research Magazine of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft german SPECIAL 2004 Peep into a Different World How a Town Can be Created in a Test Tube Afghanistan: The Culture of the Kafirs In the Service of the Crown When Plants Tell of Their Environment german research SPECIAL 2004 In this issue Content ...an Investment Expedition to the Volcanoes When Merapi in the Future . p. 2 of the Arctic Seafloor . p. 44 Spits Fire A Rose is When Plants Tell a Rose is a Rose? . p. 4 of Their Environment . p. 50 Of the 129 active volcanoes to be found in Indonesia, Merapi, On the Trail Peep into a 2,691 metres in elevation, is of Glowing Lava Flows . p. 8 Different World . p. 55 the most restless. Over the past 450 years it has erupted every Life and Death On the Battlefield seven years on average. The in Ancient Egypt . p. 14 of Chiapas . p. 59 local population is relying on scientists to improve their Travel Educates – The Refuge chances of survival after an Clichés Persist . p. 20 under the Bark . p. 62 eruption. Page 8 A Treasury in Sibiria . p. 66 Ornamental Gothic Vaults from Computer . p. 24 The Loneliness Life and Death of Island Life . p. 73 in Ancient Egypt In the Cockpit of the Fly . p. 28 In the Service Modern Egyptologists can of the Crown . p. 76 read the mortal remains of Afghanistan: mummified corpses of ancient The Culture of How a Town Can be Egyptians buried three and a the Kafirs . p. 32 Created in a Test Tube . p. 80 half millenia ago like medical case histories, enabling far- A Climatic Archive The Deutsche reaching conclusions to be with Hide and Hair . p. 37 Forschungsgemeinschaft p. 84 drawn regarding their con- temporary society and its “health system”. Page 14 Innovations for the Microscopic World Microsystem technology can open up the way The Fly to new products in medicine, analysis and as a Model electronics. The aim is to combine microcom- ponents to form novel types of microsystem. Thanks to its large, facetted Researchers are investigating the fundamen- eyes, the fly enjoys almost com- tal concepts for this. pletely all-round vision. This (Cover photo: IPT-Aachen) makes it possible for it to per- form its breath-taking flight manoeuvres. Using a panorama Impressum cinema, “FliMax”, scientists in- “german research SPECIAL 2004” is a special edition of the DFG’s newsmagazine vestigated how the sequential “german research”, which appears three times per year. “german research” is pub- images received in the fly’s lished by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Founda- headlong flight are processed in tion); Editorial staff: Dieter Hüsken (editor-in-chief, design), Dr. Rembert Unterstell, Ursula Borcherdt-Allmendinger, Angela Kügler-Seifert (coordinator); English con- its brain. This method enables sultant: Nicholas Naughton BDÜ; Publisher: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, biologists to gain important in- Weinheim, P. O. Box 10 11 61, 69451 Weinheim (Germany); Annual subscription sights into the neuronal proces- rates 2004: € 44.00 (Europe), US $ 48.00 (all other countries) including postage and handling charges. Prices are exclusive of VAT and subject to change. ses and mechanisms of image Printed by: Bonner Universitäts-Buchdruckerei; Address of editorial staff: processing. Page 28 Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Press and Public Relations Division, Kennedyallee 40, 53175 Bonn (Germany); E-mail: [email protected]; Internet: www.dfg.de; printed on chlorine-free bleached paper with 50 % recycling fibres. ISSN 0172-1526 german research SPECIAL 2004 Commentary n today’s world, science is in- collaboration offers particularly young investigators from all over creasingly dependent on the col- favourable conditions for the inter- the world the opportunity to work Ilaboration of researchers, on the national training and mobility of re- in one of the participating Euro- joining of minds and resources searchers. pean countries for a five-year peri- across disciplinary, national and The highly dynamic develop- od as leaders of independent junior cultural boundaries. Since its incep- ments in Europe bring about new research groups. tion, the Deutsche Forschungsge- challenges and opportunities for meinschaft (DFG, German Research research and research funding. Foundation) has been committed to The DFG is firmly committed to n order to intensify international fostering and facilitating the inter- contributing to the realisation of a cooperation and networking, the national cooperation of researchers. European Research Area and to IDFG has established representa- A large and growing number of re- collaborating with European part- tions in selected regions of the search projects in Germany is con- ner organisations on initiatives de- world which are of particular signi- ducted in collaboration with part- signed to enhance the funding of ficance for present and future col- ners from other countries. Many of cross-border activities, support the laboration. The Sino-German Cen- these projects – for instance in the mobility of researchers, and create ter for Science Promotion, which is fields of earth and environmental joint funding schemes. A recent ex- operated jointly by the DFG and the sciences – are integrated into inter- ample for these efforts is the estab- National Natural Science Founda- national programmes coordinated lishment of the European Young tion of China, was opened in Beijing at European and global levels. In- Investigator Award (EURYI) pro- in 2000. The DFG has recently es- ternational cooperation is thus a gramme which is funded jointly tablished liaison offices in Washing- necessary and increasingly impor- by 18 national research organisa- ton, D.C., and in Moscow. tant component of research funding tions from 14 European countries. The United States continues to be and is, in fact, one of the DFG’s This programme offers outstanding a particularly attractive country for strategic priorities. Cooperation with international partners is encouraged in all of the DFG’s funding programmes, begin- ning with the support of young re- searchers. Of the nearly one thou- sand fellowships awarded every Prof. Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker year by the DFG to young postdoc- toral scientists more than two-thirds are used to fund research stays International cooperation is becoming abroad. The United States of Amer- ica hosts the majority of these fel- an increasingly important part of science lows. The personal experience gained and contacts made as a re- and research. Therefore, the DFG is committed sult of these visits form a basis for to fostering collaboration and exchange between future cooperation. Another exam- ple illustrating the international di- German researchers and partners across the globe. mensions of the DFG’s programme Enabling scientists to work together across portfolio are the Research Training Groups. In these university training disciplinary and national boundaries helps tackle programmes doctoral students pur- sue their degree within the frame- the world’s major scientific questions and is thus... work of a coordinated research and study programme run by a team of university teachers. So far, 28 Inter- national Research Training Groups – a variant of the traditional pro- gramme – have been established ...an Investm between German universities and universities in other countries. The research and study programmes are developed and supervised jointly and provide the participat- in ing students with the opportunity for research stays at their respective partner universities. The frame- 2 work of such “centre-to-centre” german research SPECIAL 2004 German researchers. One of the main tasks of the DFG Washington Office therefore is to support the nu- merous DFG fellows in the US, both with regard to their return to Ger- many and to opportunities for transatlantic cooperation. In addi- tion, the office is dedicated to ex- panding cooperation with our part- ner organisations in the US, and providing information for American scientists and research institutions about opportunities for collabora- tion with partners in Germany. Sev- eral joint activities have been initi- ated in recent years. Among them are the Arabidopsis Functional Ge- nomics Network initiative, which was implemented in close coopera- tion between the DFG and the Na- tional Science Foundation. Other examples include joint funding activities in the areas of digital libraries and materials science, pro- gramme networking in education research, as well as the establish- ment of a Transregional Collabora- tive Research Centre on process chains for the replication of optical elements, a cooperative effort of re- searchers from the universities of Bremen and Aachen and Oklahoma State University at Stillwater. n April 2004, the first DFG Re- search Conference will be held in IWashington, D.C., in the field of geosciences. It will be co-sponsored by several partner organisations in the United States and is designed to bring together young researchers from both sides of the Atlantic and serve as a forum for developing joint research activities. Enabling international coopera- tion in research is an investment in the future, and the DFG will contin- ue to foster collaboration and ex- change between the German re- search community and partners ent across the globe. the Future Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker President of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft 3 german research SPECIAL 2004 A Rose 4 Life Sciences is a Rose is a Rose? What everyone has always wanted to know about the sexuality of roses: study of their reproduction is primarily of benefit to plant breeders here is scarcely any plant that inside the body of the plant. He had has so inspired the imagination also noticed the different form of the Tand cultural history of man- sepals on many roses, a feature kind as the rose. As the symbol of which is still used today to distin- love and innocence it has acquired guish the group of the Dog Roses the role of “queen of the flowers”. from all the other roses. However, For the plant taxonomist, howev- the scientific study of roses, rhodolo- er, it presents a totally different pic- gy, dates from the beginning of the ture.