchers as the genetic
stands out primarily due to its colossal facility is the showpiece in the equip- code is to biologists. Just as the genome
magnetoresistance. ment fleet of Felser’s department. It defines a good portion of our character-
Back in the late 1980s, Peter Grün- provides a closed system in which the istics, how electrons behave determines
berg and Albert Fert discovered giant researchers can carry out many experi- the features of a material. Knowing
magnetoresistance. It forms in sand- mental steps that would otherwise take and, if at all possible, even being able
wiches comprising two thin magnetic place in separate apparatuses. to predict where and how electrons
layers and a non-magnetic intermedi- In the device’s vacuum chambers, move through a material provides in-
ate layer when the magnetic layers are they use various methods to produce formation on what type of magnetism
oppositely polarized. Since each indi-
vidual magnetic layer allows nearly
X 2YZ Heusler components
only those electrons to pass that have
the spin direction that matches their
polarization, most of them get stuck on
their way through an oppositely poled
Graphic: T. Graf et al./Progress in Solid State Chemistry 39 (2011) 1-50
double layer.
Grünberg and Fert were awarded
the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2007 for
their discovery of giant magnetoresis-
tance. At room temperature, CCFA has
a magnetoresistance that is even many
times higher than the material in which
Grünberg and Fert first detected the ef-
fect. This makes it eminently suitable
for reading data in magnetic storage
points. IBM bought the corresponding
patent in 2001.
In the future, the researchers in
Huge variety: The metals marked in color in the periodic table of the elements can be
Dresden want to increasingly focus combined to form countless X 2YZ compounds. The colors stand for the different positions of
their research on materials in the form the elements in the crystal structure that is typical for Heusler materials. The numbers
in which the electronics industry uses indicate the electronegativities.
Above In the spherical sputtering chamber, Gerhard Fecher, Thomas Krüger and Roshnee Sahoo (left to right) first produce different materials that
they can subsequently subject to various analysis methods by shuttling the specimens through the system’s tubes.
Below A material’s electronic properties can be derived from its band structure. The band structures of cadmium telluride (CdTe) and the Heusler
compound scandium platinum antimonide (ScPtSb) are similar around the zero energy level because both substances are topological insulators –
that is, they conduct electricity only on their surface.
4 3 Following a “triple jump” strategy of

2 calculating, synthesizing and measur-
2 ing, Felser’s team is searching, for in-
1
stance, for new half-metallic Heusler
Energy (eV)
Energy (eV)
Photo: Sven Döring; graphics: T. Graf et al./Progress in Solid State Chemistry 39 (2011) 1-50
0 0 compounds that can likewise be used
CdTe ScPtSb in spintronics. Half-metallic magnetic
-2 -1
materials only conduct charge carriers
-2 of one spin direction. This is what
-4 gives CCFA, for instance, its colossal
-3
magnetoresistance. Another of the few
-6 -4 half-metallic Heusler compounds is co-
W L X W L X
balt iron silicon, which also took cen-
ter stage as a ferromagnet due to its
a material exhibits and what else it when simple electron counting gets high magnetic moment.
might be able to do. The paths of the them nowhere. In this way, they can But the researchers working with
electrons are, of course, particularly im- at least narrow down a substance with Claudia Felser are also searching for
portant in electronics. the desired property and spare them- other Heusler compounds that aren’t
After the researchers in Dresden selves the effort of synthesizing count- magnetic and whose conductivity is
create a material, they examine its less material combinations for testing. nevertheless dependent on the spin di-
electronic structure as closely as possi- But since their calculations are always rection. This is where the field of exper-
ble. Before that, however, they use so- based on mere approximations – how- tise of the team in Dresden meets a re-
phisticated computer programs to cal- ever good these may have since be- search field that physicists opened up
culate what behavior they can expect come – and are not always exactly just about ten years ago: topological in-
from the electrons and thus from the right, there’s also no getting around sulators, which have since become
Heusler compound itself – especially follow-up experiments. quite popular in physics.
Inside the crystals of such a material, insulators. However, they always con- Whether with or without rare earths,
electrons are just as restricted in their tain rare earth metals and, in addition, in view of the nearly unlimited possi-
movement as they are in insulating plas- usually platinum or gold. This doesn’t bilities the Heusler materials offer and
tics. On their surfaces, however, the elec- have to stand in the way of practical ap- the versatility they have already
trons can whiz about as freely as they do plication if a material simply does its job demonstrated, Claudia Felser’s long-
through metals, and the electrons of the well enough, as today’s high-tech clear- term goal doesn’t seem too far-fetched:
two spin orientations always move in ly shows: for all of their disadvantages, “I would like to bring at least one more
different directions. This makes them in- rare earths and precious metals are fre- material that we develop here to the
teresting for spintronics computing op- quently indispensable here. application stage.”
erations. “In spintronic components, to-
pological insulators would require far
less energy than other materials,” says
Binghai Yan, who is Claudia Felser’s to-
pological insulators specialist and leads TO THE POINT
a research group on precisely this subject l Heusler compounds involve 52 metals combined in various ways, making it
at the Max Planck Institute in Dresden. possible to produce materials with a wide variety of properties: semiconductors,
metallic conductors, half-metals that can additionally exhibit various forms of
magnetism, and also such exotic characteristics as superconductivity, thermo-
TOPOLOGICAL INSULATORS
electricity, colossal magnetoresistance and topological properties.
AMONG HEUSLER COMPOUNDS
l Heusler materials thus expand the available potential for the electronics industry,
for instance, and could even eliminate some industries’ dependence on such
The physicist came to the Institute in materials as the rare earth metals, which have finite availability or aren’t ecolog-
Dresden after his current boss met his ically sound.
former boss, Shoucheng Zhang from l R esearchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids have
Stanford University, in 2009 – at a spin- already developed, for instance, a soft-magnetic ferromagnet that, with its high
tronics conference. Felser gave a pre- magnetic moment, meets one of the requirements of a good permanent magnet,
and a hard-magnetic ferrimagnet with a low magnetic moment for potential
sentation on the prospects Heusler
applications in memory technology. The researchers have also found half-metals
compounds offered for this technolo- with colossal magnetoresistance and topological insulators for spintronics.
gy, and Zhang spoke about topological
insulators. Afterwards, the two quickly
agreed that there must also be topolog-
ical insulators among the Heusler com- GLOSSARY
pounds, and that they could have prac-
Ferrimagnet: Here, atomic elementary magnets, which we can picture as tiny bar
tical advantages over other materials of
magnets, align themselves oppositely, or antiparallel, to one another rather than paral-
their kind. “Only one group of re- lel, as in ferromagnets (such as iron). However, since in ferrimagnets, the elementary
searchers was able to synthesize the magnets of one of the two opposing orientations outweigh the others, they also exert
original topological insulators – no one a weak external magnetic field.
else had succeeded,” says Binghai Yan. Heusler compounds: Materials that generally comprise three metals. Since there are
“Heusler compounds, in contrast, are a total of 52 metals that can combine in various arrangements to form Heusler com-
much easier to create.” pounds, there are a great many possible variations. Around 1,500 Heusler compounds
are currently known.
Binghai Yan’s specialty is not limited
Coercivity: The strength of the magnetic field required to completely demagnetize a
to synthesizing topological Heusler
magnetized substance.
compounds, though; it also includes the
Spintronics: A form of electronics that exploits not only the charge of the electrons,
theoretical prediction of which materi- but also their spin, which turns electrons into tiny bar magnets. This makes it possible,
al is most suitable for the task. “To find for instance, to pack data more densely in today’s hard drives.
such materials, we need a treasure map Topological insulator: A material whose crystals act as electrical insulators in their
of sorts,” he says. “Theory provides good interior, but conduct electricity on their surface. Since the direction of the electricity is
maps.” So far, the Dresden-based team determined by the spin of the electrons, these substances are of interest for spintronics.
has found nearly 100 Heusler com-
pounds that belong to the topological
PHYSICS & ASTRONOMY_Planetology
A Dark World
of Ice
A space probe has journeyed to Ceres for the first time. Scientists from the Max Planck
Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen are using its two onboard cameras
to explore the dark surface of the dwarf planet. They have already discovered signs of frozen
water – but is there also an ocean slumbering deep below the craters?
TEXT THORSTEN DAMBECK
S
ome things are relative – a around 14 months exploring this world res was discovered more than two cen-
tenet that applies to asteroids from its orbit. The probe then ignited turies ago by Italian astronomer Giu-
as well. Take Ceres, for exam- its electric ion thruster once again and seppe Piazzi, very little exploration had
ple, which the International set off toward Ceres, arriving in March been done there. The story of its dis-
Astronomical Union has list- 2015. It has been circling Ceres closely covery is a cosmic cliffhanger: As ear-
ed in the dwarf planet category since from different orbits ever since. ly as the end of the 18th century, there
2006. This “dwarf,” which is named for was widespread skepticism among sci-
the Roman goddess of agriculture and COMPLEX GEOLOGY FASCINATES entists as to whether the conspicuous
fertility, is simultaneously the largest of THE RESEARCHERS gap between Mars and Jupiter really
the innumerable small bodies that or- was empty. Could an undiscovered
bit the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. The scientific camera system is one of planet be lurking there?
Geometrically speaking, Ceres is an Dawn’s high-profile onboard experi- A group of German astronomers –
ellipsoid. At first sight, however, it re- ments. It comes from the Max Planck the “celestial police” – systematically
sembles a sphere with an average diam- Institute for Solar System Research in hunted down the suspected celestial
eter of 946 kilometers. Its planetary Göttingen. The two so-called framing body in the zodiacal sky. And lo and
body is not perfect, of course; stamped cameras are Dawn’s eyes, so to speak, behold: on New Year’s Eve 1801, a pre-
on the ellipsoid is a landscape that de- and they play a key role in the explora- viously unknown object was detected –
scends as deep as 7.5 kilometers and tion of the two celestial bodies (see box Ceres. This discovery was not, howev-
towers up to a height of 4 kilometers in on page 56). Now, their gaze is directed er, attributable to any of the celestial
other places. This 3.2 percent variation at Ceres. Most of its surface is as dark as police officers, but was made at the ob-
spans a much greater range than that fresh asphalt; on average, only 9 per- servatory in Palermo. The new “wan-
Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
of our own moon (1 percent). Com- cent of incident light is reflected. The dering star” was almost the exact same
pared with its sister Vesta in the aster- researchers are fascinated all the same: distance from the Sun that had been
oid belt, for which this figure is around the dwarf planet is a world with a com- predicted by the Titius-Bode law for the
15 percent, the variations in Ceres’ to- plex geology. Although much of what planet they were searching for. This em-
pography are merely moderate – rela- the flood of images is now revealing pirical law, named for the two scholars
tively speaking. hasn’t yet been evaluated, even the pre- Johann Titius and Johann Bode, had al-
NASA’s Dawn space probe traveled liminary analyses have unearthed un- ready correctly reproduced the distance
to both of these miniature planets after expected details. between the Sun and Uranus, which
setting off on its journey in 2007. Dawn is the first visitor to Ceres; last had been discovered two decades earli-
Dawn’s first port of call was Vesta in year was the first time a space probe er. Ceres was now considered to be a
summer 2011. The terrestrial scout spent managed to get this far. Although Ce- planet, just like Uranus. >
Dwarf in space: This false color image shows different material
on Ceres’ surface. The bright regions in the Occator crater appear
clearly, near the center of the image.
But the discovery of Ceres was only the based on observations with the framing sumably formed as a result of landslides
beginning; there was apparently a cameras that were undertaken from a on the slopes. Kupalo doesn’t have a
whole gang of undiscovered planets be- relatively large distance (4,424 kilome- central peak, as is usually the case with
yond Mars: Pallas and Juno were found ters). Since January, Dawn has been di- impact craters of this size.
soon afterwards, and Vesta followed in recting its eagle eye toward the cra- Instead, its center is home to a
1807. In 1850, they were already so nu- ter-covered surface. On its new orbit, mountain chain that extends for more
merous that the designation dwarf the probe approaches Ceres to within than seven kilometers. Several similar
planet gained acceptance. By the turn 385 kilometers. mountain chains are repeated near the
of the 20th century, 462 members of “Now, with significantly better res- crater rim, whose shape also deviates
Ceres’ species had been tracked down, olution, we can investigate many of conspicuously from a circle. Kupalo’s
and its status as a planet was now long the surface details that we have known crater bottom is otherwise almost flat
gone. Today, almost half a million about since Dawn reached Ceres,” and has no subsequently formed small-
known specimens inhabit the main as- says Max Planck researcher Andreas er craters – an indication of a relatively
teroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Nathues, who manages the camera ex- young age. Several bright spots can be
Most of them are relatively small; Ce- periment from Göttingen. The planet seen in its interior, but more about
res alone accounts for around one-third researchers particularly study the dif- those later.
of the total mass of the belt. ferent manifestations of the impact The Messor crater (diameter: 42 ki-
craters on Ceres. lometers) also attracts attention due
EAGLE-EYED CAMERA STUDIES A recent image shows Kupalo, an to its unusual shape. Like Kupalo, its
IMPACT CRATERS impact crater measuring around 25 ki- rim also has an irregular shape, and it
lometers across; it is named for a Slav- doesn’t have a central peak either.
Back to the present: Researchers in the ic fertility goddess and is located in Moreover, the crater bottom has a
international Dawn team have mean- the southern hemisphere. Conspicuous marked wave-like pattern. Messor is
while presented the first geological bright stripes spread out radially on the superimposed onto an older crater
maps of Ceres. These, however, are inside of the crater rim. They were pre- whose relics are still evident. Messor is
THE EYES OF THE SCOUT
The eyes of NASA’s Dawn probe are made in Germany: the two fram-
ing cameras. Apart from mapping the surface, they are used for probe
navigation. Each camera weighs 5.5 kilograms. They can take white-
light and color photos and have seven filters in the spectral range
from visible light to near infrared for this purpose. The camera sys-
tem is a collaborative project: it was developed and built by the Max
Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen in collabora-
tion with the DLR Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin, and the
Institute of Computer and Network Engineering at the Technical Uni-
versity of Braunschweig.
In addition to the high-resolution photographs, it can record
views of the surface with 3-D effect, which can also be made into a
montage to create virtual fly-bys. Three further onboard experiments
round out the scientific payload: the infrared spectrometer from Ita-
ly, with which the researchers analyze the mineral composition and
the temperature distribution on Ceres’ surface; the gamma and neu-
tron spectrometer from the US, which is responsible for determining
Photo: Ronald Schmidt
the chemical elements in the surface rock; and a radio wave experi-
ment that is used mainly to measure the gravitational field of the ce-
lestial body and for position determination.
obviously an older crater, because its
interior contains almost as many small-
er impact craters as are found outside
the crater.
A further crater, around 30 kilome-
ters in diameter and as yet unnamed,
has a prominent central peak and dis-
tinct terraces that cover the entire cra-
ter bottom. These structures also indi-
cate that an asteroid struck material
that had a high degree of mobility im-
mediately after the impact. An indica-
tion of frozen water in the ground?
OUTER LAYERS ARE NOT MADE

OF HARD ROCK
A different crater, the 125-kilometer

Dantu, appears on the images to be
conspicuously flat with a network of
cracks such as those we know in a sim-
ilar form from lunar craters, for exam-
Short-range reconnaissance: The Dawn space probe was launched in 2007, flew past the asteroid
ple the young crater Tycho. “The outer
Vesta in summer 2011 and swung into an orbit around Ceres on March 6, 2015. Since January, the
layers of Ceres aren’t made of hard space probe has come to within 385 kilometers of the dwarf planet.
rock, and this was likely crucial for the
formation of these cracks. When the as-
teroid struck, frozen water below the
surface probably melted, at least par- which are bowl shaped,” says the re- But back to the unusually bright depos-
tially. If it subsequently cools down, it searcher from the Jet Propulsion Labo- its that were found on Dantu, for exam-
can contract considerably and form ratory in California. ple. The Max Planck researchers had al-
many cracks,” says Max Planck scien- Ceres has almost the same surface ready discovered similar ones on other
tist Martin Hoffmann. gravity as Saturn’s moon Rhea – the parts of the surface; even on the ap-
Unlike the situation on our own difference between the two celestial proach to Ceres, the cameras were daz-
moon, frozen water has played an im- bodies is a mere 4 percent. The indica- zled by bright spots on the surface.
portant role in the formation of these tions that tell of ice on Ceres, such as They initially appeared on the photos
structures. The fact that Ceres also con- the morphology of the impact craters, as overexposed spots – a completely
tains ice had already been expected be- are only indirect at present. Direct surprising observation, according to
fore the Dawn mission. “Ceres’ low av- measurements, for example with the Martin Hoffmann. Last December, a
erage density of 2.16 grams per cubic onboard infrared spectrometer, aren’t team headed by Nathues and Hoff-
centimeter can’t be explained any oth- yet available. Hoffmann and Nathues mann reported in the science journal
er way than by a high proportion of fro- are nevertheless convinced that frozen Nature that the conspicuous spots
zen water,” explains Andreas Nathues. water played a crucial role in the geol- weren’t rare at all, and that 130 of them
The comparison with Saturn’s moon ogy: melted by the heat of the impact, had already been identified on Ceres.
Rhea, which also contains large amounts it formed many structures as it subse-
of ice, is an indication of frozen water quently froze, structures that are SALT DISSOLVED IN WATER IS
in Ceres’ surface material. much less pronounced or even lacking LEFT BEHIND
“The irregular shapes of Ceres’ cra- completely when objects impact solid
Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech
ters resemble those on Rhea,” explains rock. “Even though we don’t yet un- With measurements in laboratories in
Carol Raymond from the Dawn team. derstand these processes in detail, Canada and the US, the researchers at-
The craters on Ceres are unlike those they could explain the fracture lines, tempted to imitate the color signal of
on Vesta, the subject of the probe’s the terraces, the lack of simple central these spots recorded with the framing
earlier study. “The craters on Ceres peaks and the irregular crater rims,” cameras. The result: the bright surface
are very dissimilar to those on Vesta, says Andreas Nathues. material is likely salt. It presumably
Cornucopia for planetologists: The study of craters

provides deep insight into the geology of Ceres. Each of
these remnants of asteroid impacts tells its own story,
whether it is Dantu, Kupalo, Messor, Occator or Oxo
(from left). The bright deposits all over the surface have
particularly astonished the researchers. This is apparent-
ly material that consists of hydrous magnesium sulfate
or other salts. In the Occator crater – shown here in a
color-coded topographic view – haze can also form at
the crater bottom when the Sun has risen.
consists of hydrous magnesium sulfate The salt that was originally dissolved in sphere, which is around 80 million
or other bright salts as also occur in ter- the water is left behind. “Investigating years old and has a diameter of over 90
restrial salt lakes, in Torrevieja and La these bright deposits on Ceres’ surface kilometers. Inside its crater walls, which
Mata on the Spanish Costa Blanca, for will be one of the main objectives for can be as deep as 4 kilometers, the
instance. Nathues therefore presumes the Dawn mission over the coming framing cameras have even detected
not only that Ceres’ surface conceals months,” predicts Martin Hoffmann. the brightest spots on the whole sur-
ice, but that this ice is partially mixed face. What’s more, the photos show
with salt. HAZE DEPENDS ON THE POSITION that haze forms on the crater bottom
As soon as this mixture is exposed OF THE SUN after the Sun has risen. But this mist
by asteroid impacts or is transported to becomes visible only when Occator is
the surface by internal forces, it can Some of the bright areas have even more photographed at a very low angle. In
slowly sublime, or transition directly to offer, such as the relatively young the diurnal rhythm, the patches of haze
from the solid into the gaseous state. crater Occator in the northern hemi- clear as soon as the Sun is near or al-
ready below the horizon.
This finding also supports the hy-
pothesis of subsurface frozen water, al-
though it is still not clear how exactly
the haze forms. According to Andreas
Nathues, it probably happens through
Photos: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA (2); photo: Ronald Schmidt (bottom)

openings in the ground, when frozen
water sublimes into the vacuum of
space. Since dust particles are also en-
trained in the process, it resembles the
outgassings of comets.
The second brightest structure on
Ceres’ surface, 8-kilometer-wide Oxo
crater, is also comparatively young. The
photos show bright spots and haze here
as well. If the indications for ground ice
are confirmed, then the framing cam-
Orientation on a distant world:

Andreas Nathues (left) and Martin Hoffmann
inspect a global mosaic of the dwarf planet
Vesta. The Dawn probe journeyed to it as the
first stop on its tour. The two framing cameras
on board were developed and built by, among
others, the Max Planck Institute for Solar
System Research in Göttingen.
eras will have proved for the first time sibly have been formed by reactions searchers: Does Ceres’ solid crust sit
from close up that ice is present in the with organic material or ammonium atop an ocean like the one planetolo-
asteroid belt. Although this region of ice when Ceres was still very young. gists have discovered on Europa? Al-
the solar system is actually too warm though Ceres is much smaller than this
for it, ice can evidently remain stable DID THE DWARF PLANET particular moon of Jupiter, the dwarf
over long periods here when there is MIGRATE TO THE ASTEROID BELT? planet is relatively large when com-
a layer of surface rock protecting it pared with the even smaller Enceladus,
against vaporization. The latter, however, is stable only at the which orbits Saturn and also has such
Dawn’s observations corroborate very low temperatures found in the an ocean. Although they don’t yet take
measurements taken by the European outer solar system, which in turn Dawn’s observations into account, the
space telescope Herschel, which had al- would indicate that pebble-sized ob- latest computer simulations appear to
ready discovered the spectral finger- jects drifted from regions far from the indicate that this could be the case with
print of water vapor in the infrared Sun into the asteroid belt, where they Ceres as well.
light of the dwarf planet. One of the were taken up by the bodies already According to the calculations, a zone
two possible sources of vapor discov- there. Or did Ceres once migrate from in which the ice has melted could start
ered by Herschel coincides with the po- somewhere near Neptune’s orbit into 5 to 33 kilometers below the surface; the
sition of the Occator crater. According today’s asteroid belt, as De Sanctis puts uncertainty in this figure results from
to the analyses undertaken by Nathues’ forward for discussion? The Göttin- the spread of assumptions that were
team, so-called hydrated magnesium gen-based researchers have remained made for the calculation. If the hypo-
sulfates – that is, hydrous mineral salts rather more cautious here. The evalua- thetical ocean were very salty, it could
– are an important constituent of the tion of the measurements is still ongo- exist under an even thinner surface lay-
bright ground material. Many of the ing; Ceres’ origin can be assessed only er. Dawn’s eyes and the other instru-
other bright regions on Ceres, in con- when this is complete. ments on board have the opportunity
trast, probably consist of dried-up salts. And another important question to find answers until early 2017. After
The activity that is still ongoing at the heads the to-do list of the Dawn re- that, the probe will run out of fuel.
Occator crater apparently stopped some
time ago at these other locations.
Photos: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA (3)
A further current investigation is

likewise devoted to Ceres’ surface min-
erals. The researchers used Dawn’s in- TO THE POINT
frared spectrometer to measure the l The Dawn space probe has been orbiting the dwarf planet Ceres since March 2015.
spectral distribution of the reflected l Ceres is a world with a complex geology. Some craters have interesting structures;
light at wavelengths between 0.4 and 5 frozen water evidently played a major role in their formation.
micrometers. Cristina De Sanctis from l White spots appear all over the surface – salt. It presumably consists of hydrous
the Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia magnesium sulfate or other bright salts as occur in terrestrial salt lakes.
Spaziali (IAPS) in Rome concludes from l Simulation calculations indicate the possibility that an ocean lies hidden beneath
the measurements that sheet silicates Ceres’ surface.
containing ammonium occur widely
on Ceres. These substances could pos-
Thaw in the
Climate Model
Nowhere does climate change make its presence felt more strongly than in the Arctic. The volume
of sea ice there has fallen drastically in recent decades. Climate models have been far from accurate
in conveying the full extent of this loss. This is set to change now – not least because Dirk Notz
and his research group at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg are constantly
improving their understanding of the processes that influence the formation and melting of sea ice.
TEXT UTE KEHSE
E
very year, when the polar ing from Canada to Siberia, pushing the first time since satellite measure-
night falls over the Arctic through the Bering Strait and Baffin ments began in 1979, the minimum
Ocean, a wafer-thin solid Bay and almost fully enveloping Green- area of the ice in summer was less than
crust forms on the bitterly land and the Spitsbergen archipelago. four million square kilometers. “The ex-
Photo: Thorsten Heller, Arved Fuchs Archive
cold water. Initially, it con- By the end of February, the Arctic sea panse and thickness of the Arctic sea ice
sists merely of individual ice covers an area of around 15 million in summer has approximately halved
crystals that glide over the surface of square kilometers every year, an ex- over the last 35 years. Three-quarters of
the water, forming a sludgy mixture panse equivalent to one and a half the volume is gone,” says Dirk Notz, a
with a slush-like consistency. This mass times the area of Europe. During the sea ice expert at the Max Planck Insti-
gradually consolidates to form circular summer months, in contrast, the vast tute for Meteorology in Hamburg. The
pancake-shaped structures from which white expanse retreats considerably. melting of the sea ice has reached dra-
meter-thick ice floes eventually form. And it is retreating more and more: matic proportions: the northeast pas-
By the end of the winter, the ice fills al- The Arctic sea ice has been shrinking sage along the Siberian coast is now nav-
most the entire Arctic Ocean, extend- rapidly for some years now. In 2012, for igable in most summers and the ice edge
ENVIRONMENT & CLIMATE_Sea Ice
is shifting further and further north. disappears, the high latitudes will warm Not stranded: Dirk Notz and Thorsten Heller,
Most climate models now predict that up at an even faster rate than is already a member of the ship’s crew, take a sample
on an ice floe. On this expedition they joined
the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in the case. This would lead to a decrease
polar researcher Arved Fuchs, who was
summer by the middle of this century. in the temperature difference between travelling on the sailing vessel “Dagmar
This has considerable consequences the mid- and high latitudes, a develop- Aaen” for nostalgic reasons.
for the global climate. Although sea ice ment that could give rise to freak
is only a few meters thick, it sits on the weather conditions in temperate zones. example, the ice shrank so much that
ocean like a lid, largely preventing heat As recently as ten years ago, many some researchers suspected a tipping
from the water from reaching the atmo- climate models came to the conclusion point had already been reached, beyond
sphere in winter. In summer, in con- that ice-free summers could be expected which the ice could disappear in a mat-
trast, the bright white ice radiates a in the Arctic at the end of the 21st center of just a few years. However, it ex-
large proportion of the incident sun- tury at the earliest. However, the ice has panded again over the following two
light back into space. Both effects cool retreated considerably faster than pro- years – again, an unexpected develop-
the air in the polar regions. If the ice jected by these simulations. In 2007, for ment. In short, the sea ice was behaving
The place where the group’s laborato-

ry experiments are carried out is just a
short walk away from Dirk Notz’s of-
fice. On the 13th floor of the neigh-
boring building, the University of
Hamburg’s Geomatikum, Notz and his
colleagues have set up a cold room
that’s not much bigger than a store-
room. Most of this space is taken up by
an ice tank measuring almost two me-
ters long and one meter high. The re-
searchers can grow and study their
own sea ice here. They also test proto-
types for the measuring equipment
they develop themselves and later use
in the field.
“In principle, the entire room is a
big freezer,” explains Dirk Notz. By
cooling the air down to as low as minus
Cinematic experience in the sky: The Max Planck researchers enjoyed breathtaking views 25 degrees Celsius, the researchers can
of the aurora borealis from the Daneborg Research Station in Greenland. reduce the greenish water in the tank
from room temperature to negative
so strangely that it seemed that climate melts. They use models to describe temperatures within a period of three
researchers couldn’t get a handle on it these physical processes, and they also to four days. After another half day,
in their models. develop new measuring instruments enough ice accumulates on the surface
Since then, however, the gaps be- and use them in field experiments. for them to carry out all sorts of exper-
tween the models and reality are far bet- “The way we combine research on a iments. With the help of several pumps,
ter understood and have narrowed con- laboratory scale with general studies they can make the water flow in steady
siderably – thanks in part to Dirk Notz’s and mix different methods is our circles or generate waves. Heating plates
work. He has been head of the Sea Ice in unique characteristic and the great help them simulate thaw conditions.
the Earth System research group at the strength of our group,” says Dirk Notz. Snow comes from standard spray bot-
Max Planck Institute in Hamburg for “We bring the worlds of the modelers tles, and wind from a ventilator.
seven years. Notz and his colleagues de- and experimental researchers together.”
vote their efforts to finding out what In this way, the Max Planck research- HOMEMADE SENSORS
kind of future lies ahead for the sea ice ers improve the climate models’ simula-
around the North Pole and on the far tions of how the sea ice is changing at It all seems a bit improvised, but that
side of the globe in the Antarctic. the global level. “Our measurements en- doesn’t bother Dirk Notz. “It doesn’t
able us to gain a better understanding of matter if it doesn’t look pretty, it just
NEW MEASURING INSTRUMENTS the minutiae of the processes that influ- has to work,” he says. The group has
FOR FIELD EXPERIMENTS ence the growing and melting of sea ice the same attitude to measuring equip-
in nature,” explains Notz. Through this ment. Because there were no suitable
The team takes a very comprehensive understanding, the scientists can then sensors available for many of the pa-
approach to its research: they keep an estimate which processes must be incor- rameters they wanted to measure in
eye on the overall comings and goings porated into the global models to obtain the ice, the team had to develop suit-
Photo: Leif Riemenschneider
of the sea ice, evaluate satellite data, reliable answers to the central questions able measurement sensors themselves.
and model the observed rhythms using of sea ice research. “Thanks to our work, Dirk Notz uses words like “tinkering”
complex computer programs. They also we know which questions we can rea- and “cobbling together” when he de-
investigate the physics of the sea ice in sonably answer using our models – such scribes the work they did on develop-
detail: In their laboratory, they observe as why the sea ice is increasing in the ing the sensors. “We do almost all of
how the ice changes when it freezes or Antarctic but melting in the Arctic.” the practical stuff ourselves – it’s all
part of our work, so a bit of practical timeter. Electrical conductivity is mea-
Extent of Arctic sea ice [million km2]
10 intelligence is needed,” he says. sured between the wires, and the salt
The results of this development content can be extrapolated from this.
8 work are internationally unique. For “The salt content of the sea ice is
example, the Hamburg-based research difficult to determine, but it is an ex-
group has a measuring device with tremely important parameter when it
6
which it can measure the salt content comes to characterizing the ice,” ex-
of sea ice at different depths. The sen- plains Dirk Notz. When sea water freez-
4 sor resembles a harp. The small version, es at minus 1.8 degrees Celsius, salt and
which is used in the experiment tank, other dissolved substances are not in-
2 consists of a circuit board and a Plexi- corporated into the crystal lattice, but
glas sheet from which eight pairs of are left over as concentrated brine in
0 wires protrude at intervals of one cen- tiny pockets and channels within the
1950 2000 2050 2100 2150
Year
Above The models taken into account in the latest global climate report make very different predictions regarding sea ice cover in the
Arctic. The measurement data from ships and aircraft (dotted green line) and that from satellites (solid line) are located around the mean
of the most reliable simulations.
Below In the laboratory in Hamburg, Dirk Notz (left) takes an ice core, while Niels Fuchs measures the temperature of the ice’s surface.
Photo: Tom Pingel; graphic: MPI for Meteorology
Left Leif Riemenschneider (left) and a member of the team install a measuring instrument they use to determine the salt content
of the ice by measuring its conductivity as it grows. They are wearing survival suits in case they fall through the ice.
Right To be able to carry out experiments in the youngest sea ice possible, the researchers move around a fjord in northeast
Greenland in a hovercraft that can travel over ice and through water.
ice. Thus, sea ice is a mixture of solid gen-rich water. The draining of the the physical processes that can change
freshwater ice and liquid brine. Because brine from the sea ice is thus an import- the salt content in their calculations.
this brine has a higher density than sea ant driver of this cycle, which also The structure of the ice, and thus its salt
water, some of it drains out of the ice keeps the ocean currents on the surface content, develop not only during
and into the sea water over time. The in movement. growth and thawing, but also when it
researchers deduce from the salt con- snows or rains or when the sun shines
tent of the sea ice how much brine re- HOW DOES THE SALT CONTENT on the surface. The model they devel-
mains in the ice. This, in turn, enables DEPEND ON THE AGE OF THE ICE? oped enabled Griewank and Notz to
them to draw conclusions about almost gain a clear understanding of the mea-
all of the other physical properties, So there are plenty of reasons for want- sured salt content of sea ice.
such as the heat conductivity and me- ing to gain a better understanding of Another gap in the research has
chanical strength of the sea ice, which the complicated processes that influ- been closed by meteorologist Ann Kris-
have to be included in the simulations ence the salt content of the sea ice and tin Naumann. For her master’s thesis,
of global sea ice development. the volume of brine that flows out of it. she studied how sea ice freezes in the
The brine that drains from the sea For example, it was long unclear how experiment tank when the water is
ice also plays an important role in the the salt content depended on the age stirred up by waves or kept in motion
global circulation of the oceans, a pro- or thickness of the ice. To explore these by wind and currents. Little was previ-
cess known as thermohaline circula- and other correlations, Dirk Notz and ously known about these processes.
tion. Again and again, the heavy liquid Philipp Griewank, his former doctoral Naumann first had to find a suitable
increases the density of the surface wa- student, not only studied the salt con- method for measuring the solid part of
ter in some locations in the polar zones tent in experiments, they also devel- the slushy ice that forms in the agitat-
so much that it sinks to the bottom and oped a complex one-dimensional mod- ed water. As she observed, even if the
provides the deep sea with cool, oxy- el for describing it. They included all of overall mass of ice in the tank increas-
UMWELT & KLIMA_Meereis
» Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod
tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua.
es, the solid proportion of the slushy around a quarter of the anthropogenic In this way, the researchers in Hamburg
ice doesn’t increase with time. As long CO2 emissions to date. are collating many important details
as slushy ice is present, only one quar- The scientists would also soon like to that help them obtain a better under-
ter of it consists of solid ice crystals. study some of these processes in field ex- standing of the peculiarities of the sea
This finding is important for under- periments. To do this, they have built a ice – and thus ultimately enable them to
standing the large-scale behavior of sea bigger version of the salt measuring de- provide better simulations of its large-
ice and can now be incorporated into vice that is buried in the sea ice and scale behavior. Dirk Notz has already
climate models. transmits data via a satellite connection. achieved some success in this area, too.
Over the course of the last few years, An initial test carried out in Greenland “By examining apparent contradictions
Dirk Notz and his colleagues have ex- in 2013 came to a premature end after between observations and model simu-
amined numerous other sea ice process- just two weeks, but it already provided lations, we were able to fill several ma-
es in detail in their experiments, such a lot of valuable data. “We now want to jor gaps in the understanding of sea ice
as the thawing and other developments extend the monitoring period and ob- in recent years,” he reports.
that arise at the boundary between ice serve for the first time how the salinity
and water. They have also focused on in sea ice develops over time,” explains AN EXPLANATION FOR THE
the interaction between snow and sea Notz. The only information previously INCREASE IN ANTARCTIC ICE
ice. For example, they examined exact- available about the salt content of sea
ly what happens when a layer of snow ice came from individual measurements Together with his colleagues Hauke
pushes the sea ice so far down that the taken from ice cores. Schmidt and Alexander Haumann, Dirk
floe is flooded with sea water. The wa- To this end, the researchers plan to Notz discovered, for example, why a
ter freezes and forms snow ice, which transport the salt measuring device to slight increase in the extent of the sea
accounts for up to 40 percent of the a fjord in Spitsbergen as soon as possi- ice in the Antarctic is currently being
volume of sea ice in some parts of the ble, and put it to practical use there for observed – a puzzling effect that is of-
Southern Ocean. Another topic of in- an extended period of time. The team ten not apparent in climate models.
terest to the scientists is the influence also aims to insert additional sensors The study’s findings were published in
of sea ice on the exchange of CO2 be- into the ice to measure the light con- Geophysical Research Letters in 2014:
tween the ocean and atmosphere. This ditions, pH value, and oxygen and car- Winds blowing from the land have in-
is a question of global relevance, as the bon dioxide concentrations at differ- tensified on the Ross Sea, an ocean re-
world’s seas and oceans have absorbed ent depths. gion on the Pacific side of Antarctica,
Extent of ice in September (million km2)
10
Extent of ice in summer (million km2)

9 1960 8
1970
8 7
1980 Arctic
7 1990 6
6 2000 5 Antarctic
5 2010 Measurements by
4
Ship, aircraft
Satellite
4
320 330 340 350 360 370 380 390 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
CO2 concentration (ppm) Year
Above There is a linear correlation between the retreat of the Arctic sea ice and the increase in CO2 concentrations
in the atmosphere (left). Dirk Notz and his colleagues were able to eliminate all other possible causes for the retreat.
While sea ice in the Arctic has retreated over the last 50 years, it is expanding slightly in the Antarctic (right).
Right Dirk Olonscheck, Dirk Notz and Niels Fuchs (from left) discuss the latest measurement data and consider
further experiments.
and are driving the ice away from the after around three years,” explains Dirk sea ice: “It melts,” explains Notz. As the
coast. “The ice is being blown to the Notz. This means that the sea ice in the two researchers have shown, anthropo-
north and the ocean south of it freezes Arctic adapts relatively quickly to the genic emissions are the direct cause of
over again,” explains Notz. As a result, prevailing climate conditions – and it the sea ice retreat.
sea ice cover in the Antarctic, particu- would remain largely stable if climate Notz also thought about why this
larly the Pacific sector, is increasing – change were halted. retreat is considerably slower in many
despite global warming. of the climate simulations than in re-
In another study, Dirk Notz and ONLY THE CO2 INCREASE CAN ality. This discrepancy is often taken
some colleagues from the Max Planck EXPLAIN THE SEA ICE RETREAT as an indication that the climate mod-
Graphics: Based on Notz and Marotzke, 2012 (left), Dirk Notz/MPI for Meteorology (right)
Institute for Meteorology discovered in els fail to realistically register import-
2011 that there is no tipping point be- However, as revealed by a 2012 study ant processes. However, in an article
yond which the summer retreat of sea by Dirk Notz and Jochem Marotzke, Di- published in the British Royal Soci-
ice in the Arctic would be irreversible. rector at the Max Planck Institute in ety’s journal P hilosophical T ransac -
Many climate researchers previously Hamburg, the increasing concentrations in 2015, Notz concludes that the
suspected that the Arctic Ocean would tions of greenhouse gases in the atmo- model simulations can deviate consid-
enter a new state of being ice-free in sphere are already having a very direct erably from the measurement data
summer if the extent of the ice went be- impact on sea ice. For this study, the re- without being fundamentally incor-
low a certain limit for the first time. It searchers evaluated measurement data rect. He proves that the expansion of
was feared that the ice loss could accel- on sea ice cover since the 1950s. They the sea ice is so strongly influenced by
erate by itself, since sea water absorbs concluded that the current sea ice re- chaotic natural fluctuations that even
more heat in summer than ice. treat can’t be explained by natural fluc- models that realistically describe the
The climate simulation created by tuations and must be due to an exter- key physical processes can deviate
the Hamburg-based researchers re- nal cause. The scientists were able to strongly from the way things develop
vealed, however, that the sea ice also re- rule out solar radiation, volcanic erup- in reality.
covers quickly after a completely ice- tions and other factors as possible ex- Thus, even if the climate models
free summer. In winter, the ocean planations for this, leaving only rising failed in part to predict the rapid re-
quickly releases the previously ab- CO2 values as the cause. “The green- treat of sea ice in the Arctic and could
sorbed heat back into the atmosphere. house gases increase the incident heat still be improved on, this doesn’t nec-
“Various feedback mechanisms ensure radiation in the Arctic, which has a di- essarily mean that they are fundamen-
that the former state is re-established rect impact on the heat balance of the tally incorrect. “I believe this study is
UMWELT & KLIMA_Meereis
one of the most important results of weeks of thaw on the Arctic island in Data Center in the US has just an-
our work, and it has consequences that December and January – right in the nounced that the maximum extent of
extend far beyond sea ice,” explains middle of the polar night – and there the winter sea ice in the Arctic this
Dirk Notz. The conclusion that the was no trace of the sea ice that usual- year was the lowest ever recorded since
natural fluctuations make it difficult ly has the island firmly in its grasp in measurements began. The great melt
to accurately predict a development winter. And the National Snow and Ice appears to be forging ahead.
can also be applied to other parame-
ters in the Earth’s climate, such as the
amount of precipitation and the fre-
quency of storms and drought.
The Hamburg-based researcher has TO THE POINT
a lot of plans for the future. He and his l Sea ice in the Arctic has retreated considerably since satellite measurements
colleagues are now increasingly incor- began in 1979. The extent of the ice there in summer today is only one-fourth of
porating the insights gained from the the extent recorded then. Previous climate models failed to reflect both the
group’s experiments into global Earth strong retreat of the sea ice in the Arctic and the increase in the extent of the
ice in Antarctica.
system models so that they can provide
Dirk Notz and his Sea Ice in the Earth System research group are improving the
better predictions about the ice cover.
l
simulations created for the climate models by studying all of the processes that
Another focus of their current work affect the extent of the ice in the Arctic and Antarctic, both generally and in
consists in gaining a better understand- detail, using laboratory and field experiments and models. An important pa-
ing of the processes that take place at rameter here is the salt content of the ice, which depends on different factors.
the boundary between sea ice and sea l T he researchers have established that there is no tipping point for the Arctic
water – for instance, how the ocean sea ice, beyond which the sea ice would disappear permanently in summer.
transfers heat to the ice. They also discovered why the sea ice in the Antarctic is increasing: stronger
winds from the land are driving the ice away from the coast, so that new ice is
But their research object isn’t ex- forming there.
actly making things easy for them at l According to another study, due to chaotic natural fluctuations, climate simu-
the moment: a few experiments that lations can deviate significantly from observations without necessarily being
Photo: Tom Pingel
the team had planned to carry out in incorrect. This insight can also be applied to other climate parameters, such as
the Van Mijen Fjord on Spitsbergen in the amount of precipitation and frequency of storms and drought.
January 2016 had to be cancelled due
to a lack of ice. There were several
CULTURE & SOCIETY_Personal Portrait
Mediator
between Worlds
Ayelet Shachar wanted to be an architect. She wanted to create spaces and provide homes
for people. As a lawyer and political scientist, however, she discovered the spaces of the law
– and the possibilities they provide for enabling migrants and locals to find ways of living
together. Every community, says the Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of
Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, needs the discourse about aims and identity.
And every individual has the right to participation and a home.
TEXT MARTIN TSCHECHNE
A
rchitecture seems like an ies of Professor Shachar, who was born So: architecture. She really was head-
obvious place to start. To in Jerusalem: time is the crucial fourth ing in that direction, she explains. For
accommodate the new col- dimension in her thinking, to which a few years she dreamed of creating
league, a story was added she gives form through political analy- spaces, three-dimensional structures
on to the rather simple sis, ethical debate and legal intellectual and volumes that would house and
building that stands opposite the beau- rigor, citing architecture as a model. protect their residents, lend direction
tiful art nouveau villa where the Max to their activities and a dimension to
Planck Institute for the Study of Reli- EXPLANATIONS AND SOLUTIONS their thinking. “Imagine a cathedral,”
gious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttin- ALWAYS IN DEMAND she says. “People were supposed to
gen is based. Finishing plaster still perceive how small they are in the face
crunches underfoot up there, and She has been in Germany since last of divine greatness. That was the pur-
desks, computer monitors, corner seat- June and in Göttingen since July, after pose of architecture then.” In her vi-
ing, conference rooms and coffee ma- which events unfolded in quick succession of space, it should empower peo-
chines have yet to transform the snow- sion; she was increasingly called on to ple instead.
white suite of rooms into a workplace. share her expertise, and was overrun In the aftermath of the Vietnam
Not a single book stands in Ayelet with new requests for explanations and War, it was the boat people whose fate
Shachar’s bookshelves yet. solutions, long-term strategies and in- shook the world. Between one and a
It’s a spring day in 2016. Every im- stantaneous advice for the next day’s half and two million people who had
pression is a mere snapshot, of course – decisions. The lawyer and political sci- escaped Vietnam also faced hostility in
this one, too. The boxes from Toronto entist says she longs to finally get back neighboring countries. So the refugees
will be unpacked soon, the books ar- to the everyday life of the world of re- were forced onto the sea in rubber din-
Photo: Frank Vinken
ranged, and colleagues will have fur- search, but she doesn’t give the slight- ghies and fishing boats, floating coffins
nished their rooms upstairs. Today est impression of being exhausted. “I that were always hopelessly overfilled.
more than ever, perhaps, this kind of in- arrived at exactly the same time as the They would arrive somewhere eventu-
sight plays a role in the work and stud- refugees,” she says. ally. The international community ac-
XXXXX_Zur Person
tually responded at the time. Ships

were dispatched and many of the
homeless Vietnamese were saved and
granted asylum in the US, Canada, Ja-
pan, and many in Germany, as well.
But over 250,000 of them drowned.
Ayelet Shachar was an alert and con-
cerned young woman in Israel. The
fate of the boat people must have af-
fected her. At some point during this
period she decided to study, not archi-
tecture, but law. After all, the two dis-
ciplines are not so very different.
The images we see today are similar.
They portray dramas unfolding off the
coast of Greece, at border fences in
Hungary and in front of armed police
at the gateway to Macedonia. But can
Room for law: As a lawyer and political

scientist, Ayelet Shachar is interested in the
question of how governments can create a
contemporary legal framework for the
phenomenon of global migration. Her work
in Göttingen is also supported by the Max
Planck Foundation.
laws provide a home? Define a home? Right to a homeland: Where a child was born or where its parents come from currently
“They can create spaces,” Ayelet Shachar determines its nationality and thus the opportunities it will have in life. In Ayelet
Shachar’s opinion, this principle is outdated. Instead, she advocates nationality based
replies. That’s already a huge step. They
on a person’s reality.
can offer safety, regulate coexistence,
protect culture and, by way of a happy
ending, lay the foundations for an iden-
tity – assignments that any architect
would be proud to work on.
Her topic is the study of citizenship
and migration, borders and refugees:
collapsing systems, merging cultures,
biographies without hope, and the fun-
damental right to a place to live and
participation. And when all of that has
been sorted out, when dry land has
been reached, at least, and a temporary
status established, the researcher is in-
terested in how minorities integrate
and how they are integrated. How does
the tradition and culture of one group
rank vis-à-vis the law of the other? How
much identity does someone need to
survive, and how unavoidable is a new
start when all the coordinates have
changed? She is interested in the ques-
tion as to why a woman from Syria
thinks it is acceptable to leave her
apartment in Hamburg only with her
» Laws can offer safety, regulate coexistence, protect culture and,

ultimately, lay the foundations for an identity.
husband’s permission and in his com- with all of the rights of a US citizen. nities offered by coexistence in such a
pany. Where should a new way of His parents remained in the country. multilayered, complex and conflict-rid-
thinking take over: With her? With the Their temporary visas lapsed. The en- den setting?
husband? With everyone else? Shachar tire family was illegal. The boy went to Sometimes she is impelled to pro-
has no propensity for pathos. She loves school like everyone else, as American vide an answer; sometimes, when pol-
light and clear, functional lines – in ar- law does not ask about citizenship iticians put pressure on her, she gives
chitecture, too. when it comes to reading, writing and in and does just that. No, she says, if
The questions come day in and day arithmetic. It was only when he ap- the scales of justice oblige such a result,
out. Should women from Afghanistan plied to go to college that he discov- of course you must convince the wom-
insist on wearing their veils when they ered that, officially, he didn’t even ex- an to remove her burka in court. After
face a judge in Europe? Is it acceptable ist. He had never lived anywhere all, democratic discourse is not just
for states to sell their citizenship, in- except the US. He was bright and curi- about making your arguments heard; it
cluding the right to vote, like a com- ous and ready to take his place in the is also about engaging with others
modity? What should be done when community – but he was a loser in the while you do it.
false passports come to light or when lottery for rights defined at birth and
Tunisians and Moroccans mix in with based on origin alone. Shachar’s work MALTESE CITIZENSHIP FOR
the streams of refugees from Syria and on religious diversity and gender 650,000 EUROS
Iraq? How much co-education should equality, “Multicultural Jurisdictions,”
girls from Muslim families be expected had already generated a groundswell She is well able to tell stories and does
to accept when it comes to physical ed- of interest. “The Birthright Lottery” is so like a seasoned reporter. She backs up
ucation? How much special status is the book with which Shachar cement- her findings with stories and anecdotes
needed to make one group understand- ed her reputation as a combative think- because people give their reality a struc-
able to the other? er. “And that,” she concludes her ex- ture through narratives comprising im-
ample, “is why we need a jus nexi to ages and examples. She ignores the cau-
MILLIONS OF PEOPLE NOT supplement and complement the oth- tionary advice she has received from
RECOGNIZED er two principles.” Millions of people some colleagues that, in professional
are living without recognition. circles, it’s better to attract attention by
And does the definition of belonging “Here I am. I come from Canada, publishing a large number of individu-
to a community on the basis of a birth- the global center of multiethnic, inter- al articles, and joyfully owns up to the
place or the legal status of parents religious and multicultural diversity!” iconoclasm of her books. She’s special,
alone reflect the reality of life in a glo- This is how she introduced herself to and she likes it that way. And such de-
balized world? The principles of jus soli her colleagues from the Max Planck So- light in argument and constructive
and jus sanguinis are so old that they ciety. Nor did she forget to mention the confrontation could well provide fertile
have Latin names: right of the soil and special situation in the city of her birth, ground for the vision of a society that
Photos: Reuters (top), Niels Leiser (bottom)
right of the blood. Shachar argues that Jerusalem, where the holy sites of three has accepted diversity and mobility as
it is high time that we adopted a jus monotheistic global religions are locat- characteristics of its time, and develops
nexi, a right of connection, based on ed against the backdrop of an eternally opportunities from them. A society in
which a person’s reality dictates his or smoldering conflict, a city dominated which ideas count more than norms
her citizenship. by the acute threat posed by almost all and fostering exchange is more import-
She tells the story of a young man of its neighbors, a vital need for coali- ant than sticking to the rules.
who arrived in the US with his parents tion and compromise, and a popula- She tells about Canada and the US,
when he was just ten days old. Jus soli tion with highly diverse roots and cul- where immigration and integration
applies there: anyone born on Ameri- tures: what else could she do but reflect were constitutive elements of society
can soil is automatically an American on rules and borders and the opportu- from the outset – and where, neverthe-
» Nobody gets into a rubber dinghy to paddle to America.

Geographical location, history, economic power: everything has its weight.
less, all negotiations about access and was asked in front of the cameras of the whole. Every deported asylum seeker
acceptance take place, as far as possible, Western media when the citizens of the hardens the structures underpinning
outside the territorial limits and, ideal- GDR would be able to travel to the West those who sent him away. Every accept-
ly, in the place from which the people without a special visa. That was on No- ed refugee alters the economy, demog-
embark on their journey. Naturally, it is vember 9, 1989, and the party official raphy, culture and social network. No
alarming, to say the least, when a coun- made world history without knowing it one can say when and how critical val-
try like Malta puts its citizenship up for or intending to do so. He seemed help- ues are reached and exceeded; no one
sale for 650,000 euros. This throws less. The rustling papers in his hand had can be certain which investment will
open a back door to the European no better information to give him – but pay off. But change can’t be hindered,
Union and the Schengen area with no a minor uncertainty in the legal detail and every development opens up new
agreement or control. The few cosmet- sealed the fate of his country. opportunities.
ic changes subsequently imposed – the No solution can be applied to the The questions about the burka and
price increase and residency require- next case without being verified, and the trade in citizenship remain import-
ment – did nothing to alter the repre- no structure will hold up if it was de- ant. And yet, Shachar constantly sees a
hensible nature of this business, espe- signed to accommodate a few thousand threat to her role when she is expected
cially in the case of people who were up unfortunate refugees and one and a to express her views in shorthand.
to no good. half million of them suddenly appear Headlines are short, committees have
on the doorstep. Ayelet Shachar acts in other items on their agenda to get
A RELATIVITY THEORY OF systems whose essence and only con- through, and political negotiators seek
MIGRATION stant is change. There were times, she solutions by cobbling together a few
relates from the history of the US, when points from each side’s list into an ac-
Canada is vast, but it has only 35 mil- there were grave doubts as to whether ceptable compromise.
lion inhabitants. And the US, unlike it would ever be possible to integrate
Germany, isn’t surrounded by nine dif- Italian or Irish immigrants there. The OLYMPIC PRIVILEGES FOR A
ferent neighbors with nine different scientist pauses with relish before SELECT FEW
ideas about the needs of their citizens. reaching her punch line: “Today, Amer-
Great Britain is an island and Greece has icans of Italian and Irish origin have ex- Shachar focuses on the whole picture,
too many of them to be able to protect actly the same reservations about the not the pixels: it’s the interaction of the
them effectively. “True,” says Shachar: Cubans. And who knows, maybe one elements that fascinates her, not so
“Geography matters.” Nobody gets into of them will become the next presi- much the elements themselves. The
a rubber dinghy with the intention of dent, or the one after that … .” scandal that arose around the Archbish-
paddling to America. Geographical lo- She erects her buildings on agile op of Canterbury a few years ago was a
cation, history, economic power: every- foundations. And in her expert reports, warning to her. Rowan Williams argued
thing will have its weight in the nego- she recommends making this a feature that, in a society in which people of Is-
tiations. The social obligation of the of their design. Haven’t architects in Ja- lamic faith have also found their home,
community to its citizens, the expecta- pan shown that skyscrapers can grow the application of their legal system
tions of those who take to the roads and even in earthquake zones? The scientist must also be up for discussion. Sharia
seas, their despair and possible disap- is also aware of the role of change in her law in England? The outcry resounded
pointment, the ultimate strength of ev- simulations of reality: time is the fourth across the entire country. “He referred
ery detail is tested and each one can be- dimension of her architectural cre- to one of my books,” says Shachar. But
come a weakness that puts the entire ations. Something akin to a theory of of course the headlines omitted all the
system at risk. “To my knowledge, this relativity of migration develops and un- analysis, the intricately developed log-
takes effect … immediately, at once,” folds in this way. The formula is basi- ic of the argument, and the detailed ex-
stuttered Günter Schabowski when he cally simple: each detail alters the planation of the systemic relationships.
Politicians act like politicians; Ayelet Renowned expert: Ayelet Shachar is popular as a speaker, but even more
Shachar is a scientist. She completed so as a political consultant. She began working at the Max Planck Institute
in Göttingen in summer 2015 – at the same time as thousands of refugees
her undergraduate studies in Tel Aviv
arrived in Germany via the Balkans.
and her doctorate at Yale University.
She has held guest professorships at
Stanford and Harvard and a prestigious
chair in Toronto. She is married to Ran
Hirschl, a renowned expert in compar-
ative constitutional law, was appointed
a member of the Royal Society in Can-
ada, and was invited to become Direc-
tor of a Max Planck Institute. “Just
don’t look for any straightforward log-
ic in my career,” she says and laughs.
“There is none!”
Except, perhaps, the logic that she
has always gone where she was needed.
Not so much to the individual building
Photos: Niels Leiser (top), Reuters (bottom)
sites, but to the places where the mas-

ter plan, the strategy, the political con-
cept is being developed. The highest
court in Canada has telephoned her, as
has the World Bank and, more recent-
ly, the European Parliament, as well as
other instances that prefer to keep such
consultations confidential. Is there a
better place than Göttingen to reflect
on the routes and possible destinations
» No solution can be applied to the next case. Ayelet Shachar acts in systems
whose only constant is change.
of the current refugee crisis? A provoc- pros and cons of the perhaps shrewd, or Yale, were accepted at Stanford,
atively empty pedestal with no memo- but maybe also shortsighted importing Caltech or MIT, and have since found
rial figure on top was recently placed in of skills and competencies. Its title, their place on Wall Street or in Silicon
front of the town’s railway station. In “Olympic Citizenship,” expresses a cer- Valley.
the inscription, seven professors from tain irony, as it is obviously an injustice The world will look different tomor-
the university scornfully thank King to keep hundreds of thousands of peo- row – of this Ayelet Shachar is certain.
Ernst August for chasing them out of ple out of certain countries with barbed- Tomorrow, the boxes from overseas will
the country in 1837 during the strug- wire fences while promising others be unpacked, her books will line the
gle for a liberal constitution. Brothers Olympic privileges because they can shelves, and her colleagues will have
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were among design complex computer programs or taken their places at the desks in their
them. The spotlight of their global re- play football with particular skill. beautiful white office suite. Sixty mil-
nown as linguistic researchers, fairytale lion people fled their countries in 2014.
collectors and fathers of a German BUILD BRIDGES, NOT WALLS Many more have probably since fol-
identity shines today on nearby Kassel lowed them. The problem is spreading
and Berlin. What remains for the peo- However, the starter pistol in the race – with luck and astute action, it is pos-
ple of Göttingen is stubborn mockery – for talent, the competition for highly sible to develop opportunities from it.
the empty pedestal is also, of course, a skilled migrants with a willingness to And Europe is by no means the only
reference to the pompous equestrian adapt, has already been fired. Skeptical region that must ready itself for the mi-
statue that stands in front of the rail- geopoliticians, demographers and gratory movements of the 21st centu-
way station in the federal state capital economists have long bemoaned the ry. The German federal finance minis-
of Hannover and bears an inscription corresponding loss of workers in counter travels to China to discuss the roles
proclaiming the people’s loyalty as the tries that urgently need doctors, teach- of both countries in the global banking
servants of their sovereign ruler. ers and engineers. But countries like the system and to develop common ground
Ayelet Shachar has to smile when Philippines have long been deliberate- in the area of migration. Everyone has
she hears this story. It is exactly the ly producing such employees for the realized that banks and finances are
kind of thing that appeals to her: a terse global market. And the money the sea- closely intertwined throughout the
statement, an image confirming pre- farers, building workers and well- world. The realization that the opera-
cisely what she gives the hotheads to trained nurses send back to their fami- tion of nuclear power plants, waste dis-
think about when they try yet again to lies at home is a fixed item on the asset posal, air pollution, climate change and
get her to corroborate a preconceived side of their economic balance sheets. the weapons trade can’t be regulated by
view. Sometimes, self-interest can also This happens. The migrants pay national forums alone is also gaining
prompt more detailed reflection about their price, and it is very high. And gov- ground as the working basis for inter-
a place where people can find a home. ernments know the value of people as national conferences. However, the
The Brothers Grimm weren’t the only a resource. In 2000, when Schröder’s phenomenon of migration is still wait-
ones to receive a friendly reception in government failed to attract IT special- ing for the recognition, analysis and
Kassel: before them there were the Hu- ists – particularly from India – with gen- management of its global dimension.
guenots, the Protestants driven out of erous promises, the reason wasn’t just The world needs workable ideas; not
France, a capable, ambitious and grate- the bad weather in Germany, but the walls, but bridges – and, if possible,
ful people. And a good 300 years of his- fact that the green card offered wasn’t bridges that can be used at different
tory have confirmed the wisdom of as attractive as the one provided by the times and in different directions. Good
that decision. competition. The attempt simply came architecture creates the foundations for
Shachar has just written a book too late and the tide was already in full this. Ayelet Shachar devotes her time to
about such benefits accrued by commu- flow. Large numbers of these employ- thinking about such future foundations
nities through migration, about the ees completed their studies at Harvard for a world of mobility.
Wissen Sie, wie man „Berufungsliste“, „Blockseminar“
oder „Präsenzstudium“ ins Englische übersetzt?
Oder welche Entsprechung der Ausdruck „die Anerken-
nung von Studien- und Prüfungsleistungen beantragen“
im Englischen findet? Dirk Siepmann | Wörterbuch Hoch-
schule | Forschung, Lehre und Management | Deutsch –
Englisch | Englisch – Deutsch
2.
unver-
änderte
Auflage
Gebundene Ausgabe, 2. unveränderte Auflage 2016, Dirk Siepmann ist Professor für Fachdidak-
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oder per Mail: [email protected] Lexikographie.
FLASHBACK_Nuclear Physics
Hunting for Particles Underground

Neutrinos are particles with seemingly magical powers: the different types are able to transform into
one another, and thus have a mass. This discovery earned two scientists the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physics.
A quarter of a century ago, these ghostly particles also attracted the attention of researchers at the
Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg for the first time. While conducting their Gallex
experiment to hunt for them, they looked deep into the furnace of the Sun.
TEXT HELMUT HORNUNG
We can’t see them, we can’t feel them, yet they’re everywhere. trap for the ghostly particle from the interior of the Sun. To do
They penetrate everything – stars and planets, lead walls mea- this, they went underground.
suring light-years across, and even our own bodies. More than The Gran Sasso tunnel is a good 10 kilometers long. The A24
66 billion of them shoot through the nail of your index finger ev- autostrada that runs through it links the cities of Teramo and
ery second. Neutrinos are the most common particles in the uni- L’Aquila as it crosses the Abruzzo region of Italy. After 6.3 kilome-
verse after photons, or light particles, yet their research history ters, an exit leads off to a laboratory. Above its halls are 1,400
is relatively young. meters of rock, which forms a natural barrier against cosmic
In a letter written on December 4, 1930, Wolfgang Pauli men- radiation and thus minimizes the “contamination effect” in the –
tioned such a particle for the first time, calling it a neutron. The extremely intricate – measurements.
Austrian physicist postulated the particle to explain the ener- The trap consisted mainly of 30.3 tons of gallium – half of the
getic conditions in the radioactive beta decay of an atomic nu- annual global production at the time. The gallium was delivered
cleus. Enrico Fermi, an Italian, studied it in depth and gave the in six-packs of containers holding 1,200 liters of gallium chloride
tiny theoretical particle the name “neutrino”. Finally, in 1956, solution each. The liquid then had to undergo a 20-hour process
Clyde L. Cowan and Frederick Reines at the Los Alamos Nation- to purify it of contaminants created by natural cosmic radiation.
al Laboratory in the US succeeded in detecting this “mini neu- Only then was the gallium chloride put into one of two 30-cubic-
tron.” The project to search meter tanks and dissolved in hydrochloric acid.
for the neutrino was aptly The tanks were made of corrosion-resistant material, glass-
called “Poltergeist.” fiber reinforced polyester coated on the inside with polyvi-
Owing to its extremely nylidene fluoride. This material contained extremely small
weak interaction with mat- amounts of natural radioactive substances such as radium, tho-
ter, the fleeting phantom rium or uranium. Only one tank was used for measurements at
was very difficult to detect. any one time, with the other kept in reserve as a precaution.
This spurred the physicists So how did they go about finding the neutrino? One of the re-
on all the more to investi- searchers involved referred to it back then as a “special challenge
gate it in greater detail in for chemistry” – a slight understatement, which is why the me-
the years that followed. So dia repeatedly reported that the whole project was more diffi-
the hunt continued, and in cult than the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack.
early summer of 1990, Euro- The numbers speak for themselves: there were some one
pean scientists set a special quintillion (1030) atoms floating around in one Gallex tank. The
scientists set a measurement period of 20 days. During this radi-
ation period, the solar neutrinos were expected to score an aver-
In the spotlight: The media age of ten hits – that is, collide with ten (!) gallium atoms and
showed a great deal of interest transmute them into germanium. In a nutshell: a hint of radioac-
in the results obtained by the tive, gaseous and therefore extremely volatile germanium chlo-
Photo: MPG Archive
neutrino hunters in the 1990s. ride was formed in the liquid gallium chloride.
Here, Gallex spokesperson Till
Kirsten from the Max Planck
At the end of a measurement period, these miniscule traces of
Institute for Nuclear Physics germanium chloride were driven out of the tank using liquid ni-
at a press conference. trogen and, after a complex treatment process, were detected by
RÜCKBLENDE_Lockstoffe
In the depths: In the Gran Sasso subterranean laboratory under

1,400 meters of rock, researchers gazed into the heart of the Sun.
The Gallex experiment registered neutrinos generated by the
stellar fusion reactor.
means of their radioactivity. The scientists then used the number

of germanium atoms detected in this way to draw conclusions
about the flow of neutrinos from the Sun.
The unusual location of the Gallex experiment deep below
the rocks paid off. The researchers succeeded in reducing the
germanium production resulting from the natural cosmic back- Gallex entered the scene at just the right time, because the ex-
ground radiation to a mere two percent of the neutrino-induced periment was intended to capture the above-described, much
signal. In addition, the counting room was also surrounded by lower-energy pp neutrinos for the first time. The result was pub-
a Faraday cage that kept out the stray electric radiation coming lished roughly a year after the facility had gone into operation:
from the outside. “First glimpse into the furnace of the Sun” was the title of a press
The neutrinos that got caught up in the tank originated from release issued by the Max Planck Society on June 2, 1992. It report-
the center of the Sun, where there is a gigantic fusion reactor at ed that Gallex had tracked down neutrinos compatible with the
work converting hydrogen to helium at a temperature of well predicted number. Till Kirsten from the Max Planck Institute for
over 15 million degrees Celsius and a pressure of 200 billion bar. Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, who headed the European Gallex
collaboration, said, “The foundations of our explanation of nature
»
Bild der Wissenschaft, issue 12/1992 behave in such a normal way that some sensation-seeking ob-
servers may be disappointed at this time.”
With their sophisticated trap for the fleeting particles – From the very beginning of proposal writing and project plan-
a tank filled with thirty tons of liquid gallium – the ning, Gallex defined two major motivations. One was the defi-
researchers in the Italian mountains have received nite detection of solar pp neutrinos, and the other was the search
unambiguous neutrino signals.« for neutrino mass, reflected in reduced electron-neutrino fluxes
due to neutrino flavor oscillations between electron, muon, and
During this proton-proton reaction, as the process is called, two tau neutrinos.
hydrogen nuclei (protons) first fuse to form a deuterium nucle- The first data set released in 1992 proved the first item, but
us, releasing a positron (a positively charged electron) and an the statistical significance concerning the second one was far too
electron neutrino as they do so. In a second step, the deuterium low for a positive claim. Ensuring this option required patient
nucleus fuses with a further proton to create a helium nucleus solar neutrino data collection for many more years and an
(3He) and simultaneously emits a gamma quantum. In the final elaborate calibration with a man-made megacurie low-energy
step, two 3He nuclei fuse to form 4He and release two protons. neutrino source. In 1997, the significance of a neutrino flux defi-
During the proton-proton reaction, the Sun uses hydrogen to cit due to neutrino oscillations had reached more than 99.9 per-
generate not only considerable amounts of helium, but also an cent.
inconceivable number of so-called pp neutrinos. These witness- In 2001, researchers working with Canadian physicist Arthur
es to the stellar fire leave the interior of the Sun unhindered and B. McDonald published their measurement results, which the
reach Earth a good eight minutes later. They account for rough- team working with Japanese physicist Takaaki Kajita confirmed.
ly 90 percent of all solar neutrinos and, at 420 kiloelectron volts, As the electron neutrinos travel the 150 million kilometers from
have quite a low maximum energy. But Gallex was sensitive to the Sun to Earth, they slip into the role of their relatives, instant-
this type of neutrino. The scientists eagerly awaited the result, ly changing into tau and muon neutrinos, to which traps like Gal-
having run into a dilemma in the years before the Gran Sasso ex- lex were blind. For them to convert, they must have a mass, albe-
periment. They were racking their brains over the mystery sur- it a very low one. And that’s how the two scientists finally man-
rounding the neutrino. aged to detect the ghostly particles – and walk away with the
In the early 1970s, Raymond Davis was the first to detect 2015 Nobel Prize for Physics.
solar neutrinos using a tank full of perchloroethylene in the The work in Italy’s Abruzzo region goes on. One experiment
Homestake gold mine in South Dakota. The problem was that there, known as Borexino, has also been on the trail of solar neu-
there was only a third as many of them as the standard solar mod- trinos for the last couple of years. Adjacent to it are the traps
el predicted. The Japanese Kamiokande detector likewise found that are designed to capture particles of the enigmatic dark
Photo: MPG Archive
this discrepancy. However, the two detectors were sensitive to matter that makes up one-fourth of the cosmos and whose na-
beryllium-7 and boron-8 neutrinos, which were thought to arise ture is still completely unknown. The underground researchers
from a side chain of nuclear fusion. So was the theoretical sce- apparently specialize in solving the most difficult mysteries in
nario in the core of our Sun wrong? the universe.
MAX PLANCK COMMUNITY
New Open Access Initiative Launched

An expression of interest made public in mid-March has already been signed by over 40 organizations
in achieving scientific progress in the

digital age. The time has come to make
open access the publishing standard.
Only by coordinating our activities in-
ternationally can we succeed in achiev-
ing this goal,” says Max Planck President
Martin Stratmann.
The first signatories include the FWF
Austrian Science Fund, the Dutch re-
search organization NWO and the Euro-
pean University Association, which rep-
resents more than 800 institutions of
higher education in 47 European coun-
tries. From Germany, this group includes
the German Research Foundation (DFG),
the German Rectors’ Conference, the
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, the Helmholtz
Society, the Leibniz Society and the Max
Planck Society. The European Research
Council (ERC), which has no specific
publication funds, also supports the ini-
tiative in its own position statement.
According to the EoI, the objective
is “to convert a majority of today’s sci-
At the conference in Berlin: Chairperson Ulrich Pöschl (third from left) with DFG President Peter entific journals from a subscription
Strohschneider (second from left) and Gerard Meijer, President of Radboud University (left). model to OA publishing.” This trans-
formation is to be achieved by using
A growing number of international re- The expression of interest (EoI) was “funding currently spent on subscrip-
search organizations are endeavoring to published in mid-March. tions to scientific journals to fund sus-
convert the majority of scientific jour- The EoI calls on all parties concerned tainable OA business models.”
nals currently published on a subscrip- to “work toward a rapid and efficient Studies showing that the conversion
tion basis to open access (OA) publish- transition for the benefit of science and from traditional scientific publications
ing. This goal was discussed at the 12th society,” and has already been endorsed to the OA model is feasible with the
Open Access Berlin Conference hosted by more than 40 organizations. “Direct available funding were also discussed
by the Max Planck Society in late 2015. access to specialist articles is a key factor at the Berlin conference, which was
chaired by Ulrich Pöschl, Director at the
Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, who
is the scientific open access coordinator
About OA2020 at the Max Planck Society. The Max
Planck Digital Library (MPDL) – which
OA2020 is an initiative under the umbrella of the Berlin Declaration on Open Access
is coordinating the “OA2020” transfor-
to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, which has been embraced by more
mation initiative associated with the EoI
than 540 signatory institutions. Building on the Mission Statement of 2013, OA2020
– also presented such analyses. The
aims to accelerate the transition to open access by transforming the existing cor-
plans also call for the establishment of a
pus of scientific journals from their current subscription system to open access.
network with national points of contact
Over the course of the last 10 - 15 years, open access has become a shared vision
in Europe, Canada, the US, China, Ja-
of many if not most of the world’s national and international research councils. Open
pan, South Korea and other countries.
Photo: Georg Botz/CC-BY-SA
access as a principle is very well established in the international discourse on research

As Ralf Schimmer from the MPDL ex-
policies; however, open access as a practice has yet to transform the traditional sub-
plains, “All parties concerned will agree
scription-based publishing system, which is as vigorous and prosperous as ever, de-
on specific steps in the transformation
spite its inherent restrictions on access and usage and its remarkable detachment
process in the form of a roadmap.”
from the potentials of a 21st century web-based publishing system.
www.oa2020.org
Kick-off for Cooperation in Hong Kong

Max Planck researchers establish contacts with potential research partners at three-day symposium
Max Planck Society scientists are in-

volved in many projects in China,
and traditionally especially with col-
leagues from the Chinese Academy
of Sciences. A total of four Max Planck
Directors and twelve Max Planck Re-
search Group Leaders from seven in-
stitutes traveled to Hong Kong in ear-
ly April to share information and
ideas on their research work with
around forty select junior scientists
from five Hong Kong universities.
Both the public lectures at the Uni-
versity of Hong Kong (HKU) and the
follow-up workshops in small groups
focused primarily on topics in phys-
ics and the life sciences.
Joachim Spatz, Director at the
Max Planck Institute for Intelligent
Systems, heads up the initiative for
the Max Planck Society. A key part-
ner, in addition to the Hong Kong
University of Science and Technolo-
gy (HKUST), is the Croucher Foun-
dation – a private foundation that
applies the Harnack principle and
supports outstanding junior scien-
tists from Hong Kong. Following the
successful kick-off, the partners now
want to further discuss how cooper-
ative projects can be set up on ap- Kicking it off with a handshake: Joachim Spatz, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent
propriate research topics. Systems, welcomes King L. Chow from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Alumni Symposium Holds Premiere in Berlin

New platform for exchange of career ideas
What career path should I pursue after leaving Max Planck? change between alumni, the Max Planck Alumni Associa-
Should I go into research or industry? What have other alum- tion and junior scientists. “International guests will report
ni chosen to do? And how can they be better integrated into on their alumni work, and we will build on their experience
the Max Planck Society today? These and other questions with all participants, for example by developing joint proj-
will be discussed at Harnack House from August 22 to 24 at ects between the Max Planck Society and its alumni,” ex-
the first “Max Planck Symposium for Alumni and Early Ca- plains Filippo Guarnieri, co-organizer and head of the Max
reer Researchers,” which provides a new platform for ex- Planck Alumni Association.
Photo: HKUST
To register, visit: www.mpg.de/symposium2016
Diverse Objectives – Diverse Careers

On a visit to Munich, PhDnet presented its 2016 agenda
The PhDnet Steering Group: General Secretary Cátia Crespo, Spokesperson Martin Grund (front, center), Financial Officer Roman Prinz (front, right)
and Sections Representatives Yorick Peterse (BMS), José Martinez (CPTS) and Christian Sternberg for the HSSS, (back, from left).
Whenever the Steering Group of PhD- ly to ensure that doctoral students are families and those with disabilities.”
net visits Administrative Headquarters, actively supported regardless of gender, The PhDnet workgroup is also consid-
it is always a little livelier in the corri- sexual orientation or background, and ering “diversity days” or special soft-
dors – and this visit, when the new with consideration for chronic diseases skills seminars.
members traveled to Munich for discus- and disabilities – in short, to ensure PhDnet advocates more profession-
sions with President Martin Stratmann that the full spectrum of individual life al and centrally managed career adviso-
and Secretary General Ludwig Kron plans is taken into account.” ry services covering career paths both
thaler, was no exception. The Steering Group, which repre- within and outside of science. This is-
They came from four different fed- sents around 3,500 Max Planck doc- sue will also be the focus of the career
eral states, and this broad array also re- toral students, has plenty of ideas fair, which, following its successful pre-
flected one of this year’s main issues: about how to champion such diversi- miere last year, will again bring doctor-
Photo: Dalija Budimlic/MPG
the need for diversity. “And this applies ty. “Bringing the number of vacation al students into contact with potential
in every respect,” says spokesperson days into line with that of the collec- employers at the Visions in Science
Martin Grund from the Max Planck In- tive agreement for civil service em- conference from September 16 to 18.
stitute for Human Cognitive and Brain ployees would be a step in the right di-
Sciences in Leipzig. “A workgroup was rection, as it would send an important
set up at our annual meeting specifical- signal to doctoral students from abroad, www.phdnet.mpg.de
Research Establishments SCHLESWIG-
HOLSTEIN Rostock
Plön Greifswald
MECKLENBURG-
Institute / research center WESTERN POMERANIA
Sub-institute / external branch Hamburg
Other research establishments
Associated research organizations
Bremen BRANDENBURG
The Netherlands LOWER SAXONY
Nijmegen
Berlin
Italy
Rome Hanover Potsdam
Florence
USA Magdeburg
Jupiter, Florida Münster
SAXONY-ANHALT
Brazil NORTH RHINE-WESTPHALIA
Manaus Dortmund
Halle
Luxembourg Mülheim Göttingen
Leipzig
Luxembourg Düsseldorf
Cologne SAXONY
Bonn Jena Dresden

Marburg THURINGIA
Bad Münstereifel HESSE
RHINELAND Bad Nauheim

PALATINATE
Mainz Frankfurt
SAARLAND Kaiserslautern
Erlangen
Saarbrücken
Heidelberg
BAVARIA
Stuttgart
Tübingen
Garching
BADEN-
Munich
WÜRTTEMBERG
Martinsried
Freiburg
Seewiesen
Radolfzell
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B56133

Research doesn’t have

High above the Clouds?

SPECTRUM MATERIALS & TECHNOLOGY ENVIRONMENT & CLIMATE

development of new materials. fallen drastically in recent decades. What

Chancellor Pushes the Red Button

New Network for Alumni

“The end product is what matters”

Leibniz Prizes Awarded to Three Max Planck Researchers

The Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize,

ples of how ribosomes – the protein

HIV Scissors to Combat AIDS

Burgeoning HIV: Up to ten billion virions are newly formed from

Exchange of Talent with Dutch University

Soon, up to 100 master’s degree students from Radboud

CV of Failures A Quantum Future Fascinating Insights

TEXT LORRAINE DASTON

Painting over photography: Botanists in the past

Please don’t misunderstand me: genuine cases of data

TEXT CATARINA PIETSCHMANN

when they are in a relaxed setting and

covered that chimpanzees use distinct

with the intention of offering or show-

“Initially, they point at something

Left Ravens are very social animals.

» A comparison of the complexity of vocalizations and gestures produced

back and forth; a game based on a spe-

TEXT STEFANIE REINBERGER

they’re familiar with.

Speaking time in the laboratory:

TEXT TIM SCHRÖDER

CRF Destination take out hand knife drawer

the person gets out a knife from the drawer

Video Image and video Recurrent Generated

“It’s difficult to teach a computer to es-

processes and traffic engineering.

Extreme Energy Source at the Heart

Blood Test for Tuberculosis

Photos: Dr. Mark A. Garlick/H.E.S.S. Collaboration (top), Jonas Steengaard (bottom)

Compass in the Eye

Telltale magnetic field: Foxes may be able

Extortioners at the Negotiating Table

Animation Made Easy

Suitable expressions: Based on ordinary video

A Hammer for Molecule Swapping

Testing the Response Time

The name of the hormone oxyto-

Targeted release of hormones: A small

Dark Taiga Lightens Up

Ciliates can do amazing things: Be- constructing their swimming micro-

Hardship Linked Fighting for the Host

TEXT PETER HERGERSBERG

especially those in offshore installa- solution, at least as far as permanent

repertoire: some Heusler compounds

Photo: Sven Döring; graphics: nature materials/2015/Macmillan Publishers

4 3 Following a “triple jump” strategy of

TEXT THORSTEN DAMBECK

THE EYES OF THE SCOUT

OUTER LAYERS ARE NOT MADE