Alls Ear 02 | 2020 MAX PLANCK Research All E Approved for species protection species for Approved 02 Science hi Science | 2020 s to ry M a rs ax The bitter legacy of slavery Arch a eogenetic P s lanck A legend from the 3D printer I Research ron re s e a r ch 2 Max PlanckResearch ·2 | 2020 As a current survey confirms, confirms, survey acurrent As wherever –we want it. R Ever development the since t technologies, researchers researchers technologies, aweek. Using special times to listen Germany in living have been able to trace the the have able to trace been n music, podcasts or the radio radio or the music, podcasts music whenever nearly – and even turn them to good use. to good them even turn effect soundwaves,of can and of good quality sound quality of good over their headphones several several headphones over their able background to create e e chnology, we have been arly two-thirds of people arly two-thirds ecording is running.
COVER: PHOTO: ADOBE STOCK; LEFT: PHOTO: UNSPLASH / JASON ROSEWELL Editorial
Dear reader,
Who thinks of physics or neurobiology when listening to “Bad Guy” by Billie Eilish or Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony? Instead, we let the sounds transport us, the voices touch our emotions, and the rhythms carry us away. But before any of that can happen, we first have to actually perceive sound. Sound reaches our ears in the form of waves; it is converted to electrical signals, which are then unscrambled by our brain’s busy switchboards. This last sentence may admittedly sound a bit flippant. But this is how one of the researchers featured in our “Focus” article describes the essence of his work – and it is far from trivial. What actually happens in our brain when it pro- cesses sound? Why do we perceive some tones or sounds as pleasant and others 3 as unpleasant? And what’s behind the success of hit songs like “Yesterday?”
From the melancholy and gentle Beatles song, we move on to the raw reality of the animal kingdom. When dusk falls, the great hunt begins. Bats swoop through the air in search of prey. The animals use ultrasound to locate their targeted prey even in complete darkness. They have developed sophisticated hunting methods to ensure that moths and grasshoppers do not escape them. But the creatures they hunt have their own defenses.
Speaking of ultrasound: we experience its practical application on our own bodies, for example during a thyroid gland examination. But how else can ultrasonic frequency help us? In fact, scientists are using ultrasound to join particles into three-dimensional structures. And such acoustic holograms are far more than just gimmicks. One day, they could be used to produce artificial tumors or organoids for testing pharmaceuti- cals, and in this way, probably also reduce the number of animal tests.
We wish you an exciting reading experience full of surprising insights!
Your editorial team
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 40 Researchers are using modern modern using are Researchers ultrasound calls made by made bats. calls ultrasound technology to track the the to track technology
HEARD Mariela Morales Antoniazzi Antoniazzi Morales Mariela is campaigning on behalf of people in Latin America. of Latin people in 50
FOUGHT 40 66 Max PlanckResearch ·2 | 2020 Some viruses can can viruses Some 66 jump from chimpanzees chimpanzees from jump to humans to
SWAPPED Damascene steelDamascene is 80 80 due to its pattern. often used for decoration for decoration used often
WAVED 50 80
PHOTOS: AXEL GRIESCH (TOP LEFT); KATHARINA DUBNO (TOP RIGHT); CRISTINA GOMES/TAI CHIMPANZEE PROJECT (BOTTOM LEFT); BIGTUNAONLINE / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO (BOTTOM RIGHT) CONTENT
03 | EDITORIAL 50 | VISIT TO Mariela Morales Antoniazzi 06 | ON LOCATION Campaigner for human rights In the Atacama Desert in Chile KNOWLEDGE FROM
08 | IN BRIEF 58 | Approved for species protection Europeans considered bears, wolves and ibexes 17 | NOBEL PRIZES 2020 either as a food source or as trophies, and hunted them to extinction. Yet over the last few centuries, our relationship with iconic 18 | VIEWPOINT mammals has changed. Surviving the anthroposcene 66 | Viruses from the wilderness Surviving in the Anthropocene Humans have taken dominion over the Earth – to an Some pathogens can jump from chimpanzees extent that threatens the basis for human to humans and pose a danger to them – and life. Here, new findings in science and vice-versa. technology have played a key role on the path to this new era. 74 | The bitter legacy of slavery Scientists have succeeded in returning a part of their history to three men from Africa who 5 IN FOCUS lived in Mexico City during the 16th century. All Ears 78 | “Stricter laws are a sign of 24 | Sound takes form helplessness” Ultrasound can be used to manipulate tiny An interview with Tatjana Hörnle about particles and even to arrange them in any the demand for more severe penalties in cases desired patterns through the use of acoustic of child abuse. holography. Physicists are already working on medical applications. 80 | A legend from the 3D printer In ancient times, Damascene steel was the 32 | Sound check material of choice for sword blades. Today, Operatic singing. Birdsong. Loud shouting. a form of this composite material can now be An off-pitch violin. We instinctively find some produced using a completely new technique. sounds pleasant, and others unpleasant. But how do we decide whether something sounds good or bad? 86 | POST FROM ... Santiago de Chile, Chile 40 | Getting their bearings Two shadows flit around in the evening light: a bat is chasing after a moth in a wild dance 88 | COMMUNITY NEWS between hunter and prey. But how do the animals use sound to track each other? 90 | FIVE QUESTIONS on over-fertilization and biodiversity 48 | INFOGRAPHIC Racing against the virus 91 | PUBLISHER’S INFORMATION
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 CLOSE TO HEAVEN: THE VERY LARGE TELESCOPE IN THE ATACAMA DESERT IN CHILE.
6 PHOTO: M. CLARO/ESO
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 On location
They are called Antu, Kueyen, Melipal and Yepun – in the 7 language of the indigenous Mapuche people, the names of the Sun, the Moon, the Southern Cross, and Venus. These four telescopes form the heart of the most advanced observa- tory in the world, at an elevation of 2,635 meters on the Cerro Paranal in the middle of the Atacama desert in Chile. From here, the astronomers probe the depths of the universe with the main mirrors, each with a diameter of 8.2 meters, and the four movable 1.8 meter auxiliary telescopes. This telescope facility, the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory (VLT), can be connected to an interferometer that produces images of the sky with an angular resolution of thousandths of an arc second. This level of precision would enable the two headlights of a car on the moon to be distin- guishable from one another.
However, the telescope is only as good as its instruments. Max Planck scientists have helped to invent some of these, such as the GRAVITY and MATISSE interferometers, the SPIFI spectrograph and the SPHERE planet hunter. Recently, researchers under the direction of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics succeeded in getting a clearer view into the heart of the Milky Way with their hi-tech optics. There they were able to observe that a star does not orbit the supermassive black hole at the heart of our Milky Way along a closed path, but rather describes an open curve in the form of a rosette. Albert Einstein predicted this effect more than a hundred years ago.
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 In brief
New team, new ideas In July 2020, three new Vice Presi- manities, Social and Human Sci- Vice President of the Chemistry, dents took office at the Max Planck ences Section is Ulman Linden- Physics and Technology Section. He Society. Asifa Akhtar, Director berger, Director of the Max Planck is responsible for technology trans- of the Max Planck Institute of Institute for Human Development in fer and Cyber Valley, but the issue of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Berlin. In this position, he will take sustainability is also close to his Freiburg, is the first female Vice over the scientific management of heart. Blaum also aims to improve President of the Biology and Medi- the Minerva Foundation for the Pro- the exchange with the Chinese cine Section. Born in Pakistan, motion of Scientific Cooperation Academy of Sciences. Nicola Leibin- Akhtar wants to advance interna- with Israel. Lindenberger is also ger-Kammüller, Chairperson of the tionalization at the Max Planck keen to provide new stimuli for the Management Board of Trumpf, took Society and is the contact person for appointment procedure at the Max office as an external member of the the Max Planck Schools. Equality Planck Society. Klaus Blaum, Direc- Executive Committee. and diversity are also important to tor of the Max Planck Institute for www.mpg.de/15105526 her. The Vice President of the Hu- Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, is the
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8 UM A IE N FA E ST PHOTOS: MARCUS ROCKOFF, PHOTOS: MARCUS ROCKOFF,
The new team supporting Max Planck President Martin Stratmann: Asifa Akhtar, Ulman Lindenberger and Klaus Blaum (from left).
Iidentify ng victims During the Nazi era, the predecessors Planck Institutes of Psychiatry and than one thousand cases. Some of of several Max Planck Institutes used Brain Research. Max Planck President them had lived at the mental institu- the remains of victims of the Nazi re- Martin Stratmann responded to these tion in Eglfing-Haar, near Munich. gime for their research. After the end findings by having an external expert The Nazis had murdered them be- of World War II, the Institutes kept committee investigate the identity and cause of their physical or mental dis- and in some cases even used these origins of all the victims whose re- abilities. Other victims came from the specimens, most of which were sec- mains had been found. In the spring of occupied Polish territories, were pri- tions of brain tissue, until the Max 2020, the commission presented its soners of war, or were executed by the Planck Society had them interred in initial results in the form of an interim Nazi Volksjustiz (the so-called Peop- 1990. In 2015 and 2016, still more spec- report: they had succeeded in finding le’s Justice). imens were discovered at the Max out the names of the victims in more www.mpg.de/14472738
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 IN TOCK S E OB D /A
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Attack on the immune system: one way in which HIV viruses are transmitted is in the blood.
Gene scissors Award-winning against HIV Volker Springel OR OR ) F
It could be the first treatment to per- E TS T I
manently eliminate the HIV virus Volker Springel, Director of the Max Planck H TU I S ( S
Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, T 9 from the body – the medications cur- IE D NS I has been awarded the 2020 Gruber TU rently available are only able to keep it G R at bay. A team from the Heinrich Cosmology Prize for his valuable contri- E LB CAL S CAL
bution to simulations of the universe. I DE Pette Institute – Leibniz Institute for T E
Springel will share the US$500,000 prize EI
Experimental Virology (HPI) in OR money with Lars Hernquist from the E
Hamburg and the Max Planck Insti- TH Harvard-Smithsonian Center for OTO: H tute of Molecular Cell Biology and Astrophysics. The two researchers have PH Genetics in Dresden has developed developed methods for testing theories about ‘gene scissors’ using an enzyme the formation of structures in the universe known as Brec1, which can cut the on scales that encompass stars, galaxies, genetic material of the AIDS patho- and even the universe itself. To this end, gen out of the genome of infected they developed numerical algorithms and cells and thus remove the virus. The community codes that many other Hamburg-based biotech startup Pro- researchers are now also using. virex has developed this technology further so that it is now ready for use in the form of stem cell treatment. The HPI and the Medical Center Friedrich Bonhoeffer
Hamburg-Eppendorf are now pre- R
Friedrich Bonhoeffer,E meritus Director E
paring for clinical trials in which the LB of the Max Planck Institute for Developmen- I
treatment will be administered to tal Biology in Tuebingen, has been awarded NH EI eight patients. the 2020 Gruber Neuroscience Prize. T S www.mpg.de/14744748 Bonhoeffer shares the prize with Corey D
Goodman from the University of California HOL RT in San Francisco and Marc Tessier-Lavigne E from Stanford University for their joint research into molecular mechanisms in the central nervous system. The discoveries PHOTO: B made by these three researchers have fundamentally changed our understanding of the formation of neural networks in the brain and have led to insights into neurological and psychiatric diseases and how the nervous system recovers after injury.
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 10 a To by isolating they started do this, w with a metabolic module developed developed module metabolic a with various attributes tovarious attributes individual drop dioxidevert carbon into usable car P France, the Max PlanckFrance, Max scientists the M I Plants have able been to do it for- mil s faster than previous systems. Another Another systems. previous than faster plasts to test reaction pathways toplasts test reaction that pathway tiny droplets. within This place in natural chloroplasts plants. in natural in place lions of now years, may humans soon the chloroplastthe membranes of spin ture, researchers will therefore be therefore be will researchers ture, not they are Atthesis. time, same the al chloroplastscan lets. The artificial encapsulate metabolic the they can network research interdisciplinary of Marburg,in working the part as of to con energy solar harnessing the have developed which amethod with ratus foundratus membranes, on these ready fix carbon dioxide carbon ready fix times 100 natural photosynthesis. be ablebe to do it too: photosynthesis, i.e. by scientists themselves. the This bon compounds. at Researchers the C minute which in compartments solar dependent on natural enzymes. dependent enzymes. on natural d cooperation with colleagues in colleagues with cooperation contain only components the contain are that carbohydrates dioxide from carbon in chemical energy,chemical coupled then was energy is converted is energy into en chemical ergy, takes that not process the unlike enables to produce them of thousands absolutely necessary for photosyn for necessary absolutely chloroplastsadvantage these that is a way which more is efficientthan ach plants; photosynthesis the appa enzymes, uses the energy to build energy the uses enzymes, able to use the new artificial chloro able new the to use artificial standardized compartments or assign or compartments assign standardized nstitute for Terrestrial Microbiology for Terrestrialnstitute Microbiology o n h E a hoto y ich converts light into energy d TC xSynBio, have now have developed xSynBio, ot occur in nature. Lifelike nature. in sys ot occur nt h cycle, which of consists 18 ro h pl - e
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IMAGE: TOBIAS ERB/MPI FOR TERRESTRIAL MICROBIOLOGY www.mpg.de/14788928 Max PlanckResearch In br In i ef ·2 | 2020 - Semi-synthetic chloroplasts: the 0.1 chloroplasts: the millimeter Semi-synthetic chloroplasts. chloroplasts. droplets contain the membranes of natural of natural membranes the droplets contain metabolic cycle, they can use solar energy energy solar use cycle,metabolic can they I n co njunction with an artificial artificial an njunction with to fix carbon dioxide. carbon to fix
GRAPHIC: GCO N to T The rapid spread of COV of spread rapid The vestigated possible connections be vestigated possible connections I tween personality traits and the pur and the traits personality tween Leipzig- in in Anthropology tionary Planck Max the endthe of 2020, March at researchers by rise up sales to percent. 700 their commodities. Some toilettain paper throughout the participants. The showed results participants. the le to stockpile quantities of large cer many 2020 March peop- caused in ica manufacturers, formanufacturers, example, saw chase of these hygiene of these chase They articles. adults from 35 conducted countries at of threat, and quarantine behavior and quarantine ofof threat, age, perceived the analyzed levelalso n astudy of one more thousand than h i e l a E e
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CHRONIC KIDNEY FAILURE: BRAZIL AND NIGERIA IN COMPARISON TO ITALY
BRAZIL NIGERIA
AGE
80+
75–79
70–74
65–69
60–64
OVeRCOMiNg 55–59 THe weAKeR 50–59 SeLF 45–49 40–44
Although we should know better, we 35–39 frequently make choices that are not good for us and then feel bad about 30–34 them later on. However, we can 25–29 strengthen our self-control by ma- 20–24 king simple changes to our environ- ment. Researchers from the Univer- sity of Helsinki and the Max Planck 5.0 2.0 1.0 1.0 2.0 5.0 12 institute for Human development LOGARITHM SCALE describe how psychology can be used to this end. Their advice includes Higher prevalance Higher prevalance using reminders and prompts, e.g. compared compared putting a photo of a carrot on the re- to italy to italy frigerator door or putting running shoes next to the bed. Another useful idea is to give decisions a diff erent an- Chronic disease is more widespread in gle: we can for example choose to wel- the southern hemisphere than in europe. in Nigeria, the percentage of gRAPHiC: gCO come each fl ight of stairs as an oppor- people in their early 20s who suff er tunity to minimally increase our life from chronic kidney failure is about expectancy. Furthermore, we should twice as high as in italy. make harmful things less accessible, i.e. we should put potato chips and candy high up on the top shelf of the wHeRe COVid-19 kitchen cabinet and keep fruit within easy reach on the table. Last but not ALSO PUTS yOUNgeR least, we can increase our account- ability by using social agreements to PeOPLe AT RiSK put ourselves under pressure, e.g. by arranging to meet other people to go For people in europe, age is one of the geria, for example, the number of peop- jogging. risk factors that infl uence the severity le in their early 20s who have cardiovas- www.mpg.de/14796211 of COVid-19. However, although the cular disease is more than twice as high populations of many countries in the as in italy. Chronic renal failure and southern hemisphere are on average chronic obstructive pulmonary disease younger, they are no less aff ected by the are signifi cantly more widespread pandemic. According to a study by the among 40-year-olds in Brazil and Ni- Max Planck institute for demographic geria than in italy; in fact, it is four Research in Rostock, one reason for times more prevalent among women in this is that the proportion of people of Nigeria. This also signifi cantly in- working age who suff er from pre-exis- creases the risks associated with
ting conditions is signifi cantly higher COVid-19. gRAPHiC: gCO, MPi FOR deMOgRAPHiC ReSeARCH there than in europe. in Brazil and Ni- www.mpg.de/15022135/0624
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 In brief
Relationship crisis Female giraffes are choosy: while they animals’ social environment. The re- raffes face a trade-off between their like to associate with some females, searchers have observed that indivi- social bonds and the safety of their they prefer to avoid others. The result dual giraffes living close to villages of calves. This disruption of their social is a complex, multi-layered society of indigenous Masai form less strong system – along with poaching and the female giraffes. An international social bonds among themselves and loss of habitat and food supply – could team including a researcher from the have less contact with other females be why the population of Masai Max Planck Institute of Animal Be- of their species. The Masai tolerate giraffes has declined by 50 percent in havior in Konstanz observed 540 fe- the giraffes, but the giraffes often -en recent years. However, the resear- male giraffes in Tanzania over a pe- counter humans and cattle around cher still have to determine how dis- riod of six years, thus gaining insight the compounds. This could be cau- rupted social behavior is weakening into the largest social network of wild sing the groups to split up. It is par- the giraffe population. mammals studied to date. The re- ticularly common for females with www.mpg.de/14898269 sults showed that the animals live in calves to spend time close to human discrete social groups of 60 to 90 fe- settlements, possibly because this males. These groups rarely mix, even means their calves are better pro- when they share the same living space. tected from attacks by lions and hye- However, humans are disrupting the nas. It therefore seems that female gi- Masai giraffe in the Tarangire ecosystem in Northern Tanzania. Popula- tions here have declined by half in recent years. 13 EE K L E R DE PHOTO:
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 14 THe BLOOd- THe Another step has been taken towards taken Another been step has with the help the with and of then antibodies, vessel forces, using magnetic thus vessel may make it easier to transport vessel may make it to transport easier MiCROTRANS- PORTeR FOR FOR PORTeR MySTeRy OF THe SOLAR Planck institute for intelligent Sys- STReAM porter with medicinal substances, substances, medicinal porter with tems in Stuttgart has developed has Stuttgart tems in ami- of medi- accurately goal the guiding the location. rolled it artifi through an cial blood researchers loaded a microtrans- Researchers haveResearchers long puzzling been guided itguided tissue towards diseased diseased tissue. A team at the Max at Max the tissue. Ateam diseased Solar activity fl activity Solar in a rhythm uctuates plete 22 years. lasts period magnetic tive gas – that covers of – that tive surface the gas tions beneath the star’s the beneath tions “skin”: alayer the frequencythe of spots. sun Acom- crotransporters targeted cancer cells cells cancer targeted crotransporters shape and mobility. size, in cell The resemblescrorobot that awhite blood cation through the bloodstream to bloodstream through the cation flin various ected phenomena such as and discharged an active at substance an and discharged atumor. mi- as the tests, further in against the fl the against ow of in a blood blood stream. The ability to and roll with stream. flsimulating the blood- ow against substances to aspecifisubstances c suchlocation, CyCLe iS iLLUMiNATed must be a connection with the condi- the with must a connection be of hot plasma – electrically conduc-of hot –electrically plasma over cycle. this what There causes of about eleven which years, re- is www.mpg.de/14901427 gizon from the Max Planck Max institute from the gizon for System now Solar has Research plasma flplasma direc- in a north-south ows prehensive to date picture of these tion. found The researchers the that of led by researchers team Laurent motion. in tion zone constantly is A convec-ters. inside The plasma this kilome- to a depth sun the of 200,000 flis remarkably simple:ow symmetry succeeded in drawing the most the drawing com- in succeeded FRUiTFUL eNCOUNTeR Modern humans and Neanderthals in- Modern and Neanderthals humans Planck institute for evolutionary An- pregnancy. Researchers at the Max Max the at Researchers pregnancy. aver- an outsideperson contains Africa is ahormoneis plays that important an linska institute in Sweden institute in linska the analyzed dNA.thal Some genetic of vari- these terbred millen- the through many times thropology in Leipzig in Karo- and the thropology fifromand genomedisappeared our cial role in the menstrual cycle role and during menstrual the in nia. This is why is This nia. genome the of every gesterone receptor gene; progesterone progesterone gene; receptor gesterone able, for example of pro- avariant the weas evolved. were Others more favor- ants were bene- more than detrimental ofage one to two percent of Neander- 2 1 300,000 years ago HUMANS MOdeRN eMeRgeNCe OF 600,000 years ago Max PlanckResearch AFRICA HUMAN MODERN In brIef In Modern humans and Neanderthals interbred many times throughout interbred times many Neanderthals and humans Modern ·2 HUMAN | 2 2020 1 3 form closer and closer to equator the ting approximatelyting each 22 in years the plasma makes asingle las- makes circuit plasma the fl theected by well-known butterfl y fl ow towardtheequator thebottom at nomenon long re- has been since that diagram. as the solar cycle progresses, aphe- cycle solar the as progresses, of convection the spots to zone causes solar hemisphere.solar addition, in the the course of evolution. This has left traces in human dNA. human in of evolution. left traces course the has This 4 3 100,000 years ago MigRATiON eARLy ago < 65,000 years MigRATiON MAiN while three percent actually carry two carry percent actually while three women and discovered one three that in Neanderthal receptor gene. 29 percent Neanderthal european womeneuropean have inherited the this variant have re- more progesterone variant this for mostthan other genes. women with biobank data of more than 244,000 of 244,000 biobank data more than more children. children. more ceptors in their cells. This means they means This cells. ceptors their in proportion the that means This copies. one copy gene, of Neanderthal the carry and bleeding. to give They birth also miscarriage from protected better are moreare sensitive to hormone the and ant of gene the about is higher ten times vari- aNeanderthal of women carrying www.mpg.de/15032287 4 NEANDERTHAL www.mpg.de/14877152 5 65,000 years ago years 65,000 47,000 to
5
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gRAPHiC: gCO AFTeR iLAN gRONAU In brief
An extremely precise atomic balance: Pentatrap Quantum leap tipping consists of five Penning traps arranged one above the balance CS I
S the other (yellow column Y H in the middle). These A new door to the quantum world has dual atoms. In order to achieve this,
AR P traps enable ions to be
E been opened: every time an atom ab- they used the atomic balance known measured and compared sorbs or releases energy via the quan- as Pentatrap. The charged atoms ro- in their excited quantum tum leap of an electron, it becomes tate in this trap, and the lighter they OR NUCL state and in their ground F I heavier or lighter. This is due to the are, the faster they rotate. Since the state. In order to minimize errors, the ions connection between energy and mass, orbital frequency can be determined
OTO: MP are also moved back and which Albert Einstein expressed in very accurately, the researchers can
PH 2 forth between different the formula E = mc . However, in an determine the mass of the atoms with traps for comparative individual atom, this effect is as mi- exceptional precision. In this way, measurements. nuscule as the difference in mass that they discovered that the rare metal an ant weighing ten milligrams rhenium has a previously unknown would make if it were standing on an quantum state that could be of inter- elephant weighing six tons. Never- est for future use in atomic clocks. theless, an international group led by This extremely sensitive atomic ba- a team from the Max Planck Institute lance thus facilitates a better under- for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg has standing of the complex quantum succeeded in measuring this infini- world of heavy atoms. tesimal change in the mass of indivi- www.mpg.de/14793234
N 15 EE ANS ST / H DE . RT E N
Ue nd rstand- EI KL IE ing weather D / E C AN forecasts I LL A Many Germans have difficulty cor- E UR CT rectly assessing weather risks. This I was the result of a representative sur- vey conducted by the Max Planck In- stitute for Human Development and PHOTO: P the Hans-Ertel Centre for Weather Research. Over one thousand Ger- mans aged between 14 and 93 an- swered factual questions about the This storm cloud over Munich threatens heavy rain – this is probably weather and its effects. A large pro- clear to most people. However, four in fiveG ermans did not understand portion of those questioned judged what was meant by the probability of rain. the risks incorrectly. For example, 44 percent of respondents believed that ground frost, which can cause icy conditions on roads and sidewalks, derstorm were approaching, many respondents were able to correctly in- can only form at air temperatures of 0 respondents would probably not take terpret information about the proba- degrees Celsius or below – a miscon- shelter in time: only one in five cor- bility of rain. The research team ception that can become dangerous rectly estimated that a 30-second de- therefore calls for a new type of risk in traffic. Moreover, two-thirds of re- lay between a lightning flash and the forecast that not only states what the spondents incorrectly believed that sound of thunder means that a thun- weather will be, but also what damage higher temperatures mean higher derstorm is about ten kilometers it can cause. levels of UV radiation. And if a thun- away. Furthermore, only one in five www.mpg.de/14847266
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 16 IMAGE: JEREMY SANDERS, HERMANN BRUNNER AND THE ESASS-TEAM (MPE); EUGENE CHURAZOV, MARAT GILFANOV (ON BEHALF OF IKI) an A A Solid State Research in Stuttgart Solid Stuttgart State in Research partners in Pisa and Lund, Pisa in research partners these precious metals conduct precious metals these elec that these ordered these that layers of gold and behavior may due be trical to fact the t gold and silvertwo-dimensional be found also thick. The team that thinner. it fact, from true:far is in This thin. onlyis 0.1 quite actually is thick, µm tricity very well. elec unusual tricity This have now created crystalline layershave of now crystalline created have like even semi-conductors, gold and silver just are one that atom of One might think that gold that leaf, which mightOne think can actually be several hundred times several be hundred times actually can ers at the Max Planck aters Max the a substrate of carbide silicon and a silver only produced be can between h ough three-dimensional forms of ough three-dimensional touch g d W orking in cooperation with with cooperation orking in
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WHEN STOCKHOLM CALLS TWICE PHOTO: DEREK HENTHORN PHOTO: HALLBAUER & FIORETTI
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A high honor: Emmanuelle Charpentier and Reinhard Genzel were awarded the Nobel Prizes for Chemistry and Physics by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Charpentier receives the award for her groundbreaking work on the genome-editing tool CRISPR-Cas 9, while Genzel is being honored for providing evidence of a black hole in the center of our Milky Way.
Emmanuelle Charpentier receives the October: astrophysicist Reinhard Genzel, Crafoord Prize means you are out of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, while the Physics Director at the Max Planck Institute for race for the Nobel,” Genzel said. Somewhat Nobel Prize goes to Reinhard Genzel. The Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching near less surprising, but no less gratifying, was rst, and until now, the last time that the Munich, was awarded the Nobel Prize in the award received one day later by Max Planck Society had scooped up two Physics – alongside U.S. physicist Andrea Emmanuelle Charpentier. The micro- di erent Nobel Prizes in the same week was Ghez and UK-born mathematical physicist biologist had for years been tipped as a in 1995. “I am delighted that two Roger Penrose. The Royal Swedish favorite for the highest scienti c honor Max Planck researchers won a Nobel Prize Academy honors the three scientists for from Stockholm. Together with U.S. this year”, said President Martin Stratman. their black hole research. “This really took structural biologist Jennifer Doudna, “It con rms the Max Planck Society’s status me by surprise,” said 68-year-old Genzel. the Frenchwoman receives this year’s as one of the most successful scienti c orga- With his group, Genzel has been using high- Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The two
PHOTO MEDAL: DPA-PICTURE ALLIANCE nizations in the world and it also reinforces precision methods to detect the black hole at researchers are being honored for their our mission: we do not rely on programs, the center of the Milky Way through years groundbreaking work on the genome- but on great minds, who we provide of experimental research. He emphasized editing tool CRISPR-Cas9. The with sufficient funds for high-risk, that the Nobel Prize was a success for the CRISPR-Cas9 technology is considered long-term basic research. This also makes entire Max Planck Society, which had pro- a revolution in the elds of medicine, bio- us highly attractive on an international level vided his team with the necessary resources. technology and agriculture. “I am over- for top researchers from all over the world. “I am very happy that I could win this whelmed and deeply honored to receive an But above all, these two Nobel Prizes coveted trophy for the Max Planck Society,” award of such signi cance. I am now demonstrate the exciting and innovative Genzel said in an interview with the looking forward to celebrating the prize discoveries that arise from curiosity-driven Süddeutsche Zeitung. He had not expected with my team, family, and friends via video basic research.” to win the Nobel Prize because he had call,” said Charpentier, Director at the The rst cause for celebration came on already received the Crafoord Prize for Max Planck Research Unit for the Science the Tuesday of the Nobel Prize week in Astronomy in 2012. “Usually, winning the of Pathogens in Berlin.
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 Surviving the Anthropocene
Humans have taken dominion over the Earth – and have done so to an extent that threatens the basis for human life itself. From the perspective of our author, the development of scientific and technical knowledge has played a key role in the transition to the Anthropocene, the geological epoch of humankind. But we still need to learn more about the close interrelationship between the Earth and humans to be
18 able to actually understand and overcome the crises that we create through our own actions.
Has there ever been a time when the dependence of our globalized societies on knowledge was so clearly evident as today? Infection rates and epi- demiological models, rapid mass testing and global vaccine research in a continuous sprint are deciding the fate of the global population. Chinese biomedical scientists were able to identify the genome of the newly emerged coronavirus and convey that information to the World Health Organization in only a few days. Continually warning about the preliminary nature of their knowledge, epidemiologists around the world are advising their respective political leaders, who must in turn protect their citizens from the lethality of an exponential spread and from societal collapse. Economists, educators and social scientists are measuring the effects of stopping entire nations in their tracks.
Crises brought on by epidemics have always made history. One need only consider the plague in Europe or the mass deaths that smallpox, measles and flu viruses caused when they were brought from the Old World and introduced into the indigenous populations of North and South America. However, the current pandemic is certainly assuming unprecedented pro- portions due to today’s circular interdependence of global economic and knowledge systems. What’s more, considering the deep impact it will have on our collective world, it will be important to draw lessons for the future from our experience with the Corona crisis and its causes.
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 VIEW POINT
JÜrgen renn
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Jürgen renn received his doctorate in mathematical physics from the technische universität Berlin in 1987, before he turned his focus to the history of science. he conduct- ed research and taught in Boston, tel Aviv and Zurich, and became the founding Director of the Max iLLuStrAtion: Sophie Ketterer Sophie iLLuStrAtion: planck institute for the history of Science in Berlin in 1994. his research focuses on topics including the long-term develop- ment of knowledge and the dynamics that have led to the Anthropocene. renn is a member of the german national Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and of the international Academy for the history of Science. January of 2020 saw the publication of his book, the evolution of Knowledge: rethinking Science for the Anthropocene. in it, he warns of crises such as a global spread of infectious diseases, which has already become a reality with coviD-19. his book is currently being translated into german.
Max planck research · 2 | 2020 The advent of the Corona crisis will not simply displace other challenges humanity is already facing. On the contrary, the virus only intensifies our focus on the profound threats to our highly modern societies posed by the increased use of previously undisturbed animal habitats, the weakening of ecosystems and – likely the most overarching of all THE DIviDING threats – climate change. As long as our view of the Earth’s natural realm remains one of an inexhaustible resource and waste LINES BETWEEN dump, it will be difficult at best to extricate ourselves from the NATURE headlong growth of mutually reinforcing crises. It cannot be ruled out that this continual exposure to crises will ultimately overwhelm AND CULTURE our societies.
HAVE BECOME So from now on, science and research must do more to confront PROBLEMATIC the challenge of contributing to the resilience of our globalized world, and put all of their previously imposed disciplinary bound- aries and methodological blinkers behind them. At the present time, when our problems can only be understood from a comprehensive perspective, it is an existential imperative that we investigate the complex interactions between society, technology, the environment and a global 20 system that is in continual overall flux.
The Earth has been radically altered by human encroachments. We are cur- rently leaving a geological epoch behind that, for roughly 11,000 years, has provided human cultures with largely stable climatic conditions, giving them a time window in which to develop and expand around the globe. For our departure from this unusually stable “Holocene” epoch, Paul Crutzen, Nobel Prize Laureate in Chemistry and former Director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, coined the term “Anthropocene,” a term that no longer permits the trivialization of the influence humans have on the Earth system.
In the Anthropocene, humans are no longer acting against the backdrop of an unchangeable natural system, but rather are profoundly intertwined in its structure and impacting both the immediate and distant future. The funda- mental revision of our understanding of this planet’s condition can only be compared to the overturning of the physical concepts of space and time that occurred in the wake of Einstein revealing his theory of relativity. In classical physics, space and time seemed to be the fixed stage upon which world events took place. In contrast, according to Einstein’s theory, this stage is no longer an unchanging framework, but rather is itself part of the play. There is no absolute distinction between actors and stage. The changes in the Earth system are confronting us with the similarly radical necessity to rethink our situation: we are not living in a stable environment that serves only as a stage
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 VIEW POINT
and as a resource for our actions. Instead, we are part of a dynamic system in which humans and the non-human world play equal roles. As it is used today, the term “Anthropocene” is also the result of a new type of Earth sci- ence, a transition from geology to the science of the Earth system, which views our planet as a complex, nonlinear system with many interactions and feedback loops in which human intervention is playing an increasingly important role.
The concept of the Anthropocene has established a bridge between geolog- ical and historical time. It has become clear that the time scale of human his- tory is inextricably linked with the geological time scale. In view of the mas- sive effects of human intervention in the environment, the traditional dividing lines between nature and culture have become problematic. What roles have science and technology played in this transition? WE ARE Were they the accelerants that will have enabled colonialism and industrial capitalism to eventually destroy the Earth? Or were CONDUCTING AN they our Cassandra, giving us fateful warnings well in advance, but whose advice was tragically ignored? Humans have certainly EXPERIMENT ON become a planetary force, but we have yet to develop any THE ENTIRE sensibility for our planet. 21 GLOBAL SYSTEM, How society, science and our shaping of the future fit together can only be assessed by focusing on the development of the WHICH WE STILL Anthropocene. The question of which processes and dynamics have brought us into the Anthropocene is currently a subject of ONLY POORLY broad discussion. Suggestions range from the extinction of the UNDERSTAND megafauna in the late Pleistocene as a result of humans’ new hunting skills and further environmental and climatic factors, to the advent of agriculture and animal husbandry, the early modern era and the Industrial Revolution, to the so-called Great Acceleration since the mid-20th century, which geologists are currently focusing on.
All of these historic interventions have left their traces in Earth’s history: the increasing dominance of domesticated animals and cultivated plants in the biosphere; the transfer of species (and of lethal pathogens) caused by Euro- pean colonialism between biospheres that had been separated for millions
of years; the rapid rise in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and oceans since the Industrial Revolution and the exponential increase in consumption of global resources since the Great Acceleration.
All of these interventions have simultaneously changed and reinforced the possibilities for human action: early advanced civilizations would have been
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 inconceivable without agricultural settlements and animal husbandry. Mod- ern science would probably never have flourished without these advanced cultures, and both colonialism and the Industrial Revolution may have been impossible without the Scientific Revolution of the modern era. This long- term, concurrent development shows how our knowledge and hence our creative power have increased, while the associated, unintentional or consciously accepted consequences have simultaneously been amplified.
Our modern societies are deeply rooted in this interaction between knowl- edge, cultural technology and intervention in the natural environment. We are currently caught up in an escalation of this interrelationship and are actually in the process of conducting a global experiment on an entire planetary system that we still only poorly understand. The effects of this experiment and whatever measures we take in the future to mitigate these effects will depend profoundly on the available knowledge of the inter- action between the Earth system and its human components. In any event, if we are to successfully shape the Anthropocene future, it is essential that we understand the evolution of our knowledge.
22 But what exactly is knowledge? Individual knowledge is based on the encoding of experiences that enable Individuals to solve problems as part of their adaptive behavior. While knowledge enables individual persons to plan their actions and to consider the results, a society or an institution can- not “think” but rather can only anticipate the consequences of its actions within a “knowledge economy.” The knowledge economy rep- resents the sum of the societal institutions and processes that FROM CULTURAL convey, accumulate and propagate the knowledge available to a society – especially the knowledge with which a society can TO EPISTEMIC ensure its own preservation and growth. The limits of knowledge economies are likely to have been a critical factor in the collapses EVOLUTION of historic societies, like those evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond examined in his book, Collapse. A knowledge history of the Anthropocene therefore includes a history of our knowledge economies, in which knowledge has been produced, distributed and reproduced – or has not been produced or has even been suppressed, ultimately with global consequences.
From an evolutionary perspective, knowledge is one of the structures, along with social institutions, that govern human behavior. At the same time, human activity affects the environmental conditions under which people live. Thus, environmental conditions also embody the structures of human behavior. Conversely, this human-influenced physical environment serves in
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 VIEW POINT
turn as the starting point for new knowledge processes and societal forma- tions. This engenders a constant interplay between the material embodi- ment of regulative structures that govern behavior and the changes in these structures based on new experiences. This interplay determines the general dynamics of cultural evolution.
Under given environmental conditions, societies can reproduce some of these conditions but not others. For example, in the transition to an agricul- tural society, humans learned to recreate the environmental conditions that enabled them to produce their own food. In this way, naturally given external conditions, such as the local availability of plants and domesticable animals, ultimately became dominant characteristics of further global development.
The transition to the Anthropocene can hardly be traced back to a single cause or moment in time. Rather, it can best be described as a cascade of evolutionary processes, from biological via cultural to an “epistemic evolution.” With this epistemic evolution, human societies – dependent on the use of fossil energy and on infrastructures and technologies that are increasingly science-based – have entered into an interdependency with 23 the Earth system as a whole. What stone tools, hunting and gathering were for the Pleistocene, and arable crops, clothing and dwellings were for the Holocene, science-based technologies are now for the Anthro- pocene: critical conditions for human life and human survival. This process can be observed at the latest since the Industrial Revolution, and has reached a preliminary peak under the present conditions of digitaliza- tion, mobility, global supply chains, technocratic governance and, last but not least, high-performance medical research on an international scale.
While the possibility of reproducing external conditions contributing to liv- ability was once primarily a question of circumstances in times of cultural evolution, it will increasingly have to be a question of knowledge in the age of epistemic evolution. This especially applies to the consequences of our actions for the coupled human-Earth system. Our understanding of this complex system requires new scientific approaches that help to better understand and mitigate systemic shocks in our highly industrialized and extremely fragile age: a “geoanthropology” or human-Earth science of the Anthropocene. The goal of such scientific approaches – which are currently also under discussion in connection with the founding of a new Max Planck Institute – is to effectively combine the necessary adaptation to the systemic risks of the present with the elimination of their causes.
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 focus
All Ears
24 | Sound takes form 32 | Sound check 40 | Getting their bearings
24 IMAGE: KAI MELDE/MPI FOR INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS
Painting with ultrasound: to construct an image with microparticles, Max Planck researchers first calculate the hologram that generates the corresponding sound profile. This simulated hologram is then used to produce an image of Picasso’s “Dove of Peace” using particles.
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 FOCUS
Sd oun takes form
Text: Felicitas Mokler
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Ultrasound can be used manipulate tiny particles and even to arrange them in any desired patterns by using acoustic holography. This method has been developed by Peer Fischer’s team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart. The physicists are already working on medical applications.
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 “We use ultrasound in many ways in everyday life, such more complex patterns from a large number of nodes, as in medical imaging, in nondestructive material which serve as pixels in an image. The phase of the testing and for measuring distances when we park our individual ultrasound waves can be adjusted by indi- car,” explains Kai Melde. But the postdoc in Peer vidually controlling the sources. The phase deter- Fischer’s working group at the Max Planck Institute mines where waves of a specific frequency reach their for Intelligent Systems has a completely different use maximum and minimum intensity. This enables the for ultrasound. He causes tiny particles to hover and researchers to actively control the locations where the transports them from one place to another with no acoustic nodes form and the microparticles accumu- apparent physical contact. What sounds like magic late. In principle, the microparticles could be ar- has become routine laboratory work for Kai Melde ranged in any pattern by using this method. However, and Peer Fischer. They use a sophisticated method to as the number of sound sources increases, the com- modify acoustic signals to cause micron-sized parti- plexity and effort involved also increase tremendously. cles to move and even be arranged into nearly any In addition, the resolution of the image is limited by pattern required. This method is of interest for med- the overall size spanned by all sources. ical treatments with ultrasound, for analyses in mate- rials science and for medical laboratory testing of cell cultures in petri dishes, for example.
The team led by Peer Fischer has opened up a promising new research field with this method. But, as so often happens in the field of science, that was not the origi- nal plan. Normally the scientists on his team work to develop nanobots and microbots, or they conduct re- 26 search on functional materials. They arrange the tini- est of components of these materials with the aid of magnetic fields or chemical reactions to form objects “I find the potential medical such as sensors. “We hit upon the method of mani- pulating materials with ultrasound while searching applications of acoustic for a way to work with biological materials as well,” explains Peer Fischer. holography particularly exciting, especially Acoustic tweezers for ultrasound therapy.” The actual concept of shaping sound and using it as a means of transport in the micro or nano world is not a new one. It goes back to research from the 1980s, Peer Fischer which yielded first optical and then acoustic tweezers. Physicists use the radiation pressure of light or sound waves to trap individual microparticles in air or fluids and to position them precisely. In the simplest exam- ple of acoustic tweezers, they use a sound source to The team led by Peer Fischer and Kai Melde also in- transmit pressure waves into a vessel filled with air or cluded researchers from the University of Stuttgart, water. This source is called a transducer and func- and together they worked out a different method to tions like a loudspeaker – but for inaudible ultrasound. circumvent these problems. They replace the ensem- Because it is physically constrained by the vessel, a ble of multiple sound generators with a specially standing wave forms within the medium that is at rest shaped plastic relief that they irradiate with sound at its nodes. Microparticles can be trapped at these from a single transmitter. This plastic plate is an locations. The sound acts like invisible tweezers. acoustic hologram. The field of optics brought us ho- lograms, which extend photography into the third If two such sources are positioned perpendicularly to dimension. In addition to the intensity of the light, each other, the standing waves are superimposed, so holography also utilizes the phase of the light waves: that the nodes and the particles trapped within them the reflection of light off a three-dimensional object form a grid. Multiple sound sources can create even creates characteristic shifts in its peaks and troughs.
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 FOCUS
Camera
Particle image I MELDE/MPI FOR INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS : KA to ho c & P
Hologram raphi G
Ultrasonic source
Top: Researchers place an ultrasound generator and a hologram in a water tank. These produce a sound profile in a container above them that moves particles together to form the desired pattern. 27
Left: Max Planck researchers in Stuttgart used Picasso’s “Dove of Peace” to demonstrate for the first time that acoustic holograms can be used to generate structures from micropar- ticles. The image shown is roughly five centimeters in diameter.
The phase of the light waves therefore transports in- high. To duplicate the dove using particles trapped by formation about the physical, i.e. spatial structure of sound, the researchers first create a phase map of the the object, which gives holographic images their ty- image on the computer. Then they simulate the ne- pical three-dimensional form. cessary shape of a plastic relief to impose exactly this phase profile on an ultrasound wave. The thicker the Similarly, an acoustic hologram contains information material that a sound wave penetrates, the more its about the phase of the waves, in this case sound waves. phase is shifted. “We use software to calculate the It therefore acts like thousands of tiny sound sources necessary thickness at each of the 15,000 pixels in the working together. To demonstrate how acoustic holo- hologram,” explains Melde. In this way, each pixel is grams can be created and used to manipulate parti- a tiny independent sound source. Each pixel is ap- cles, the physicists from Stuttgart arranged micro- proximately 375 microns in size. This corresponds to particles in a liquid to form images such as the “Dove roughly half the wavelength of the ultrasound signal of Peace” by Pablo Picasso. Because the subject is at 2MHz in water and therefore the theoretical reso- both highly complex and also has a fine structure, the lution limit of the sound waves. The researchers then resolution of the hologram must be correspondingly use a 3D printer to create the plastic relief.
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 For the actual experiment, they fill a chamber with water, Meanwhile, the researchers are also working on an to which they add 150-micron silicone spheres. They acoustic holography method to specifically structure place the hologram beneath the chamber and irradi- cells in a petri dish, without having to penetrate the ate it using a large ultrasonic transducer. The silicone culture and physically touch the cells. In this way, spheres floating in the water then actually arrange they hope to create artificial tumors or organoids, i.e. themselves into a copy of Picasso’s “Dove of Peace.” laboratory models of organs, with which they can im- To prevent the particles from disengaging from this prove drug testing and thereby replace testing on shape as soon as the sound is switched off, the re- animals. In their experiments, the researchers are searchers coat them with a photochemical material. working with colorectal cancer cells; primarily be- “If we irradiate these coated particles with UV light, cause these can be easily culti- they bond in place and the structures can then be vated in the laboratory, but also permanently retained,” explains Fischer. But crea- because artificial tumors are ting static images is not the only capability of acoustic one of the possible applications holograms. For example, Melde and Fischer use a for acoustic tweezers. different, correspondingly structured plastic relief to sUMMARY generate an annular wave on which they can actually To reproduce tumors or organs, Like optical holograms, acoustic get millimeter sized objects to surf. the researchers first collabo- holograms utilize not only the rated with colleagues from the intensity of a sound wave, but Max Planck Institute for Med- also its phase. In this way, many Medical applications ical Research to find a way to waves can be superimposed to organize cells into specific pat- generate complex sound Although the first experiments in acoustic holography terns in two dimensions. In the pressure profiles with which particles in a fluid can be sound a lot like clever tinkering, the method could next step, they expanded their manipulated and organized. also have a number of applications in medicine and cellular arrangements into the technology. For example, acoustic holograms that can third dimension, which is cru- Max Planck researchers in 28 emulate multiple ultrasound sources could help sim- cial for conclusive medical Stuttgart produce acoustic plify the inspection of materials for cracks, such as in studies. “Cells behave differ- holograms by first reverse-engi- aircraft wings. This makes use of the fact that sound ently in a three-dimensional neering how the many thousands of partial waves can propagates differently within intact material than it environment than they do in a be combined to yield a desired does in defective material. “But I find the potential two-dimensional plane. And pattern and then determining medical applications of acoustic holography particu- we simply need the third, spa- the hologram that produces larly exciting, especially for ultrasound therapy,” says tial dimension for certain drug these individual waves. Fischer. Ultrasound is already in use today to destroy tests, for tumor growth experi- The researchers also want to use diseased tissue or break up kidney stones. Holograms ments or for organoids,” ex- acoustic holography to produce could now be used to generate customized sound pro- plains Fischer. artificial tumors or organoids files that only target diseased tissue. upon which realistic medical To generate two-dimensional pat- and pharmaceutical testing can “However, acoustic holography also enables the use of terns or even three-dimen- then be performed. This may ultrasound in the brain,” explains Fischer. “This is a sional forms from biomaterial, also make it possible to replace some animal experiments in completely new concept, because treatments of this the researchers embed the cells drug development. kind have never before been possible.” This is be- in a hydrogel in which they are cause the thickness of the skull varies so much that it to continue reproducing later. distorts an ultrasound signal to the point that it be- “The problem here is that cells comes unusable. A team from the Polytechnic Uni- consist primarily of water,” ex- versity of Valencia in Spain recently demonstrated plains Fischer. “So there is that a holographic plastic relief can compensate for hardly any contrast with the surrounding hydrogel these variations. Peer Fischer’s team is working to- and they are therefore difficult to grasp with acoustic gether with researchers from the Fraunhofer Insti- tweezers.” The cells simply follow the movements tute for Biomedical Engineering to develop a medical of the sound waves. But the researchers quickly re- application for this method. To holographically mod- cognized that the ultrasound not only moves the par- ulate ultrasound waves in the brain, physicians first ticles directly through its vibrations, but also indi- use X-ray images to determine the variations in skull rectly, because it can create flowing currents through- thickness and then generate a plastic relief that com- out the fluid. By carefully phasing and synchronizing pensates for the differences. This method could help the various forms of movement, they are ultimately to remove diseased tissue, such as a tumor, from the able to position the cells in the intended configura- brain. tions.
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 The first 3D structure: Kai Melde watches as an icosahedron forms in a cubic vessel immersed in a water tank. in a water cubicimmersed in a vessel forms Kai Meldean icosahedron as watches 3D structure: The first He and his colleagues used this shape to demonstrate for the first time that two ultrasound transducers transducers twoultrasound that time for first to demonstrate the shape this used colleagues He his and c and corresponding holograms can also be used to form 3D structures. The transducers are visible as metal metal as visible are The transducers to form3D used structures. be also can holograms corresponding and y linders below cube. linders the Kai Melde’sKai therefore Ma Zhichao colleague acom used Finally, the physicists positioned the resulting relief relief resulting the positioned physicists the Finally, underneath the petri dish and irradiated it ultra with and irradiated dish petri the underneath directly on the cells to organize the cells into specific into cells specific the to organize on cells the directly patterns. Meldepatterns. prepared then suitable the hologram. puter to simulateare how that flowing the currents induced in the gel by the ultrasound pressure can be be induced gel can the by pressure in ultrasound the optimally combined with the acoustic forces acting dimensions, sound the waves must also act on them fromon them every direction. “If we want“If to in control three particles Max PlanckResearch more than one sound generator.” one than more FOCUS ·2 | 2020 - - If medical experts are to subsequently are experts medical If work the with Planck Society’s logo. However, a with cells the coating instance, this in cells, the cell cultures cannot be permitted to lose permitted be cannot cultures cell the cells, their shape as soon as the ultrasound is switched is ultrasound the off. as soon shape as their a sound. Again, the cells organized themselves exactly organized sound. cells the Again, s p lanned – in this case, forming Minerva, the Max Max the Minerva, forming case, this –in lanned
S o we n K ai Melde eed
PHOTO: WOLFRAM SCHEIBLE 29 30 This additional degree of freedom makes makes of freedom degree additional This various plastics (black hologram on the hologram (black plastics various Sounding outSounding anew the dimension: (hologram on the left of image). edge on the the (hologram from particles and cells. and particles from their amplitude. they Fortheir purpose, this waves, of sound the position, butthe also i.e. not phase, only the to manipulate upper left) white (to foam with or plastic it easier for them to form 3D structures for to form3Dit them easier structures its right). However, incorporate also they researchers in Stuttgart are attempting attempting are Stuttgart in researchers combine materials in holograms, such as holograms, in materials combine air bubbles in a plastic material bubbles material air aplastic in Max PlanckResearch focus ·2 | 2020
PHOTO: WOLFRAM ScHEIBLE FOCUS
photochemical adhesive is not an option. But the The effort of using acoustic holography to structure cells physicists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent in three dimensions could pay off in the future, such Systems have already solved even this problem. “We as in the design of organoids, because this method use a hydrogel that is initially a liquid but that gels can save a lot of time without damaging cells. Once after a certain period,” explains Fischer. The sub- the holographic plate has been printed, the cells can stance Peer Fischer and his team uses is heat-sensi- be arranged in the petri dish in a matter of minutes. It tive and the acoustic pressure slightly warms it. This would take hours or even days to produce organoids slight rise in temperature means that, once the cells with a 3D printer, because the 3D printer can only have taken on the desired configuration, the gel cools construct a framework one point at a time from a ma- and solidifies after a few minutes. So the cells can no terial on which the cells could then grow. In contrast, longer float away, but they can still multiply. And, the cells can all be configured simultaneously with an what is also important for medical research: “We have acoustic hologram. demonstrated that the cells survive; they are unaf- fected by the acoustic treatment,” says Melde. “They While the researchers in their team continue working on can then be further cultivated in the configuration the right method to generate three-dimensional cel- fixed within the gel.” lular structures, Peer Fischer and Kai Melde are al- ready sounding out the next potential uses that acous- tic holography has to offer. For example, they want to Three-dimensional set the sound profiles and therefore the particle ar- rangements in motion. They are therefore looking for cell structures ways to modify the holograms in near real-time. The researchers from Stuttgart are now exploring the Having successfully used acoustic holography to gene- field of acoustic holograms – which they themselves rate cellular patterns in two dimensions, the team developed – in completely new directions, and it from Stuttgart is now working on three-dimensional likely that in the future, they will explore many other structures. But the transition to the third dimension possibilities with ultrasound. 31 is anything but trivial. Holograms can in fact be used www.mpg.de/podcasts/schall (in German) to generate three-dimensional sound patterns, as Peer Fischer’s team has already achieved in their ex- periments. However, in contrast to the previous ex- periments in two dimensions, particles or cells are now no longer confined to a flat surface, but rather are free to move in all directions. It is difficult to control this new-found freedom from only one direction. “If we want to control particles in three dimensions, the sound waves must also act on them from every direc- tion. We therefore need more than one sound trans- ducer,” explains Kai Melde. Melde and his colleagues therefore proceeded to develop concepts and ways to irradiate a contained volume with sound from two or GLOSSARY three transducers on various sides, and thereby inter- connect the particles in three-dimensional pat- Holography terns. This method uses not only the intensity of light or sound waves, but also their phase. Holograms therefore also contain information about the three-dimensional structure of an object.
Organoid An organ-like structure made up of many cells.
Phase Indicates the point at which a wave is in its cycle at a specific time. Waves that share the same phase have peaks and troughs at the same location. A phase shift between waves results in an offset, which changes the resultant wave pattern when they are superimposed.
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 FOCUS
Sound check
32 Text: Tobias Herrmann
Operatic singing. Birdsong. Loud shouting. An off-pitch violin. We instinctively find some sounds pleasant, others unpleasant. But how do we decide whether something sounds good or bad? And how is sound actually processed within the brain? In an attempt to answer these questions, a team led by David Poeppel at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt is trying to break down speech and music into their most elementary components. And at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, researchers are investiga- ting the secret of super-hits.
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 FOCUS
Alarm! Screams, including babies’ cries, feature an acoustic peculiarity that we experience as particularly unpleasant. It’s what guarantees their social impact. K OO BR ST E W O RT E B O R S/ E MAG
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Unique testing stage: the Max Planck Institute’s ArtLab in Frankfurt is both a concert hall and a laboratory. With it, scientists can record the various physiological data of both the performers – like the vocal ensemble Cut Circle pictured here – and the listeners during performances. 34
“What is the role of neuroscience?” David Poeppel’s re- tary constituents, which – if processed correctly – sponse to this question, posed in an interview, was as carry the appropriate information.” His interest, then, follows: “Breaking something up into its constituent is how acoustic signals are processed in the human parts.” This observation reflects both his personal brain. If he can answer these questions, Poeppel approach as a researcher and that of the Max Planck hopes to make advances in linguistic theories and in Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt, the aesthetics of speech and music. where Poeppel has been Director since 2014. How- ever, that’s not where you would have reached him on the day of this interview in April 2020. Instead, you Many languages, one tempo would have had to dial a telephone number starting with +1 – the country code for the U.S. Since 2009, There’s no denying that a conversation with David he has held a part-time professorship in psychology Poeppel is inspiring. Many of the questions he poses and neuroscience at New York University. At the are ones you’re likely to have already asked yourself, start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Poeppel and his while others are very unexpected. Some sound very family left the hotspot New York City for Connecti- complex, and others are almost astonishingly simple. cut, where he continues to work from home. In his For instance, you don’t have to be a linguist to know words, it has been a “blessing in disguise”; he has had that words are made up of one or more syllables; the time to pursue ideas that he had previously put on surely, the question “what is a syllable?” is, at first the back burner in his daily work. glance, banal. But from a scientific and technical standpoint, nothing could be further from the truth. Time is also relevant to his research; one of his research As Poeppel explains, linguists have been discussing interests is how speech and music are processed in for some 70 years whether syllables should be re- time. Poeppel gives an explanation for the layperson: garded as elementary constituents of speech or “A sound wave reaches your ear, is converted into an whether they are just a type of by-product of smaller electrical signal and is then split apart at switching acoustic elements, such as phonemes, the individual points in your brain. The final result is tiny elemen- units of speech sounds.
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 FOCUS
What is beyond dispute is that syllables play a fundamen- (“moDERN”, meaning “Munich is modern”) or the tal role in speech perception and speech production. first syllable is emphasized, “MOdern”, which In one long-term project, Poeppel and his colleagues changes the meaning to “Munich is rotting.” Speech compared the speed of various languages with the only becomes interesting and vibrant when it includes number of syllables uttered. They discovered that the such ‘prosodic contours’. The importance of such average speed of speech corresponds to the rate of factors is particularly evident in sarcasm and irony. successive syllables. The astonishing thing was that Whether you are praising someone when you say this tempo was almost identical for countless lan- “well done”, or whether you’re being sarcastic depends guages. “Our sense that some languages are spoken completely on your chosen emphasis. much faster than others is therefore mistaken,” says Poeppel. To perceive such nuances, longer time intervals are needed; the brain needs to generate both a temporal A person can easily speak four to five multisyllabic words and a spectral analysis, and this occurs at frequencies in the space of one second. To clearly understand of a few Hertz, corresponding to time intervals of be- each word, the listener needs to perceive every single tween 200 and 300 milliseconds. “Ultimately, two sound. Moreover, the sequence of the sounds is cru- parallel processes need to take place in the brain,” cial. The slightest errors can result in chaos, as any explains Poeppel. “I can work out the correct order of child who’s ever played the popular game of “Tele- sounds based on the short time intervals, and the long phone” will know. “Wall” quickly becomes “ball”, time intervals indicate the intonation and the speech “shoes” becomes “choose”, while “smell”, “sell” and melody.” If you want to discover how these differing “sail” can hardly be distinguished when whispered. lengths are then precisely analyzed and converted
Non-musicians Musicians Musical heads: researchers at the Max 35 , 41, 361-364 , 41, Planck-NYU Center for GY O
L Language, Music and Emotion used electro- HNO Headline notwendig?
EC encephalography (EEG) T to study how the brain ND
A follows a melody. They CE utilized their findings to EN I C make predictions about
AL S how the subjects would C I measurably react to ST U melodies. These CO
A predictions were more N O accurate for musicians’ ED reactions, and the AS B correlation with the CO Correlation between the EEG data and predicted measurements
: G melodies was also better C I
H than with the reactions of non-musicians.
GRAP 0 0.1
To perceive such fine differences in ordinary discussions, into concrete information, you have to delve deep into the brain has to achieve a temporal resolution of be- neurobiology. That’s where neuronal oscillations play tween 20 and 80 milliseconds. “The brain needs to be an essential role. structured in such a way that it can construct very short intervals of time: ‘samples’, as we refer to them,” By this, neuroscientists mean the synchronized activity says Poeppel. But that would only result in a stacca- of particular groups of cells. Once a sentence, a to-like sequence of sounds. Speech is also highly de- melody or a sound reaches the ear as a sound wave pendent on precise stresses, pauses and intonation. and is converted into electrical signals, certain nerve Take the example of the German phrase “München cells in the brain become synchronized, switching on wird modern”. Its meaning depends on whether and off in defined cycles. In order to process the the last syllable of the word “modern” is stressed aforementioned short time intervals of under
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 FOCUS
100 milliseconds, the relevant cells oscillate at a fre- “Synthesized music is very easy to manipulate and quency between 25 and 35 Hertz, known as ‘gamma control, but it’s not as natural, so it’s not as easy to waves’. For the longer intervals, a different type of cell define how people actually perceive the music,” says becomes active at a frequency between three and Larrouy-Maestri. eight Hertz, and these oscillations are known as ‘theta waves’. In one of her experiments, she asked volunteers to listen to famous chorales by Bach that were altered at cer- Neural oscillations don’t just play a role in perceiving tain points in the music. She then analyzed how the speech. They also underlie the brain’s ability to process subjects’ brains reacted to the altered passages or music, as David Poeppel discovered with his colleague notes. Listeners, she discovered, were able to recog- Keith B. Doelling from New York University. In their nize harmonic structures and, therefore, precisely study, the two compared active musicians with at least identify the places where the music had been altered. six years of musical training with non-musicians. The Pauline Larrouy-Maestri und Xiangbin Teng‘s ex- test subjects listened several times in succession to periment showed that we analyze music and speech in 13-second excerpts from various classical pieces by Jo- similar ways. While continuous speech is parsed into hann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven and Jo- linguistic units – sentences, words and syllables – the hannes Brahms. The pieces were played on the piano continuous musical phrases in pieces of music are in varying tempos – from one note every two seconds parsed into musical units – melodies, chords and to eight notes per second. notes. The more musically trained the subjects were, the better their brains could distinguish the musical We process speech and units from each other. Another focus of Larrouy-Maestri’s work is the question music in similar ways of whether musically untrained listeners can recog- nize wrong notes in songs and which cognitive pro- For the pieces of music with a faster rhythm than one cesses are responsible for this. She found that you 36 note per second, the researchers were able to record don’t have to be a professional musician to detect cortical oscillations in musicians and non-musicians, wrong notes in a piece of music. Nor is it necessary to and these oscillations were synchronized with the have an expert ear to know whether a singer is singing speed of the notes in the piece being heard. “The off pitch. Almost anyone can hear what’s right or findings show that the presence of these oscillations wrong – regardless of the music being played. improves our perception of music and pitch changes,” explains Keith Doelling. Like David Poeppel, the impetus for Larrouy-Maestri’s research often comes from observations of everyday At the same time, they also observed that the brains of life. People turn on the radio and probably switch sta- the musicians synchronized more clearly with the rhythm of the music than those of subjects with no musical training. In addition, it was only in the musicians that oscillations were recorded that synchronized with unusually slow pieces. This dif- ference indicates that people without musical train- ing may have difficulty recognizing continuous melodies, instead perceiving music as just a series of tones. In the larger context of their research, the find- ings also demonstrate that low-frequency oscillations enable the brain to decipher speech or music. “You don’t have to
Pauline Larrouy-Maestri, a senior researcher in be a professional Poeppel’s group, also investigates parallels between speech and music. Given her broad background, she musician to hear appears predestined to conduct this kind of research. She studied psychology and music, plays the piano wrong notes in and used to work as a clinical speech therapist. In a typical experiment, Larrouy-Maestri asks subjects to a piece of music.” listen to music and then rate the performance. She plays them either synthesized or acoustic pieces, both of which have their advantages and disadvantages. Pauline Larrouy-Maestri
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Small-scale processing: in order to understand what someone is saying, our brains must perceive every detail. What we hear is analyzed within time intervals of only 20 to 80 milliseconds. That roughly corresponds to the duration of individual syllables.
tions a couple of times until they find a song they want how the human brain processes music in general. It is to listen to. “Irrespective of what kind of sound we these general mechanisms that Larrouy-Maestri is perceive, we can immediately say whether we like it or trying to discover, in order to find out what makes not. Astonishingly, it’s something we’re all able to do. people decide whether or not a piece of music is good And so I asked myself, how is that possible?” To an- or bad. “I’m not trying to crack the code for writing swer this question, Larrouy-Maestri has relied on the perfect musical hit that everybody loves,” she says. natural acoustic music in her experiments. “We in- “I’m more interested in how listeners reach their deci- vite volunteers – both trained and untrained musi- sions regarding whether they like a particular piece or cians – to come into the lab and sing us a song.” Then, not,” says Larrouy-Maestri. we ask other volunteers to judge how well they sang. What does a “hit” trigger in the human brain? That’s In another study, Larrouy-Maestri tried to discover another mystery that a research team at the Max which factors influence whether listeners experience Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sci- a melody as pleasant or less pleasant. In vocal music, ences in Leipzig is looking into. Vincent Cheung, a these include how accurately the melody is sung, for doctoral researcher at the Institute, doesn’t just have instance, how on pitch people sing. However, accu- a passion for listening to music; he is also a violinist. racy is not the only criterion. Interestingly, the speed He asked himself why certain pieces touched both of the music also seems to be a factor. The majority of him and other music lovers so deeply. Together with people experience neither very fast nor very slow mu- Stefan Koelsch, he set out to discover the recipe for sic as pleasant. This might have something to do with the success of songs like Yesterday by the Beatles,
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 FOCUS
Original chord F# Bm/F# F#/C# D#7 Bm F# ... Scientific sound check: using a Transposed chords C Fm/C# C/g a7 Fm C ... G learning algorithm, researchers from HEUN
C Leipzig analyzed the T
EN chord progressions of NC I 10 745 U.S. super-hits. V
N To make them more O Uncertainty comparable, the ED 5
AS original chords were B
CO transposed into the 0 : G same key. ‘Uncer- C I
H tainty’ means that 15 listeners were unable GRAP to easily predict the 10 next chord. ‘Surprise’ Surprise denotes how 5 significantly the 0 sound the listeners just heard differed 0 10 20 30 from what they Chord number expected to hear.
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Nutbush City Limits by Tina Turner or The Look by piness, only reacted in the test SUMMARY Roxette – and he found it. They used machine learn- subjects when they were parti- ing to analyze the 745 super-hits of the U.S. billboard cularly interested in finding out The brain analyzes speech at charts from 1958 to 1991. To do this, they removed how the music would continue. different temporal resolutions to elements such as text and melody from the pieces, interpret both individual sounds // leaving only the chord progressions. Composed of But, of course, not everything we and more complex patterns. Es gibt viele Magazine triads and more complicated harmonies, such pro- hear is pleasant – our auditory The brain processes music in a für die deutsche gressions are familiar to anyone who plays the guitar system, for example, also exists similar way. It breaks pieces of to accompany songs. Most people in the western to warn us of danger. It’s a sub- music down into individual Wissenschaft : Jede world are familiar with their sound; particular se- ject the researchers at the Max components, such as melodies, Hochschule, jede chords and notes. quences of chords have long been the standard buil- Planck Institute for Empirical außeruniversitäre ding blocks of western music – from simple folk songs Aesthetics are also examining. Professional musicians can often Einrichtung, jede Institution to modern pop music. David Poeppel caused a stir with recognize musical structures der Forschungsförderung, jede Stift ung a study in which he explored better than people without musical The scientists then calculated how predictable or sur- why screams shake us to the core. training. But even lay people präsentiert in ihnen das je eigene Profi l. Hinzu kommen prising the chord progressions in each of the hits It’s another question that sounds can recognize wrong notes or die Wissenschaft sseiten der großen Zeitungen und sehr Prof. Dr. h.c. Jutta were and analyzed the reactions of test subjects to the simple until you start looking for manipulated harmonies. gute Blogs, die die Forschung kritisch begleiten. Die DUZ Allmendinger, Ph.D. sound sequences. They found that listening pleasure the answer. “Everyone can re- Popular songs are characterized aber kann und macht alles: Sie ist Fundus und Dach, Präsidentin des Wissen- was greatest when listeners were occasionally sur- cognize a scream, and everyone by a mixture of predictable and Seismograph und Refl ektor. Sie zeigt Forschung, Lehre, schaftszentrums Berlin für prised, while too much uncertainty was a bad thing. has a rough idea of what consti- Sozialforschung (WZB) surprising chord sequences. Transfer, Administration. Und die Geschichten und If the listeners were relatively sure which chords tutes a scream – they’re loud, would come next, they enjoyed the sensation of being high and shrill,” says Poeppel, Gesichter, die dahinterstehen. surprised – in other words, if their expectations were describing the starting point not met. If, on the other hand, they were unsure of of his analysis. In several studies // what was going to come next, they preferred not to be conducted with his New York colleague Adeen surprised by subsequent chords. These findings were Flinker together with Luc Arnal, Andreas backed up by magnetic resonance imaging studies of Kleinschmidt and Anne-Lise Giraud from the the test persons. The nucleus accumbens, the brain University of Geneva, he identified an acoustic DER DIALOG, EIN FORUM, DIE DUZ. structure responsible for anticipating feelings of hap- peculiarity that is unique to screaming. MAGAZIN 3 AUSGABEN FÜR 15 EURO IM KENNENLERN-ABO FÜR WISSENSCHAFT Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 UND GESELLSCHAFT SHOP.DUZ-MEDIENHAUS.DE/DM-TESTEN.HTML focus
“Screams exhibit a characteristic termed ‘roughness’,” Thus, the sounds that we perceive can be meaningful to explains Poeppel. “Roughness occurs when sounds us in many different ways. The brain performs an acquire a particular temporal structure due to chan- enormous feat in not only distinguishing between ging amplitude. If such changes occur extremely different sound sources, but also simultaneously fil- quickly, the auditory system can no longer resolve tering out what is important for us and correctly de- them – they are instead experienced as rough and coding what we hear. And yet, as David Poeppel therefore unpleasant.” Normal speech has a modula- points out, even though scientists have made tion frequency of about four to fiveH ertz, but for numerous discoveries in recent years, there are still roughness that frequency is between 30 and 150 fundamental puzzles that are still unresolved – for Hertz – the changes are much faster. instance, the interaction between sound and memory. Finding the answers will require the contribution In one study, the research team generated a sound data- of many bright minds and visionaries who pose the base containing a wide variety of human sounds, right questions. from screams and sentences to artificial sounds, such www.mpg.de/podcasts/schall (in German) as an alarm clock going off. They discovered that both screams and artificial sounds, such as an alarm clock, and dissonant intervals, such as an off-pitch fifth, fall within the frequency range of roughness – a finding that shows that the manufacturers of alarm clocks have done a great job in imitating the modula- tion of a human scream.
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Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 Focus
Getting their bearings
Text: UTa Deffke
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Two shadows flit around in the evening light. A bat is chasing after a moth in a wild dance between hunter and prey. For Holger Goerlitz, pursuits like this one are Deceptive silence: a real thrill. The leader of an Emmy Holger Goerlitz needs a large amount Noether Research Group at the of technical equipment to be able Max Planck Institute for Ornithology to hear the ultrasonic in Seewiesen is researching calls emitted by the bats. how bats and insects use sound to detect each other.
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 Focus
Many animals have the ability to hear. Sound can carry several layers of clothing, over very long distances, and obstacles hardly muffle since it can get pretty cold in it at all. Nocturnal animals in particular rely on their northern Bulgaria, even in Summary sense of hearing because, unlike their eyes, their ears the spring and fall months. are also effective in darkness. “The most spectacular time is Bats are able to orient themselves just before it gets completely by emitting calls in the ultrasonic frequency range. They calculate Bats are perfect examples of what extraordinary feats the dark, when we are still able to the distance of an object from the sense of hearing can accomplish. The animals emit observe the bats and their time elapsed between their call and sounds and analyze the echoes that are reflected back behavior ourselves,” Goerlitz its echo. The size, surface by their surroundings. To do this, they usually use says. structure and position of the object ultrasound, in other words, frequencies that lie above are indicated, among other things, the audible range of the human ear. “So for us, the But some experiments can only by changes in the frequency, duration and volume of the echo. sounds bats make are usually inaudible. And we be conducted in the labora- should be glad about this, because the volume of bat tory. Both at the station in Many prey species have adapted to calls reaches the level of a jackhammer or even a jet Bulgaria and at the Max the echolocation strategies of bats. plane,” Holger Goerlitz explains. The bats calculate Planck Institute in Seewiesen, Moths have developed particularly their distance from an object according to the time the researchers use sound- good hearing in the frequency ranges used by their predators, and that elapses between the moment they emit their call proofed flight rooms use evasive maneuvers in flight. and the moment they hear the echo back. Fluctua- equipped with loudspeakers Bushcrickets also adapt their tions in the frequency – the pitch of the sound – as and microphones. These chirping to protect themselves well as the duration and volume of the echo also rooms are of course kept com- against attacks by bats. inform the animals as to whether the object is large or pletely dark, in keeping with small, smooth or rough, stationary or flapping its the animals’ nocturnal The sense of hearing evolved in moths and bushcrickets to commu- wings. This is how they can identify obstacles, find rhythm. The laboratory ex- nicate and to perceive the potential prey and even communicate with other periments have shown the re- surrounding, and not as a reaction members of their own species. This is not so easy in searchers that the bats con- to echolocation. the natural world, because bats are moving within stantly adapt their echoloca- complex sound environments during their nightly tion to the specific environ- hunting excursions. Other bats of the same or ment and task. In the open air 42 different species are calling, moths are flying about, they emit regular calls at low bushcrickets are singing, beetles rustle on the ground, frequencies, since these travel and leaves shake in the wind. particularly far. As a result, they can detect obstacles and prey over longer distances. In contrast, when fly- Goerlitz and his team are observing the animals in their ing in more confined spaces, when landing or when natural environment and in laboratory experiments approaching prey, the bats’ calls get shorter, contain to study the sensing and orientation strategies used more frequencies and are repeated more often. In this by bats and their prey. The group is operating a small way, the animals optimize different aspects of the research station in a village in northeastern Bulgaria. echoes to obtain more and more precise information Rivers have carved themselves deep into the rocks of about their environment from the returning echoes. the region’s karst landscape and a large number of “Thus, with their calls, bats let us know what they are caves have been created at their edges. This environ- currently interested in,” says Goerlitz. ment provides roosting sites and food for many diffe- rent bat species. “This is ideal territory for field re- Recently, the researchers have begun utilizing portable search and laboratory experiments,” Holger Goerlitz mini-measuring stations to study the strategies that enthusiastically explains. bats use when approaching prey. Fitted with sensors, these devices are attached to the backs of the bats, and The researchers capture the winged hunters at night as throughout the night, they collect data about the nat- they fly in and out of the caves, and then fit them with ural behavior of the animals in the wild. In this way, sensors. Since bats are nocturnal, the experiments Goerlitz and an international team of colleagues have are usually conducted in the first few hours after sun- discovered how the bats can differentiate between set. By setting up arrays with four to 22 microphones, their prey and other objects in the background. “Just the researchers record the calls of passing bats and before they attack, the background echoes disappear analyze their flight paths and the direction of their and the acceleration sensors kick in. In other words, calls. Using the tiny differences in the time that it shortly before they attack, the bats turn away from takes each call to reach all of the microphones, the the background and towards their prey. In this way, researchers calculate the three-dimensional location they fade out the background and focus on the prey,” of the animals. On the other hand, microphones Goerlitz explains. But the prey insects have their own placed just next to the prey species measure what they defense mechanisms against attacking bats. Moths, hear from the approaching predators. Then, the re- for example, can hear the echolocation calls made by searchers have to sit and wait. They’re wrapped up in the bats and react to the predators with sophisticated
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 Focus
Right: In the laboratory, Antoniya Hubancheva replays the hunting calls of a bat to a bushcricket and measures the insect’s reaction.
Below: Most bats are very delicate creatures. A young pale spear-nosed bat like this one held by Holger Goerlitz weighs just around 15 grams.
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44 PhOtO: Carsten braUn / FOtOFinDer
the greater mouse-eared bat can localize its prey even in absolute darkness. to do so, it uses echolocation and its fi nely tuned sense of hearing.
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Lesser and greater mouse-eared bats, common bent-wing bats and long-fingered bats in the Gabarnika Cave. The animals form huge colonies of tens of thousands of bats. They rear their young in the karst caves in northeastern Bulgaria, where they also roost during the winter months.
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 Focus
evasive maneuvers. This is surprising, since the in- case the variety of evasive maneuvers would be a sects have only a very simple ear. It consists of just group phenomenon. The researchers have been one eardrum and two nerve cells with different levels studying this hypothesis in the laboratory, using of sensitivity. As a result, the moths can perceive a highly sensitive technology to measure the reaction of broad frequency range and hear a bat as it attacks, but seven species of moths when they hear recordings of they are unable to differentiate between individual bat echolocation calls. The experiments have shown frequencies. that each species of moth uses different maneuvers. Among some species, there are even differences be- Jointly with a colleague from the U.S., Goerlitz has dis- tween individual moths. “Since several species of covered that the moths’ sense of hearing is adapted to moth live in one habitat, this diversity provides addi- the local bat population. For example, if bat species tional protection against the predators, since a bat is that call at a higher frequency are living in a region, unlikely to differentiate between the various species the ears of the local moths are more sensitive within of moth. As a result, it cannot know how the prey will this frequency range as well. The moths respond to a react,” says Goerlitz. bat attack with a two-stage evasive maneuver. If the bat is still far away, and its call is relatively faint, they To date, the researchers only understand the features of try to escape via the direct route. However, if the the two nerve cells that are activated immediately by predator comes closer and its calls become louder, the the vibrating eardrum. However, they know almost insects fly in a zig-zag pattern or in spirals, or they nothing about what happens to this information in drop to the ground. This variation in evasive maneu- the moth’s brain. Therefore, Goerlitz and his team vers makes it difficult for the hunters to catch their also want to find out more about the neuronal basis for prey. The researchers want to find out whether moths these types of behavior. “For example, how are the use different evasive maneuvers and which of these sensory inputs to the left and right ear combined? Or are the most successful. For example, it might be the how long does it take for a reaction to occur after the case that every moth utilizes all available flight strat- sound has entered the ear, and how is hearing influ- egies. However, it may also be possible that moths enced by other stimuli, such as light or the phero- only have one of these strategies available, in which mones of female moths?” To learn even more about
46
For their studies, the researchers also investigate bats in the laboratory. The bats are captured in fine-mesh nets, from which they are carefully extricated. F I RE G AN F TE S O: T O H P
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 Focus
the strategies that evolved in prey species to outsmart Instead, we localize the sound within the center between their attackers, Holger Goerlitz and his team are also them. The bats might experience a similar phenome- studying bushcrickets. Bushcrickets primarily use non, making it difficult for them to perceive and locate sounds to communicate with each other. But this their prey as individual targets. could reveal their location to bats, which not only actively emit echolocation calls, but also passively In summary, the researchers have observed various adap- listen for sounds generated by their prey; so the tations of the prey species in response to the hunting bushcrickets have to adapt their communication to strategies used by the bats. Have the bats responded in their nocturnal predators. For this reason, some turn, meaning that a kind of “arms race” is taking bushcrickets stop chirping when bats are close by. place between the hunters and their prey? “For many However, some species don’t let themselves get years, it was thought that this was the case. Bats and distracted by the hunters flitting around them and moths were considered a textbook example of coevolu- continue to sing as before. “Interestingly, these are tion between predators and prey,” Goerlitz says. One species that chirp with a fast rhythm and at high of his discoveries initially appeared to confirm this frequencies. It is possible that their chirps superim- view. Barbastelle bats mostly hunt moths that have a pose the echoes from the surrounding in such a way, sense of hearing. Their calls are ten times quieter than that the bats are no longer able to orient properly in those of other bat species. And the closer they come to their habitat,” Holger Goerlitz explains. the moth, the quieter they become. This enables the animals to outwit their prey’s auditory senses and The first laboratory data appears to confirm this idea. catch the moth. However, the disadvantage of this When bats hear the songs of bushcrickets via loud- hunting strategy is that the barbastelle bat only re- speakers, they are less successful in catching their ceives faint echoes from its environment, and there- prey. When several bushcrickets sing simultaneously, fore is almost flying blind.T he fact that it is willing to it could also create a similar stereo effect to the one we accept this handicap suggests that the advantages of hear from our stereo systems. Although the same its quiet echolocation for hunting compensate for its sound is coming from two sources (the speakers), we disadvantages during orientation. do not perceive them as being separate. However, Goerlitz no longer agrees with this idea, and is investigating an alternative explanation. Many close relatives of the barbastelle bat hunt along the edges of 47 forests and bushes and above meadows by listening for the rustling sounds made by insects. At such proxim- ity to the vegetation, loud orientation calls also gene- rate loud echoes from the vegetation. In addition, they mask the quiet rustling sounds of the insects. Possibly the ancestors of the barbastelle bats began to call more quietly to prevent this masking. The advantages of quiet echolocation for hunting prey with ears in open spaces would have been a secondary effect that the barbastelle bats only began to exploit later on. It was also assumed for a long time that the sense of hearing in moths had evolved in response to predation by bats. However, there are now indications that the moths were already able to hear millions of years before bats came on the scene. If that is true, then their sense of hearing evolved to communicate and as a general sense of their environment, and not as a specific reac- tion to nocturnal predators. “As you can see from this example, it is often difficult to determine the cause of an evolutionary development with any certainty,” Goerlitz explains.
“However, there is a simple reason why moths have adapted in more ways to bats than the other way around,” says Goerlitz. “For the prey, the pressure to succeed is far higher, since for them, it is nothing less than a matter of life and death. For the predator, how- ever, all that is at stake is another meal.” www.mpg.de/podcasts/schall (in German)
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 RACING AGAINST THE VIRUS Roadmap for new vaccines
VACCINE APPROVAL
START OF TESTING SEVERAL VACCINE CANDIDATES AGAINST SARS COV 2 Parallel testing of several vaccines (Status Spring 2020) in the same study
YEAR ?
PARTIALLY OVERLAPPING IMPLEMENTATION START OF OF PRECLINICAL, PHASE I, PHASE II, RESEARCH YEAR 0 AND PHASE III STUDIES
48
YEAR 0 YEAR 3 YEAR 12
“Currently, there is no ideal model to study the SARS-CoV-2-Virus.”
RESEARCH PRECLINIC PHASE I PHASE II PHASE III
20* 10* 5* 3* 1*
Search for Tests on 20 to 80 Tests on safety About 10.000 suitable tolerance volunteers and immune volunteers vaccines and per study response per study protective e ects in ======animals Tests on
Test in Protection DEVELOPMENT CLINICAL safety and s p e c i c from immune target group infection/ response disease * Estimated number of candidates
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 INFOGRAPHIC
New vaccines must prove their worth in time-consuming trials before they can be approved. Only one candidate in 20 passes all tests. The studies make sure that people only receive e ective and safe vaccines. In cases of mergency, such as the Corona crisis in 2020, researchers are trying to accelerate the development of candidates.
Vaccine development Sars-CoV-2-virus
Vaccine development in general
49
“Currently, there is no ideal model to study the SARS-CoV-2-Virus.” Prof. Stefan H. E. Kaufmann Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology INFOGRAPHIC: MPG BÜDINGER / MO
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 Campaigner for human rights
Mariela Morales Antoniazzi has challenged corruption in Latin America and mobilized its citizens. The Venezuelan-born lawyer is currently conducting research at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg to investigate why human rights are the prerequisite for any democracy – and how to defend them.
Text: Martin Tschechne 50
“There are indeed enough reasons to despair,” says the press? “There are indeed enough reasons to Mariela Morales Antoniazzi. “But who would despair,” reiterates the lawyer. But resignation is that help?” The Amazon rainforest is burning. just not in her character. It’s an issue concerning the pasture land and cultivation areas for an agricultural industry In Chile, police use firearms against demonstrators. that is expanding ever more rapidly. The areas The preferred target for the carabineros are the are so vast that they are visible in satellite photos demonstrators’ eyes. In Brazil, President Jair M. from space. In Argentina, women fall victim to Bolsonaro frivolously and cynically plays down the culture of machismo. Every 30 hours, the the danger of COVID-19. The ‘M’ in his name authorities report a murder; the perpetrator is stands for “Messiah”, but the inhabitants of the almost always a lover or husband. In Mexico, densely populated slums of Rio de Janeiro, the people are demonstrating in memory of the 43 favelas, have no chance against the pandemic. In students who disappeared without a trace in the Venezuela, two men are vying for the office of city of Iguala six years ago. They were not the president: the incumbent, Nicolás Maduro, and only ones, and they won’t be the last. Die Zeit the opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, who is offi- quotes one observer as saying that the country is cially recognized by around 50 states, including “one mass grave.” Nobody knows how many peo- the U.S. and the majority of EU countries. Ve- ple have been kidnapped and murdered to date. nezuela was once the fifth largest oil exporter in The estimated figure is around 60,000. the world. Today it staggers towards ruin; its people are starving. Five million people have al- Human rights? An opportunity for education and ready fled, most of them to neighboring coun- prosperity, for health, participation, freedom of tries, where as migrants they are no better off.
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 visit to
Mariela Morales Antoniazzi
51 PHOTO: KATHARINA DUBNO
A lawyer with an attitude. Mariela Morales Antoniazzi has set herself the task of utilizing her research to improve the living conditions for people in Latin America.
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 VISIT TO PHOTO: REUTERS / CHRISTIAN VERON
52
Protests in Caracas: after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro disempowered parliament in March 2017, tens of thousands of Venezuelans demonstrated against an impending dictatorship. The state reacted with reprisals.
Mariela Morales taps her finger on the table to the gion devastated by dictatorship and “hyper-pres- staccato of her complaints. Colombia, Honduras, identialism”, by mismanagement, drug traffick- Nicaragua. Venezuela is her homeland. She stu- ing, and civil war. died there, was politically active, and made a name for herself. She took on the police to break Is that really a topic for academic research? “Cer- the vicious circle of corruption – quite simply by tainly,” she says. “An urgent topic even!” Her making them install GPS navigation in patrol own journey has been protracted. She has been cars. From that moment on, civil officials at head- the Minister of the Interior and the Deputy Mi- quarters would always know where their security nister President of the State of Aragua, Chief of forces were patrolling, where they were stopping Police, lecturer at the Andrés Bello Catholic Uni- and perhaps knocking on a back door. She had versity and at the Central University of Venezu- tough guys in uniforms unburden themselves to ela in the capital city of Caracas. She is the psychotherapists about what was weighing on founder of a citizens’ movement for nationwide their minds at work. She speaks live on the Inter- change, an advisor to the government, a cam- net to 6000 students in Mexico, she distributes paigner, and a coordinator. Yet, for all her deter- her seminars about the human rights system of mination and almost defiant courage, in person, the Organization of American States online, and Mariela Morales is surprisingly engaging, open, she has published books – 24 of them to date – in and charming. Sporting a sunflower yellow jacket which she states that political morality in Latin and butterfly glasses in a retro look, she has deco- America is in a state of emergency. An entire re- rated the table in the conference room of the Max
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 VISIT TO
Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and curity was a signal to the people – perhaps even an International Law in Heidelberg with flowers and experiment. It might be said that suddenly being a doily upon which she has placed a self-made flan. placed in charge of the police, civil defense, and “Made with coconut milk,” she explains, beaming. fire departments was a bit overwhelming. After “It’s the secret ingredient that distinguishes Latin two weeks in office, Mariela Morales was ready to American egg custard from its Spanish counter- throw in the towel. “You need a politician,” she part. You must try it!” said to her boss, “not a professor!” Her opponents in the old guard were in complete agreement. Time and time again, she has seen that the vicious circle of greed for power and corruption can in- But she stayed. She recognized her opportunity and deed be broken. She cites the case of Velásquez grabbed it. She had tracking systems installed in Rodríguez vs. Honduras – kidnapping and murder police cars, banned public officials from having -lu by a corrupt regime – and the list goes on: Karen crative side jobs as security advisors, and made sure Atala vs. Chile, Maria da Penha vs. Brazil, that staff were better trained. Money wasn’t an is- González and others vs. Mexico. She continues to sue; thanks to state-owned oil production, it was list the names, each one telling the story of a suc- practically on tap. She overcame resistance with her cessful revolt: against the mistreatment and mur- friendly and cooperative approach. No time today? der of women, against the exploitation of indige- Tomorrow then, any time! The federal structure of nous communities, the destruction of the natural her country was a boon. “The power existed right environment, discrimination against homosexuals, where it could make a difference,” she says. “Decen- African Americans, migrants, and journalists. tralized. And that’s exactly what our goal was: to Against the pervasive practice of kidnapping and change things! Transformation.”
53 “There’s a world of difference between the constitutional texts and the reality on the ground.”
killing people, against the lack of rights of home- Carlos Tablante’s time in office ended in 1996, after less children, the suppression of ‘undesirable’ two terms. Mariela Morales remained in her post judges. “Something can and must be done,” she more months – but it was during that time that she concludes. “Always! Just think of Alberto Fuji- began to foster a debate on values like plurality and mori,” she says triumphantly. The president of the rule of law in other forums. She founded a Peru was accused of electoral fraud and corruption, non-governmental organization, held public semi- of deploying death squads, and of murder. He was nars on democracy, and discovered the In- made to stand trial. And he is currently serving ter-American System for the Protection of Human time in prison for his crimes. Rights: the Commissions and the Court. She ar- gued that these are powerful instruments to record Born in 1962, Mariela Morales Antoniazzi studied and publicize the individual stories of suffering law in Caracas. The stance of Catholic liberation and misery being felt from Mexico to Patagonia, to theology proponents regarding human rights and administer justice on the basis of international justice dominated the discourse at the time. When treaties, and to bring about political change. From Carlos Tablante, then Minister President of Ara- human rights policies based on witnesses and anal- gua, asked her to join his cabinet, Mariela Morales yses to more than 360 judicial rulings – the lawyer was 31, a young lecturer, married with two small in her never tires of citing from the list: Claude children, dedicated, educated, and full of idealism. Reyes in Chile, Barrios Altos in Peru, Sarayaku in Her appointment as the Minister for Internal Se- Ecuador...
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 VISIT TO
When Hugo Chávez ran for the office of Venezuelan tute in Heidelberg, she declared: “The living president to implement his vision of 21st century conditions for many people in Latin America are socialism, she was skeptical: “A military that a unacceptable.” few years earlier had attempted a violent coup d’état cannot govern in a truly democratic man- A contradiction? “Only at first glance,” says Morales ner.” Mariela Morales arrived in Germany with Antoniazzi. And therein lies the problem. She her family on September 30, 1998. A DAAD begins to expound on the concept of transforma- scholarship gave her the opportunity to obtain tive constitutionalism, which she and her col- her doctorate after years in political office and as leagues see as the goal of their work: “Constitu- an activist. The precise date is significant to her. tions are texts that define our rights. However, Three days later, she recalls, she witnessed Ger- there’s a world of difference between what they man Unity Day and was impressed. A democracy regulate and what they implement in practice. that has a reason to celebrate itself. Hugo Chávez Above all else, the promise is for equality – but we did not take office until December 6, 1998, a good are the most inequitable region in the world!” two months after her departure. “So I didn’t vote When reality and constitutional norms drift so for him,” emphasizes Mariela Morales. She far apart, social change becomes an imperative. wouldn’t have done so in any case. But she didn’t This marks the starting point for her academic know at the time that her fears would come true research. and that she would be unable to return to Venezu- ela. After all, the principle of democracy has a long his- tory in the region. It begins with its indepen- After all, hadn’t Hugo Chavez been feted as the shin- dence, back in the 19th century. At that time, the ing example of a reformer? “No!”, she contradicts countries of South America were poised for a new indignantly: “He was no reformer!” Was his suc- beginning. They adopted constitutions that were cessor, Nicolás Maduro, therefore, also a dicta- highly progressive and optimistic. They also en- 54 tor? “Definitely: sí!” Enter stage left Juan Guaidó, shrined democracy, human rights, and funda- would-be liberator of the country, with the sup- mental economic and social rights into law. When port of more than 50 countries, including Ger- the European states followed suit much later, many – but his priority appears to be winning the they discovered the South American principles support, of all people, of the authoritarian Don- were a valuable template. Similarly, the 1948 Uni- ald Trump. It’s not easy to understand how and versal Declaration of Human Rights from the why he arrived at his policy. “You don’t under- United Nations took as its basis the principles of stand?” Morales asks sharply. “Neither do I! A the Pan-American Union founded in 1910 – until year ago, directly after Guaidó’s international everything faded away or was crushed and dis- acknowledgement, we organized a colloquium in solved in the fury of the military dictatorships in Berlin to discuss the political situation in Vene- Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, zuela. What’s at stake is the guarantee of human Nicaragua and Peru. rights. That alone is the basis for my analysis. And I must stress that it is especially difficult for However, unlike in other regions of the world, what the opposition to make any headway, because the remained was a consciousness and a political cul- current dictatorship has taken other forms than ture, international connections, vigilant protest those in the past. There’s a difference. But it’s movements, and well-established, competent in- still a dictatorship.” stitutions like the Inter-American Human Rights System. “What we are striving for,” says Mariela This makes the role of supranational institutions all Morales resolutely, “is an expansive guarantee of the more important. So is effective networking the separation of powers, an independent judi- with human rights organizations, both regional ciary, and a guarantee of human rights. That ap- and international. Constant feedback from state plies to elections and freedom of expression and institutions, such as constitutional bodies or movement, but above all, to health, education, courts, is also of great significance. “The princi- and employment.” ple of democracy is now firmly established in South America,” Morales wrote in the first sen- Of course, she sometimes gets a lump in her throat tence of her dissertation in 2013. However, six when she hears news from her homeland that years later, in an article published together with shows how far reality is from these lofty goals. Armin von Bogdandy, the Director of the Insti- But at other times it fills her with righteous fury.
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 VISIT TO
Charming, but tenacious: as Minister for Internal Security in the Venezuelan state of Aragua, Mariela Morales thwarted police corruption in the mid-1990s. Nowadays, the lawyer lives in Heidelberg and follows the developments in her native 55 country with concern. ATHARINA DUBNO : K hotos P
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 VISIT TO
More than 400 lawyers and scholars throughout slums, and healthcare workers. “The virus Latin America belong to her project network Ius doesn’t discriminate,” Morales quotes a World Constitutionale Commune en América Latina, Health Organization (WHO) memorandum, all of whom are connected to citizens’ movements “but its effects vary greatly. If just one community and organizations in their regions. Mariela Mo- of indigenous people becomes infected, they all rales has organized 211 international colloquia perish.” from her home base in Heidelberg, and she con- siders the availability of online communication For politicians, the epidemic frequently provides an platforms – zoom conferences, Skype discus- opportunity to restrict fundamental rights, vir- sions, webinars – a real blessing. It has never been tually at a single stroke. “So we must be vigilant,” easier for her to reach so many people and get warns Morales. Which rights are being curtailed? them talking, to bundle their reports and use On what grounds are restrictions being imposed? them to develop strategies and scholarly con- For how long? “Human rights are the issue,” she cepts. says. They must include medical care and access to clean water, the preservation of the natural But it also has never been more urgent. COVID-19 environment, as well as education, employment, is a disease that first and foremost devastates the freedom of expression, political participation, poor. 30 percent of the population of Latin Amer- and an independent judiciary. ica live in poverty, 11 percent live in extreme poverty, and 53 percent work without a fixed con- “And don’t assume,” she adds, “that the issues con- tract. The elderly, women, and children are par- cern only the corona virus and Latin America. ticularly exposed to the threat, along with refu- We always keep countries like Poland or Hungary gees, marginalized groups, the inhabitants of the in mind as well.”
56
Closed 019 Repressed Latin America’s civil 2 ort
society in crisis ep Obstructed R The organization CIVICUS evaluates Narrowed
whether citizens are allowed to exercise itoring
their liberties in the civic space. The on Open category ‘openness’ is a measure of the M
extent to which citizens of a country are icus Not specified iv guaranteed freedom of association and C on assembly, as well as freedom of expression. Many Latin American countries violate these fundamental rights. based GCO
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 ForschungResearch leichtdoesn gemacht’t have to be heavy.
The Max Planck Society’s magazine is available as an ePaper:
www.mpg.de/mpr-mobile d the Downloa www.mpg.de/mpresearch eMagazine for free! 58 APPROVED FOR SPECIES PROTECTION
Text: Klaus Jacob
For centuries, their lives were under threat: Europeans
considered bears, wolves and ibexes either as a threat, PHOTO: IMAGO IMAGES / BLICKWINKEL a food source or trophies, and hunted them to extinction. Wilko Graf von Hardenberg, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, studies the ways in which our relationship to iconic mammals has changed over the centuries.
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 Knowledge from
Environment & climate PHOTO: IMAGO IMAGES / BLICKWINKEL
Back on top: following an eventful history, during the course of which Alpine ibexes were sometimes found exclusively in the Gran Paradiso region and even there were only a few hundred specimens, there are now large numbers living in the Italian national park and throughout the entire Alps. Knowledge from
For the first time in more than 170 years, are part of the original Bavarian Institute for the History of Science a brown bear came wandering ecosystem and that they should once in Berlin has been looking into how through Bavaria in the summer of again be accepted as the uppermost humans deal with iconic animals. In 2006, having made its way from Italy link of the food chain. On the other the current context, the word to Germany via Austria. Bruno, as side stood the livestock farmers, who “iconic” refers to animals that have a he was dubbed, soon became the talk were concerned for their herds, as special meaning for humans. Tradi- of the town and became a popular well as members of the public an- tionally, these mainly include the topic in press reports. He was even xious about having to coexist with a large predators, such as bears and featured in a report in the New York predator and who were only too wolves, whose great strength im- Times. True to his nature, he would happy to talk in terms of “the pro- presses us and which are depicted as prey on sheep and goats and plunder blem bear.” Following the fatal shot, heraldic animals on flags and coins. beehives. He soon became a “pro- emotions boiled over among both The eagle too belongs in this group. blem bear” as he began to venture parties: there were lawsuits and even Yet there are also harmless herbi- close to residential areas, and caused death threats. vores, such as the ibex, that have general merriment when the then been elevated due to their majestic Prime Minister of Bavaria, Edmund appearance, as well as their impor- Stoiber, used the term in a clumsy The history tance for hunting. The ibex is de- manner. He was shot dead on June picted in the coats of arms of numer- 26, 2006, following weeks of unsuc- of iconic animals ous Swiss cantons. “An irony of his- cessful attempts to capture him. The tory,” says Hardenberg: “of all the manner in which the 110 kilogram In the case of wolves, which are once heraldic animals there are, this one animal was dealt with serves as a again roaming free in some areas of became extinct in Switzerland for good example of the problems asso- Germany, there is a similar dispute about a century.” The last one was ciated with human-predator coexis- involving conservation on the one shot there in the first half of the 19th tence: no sooner had the intruder hand and the safety of people and century and the species wasn’t rein- crossed into Germany than two im- property on the other. And such dis- troduced until 1920. placably opposed factions formed. putes are not new: for many years, On the one side were the nature con- environmental historian Wilko Graf Large animals need extensive ranges to servationists, who argued that bears von Hardenberg of the Max Planck survive; in the case of brown bears 60 this is between 100 and 300 square kilometers for females and males re- spectively, and about half as much for wolves. More often than not, even national parks are too small, as many animals travel long distances. Young wolves and bears will travel hundreds The final tally-ho: Vittorio invited Emanuele III to the royal ibex hunt in the Gran Paradiso area, which he owned, for the final time in 1913. He ceded the of kilometers in search of new territo- region to the state six years later, under the condition that a nature park ries. Thus, people have always had to for the protection of animals and plants be established there. come to some arrangement with the large predators. Until the end of the 19th century, the arrangement was very one-sided: bears and wolves were hunted mercilessly in the Middle Ages and for a long time afterwards, and the hunters were often even paid a bounty. These predators were demonized, which is still evident in many fairy tales, for example when the wolf eats Little Red Riding Hood. The brown bear had already disappeared from the British Isles about 1000 years ago, and it became extinct in Northern Germany towards the end of the 18th century. It was able to survive for
PHOTO: PNGP (PARCO NAZIONALE (PARCO PHOTO: PNGP GRAN PARADISO) another 50 years in Bavaria, but an- other 100 years later, after the Sec- ond World War, all that remained in the Alpine region were a few isolated colonies in Italy and Slovenia.
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 environment & climate
NUMBER OF IBEXES
3800
3600
3400
3200
3000 NUMBER OF GAMEKEEPERS 2800 65
2600 60
55 2400 50 2200 45
2000 40
35 1800 30 1600 25 GRAPHIC: GCO BASED ON WILKO HARDENBERG VON
1400 20
15 1200 10 61 1000 5
800 0
600
400 ADMINISTRATIONS
200 Royal Commission for the Gran Paradiso National Forest Militia Special Autonomous National Park Commis- admini- sioner stration 1941 1931 1947 1927 1937 1924 1928 1923 1925 1942 1932 1929 1938 1935 1939 1930 1926 1933 1949 1950 1934 1936 1940 1948 1945 1943 1946 1944
The signifi cant eff ects of centralization: the number of ibexes in the Gran Paradiso National Park was not always determined reliably between 1923 and 1947, partly because the park administration changed their survey method during that period. However, the statistics reveal the trends, the most obvious of which is that when the supervision of the park was entrusted to the National Forestry Militia by the fascist regime and extra-regional militiamen were brought into the region, the ibex population shrank dramatically. It only recovered after the end of this era.
Had not a new way of thinking taken Europe. The idea was to protect This enabled a romantic image to root in politics and society in the animals rather than hunt them. take hold, in which even large preda- early 20th century when nature con- Hardenberg suspects that this tors had their place. But this was not servation began to gain in impor- change in thinking was the result of a straightforward development and it tance, bears and other iconic animals industrialization, as more and more depended upon many factors. Each would probably have become com- people started living in cities and region had its own traditions, eco- pletely extinct throughout Western lost touch with untamed nature. nomic structures and political bias.
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 Knowledge from
So one has to look very closely at the present Italy as the final refuge for detail to understand how the rela- the species, and their propaganda tionship between humans and large emphasized the extent to which the mammals has changed over time. fascist regime was committed to the protection of Italy’s natural envi- This is what Hardenberg has done. He ronment. However, this failed en- conducted research into the ma- tirely. The fascists established a nagement of the ibex in the Italian dedicated forestry police force, the Gran Paradiso massif region be- Milizia Nazionale Forestale, which tween the two world wars. The re- was recruited from all parts of Italy. sults, from two years spent search- Prior to that, the gamekeepers had ing the archives, will be published been recruited from the local area. by the University of Pittsburgh The outsiders were neither familiar Press in 2021 in a book entitled A with the nature of the region nor Monastery for the Ibex. The book with its game passes and secret tells the story of how the Gran Par- trails, nor with the peculiarities of adiso area ensured the survival of the local population. Because many the Alpine ibex (Capra ibex). The of the militias had been posted to high alpine region north of Turin this remote region as a punishment became the final refuge for the spe- for disciplinary violations, their cies during the 20th century. Like motivation levels were very low. the brown bear, it had become al- Their ignorance also made it easy most extinct in the Alps and only for locals to outwit them. The story NAZIONALE (PARCO PHOTO: PNGP GRAN PARADISO) survived there. All living members is told of one gamekeeper who of the species descend from this courted a local woman whose two bio-reservoir. The fact that the ibex brothers were well-known poachers, did not vanish completely is down so she was always able to tell them to the intervention of the authori- well in advance which routes the 62 ties. King Carlo Felice banned the various patrols would take. The hunting of these rare animals as brothers hunted the ibexes unchal- early as 1821, and King Vittorio lenged and even processed the meat Emanuele II established a royal in their own restaurants. hunting reserve around 30 years later and had it guarded by a dedi- cated corps of guards. Ultimately, Whilst ibexes this became the forerunner of the Gran Paradiso National Park, which are currently was established in 1922, shortly af- protected, this is not ter the First World War. always the case Thanks to the protection this provided, the number of ibexes increased for bears and wolves from 2370 in 1922 to 3865 in 1933. But then the development toppled But was poaching really the only thing Princeton University in New Jersey. in the opposite direction and the responsible for the sharp decline in The researchers had developed it in population fell dramatically. Whilst the ibex population? There are 2004 to determine the extent to 1564 animals had been recorded in other conceivable reasons, such as which the ibex population depended 1942, this number had fallen to just particularly harsh winters, frequent on climate in precisely this Alpine 419 towards the end of the Second avalanches, epidemics and having region. Although the period in World War. The cause was quickly to compete with chamois for food. question was 1956 to 2000, theoreti- identified: poachers had almost And there were indeed some ex- cally the model should also work for wiped out the population for cheap tremely severe winters at that time. earlier years. Hardenberg applied it meat. The fact that they were able However, Hardenberg wanted to to the interwar years and the results to go about their business undis- know precisely what happened, so were clear: by no means can the pre- turbed can be explained by the pre- he applied modern biostatistical vailing weather conditions explain vailing political situation: following methods to the historical data. He the decline in the ibex population Mussolini’s rise to power, the fas- made use of a computer model de- after 1933. Outbreaks of disease and cists intervened in the park admin- veloped by a research team led by avalanches can also be ruled out, as istration in 1933. Their goal was to climatologist Andrew Jacobson of the park administration would have
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Protection for fauna and flora: the Gran Paradiso National Park is about the size of Hamburg. Today, it not only provides a haven for plants and ibexes, but also for wolves. Bearded vultures have also been returning since the 2000s – for the first time ever in the Western Alps.
documented such events. The only cess to this fact, the situation is tremely rare in the Alps during the remaining cause, therefore, was in- more complicated when it comes to 19th century as a result of several deed poaching. the large predators that can get into factors: on the one hand, the ani- conflict with humans. Protecting mals were hunted with a vengeance The ibex is no longer endangered in bears, wolves or lynxes, for example, right up to the first third of the 20th the Alps, where approximately is always associated with a consider- century because they preyed on 45,000 animals are currently thri- able amount of conflict. In the book goats and sheep. Most of the inhab- ving, of which about 13,000 are in The Nature State, which was pub- itants of the Alps still lived from Italy and over 17,000 in Switzerland. lished by Routledge in 2017 and agriculture at that time, so they had There are even a few hundred ibexes which he co-edited, Hardenberg reason to fear predators. climbing around the German Alps, describes how the coexistence of and their numbers appear to be in- man and bear has developed in On the other hand, the Alpine land- creasing. Whilst the conservation Trentino. Ultimately, the story of scape underwent a radical change: and reintroduction of the ibex is the problem bear Bruno is also a forests were cleared, Alpine pas- currently supported by all sides and result of this history. It all started tures were established, new settle- probably owes a large part of its suc- when brown bears became ex- ments were constructed, tourism
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fl ourished, roads and railways were laid through remote valleys, and in- dustrial enterprises settled there. Bears, which need large ranges, found ever fewer refuges. They were no longer able to move from their summer pastures to their wintering grounds without crossing traffi c routes or coming close to buildings. Even in the course of their usual for-
ays they always came across human MANFRED SPRENGER DPA) encroachment. Ultimately, the bears were forced to coexist with civiliza-
tion; rather than avoiding people, as – REPORT (NEUEPHOTO: DPA ZEITUNG FOR TIROL/ is their natural tendency, they ac- cepted our proximity. The result, according to Hardenberg, was that: Ventured too close to humans: because unlike many “The number of confl icts between of his species, Bruno the bear did not remain in humans and bears rose sharply.” remote regions of the Alps, he became a “problem” Claiming self-defense, people would in Bavaria and was shot on June 26, 2006. reach for their guns wherever bears appeared.
Attitudes towards the brown bear began to change at the start of the 20th cen- tury, not least because more people were beginning to adopt a romantic view of nature and no longer simply however, had just escaped and later regarded predators as enemies. reappeared. The bear was inno- 64 Many intellectuals and politicians at cent. that time began to believe that the existence of bears was endangered By the mid-1990s, there were only three and demanded protective measures. bears remaining in the Adamello- But the killing continued. Decades Brenta Nature Park – too few to passed before a protected area maintain a breeding population. was fi nally opened in the This critical situation fi nally mobi- Adamello-Brenta region. The fas- lized the state. To avoid having to cists, of all people, then stood up for abandon this highly symbolic animal the endangered species – again for and under the auspices of an EU propaganda purposes. project, the park administration brought in bears from Slovenia, In 1936, the Italian Ministry of Agricul- where there are still large popula- ture and Forestry prohibited the tions. The operation was launched hunting and capture of bears, enac- on May 26, 1999. A truck struggled ting the fi rst total ban on bear hun- up a narrow mountain road in the ting anywhere in the world. How- Tovel valley with a male brown bear ever, because there were no game- from Slovenia in its trailer. Nine ad-
keepers and the local population was ditional transports were to follow in AUSSERHOFER BETTINA PHOTO: not supportive, not much changed. the following years, and the popula- Many claimed that not only were tion eventually recovered. farm animals in danger, but also children. Even state compensation Among the imported animals were the for the damage caused could not pre- parents of “problem bear” Bruno. vent the trend, though the farmers Joze, the father, was rehomed in were happy to take the money. Har- Trentino on May 22, 2000, followed denberg unearthed an incident that by the mother, Jurka, on May 3, 2001. took place in September 1954 invol- Bruno, a dyed-in-the-wool Italian, ving a missing cow. The farmer de- was born in 2004. However, none of manded compensation, claiming the family was particularly lucky, that a bear had killed his cow, which which probably has to do with the
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 environment & climate
idiosyncrasies of the mother. She wolves have once again taken up per- On the other side are the conservation- never behaved aggressively towards manent residence here after almost ists, such as the Nature and Biodi- humans, but did venture close to vil- 150 years. “From a human perspec- versity Conservation Union lages where she broke into stables tive, wolves are more dangerous than (NABU), who have proclaimed a and plundered beehives. Basically, bears,” Hardenberg explains. This is National Wolf Day and are calling she had adapted very well to the because, whereas bears are predomi- for donations. As Hardenberg has dense human settlement in the Alps. nantly herbivorous, wolves are pri- demonstrated in his work on other Because people refused to accept marily carnivorous. 60 packs, 6 pairs iconic mammals, whether the wolf this, Jurka was captured in 2010 and and 6 individuals have found a home will be able to survive long-term is moved to the “Black Forest Alterna- here since 1998. The Federal Docu- no longer a matter of nature: “It’s a tive Wolf and Bear Park.” Her off - mentation and Consultation Centre political decision,” the researcher spring, who had all learned from her on Wolves (DBBW) keeps meticu- explains. This is because man inter- example, fared worse. Not only lous records of this. Discussions feres with the environment and spe- Bruno was shot, but also his younger about this lupine immigrant are si- cies diversity to a profound extent brother, who had strayed into milar to the dispute about bears in and ultimately determines wildlife Switzerland, where he would rum- Italy. Hunters and livestock farmers populations, species composition mage through dumpsters. would prefer to shoot the wolves. And and even the vegetation. Today, the anxious urbanites would also like to notion of an untamed, pristine natu- Bears only tend to come to Germany en forgo the slight sensation of fear when ral environment is reserved for ro- route from other countries, whereas hiking through the countryside. mantics.
On the trail of animals and humans: SUmmarY Wilko Graf von Hardenberg carries 65 out research into how our Humans have hunted bears, relationship with large mammals wolves, lynxes and ibexes has changed over time. ruthlessly for centuries, until these large mammals were only found in a few remote areas.
Many people’s attitude towards these iconic mammals has changed since the early 20thcentury, but there have been multiple setbacks in terms of protecting them.
Using the ibex population in the Italian Gran Paradiso massif as an example, Wilko Graf von Hardenberg has reconstructed the eventful history of eff orts to protect it. He also used computational modeling to demonstrate that it was hunting, rather than climatic factors that thwarted eff orts to protect the animals between the First and Second World Wars.
Man’s relationship with bears and wolves continues to be marked by the confl icting interests of conservationists on the one hand and cattle farmers and the concerned public on the other.
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 66 these animals are extremely are animals these with great ease. great with pathogens that means which Chimpanzee Kinshasa with her with Kinshasa Chimpanzee left to right) taï the in Park national brother Kuba and son Kiriku (from brother Kuba Kiriku son and in the république the in de d’ivoire. Côte can spread within a community acommunity within spread can sociable and live in large groups, groups, live large and in sociable max Planckresearch knowledge froM ·2 | 2020
Photo: CristinA Gomes/tAi ChimPAnZee ProJeCt Biology & Medicine
Viruses from the wilderness
Text: Catarina Pietschmann
Roman Wittig, who heads up the Taï Chimpanzee Project at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, knows what happens when a virus changes its host, and has experienced it several times in the 67 Taï National Park in the République de such as SARS-CoV-2, are diseases loss at the time. Together with his that can be transmitted from ani- wife Hedwige, Boesch founded the Côte d’Ivoire, the last time having mals to humans, or vice versa. The chimpanzee project in the Taï Na- been four years ago, when a coronavi- pathogens involved could be viruses, tional Park in 1979 and, as Director rus that is harmless to humans jumped but also bacteria, fungi, worms or of the Department of Primatology, from humans to chimpanzees. In infectious proteins – the so-called later transferred it to the Max Planck collaboration with Fabian Leendertz prions. Pigs, rodents, birds, and bats, Institute for Evolutionary Anthro- including flying foxes, have been a pology in Leipzig in 1997. Fabian of the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, recurring source and target of such Leendertz flew out to the national he is looking into pathogens that host exchanges in the past. The same park, which is the last remaining ex- cause disease in chimpanzees and is true of our closest animal relatives, tensive rainforest area in West Africa, which of them could also pose a threat the great apes. For example, we and spent 13 months investigating to humans. share 99 percent of our genetic mate- the deaths. This was the start of a rial with chimpanzees, which are close collaboration between the two particularly susceptible to respira- Institutes that continues to this tory diseases. Many of the chimps in day. Everything had to happen very quickly the National Park were repeatedly when SARS-CoV-2 reached the falling victim to mysterious infec- “There have been several major and mi- Côte d’Ivoire: which team members tions as early as the 1990s. “They nor outbreaks of disease during the would remain and who would be fly- started coughing and sniffling, be- past 20 years.” Leendertz explains: ing back to Germany? “We weren’t came lethargic and lost their appe- “We examined all the sick and de- so worried about the staff,” Wittig tites,” says Wittig: “They slept on ceased animals and collected fecal explains, “as they are isolated and the ground rather than in the trees – samples from the sick ones. We per- very well protected out there in the something they never usually do for formed autopsies on the dead ones rainforest.” Instead he wanted to not fear of leopards.” There was a major under strict safety precautions, as we only protect the park’s chimpanzees wave of infections in 1999, which were aware that there had also been from getting infected but also, as he caused severe symptoms in 50 to 70 cases of Ebola in chimps.” The anal- explains: “If we had all flown home, percent of the animals, almost one in yses revealed that many of the out- the chimps would have been left to five of which died. Behavioral scien- breaks were caused by respiratory the mercy of poachers.” Zoonoses, tist Christophe Boesch was also at a diseases.
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Leendertz was able to identify various “The animals live here in their natural Thanks to the continuous emergence of common cold viruses as well as a environment and when they fall ill, new technologies, researchers are coronavirus known as OC43. The they help us to identify the causes.” even able to reexamine samples that viruses came from humans and have already been analyzed to shed cause only mild symptoms in adults. light on things such as nutritional The apes’ immune systems, by con- Treasure in the cold status or changes to the immune sys- trast, were unable to fight the patho- tem and intestinal flora.W hen, for gen, which was new to them. storage room example, they discovered a new, aty- Leendertz also identifiedS trepto- pical anthrax pathogen known as Ba- coccus pneumoniae bacteria – so- Over 50,000 fecal and 40,000 urine cillus cereus biovar anthracis, in dead called pneumococci – in the chim- samples, as well as tissue from autop- chimpanzees, they also analyzed panzees, which can also be transmit- sies and genetic samples are cur- older bone and tissue samples and ted by humans. “We now know that rently in storage in the cold rooms at discovered that of 55 dead animals, 31 such secondary bacterial infections the Max Planck and Robert Koch had been infected with the bacterium. can contribute to the severity of a vi- Institutes. In most cases, the re- Subsequent analyses revealed that ral disease.” searchers even know which chim- the pathogen had also been responsi- panzee a given sample was taken ble for the deaths of numerous wild The researchers developed strict han- from. “Such long-term data re- chimpanzees, gorillas and elephants dling and hygiene guidelines to pro- presents a treasure of immense im- in Cameroon and the Central African tect wild animals from human dis- portance,” as Roman Wittig ex- Republic. “Now there are signs that eases in the future, which are still in plains: “It becomes increasingly suggest that humans in the region force today. Anyone arriving at any valuable over time because very few have also become infected with the of the four camps in the Taï National studies go back that far.” pathogen,” said Leendertz. Park to carry out research is quaran- tined for five days. H“ andwashing and wearing a mask are also compul- sory,” says Wittig. Since that time, 68 researchers have been monitoring the health of the chimpanzees in Taï National Park: the team collects fe- cal and urine samples and examines them for pathogens in the labora- tory.
But humans are not the only ones capa- Once a month, Roman Wittig’s team collects feces and urine from each of the habituated chimpanzees. Fabian Leendertz and Wittig examine the feces for traces of pathogens. ble of transmitting pathogens to ani- This photo shows a student of the Taï Chimpanzee Project collecting urine in a mals: there is a plethora of unknown plastic bag from a chimpanzee perched in a tree above her. The mask she is wearing viruses, bacteria and parasites slum- protects against a possible infection of both humans and animals. bering in primeval forests around the world, which could become dan- gerous to humans. For many years, therefore, scientists have been hun- T C
ting down mosquitoes, mice and bats E J
and studying the pathogens they RO P EE
carry. Unfortunately, however, this Z N
does not enable us to identify which PA M
of the pathogens can actually cause HI C I A
diseases in humans. Apes, on the T / R
other hand, are susceptible to a spe- E ctrum of pathogens very similar to ZG ET that of humans and often fall ill from M JA JA ON
the same infections. “So any patho- S gens we find could be heading our : HOTO
way.” Leendertz explains: “That’s P why we now use chimps as indicators of new, potentially dangerous germs.” The rainforest serves as a huge open- air laboratory for the veterinarian.
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 Biology & Medicine
% Mortality rate of the North Group Mortality rate of the South Group Average birth rate of the Taï chimpanzees 40
30
20
GrAPhiC: GCo 10 2015 2010 1985 1995 1990 2005 2000
Chimpanzee mortality rates between 1985 and 2017 in the north and south Group of the taï Chimpanzee Project. the comparison with the average birth rate shows that signifi cantly more chimpanzees died than were born in many years. in the last 20 years, the chimpanzee population in the park as a whole has decreased by 90 percent. only in the past few years has the population stabilized to a certain extent.
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“A disrupted in samples taken from several outbreaks, next pathogen makes the leap to hu- the researchers also recently suc- mans, as we are doing everything ecological ceeded in detecting the pathogen re- possible to promote zoonoses: we are sponsible for monkeypox, a viral encroaching ever further into hith- equilibrium favors disease that is transmissible to hu- erto pristine regions and coming into mans and can cause a mild illness closer contact with wild animals. we similar to smallpox, but can also be hunt, trade and eat wild animals on a zoonoses.” fatal. the list of currently known massive scale. And thanks to today’s zoonoses includes over 200 diseases, mobility, we are able to spread patho- rOman WiTTiG ranging from A for Anthrax to Z for gens across the entire globe within a Zika. At up to 300,000 new infec- very short time. tions per year the lassa virus, which fi rst appeared in 1969, is among the the, for the most part illegal, hunting most prominent examples. this was of wild animals is increasing the followed in 1983 by hiV which has worldwide risk of pathogens being so far killed 41 million people around transmitted from animals to humans. the world. then it was one thing af- the consumption of “bushmeat” ter another: the h5n1 bird fl u has also has a long tradition in Africa. been around since the 1990s, sArs “the people attribute special powers emerged in 2003, the h1n1 swine fl u to wild animals and there is a wide- in 2009, mers in 2011, ebola in 2014, spread belief that these powers will and Zika in 2015. And now sArs- be transferred to them when they eat CoV-2. this does not surprise fa- the animals.” there is also the fact bian leendertz, who considers it to that many animals have become so be only a matter of time until the rare that prices have soared and, as a
max Planck research · 2 | 2020 knowledge from
result, wild animal products have tig insists, “we ought to do every- therefore, that SARS, Marburg, become status symbols for the rich. thing possible to put a stop to the Ebola and the new coronavirus Rhinoceros horn is so sought after in deforestation of the rainforests, the originated in these flying mammals. China and Vietnam that it is now illegal hunting of wild animals and worth its weight in gold. Although climate change.” hunting wild animals is prohibited But how does a virus in many African countries, monito- The poachers are now focusing on ring is lax and the profits tempting. smaller game because the large ani- get from a bat Leendertz himself witnessed how mals in many regions have been ex- to a chimpanzee? custom officials at Abidjan airport terminated. Bats, for example, are asked a fellow passenger to open her now being hunted by the hundreds suitcase: it was full of desiccated of thousands. However, not only are As Leendertz explains, “A fruit bat will monkeys! they sought after as a source of meat, chew on a ripe fig one night and they also harbor a plethora of micro- leave its saliva behind. The next To counteract the ever-increasing de- organisms. “Fruit bats and other morning, a chimpanzee will eat the struction, Wittig and Leendertz bats are ideal hosts,” Leendertz ex- remainder of the same piece of fruit, have proposed the so-called “One plains, “because this genus includes and the microbes it contains will Health” concept, which is intended a large number of species, and, for find themselves in a new organism.” to reduce the risk of new pandemics. this reason alone, they host a wide If they then succeed in evading “It is simply becoming increasingly variety of pathogens, which, because the ape’s immune system, multiply apparent that disrupted ecological bats travel long distances in their within its body and then go on equilibrium favors zoonoses. We nocturnal flights in search of prey, to infect other chimpanzees, they need healthy ecosystems for the sake can be dispersed rapidly over long will have succeeded in changing of our own health. Therefore,” Wit- distances.” It is no coincidence, hosts.
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As insectivores, the bats’ diet does not the rainforests. “Bats” as Leendertz overlap with that of chimpanzees, emphasizes, “also do a lot for us hu- SUMMARY but their habit of sleeping in hollow mans, even in major cities such as trees does result in contact opportu- Berlin.” They can eat up to a third of Pathogens can easily cross the species nities. “Thirsty chimpanzees often their bodyweight in insects, inclu- boundary between chimpanzees and find pools of water in such trees. ding mosquitoes, every night. humans, because the two species are They then chew up leaves, dip them “Without bats, we would have malaria genetically closely related: in the past, as a makeshift ‘sponge’ into the pool epidemics in regions in which the HI-, Ebola- (from ape to man) and coronaviruses (from man to ape) have and suck the water out of them – and disease has thus far been virtually already succeeded in doing so. a virus or bacterium can find its way non-existent.” In addition, none of into the new host.” the coronaviruses that are dangerous The primary causes of zoonoses are to humans are found in Central Eu- considered to be habitat destruction, However, demonizing bats because of ropean bat species. the illegal hunting of wild animals, their “cohabitants”, driving them intensive livestock farming and burgeoning mobility. out of houses or even exterminating Do chimpanzees actually take care of them would be a bad idea. Fruit bats, each another when one of them falls There are close links between human, by contrast, are pure herbivores and ill? “Yes,” says Wittig, “that happens animal and environmental health. In feed on fruit, pollen, nectar and all the time. For example, we re- the battle against the transmission of flowers and are, therefore, important cently saw a leopard attack an adult the pathogens, researchers are therefore pursuing the “One Health” pollinators. They then excrete the female and literally scalp her during concept for a healthy environment, pips and seeds of their meals when the struggle. Her offspring and humans and animals. they defecate far from the original friends kept coming over to her and location thus making an essential licking the wound. And she survived contribution to the reforestation of it. If a youngster is sick and cannot
71 H B M A G EDI M V TI K E BJ O
Each species harbors ND its own viruses: AB A L
occasionally, these can Z leap from one species to another. Humans EENDERT L
are destroying the
habitats of many HE T
N
animals, and thus are O
coming into contact D SE with new pathogens, A B O
which can jump C
directly to humans or C: G be transmitted via HI AP R
their pets. The G infection risk is partic- ularly high in wild animal markets.
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I AB
L Future … FO / A EUTERS R / E C N A I LL A RE TU C I : P HOTO P
Did you read the headline, remember a 1980s film, and ask what frontier research has to do with it? 72 Like a VCR, your brain just generated a stream of memory-related sequential A bushmeat vendor offers his goods for sale at the roadside.T he transmission The Max Planck Foundation has sup ported activity patterns. of pathogens is favored by poor hygienic conditions in wildlife markets. the Max Planck Society for more than The Foundation supports Yingxue ten years by providing targeted funding Wang at the Max Planck Florida for top-level innovative and cutting-edge Institute for Neuroscience; she tackles research at the more than 80 institutes, the question how the hippocampus enabling breakthroughs in frontier science. keep up with the group,” he continues, Do the researchers help sick chimpan- So chimpanzees are extremely sensitive processes information, when our brain As a patron, you can make a crucial “the mother will leave it in a fruit-bea- zees? “No!” says Wittig. “We want to to respiratory tract infections. The integrates past and future into the ring tree. She then returns every observe the animals’ natural lives, consequences for them could be dra- difference by creating additional scope present. other day to check on it until it recov- which include illness and injury – we matic if SARS-CoV-2 were to reach to keep this research ahead of the curve ers.” don’t want to interfere in that.” the chimpanzees in the Taï National Park. If a vaccine was available, Wit- in the international scientific competition. If an alpha male or an old female dies, the However, there was one exception: “It tig would probably inoculate at least Join us! group members gather round, touch was when we realized we had infected those of them that have become ac- the corpse and groom its fur. And the animals with our cold viruses and customed to the researchers. “For
some of them give in to their frustra- we didn’t yet know how to protect the chimpanzees of Taï National ADVERT Max-Planck-Foundation tion. “When Ravel, a 15-year-old them.” To combat secondary pneu- Park, it’s purely a matter of survival: Deutsche Bank male, died,” Wittig recalls, “Oscar, mococcus infections, which is also of the 3000 animals alive in 2000, his best friend with whom he had transmitted by humans, Leendertz just 300 are still alive today. We have IBAN DE46 7007 0010 0195 3306 00 grown up, tried again and again to lift used a blowgun to inject some of the a moral duty to protect the chimpan- the corpse up and get it to stand up. sick animals – including Sumatra, a zees from an epidemic that we our- But, when that didn’t work, he ran female who was seriously ill at the selves triggered.” about screaming and flinging sticks time – with an antibiotic. That was around.” Dead chimps are also some- over 20 years ago and, thanks to the times covered over with branches or therapy, Sumatra is now a very el- leaves. derly chimpanzee matron. www.maxplanckfoundation.org
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 SECTION BIOSCIENCES Back to the Future …
Did you read the headline, remember a 1980s film, and ask what frontier research has to do with it?
Like a VCR, your brain just generated a stream of memory-related sequential The Max Planck Foundation has sup ported activity patterns. the Max Planck Society for more than The Foundation supports Yingxue ten years by providing targeted funding Wang at the Max Planck Florida for top-level innovative and cutting-edge Institute for Neuroscience; she tackles research at the more than 80 institutes, the question how the hippocampus enabling breakthroughs in frontier science. processes information, when our brain As a patron, you can make a crucial integrates past and future into the difference by creating additional scope present. to keep this research ahead of the curve in the international scientific competition. Join us!
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The bitter legacy of slavery
Text: Stefanie Reinberger
When people find their final res- ting place in a mass grave, their life stories are often buried along with their mortal remains. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena have succeeded in reconstructing part of the story 74 of three African men who lived international research team under had an eventful research career, ha- th the auspices of the Max Planck Insti- ving been active in everything from in Mexico City in the 16 century: tute for the Science of Human His- pharmacological chemistry to im- theirs is a story of forced migra- tory in Jena, the mortal remains of munology, genetics and anthropo- tion and slavery, but also of three men are now able to tell part of logy. However, the Mexican scien- dangerous pathogens that traveled their story, which is one of slavery tist has a particular interest in the around the world undetected. and suffering and provide new in- history of his country and the roots sights into Mexico’s colonial era, but of Mexico’s contemporary popula- also into diseases that travel the tion. “Everyone talks about the globe alongside a mobile humanity. Spanish immigrants and the few survivors of the indigenous popula- The skulls of the three men stood out tion,” Barquera explains. “Yet, this because of striking modifications to is only a part of the truth: there were their incisors, which had been also African slaves as well as mi- Since the 1960s, the construction of the sharpened. Something similar had grants from Asia and Polynesia, subway in Mexico City has brought already been observed in African whose genetic heritage is also re- numerous testimonies to the turbu- slave remains found in Portugal. flected in modern Mexicans.”B ut lent history of this centuries-old And even now, this type of decora- this is hardly ever mentioned. metropolis to light, thus saving them tive dental modification is still com- from obscurity. In one example, mon among certain ethnic groups in In 2014, the Mexican researcher, who, workers constructing a new subway West Africa. The most obvious as- at the time, was Laboratory manager line in 1992 came across a mass sumption was that the three men at the National School of Anthropo- grave in the grounds of the Hospital were of African origin. Research logy and History in Mexico City, in- Real de San José de los Naturales. carried out by Rodrigo Barquera, a vited Krause to participate in a The hospital was founded in 1530 doctoral researcher and member of a workshop at which he talked about specifically for the indigenous in- team headed up by Johannes Krause, his field of research. Krause is one of habitants, who were hopelessly vul- Director of the Department of Ar- the few experts in the field of archaeo- nerable to diseases introduced by the chaeogenetics at the Max Planck In- genetics, which involves the analy- Spanish invaders. Yet three of the stitute for the Science of Human sis of old and ancient DNA, which skulls did not fit this scenario at all. History, has recently shed light on can, for example, be isolated from Thanks to work carried out by an the situation. Barquera has already skeletal remains. Barquera was so
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 PHOTO: DPA/CPA MEDIA were more the likely to survive had slavewhich the point trade H C R preferable “cargo”, they as liberated from a slave from ship en liberated higher prices for them. for prices higher brutal conditions of the ocean of ocean conditions the brutal route to crossing and slave and paid owners crossing years. for 300 practice common already been prohibited. been already escued: these children were children these escued: hildren and adolescents were adolescents and hildren uman trafficking had been had trafficking uman A merica in 1869, in merica at Max PlanckResearch Culture &So ·2 c iet | 2020 y 75 Knowledge From
excited about this research field that strongly suggests that the three men how the three African men ended he decided to relocate to Jena as a were among the first African slaves up in the mass grave at the Hospital doctoral researcher. Once there, he to be transported from their native Real de San José de los Naturales, got the opportunity to get hands on land to Mexico.” when this hospital was actually re- the putative Africans from the mass served exclusively for the treatment grave in Mexico City. He and In 1518, King Carlos I of Spain autho- of indigenous people suffering from Krause extracted one molar from rized the transportation of African infectious diseases introduced by each of the three skulls so that they slaves to the Viceroyalty of New the Europeans. In all probability, could isolate DNA samples from Spain, which encompassed what is the mass grave was for the victims of them. “We can extract incredible now Mexico. By the time the impor- an epidemic to which the three Afri- amounts of data from very small tation of slaves into this region was cans may also have succumbed. amounts of biological material using prohibited in 1779, some 130,000 to modern laboratory techniques,” 150,000 Africans had been forcibly But the three deceased also tell a story Barquera explains. “The range and of pathogens that travel around the breadth of information we can cur- world on ships unnoticed – which rently glean from the analysis of a given the current COVID-19 pan- single tooth is something we could demic could hardly be more topical. only have dreamt of ten years ago.” Not only did the genetic tests reveal So ancient DNA is now able to re- Summary information about the origins of the veal many things that archaeologists men, they also showed that one of have only been able to speculate The skeletal remains of three them had been infected with a strain about until now: it can be used to men, who were probably of hepatitis B that is typically found help classify people’s origins and transported from Africa to the in West Africa today. Whether this track mass migrations; it provides New World as slaves in the viral disease was rife in Mexico at 16th century, were discovered in clues about what people ate in the Mexico City. that time remains unclear. Another past and discloses the diseases from of the men had been infected by the which mankind suffered in ages A research team was able to bacterium Treponema pallidum 76 past. prove this using DNA and pertenue, which causes a painful, isotope analyses. infectious disease similar to syphilis The analysis of the teeth from Mexico known as yaws. Previously, Diseases that were new to the City identified a genetic signature New World also traveled to Barquera and Krause had disco- that points towards southwest Af- Mexico aboard the slave ships. vered the same strain of the patho- rica. It proved possible to match the gen in Mexico in a 17th century Eu- three men’s Y-chromosomes to a ropean immigrant, which could in- genetic lineage that is widespread in dicate that the pathogen originated Africa today and is also prevalent in Africa and spread among the within the African American popu- early colonial populace. lation. Such matching is possible because the Y-chromosome is resettled there. The reason for this The disease in both men was very pro- inherited virtually unchanged from was that the indigenous peoples, bably still at the symptom-free stage, father to son and, therefore, bears who until then had been abused as i.e., they were probably unaware of the genetic signature of all male an- forced laborers, were dying en the pathogens, which, like stow- cestors. An isotope analysis also masse from diseases imported by aways, had been deported to Mexico showed that all three men were born the Europeans. Their immune sys- along with them. “What this teaches outside of Mexico. The three skele- tems were unable to mount a defense us,” says Barquera, “is that, whether tons show signs of violence and mal- against such things as measles, it’s voluntary or forced, human mo- nutrition. Fractures and deformities smallpox and typhoid fever. Finally, bility has always gone hand-in-hand point to maltreatment and barba- a law was passed in 1542 that prohib- with the risk of spreading patho- rous, hard labor. Traces of buckshot ited their use as laborers. Neverthe- gens.” Still, the fate of the three men embedded in his bones prove that less, the colonialists still demanded is the researchers’ main focus. As one of the men had suffered a gun- to have slaves to do their household Krause summarizes, “We were able shot wound at some point and that chores, agricultural labor and gold to gain insight into the life histories he obviously lived with it for several panning, and Africans were deemed of some of the firstA frican slaves in years. All three died young – to be more resistant to the conta- the Americas by combining molecu- between the ages of 25 and gious diseases that had been intro- lar biology, isotope analysis and bio- 35. “Together with the evidence that duced. “However,” says Barquera, informatics methods with tradi- they were born outside Mexico,” “that might have been a mistake.” tional historical, anthropological Barquera explains, “all of this One has to wonder, he continues, and archaeological evidence.”
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 Culture & Society
5 cm 5 cm 5 cm AL N ER B . & N A ER QU AR B . R : O T HO P 5 cm
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5 cm 5 cm
A striking find: the sharpened incisors in the three skulls (above), which were discovered in a mass grave in MexicoC ity, differentiate them from the other interred persons.G enetic analyses revealed an African origin. The Africans’ skeletons show traces of excessive strain, due to heavy physical labor (center) and maltreatment (below): discolorations on the bones, for example, indicate gunshot wounds inflicted with copper shot.
In the future, the team would like to from that continent. “Should this fate of three individuals, who serve use contemporary African genomes change in the future, we would as examples of the lives of African to learn more about the precise ori- hopefully be able to not only identify slaves in colonial Mexico. Yet, they gins of the three men. “Unfortu- the origins of the three individuals cannot reflect the full history of nately,” Krause explains, “there from early Mexico, but also to give these forcibly resettled people who have been far fewer genome analyses the many millions of descendants of were brutally trafficked from one performed on contemporary Afri- abducted slaves currently living in continent to another. As Rodrigo cans than on people outside Africa.” North and South America more Barquera states, one thing is certain: While Africa is the cradle of man- precise information about the ori- “Everyone here at the Institute has kind, he continues, and is home to gins of their ancestors.” been profoundly moved by the fate the greatest genetic diversity in of these three men. We’re finding it Homo sapiens, there is nevertheless Through their work, the researchers in difficult to simply move on to the far too little genetic data available Jena have been able to sketch out the next research topic.”
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 Knowledge From
“Stricter laws are a sign of helplessness”
Interview: Mechthild Zimmermann
From Luegde and Bergisch Glad- bach to Muenster, the scourge of child abuse cases does not seem to be slowing down. Demands for and presents a convincing many have their first sexual contact with harsher punishment for the perpetra- range of sentences that does their peers at this age. But according to tors are becoming louder than ever. not require amendment. the legislation, a French kiss that a In early July, the Federal Ministry of 15-year-old gives to his 13-year-old girl- So you do not believe friend is punishable by law. Austria and Justice presented its initial reform in higher minimum Switzerland already have an exemption proposals. But what effect could sentences? clause for such cases. One positive aspect stricter laws have? Tatjana Hörnle, of the current reform project of the Fed- Director at the Max Planck Institute I know that when it comes to eral Ministry of Justice is that a similar sexual offenses against child- solution is to be introduced in German 78 for the Study of Crime, Security and ren, some people see it as triv- criminal law. But there are also lesser of- Law, is skeptical about this trend. ializing matters when a dis- fenses in other constellations such as the The lawyer has been dealing with the tinction is made between seri- one-time touches mentioned earlier. issue of abuse for years. ous and less serious acts. But These are only just above the threshold especially the recent extreme of what must be considered “sexual”. For cases make it clear: there example, briefly caressing the genital re- must be a way to correlate gion when the child is wearing clothes. varying degrees of offenses to The range of sentences should be de- varying levels of penalties. It signed so that even atypical, minor of- is precisely in those cases in fenses can be punished appropriately. which the perpetrators have Proponents of tougher laws are been particularly brutal and there are The Federal Minister of Justice demanding that child abuse many victims that the lower limit in the also wants to increase the should be punishable by at least Criminal Code is no longer relevant. minimum penalty in connection one year in prison. But hasn’t that Therefore, the question is: what do we with child pornography. been the case until now? want to achieve? When it comes to de- What do you think about that is? terring offenders, it would be more im- Tatjana Hörnle Most of the cases portant to increase the risk of discovery. The problem is similar than the one just that have recently caught the media’s at- When it comes to the moral condemna- discussed: the degree of wrongdoing var- tention – such as those of Muenster or tion of sexual violence against children, ies. A continuum of cases ranges from Luedge – are clear-cut cases of serious there is an unusually broad societal con- youths wanting to break a taboo and ex- sexual abuse. The Criminal Code al- sensus. By increasing the minimum pen- perience the revulsion such images ready stipulates a prison sentence of be- alties, the legislator tends to create new evoke to perpetrators who spread numer- tween two and 15 years. Such acts are problems. ous images of rape with child victims. thus clearly classified as felonies. Howe- Here too, the range of sentences in the ver, the legislation also covers less seri- In what respect? Criminal Code is designed to take the ous cases. For example, when a fleeting differences into account. When sexual physical touch was on the borderline be- In the legislation, there is a rigid age acts with children are filmed and distrib- tween “sexual” and “harmless”. Overall, limit of 14 years; up to this age, any se- uted over the Internet, the penalties for the framework is quite broad. This cor- xual act is prohibited. Based on surveys the perpetrators are already quite high. responds to the various types of offenses of 12- and 13-year-olds, we know that Even the mere intent to disseminate pic-
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 PHOTO: HATH/MPI FOR THE STUDY OF CRIME, SECURITY AND LAW A T differentiation established be must for caused a great deal of deal public a great caused outcry. cently put been forward. upper the to 10 limit recrease has years redistribute which in perpetrators cases vi especially for possession. a short time do nota short time deserve classi to be ableparticu offensebe the can because only up to fivein a to proposal years; sentence of two to 15 years. such looking at a single as for picture punishments. t the abuse.the without involved being images these in of such aprison resulttures in abuse can merous recipients. recipients. merous F fiedas felonieshighminimum with increase of the minimum penalty, of minimum the increase larly serious in certain circumstances. circumstances. larly certain serious in ors pass on many extreme images to nu on many extreme- images ors pass or example, when- individual perpetra cr he cases of Muensterhe cases and ew should of taken be planned the So why are these demands demands these are why So being made? being oss all political, cultural, and social A t p resent, sentence the is H owever, a critical owever, critical a T T ri L hi H vial actions ue s is justifi s is ow dge have
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79 80 max planckresearch Knowledge from ·2 | 2020 traditional way, often here, used is seen traditional that such as of its characteristic pattern. in contrast, producing contrast, in pattern. of its characteristic material design: damascus steel produced in the the produced steel in damascus design: material a material of this kind in a3d in involves printer kind of this a material varying the properties of materials that can can that of materials properties the varying for decorative purposes nowadays because nowadays because for purposes decorative be processed using this technology. this using processed be
photo: BigtUnAonline/AlAmY StoCK foto materialS & technology
A legend 81 from the 3D printer
Text: Karl Hübner
In ancient times, it was the material of choice for sword blades. Now, a kind of Damascus steel can be produced in a 3D printer using a technique developed by a team from the Max-Planck- Institut für Eisenforschung in Duesseldorf and the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology in Aachen. Composite materials of this kind could be of interest for aerospace components or toolmaking.
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 Knowledge from H B M G
NG U H SC FOR EN S I E
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Forging materials with light: when manufactur- ing metals with a 3D printer, laser energy can be used not only to melt the powdered starting materials and work them into complex components, but also to bring about transfor- mations in the metal’s structure.
Born out of necessity and destined to Celtic smiths combined various iron smiths developed the art of folding become a legend. In the past, black- alloys – perhaps initially only to re- two alloys into many thin layers. smiths were able to influence the cycle the valuable iron – and thus The layered structure of Damascus properties of iron alloys only by ad- obtained the material that later be- steel can usually be recognized by a justing their carbon content. They came known as Damascus steel or characteristic stripe pattern. obtained either a soft yet tough or a damask. It owes its name to the trad- hard yet brittle steel. Especially for ing center through which the com- Although there are currently ferrous swords, a tough and hard material posite material of oriental origin en- alloys that are both hard and tough, was needed so that the blades would tered Europe. While Indian and Ara- they are often not specifically made not break or have to be straightened bic damask was created by a sophis- for the 3D printing process and in the middle of a battle. ticated smelting process, European therefore do not fully exploit the ad-
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 materialS & technology
Summary
A team from the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung and the have become standard in many in- Fraunhofer Institute for Laser dustrial sectors in the space of just a Technology is developing alloys for use in 3D printing. few years. They are able to produce plastic as well as metallic compo- The researchers recently nents. The respective alloy is added presented a technique as a fine powder, melted by a laser whereby 3D printing can beam, and repeatedly applied layer directly convert a single by layer to form the target compo- starting material into a kind of Damascus steel with nent. For the last few years, fuel in- alternating hard and jection nozzles for aircraft engines, tough layers. for example, have been produced 83 using this additive manufacturing By fine-tuning various method, which is also known as laser parameters, such as the cladding. printer’s pause times, the laser energy, or the speed at which the metal is 3D printed, it is The laser beam makes it possible to not possible to make localized only melt the respective material but adjustments not only to the also to heat the top layer of the al- hardness but potentially also ready resolidified metal.T his is ex- to other properties. actly what the team of the Max Planck researchers in Duesseldorf used to specifically change the crys- tal structure of the steel in individ- ual metal layers. In this way, they can influence the mechanical prop- erties without changing the chemi- cal composition.
They developed an alloy consisting of vantages of this manufacturing tech- ture of the individual layers during iron, nickel, and titanium. At first, nique. Using 3D printing, scientists 3 D printing so that the final compo- this alloy is relatively soft. “Under at the Max-Planck-Institut für Ei- nent has the desired properties – and certain conditions, small nickel-tita- senforschung and the Fraunhofer all this without subsequent heat nium micro-structures form. These Institute for Laser Technology have treatment of the steel,” says Philipp so-called precipitates harden the now developed a steel that consists of Kürnsteiner, post-doctoral re- material,” explains Kürnsteiner. just one single starting material, but searcher at the Max-Planck-Institut “When subjected to mechanical is made up of alternating hard and für Eisenforschung. stress, they hinder the movement of ductile layers – a kind of Damascus dislocations within the crystal lat- steel. “We have succeeded in specif- 3D printers for additive manufacturing tice that is characteristic of plastic ically modifying the micro-struc- (the technical term for this process) deformation.”
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 Knowledge from
Freshly printed metal: Philipp Kürnsteiner inspects a cube-shaped sample of steel comprised of alternating tough and hard layers. The researcher created the material using a sophisticated method that allowed him to control the 3D printing process. WB D / EN K IN K V N A R F : PHOTO
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In order to be able to create the nickel- ture, a transformation of the crystal 2020, professor at the University of titanium structures, the researchers structure occurs in the steel,” ex- the Bundeswehr Munich. “A ‘mar- interrupt the printing process for a plains Eric Jägle, head of the “Alloys tensite’ phase is formed. It is only certain time after each newly deposit- for Additive Manufacturing” group during this phase that the nickel- ed layer. The metal cools down to at the Max-Planck-Institut für Ei- titanium microstructures can per- below 195°C. “Below this tempera- senforschung and, since January cipitate.” However, in order to allow
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 materialS & technology
GLOSSARy
precipitates to form, reheating is abrasion-resistant outer layer. 3D printing necessary. To achieve this reheating “Thanks to our concept of local con- Also known as additive manufacturing, this technique allows components the researchers exploit the laser en- trol, this was achieved in a single with complex shapes or custom ergy used to deposit the subsequent manufacturing step – without the designs to be built up layer by layer. layer. additional process steps previously The method was originally developed required for surface hardening such for processing plastics but can now This additional effect caused by the la- as nitriding,” stresses Jägle. Accord- also be used for metals and other mate- ser beam of the 3D printer is re- ing to the researchers, it might also rials. ferred to as intrinsic heat treatment. be possible to use the technology to Composite Layers that have been directly cov- locally adjust other properties such Composites are a combination of ered with the next layer without in- as corrosion resistance. materials with various properties. terruption remain softer because Packaging made of plastic-coated they are not yet present as marten- “The technology opens new doors for cardboard is one typical example. site at this point. adjusting the local micro-structures Damascus steel is made up of iron alloys with differing degrees of in a defined manner during the ad- hardness and is therefore both hard For the first time, the researchers are ditive production of even complex and tough at the same time. able to directly create a composite work pieces and making post-treat- material consisting of layers with dif- ment unnecessary,” says Kürn- ferent properties from a single start- steiner. The researcher also sug- ing material during the production gests a paradigm shift: “Until now, process. Kürnsteiner is impressed by it has been common practice to use the mechanical properties of the ma- conventional alloys in 3D printing. terial produced in this way: “The However, many known steels are not tests confirm an excellent combina- optimally suited for additive manu- tion of strength and ductility.” facturing. Our approach is to de- velop new alloys that can exploit the 85 Many different process parameters are full potential of 3D printing.” suitable for influencing the mi- cro-structures during 3D printing. Jägle explains that in addition to or instead of the pause time, which is varied in this study, martensite for- For alloys designed using additive manufacturing, the Max Planck researchers begin by preparing a mation and subsequent precipita- powder bed. A laser then produces the desired material tion hardening could also be con- directly from the powder – layer by layer – in order trolled by varying the laser energy, to manufacture the components. laser focus, or printing speed as well as external heating and cooling
techniques. H B M G
In their experiments, the researchers NG U produced cube-shaped or cuboid H SC
steel pieces with side lengths of a FOR EN
few centimeters as models for ob- S I E
jects with more complex geometries R Ü F
for which computer-controlled 3D I MP printing is of interest. They also em- / M LE
phasize that the Damascus-like A S
steel with its periodically changing ED
layers is only one example of how HM A the micro-structure of an alloy can N MI be locally influenced during the S manufacturing process. For exam- : YA
ple, it is equally possible to create PHOTO tool components with a continuous soft core surrounded by a hard,
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 PHOTO: PICTURE ALLIANCE / AA / MUHAMMED EMIN CANIK
The nation takes to the streets: October 2019 saw the beginning of mass anti-government protests in Chile, which were triggered by an increase in subway ticket prices. Max Planck scientists coope- 86 rate with partners in more than 120 countries. Here they write Chilean cities were the scene of mass Parliament organized a referendum about their personal experi- demonstrations that had started back asking whether the constitution ences and impressions. Felipe in October 2019. These protests were written under Pinochet’s dictator- triggered by an increase in the price ship should be changed. It was this González, associate scientist of subway tickets. A government constitution that legitimized priva- at the Max Planck Institute for minister added fuel to the re by say- tization, so many people saw it as the the Study of Societies, leads ing that people should simply get up source of the inequality. But then the the Max Planck Partner Group earlier to make use of the cheaper government ordered everyone into tickets available at that time. Look- lockdown and postponed the refer- for the Study of the Economy ing back, this was clearly the straw endum until October. Now nobody and the Public in Santiago that broke the camel’s back. However, knows what will become of it. Before de Chile. He reports on the the social origins of the unrest actu- COVID-19, the demonstrators had project, talks about social ally go back some 20 or 30 years. momentum on their side and the unrest in Chile, and recalls the politicians were feeling the social Almost everything in Chile is privatized, pressure. This mood could pass by culture shock he experienced be it education or healthcare. This October, even though the pandemic while living in Germany. means that many people cannot af- is revealing the full scope of the in- ford basic medical care or a college equality in society and the de cien- education, which has led to increas- cies in the healthcare system. ing social inequality. When the gov- ernment raised the ticket prices, the For economic sociologists like me, Chile Spring 2020. Coronavirus has brought dissatisfaction turned into protest. is the ideal place to research the so- the whole world to a standstill, and Thousands of Chileans took to the cial roots of economics. The country Chile is naturally no exception. All streets and chanted “Give us our has been ruled by economists ever the same, I believe that the virus and dignity!” since the beginning of this neoliberal the social distancing measures hit experiment, and the privatized sys- the population of Chile at a particu- Shortly before the coronavirus pan- tem means that there are multiple larly unfavorable time. Before the demic broke out, it seemed as if the links between the economic and so- pandemic, Santiago and other protests were proving successful. cial aspects. Nevertheless, I learned
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 POST FROM
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nothing about economic sociology Germany. The cultures of these two during the entire time I was studying countries could hardly be more dif- sociology at university – which is ferent – as I experienced rst hand why I conducted my own research when I moved to Cologne in 2011. In into it and came across the Max Latin America, the people are gener- Planck Institute for the Study of So- ally more relaxed, they talk loudly on cieties. I couldn’t believe my luck the streets, and a lot of things are
when I was appointed to a doctoral treated more casually. In Germany, PHOTO: PRIVATE post there. on the other hand, there seem to be strict rules for everything: you sort Once I had nished my doctorate and your trash, you walk only on the side- spent some time doing research at walk, and you don’t make phone calls the Institute, I decided to go back to on the train! But once I had assimi- Chile. But I never doubted that I lated the most important customs, I Felipe González, would maintain my links with Ger- had a sense of almost boundless free- many, Cologne, and above all with dom. 35, studied sociology at the the Institute. The Max Planck Part- Alberto Hurtado University ner Group I have been leading since In my view, Cologne even has a certain in Santiago de Chile. He worked January is therefore the perfect com- Latin American air. That’s partly as a research assistant for promise. One of the Group’s goals is due to their celebration of Carnival, the United Nations development program and the Latin Ameri- to make economic sociology better of course, but the people of Cologne can Faculty of Social Sciences. known in Chile. There is a growing are also very warm-hearted and open Between 2011 and 2016, community of young students who by nature. I don’t know how many he obtained his doctorate at the are interested in the subject. One of times I got into conversation with Max Planck Institute for the the Partner Group’s goals is to serve strangers on the bus or on the street! Study of Societies in Cologne. them as a meeting place. At the same I didn’t have this experience in other He has been in charge of the Max Planck Partner Group time, it aims to bridge the gap be- parts of Germany, but in Cologne, I for the Study of the Economy tween Chile and the Max Planck formed friendships that I’m sure will and the Public in Santiago Society – and between Chile and last for a lifetime. de Chile since January 2020.
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 Finding the best For over a year now, the mission of Peter Haffke, Marion Cerri and Henning G MP
Hofmann has been to identify the best sci- h/ c
entific talents worldwide.T hey are the three es ri
new Scouting Officers of the Max Planck G Society and part of the MPG-2030 renewal el : Ax
process. o t T he Scouting Officers search for the o Max Planck Directors of tomorrow. The Ph challenge is to find outstanding resear- chers and promising talents worldwide, without losing sight of the development of former and existing group leaders. “In addi- tion to groundbreaking publications and re- nowned research awards, the recognition of On the lookout for top scientists for the Max Planck Society, in Germany and their work by their peers and their leader- abroad: Peter Haffke, Marion Cerri and Henning Hofmann (from left to right) ship qualities also play an important role for have been working as Scouting Officers for 18 months now. us,” says Marion Cerri, who is the Scout- ing Officer responsible for the Chemistry, Physics and Technology Section. Sciences Section in the search process. cers have a research background at institu- International competition is no longer “The results of the talent search, which tions outside the Max Planck Society, and limited to the most renowned universities is carried out across all sections, are en- are familiar with the structure of research and research institutions. Global commer- tered into a database that will help the sec- institutions and application processes. This cial enterprises also offer attractive oppor- tions in their selection processes,” explains external perspective and their close colla- tunities for scientists. “Since there is strong Henning Hofmann, who is in charge of the boration between them can only be a competition for the most exceptional tal- Biology and Medicine Section. The bright- benefit. “We are still in close contact ents in many disciplines in basic research, est minds often work on an interdiscipli- with the scientific community,”H enning 88 they can choose the best employer with the nary basis and can rarely be assigned to a Hofmann says. “In this new position, we most attractive working environment,” says specific field.T his data collection is con- again have the freedom to experiment, and Peter Haffke, who supports theH uman stantly growing. All three Scouting Offi- to extend our view across disciplines.”
These Max Planck scientists were AWARDED Prestigious this year’s ERC Starting Grants early-career Chemistry, Physics Manuel Gomez, Tatjana & Technology Max Planck Institute Tchumatchenko, awards for Software Systems Max Planck Institute Richard Anderson, for Brain Research In the most recent calls for proposals for the ERC Starting Max Planck Institute Grants, the Max Planck Society received a total of 13 grants. for Astronomy Biology & Only the French CNRS, with 20 grants, and the Helmholtz Medicine Humanities & Social Association, with 15 grants, were more successful in secu- Maria Bergemann, Sciences ring the prestigious funding. Other successful German Max Planck Institute Stefan Glöggler, Max institutions are the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität for Astronomy Planck Institute for Sebastian Grüneisen, Biophysical Chemistry Max Planck Institute Munich (LMU) and the Leibniz Association (six grants each) Manuel van for Human as well as TUM, the Technical University of Munich (five Gemmeren, Juliane Liepe, Development grants). The ERC Starting Grants support promising early- Max Planck Institute Max Planck Institute for career researchers who completed their doctorate between for Chemical Energy Biophysical Chemistry Mathias Lerch, two and seven years ago. The grant enables them to set up Conversion Max Planck Institute their own research group and pursue their own research Erich Pascal for Demographic Stefan Truppe, Malkemper, Research projects. The projects are evaluated in a two-stage peer review Fritz Haber Institute Research Center caesar process by independent experts. As in the previous year, the most successful research organizations in Europe come Steffen Rulands, Edda Schulz, from Germany, with 88 grants. They are followed by the Max Planck Institute Max Planck Institute United Kingdom (62 grants), the Netherlands (42 grants) for the Physics of for Molecular Genetics and France (38 grants). Of a total of 3,272 applications Complex Systems submitted, 436 were approved throughout Europe. This represents a success rate of 13.32 percent.
Max Planck Research · 1 | 2020 Community News
STAYING CONNECTED IN TIMES OF SOCIAL DISTANCING The Max Planck Symposium for Alumni (CET) were dedicated to “Smart Working”. pick up people where they are and engage and Early Career Researchers has provided In keynotes, workshops and a panel discus- them, while also leaving space to reflect.” a platform for these members of the Max sion, alumns from industry, science, organi- To that aim, the Max Planck Symposium Planck Community since 2016. Each year, zational psychology, and coaching reported tested various formats that could be suitable the participants themselves proposed a topic, how their companies are adapting to the dig- for moving conference participants from a which they implemented and brought to life ital work culture. An important result was passive to an active role, consciously creat- together with experts and invited guests. It that Smart Working is not only technolo- ing the interactive network atmosphere that has been a tradition to enable about 40 of gy-driven: using the hive mind of one’s own is so characteristic for the symposium on the international and honorary alumnae and community in order to find solutions for col- site. In the end, “there is no difference be- alumni to travel to the Harnack House con- laboration even in times of crisis is funda- tween onsite and online workshops, there is ference venue with the help of travel grants. mental during the corona pandemic. “Real- only a difference between boring and inter- However, in 2020, long-distance travel has izing that you need help and reaching out active workshops. In both formats, you have been unthinkable. A completely virtual con- are the first crucial steps to becoming resil- to get people out of their comfort zone, both cept was therefore introduced – a goal which ient,” emphasized workshop chair, panelist introverts and extroverts. The really cool
had already been visualized by the partici- and resilience coach Ben Hartwig, Alum- stuff usually happens when I am silent as a 89 pants and organizers before 2020. As Tina nus of the MPI for Plant Breeding Research, coach, when they go to the breakout rooms. Persson, workshop chair, panelist and pro- “when the corona pandemic started I de- That’s when they shape their own learning fessional career coach, and Alumna of the cided to simply hire people who knew more experience,” summarized career coach Al- MPI for Experimental Medicine argues, about digital tools to help keep my coaching exander Schiller in the panel discussion. digital conferencing “offers the chance business going.” A total of 260 active Max Planck em- for a deeper level of connection to work- “You definitely need conference tools ployees, doctoral researchers and postdocs, shop participants who aren’t always heard that allow for spontaneity,” added start-up as well as alumnae and alumni of all MPIs, as much in personal workshops as much as founder Natalie Tillack, who is an Alumna registered and contributed topics. Partic- digital ones, such as the introverts.” From of the MPI für Eisenforschung. “The Max ipants from 36 countries joined the con- 09/17-09/19/2020, 4 hours every afternoon Planck Symposium managed really well to ference platform designed for the MPG, which enabled live polls, direct communica- tion via newsfeed and video chats, as well as a matching algorithm. As the Alumna of the MP I for Human Development, Imke Raja- mani of Falling Walls Berlin, noted: “The new technology for this is already out there, but sometimes we just don’t know how to use it. I hope that after COVID-19 we keep up the conversation about which medium er of is right for which interaction, to make sure that everyone stays engaged and active.” Ausserh id av
D All lectures, the panel discussion, : : o
t the opening speech by Vice President Asifa Akhtar o and highlight videos are expected to be available Ph on the MPG intranet MAX in mid-October.
A special studio was set up at the MPG Berlin office and served as a professional home base for conference hosts Ilka Schießler-Gäbler and Birgit Adam (left to right) of the MPG headquarters to guide participants through the event program via livestream.
Max Planck Research · 1 | 2020 FIVE QUESTIONS
ON OVER-FERTILIZATION AND BIODIVERSITY
FOR SÖNKE ZAEHLE
Many highly biodiverse ecosystems ular nutrient content in their food, changes of the plants and the location. It’s also are low in nutrients. Mr Zaehle, like these can have a negative e ect on their important that nitrogen losses caused by does this mean that fertilization has metabolism and therefore on populations fertilization are reduced by employing more a negative impact on biodiversity? and distribution. e cient spreading methods or adjusting fertilization schedules. This would make it SÖNKE ZAEHLE That’s certainly true of Are we using too much fertilizer possible to decrease the quantities of nutri- many habitats. Take low-nutrient grassland in Germany? ents added for agricultural purposes, thus in temperate climates, for example. Mead- reducing the quantities that in ltrate other 90 ows of this kind are among Germany’s most That’s too much of a generalization, but a ecosystems. biodiverse environments. A number of marked surplus of nutrients has been evi- studies have shown that biodiversity de- dent in some regions for quite some time How effective are individual clines when the amount of nutrients added now. This is where we urgently need to take measures of this type? to the soil increases. Nitrogen and phospho- action! The farmers have trouble disposing rus play the most important role in this sit- of the vast amounts of animal excrement The fertilizer problem goes far beyond the uation. In central Europe, the availability of that accumulates, particularly in areas question of how much fertilizer to use and nitrogen inhibits the productivity of most where there is intensive pig and cattle farm- when. We have to create closed material cy- rural ecosystems, while in the severely ing. More livestock are kept than there is cles as quickly as possible. In other words, weathered soils of the tropical rainforests, space for the disposal of their waste. How- we should only add nutrients that will be the problem is more likely to be ever, directly applying manure as agricul- removed when the crop is harvested. With- KETTERER SOPHIE ILLUSTRATION: phosphorus. tural fertilization is not the only way in out a paradigm change among consumers which nutrients end up in ecosystems. Ni- and a reduction in the amount of meat we What impact do high nutrient trogen oxides in car exhaust fumes or from eat, we will never be able to overcome the levels have? industrial plants also have an impact. This problem of over-fertilization of entire is one of the reasons why nutrient levels can swathes of land. Nutrient-rich ecosystems often bene t just actually increase in areas that are not even a few species that are particularly well fertilized. Over the years, this unintentional Interview: Harald Rösch adapted to these conditions and can grow fertilization can for example lead to very more quickly. These highly competitive high nitrogen levels in forest soil. species take light and space away from other plants. However, if only a small amount of Will the reformed fertilization nutrients are available right from the start, ordinance passed in Germany in the Dr. Sönke Zaehle from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry spring of 2020 have any effect? many species that are not as strongly com- is investigating how nutrients a ect the petitive have a chance of survival. But you material cycles of ecosystems. have to remember that other factors, like the The measures it contains are moving in the climate, play an important role as well. The right direction, but it remains to be seen nutrient content of the plants themselves whether they are su cient and whether they can also change. Plants fertilized with nitro- can be implemented in this form. Generally gen store more nitrogen, for example. Since speaking, fertilizer quantities should be plant-eating animals are adapted to a partic- adapted to the actual nutrient requirements
Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020 RESEARCH ESTABLISHMENTS
SCHLESWIG- HOLSTEIN Institute / research center Plön Rostock Sub-institute / external branch Greifswald Other research establishments MECKLENBURG- Associated research organizations VORPOMMERN Hamburg
Bremen The Netherlands BRANDENBURG Nijmegen LOWER SAXONY Berlin Italy Hannover Rome Potsdam Florence Magdeburg Münster USA NORTH RHINE-WESTPHALIA SAXONY-ANHALT Jupiter, Florida Göttingen Bochum Dortmund Mülheim Halle Brazil Manaus Düsseldorf Leipzig SAXONY Cologne HESSE Dresden Luxembourg Bonn Jena Luxembourg Marburg THURINGIA Bad Münstereifel Bad Nauheim RHINELAND PALATINATE Mainz Frankfurt
SAARLAND Kaiserslautern Saarbrücken Erlangen Heidelberg BAVARIA Stuttgart 91 Tübingen Garching BADEN- WÜRTTEMBERG Munich Martinsried Freiburg Seewiesen Konstanz
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Max Planck Research · 2 | 2020