How invading pathogens switch off plant cells' defenses

Many disease-causing bacteria are able to inhibit the defense mechanisms in plants and thus escape dissolution by the plant cell, a process known as xenophagy. Animal and human cells have a similar mechanism whereby the cell's ...

Late Neanderthals used complex tool-making techniques

Neanderthals living in the Swabian Jura more than 45,000 years ago used sophisticated techniques with many different production strategies to make stone tools. The Heidenschmiede site has yielded many stone tools and by-products ...

Chimpanzees have not entered the stone age

Unlike early human species, chimpanzees do not seem to be able to spontaneously make and use sharp stone tools, even when they have all the materials and incentive to do so. That was the finding of a study of a total of eleven ...

Peatland fires reduce future methane production in peat soils

Climatic changes are increasingly giving rise to major fires on peatlands in the northern hemisphere, which release massive quantities of carbon dioxide. However, the biomass of the peatland is not entirely consumed by fire, ...

Forest use changes life cycles of wildflowers

One of the most striking features of global warming is that the life rhythms of plants are changing all over the world. A study at the University of Tübingen has found that human land use can also significantly influence ...

Nanospheres measure the forces of cell motors

Motor proteins generate the forces for essential mechanical processes in our body. On a scale of nanometers—a millionth of a millimeter—motor proteins, for example, power our muscles or transport material within our cells. ...

When do plants help or hinder each other?

When plants grow close together, each individual plant has less chance of doing well—at least, that was the accepted wisdom in environmental research. Now Dr. Ruichang Zhang and Professor Katja Tielbörger from the Institute ...

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