Tomorrow Today: The Science Magazine
DW-TV’s science program TOMORROW TODAY focuses on current topics in research, and is aimed at anyone who is interested in ongoing projects in Germany and Europe. Our reports use terms and concepts that are easily understood, portrayed in interesting ways, and address the core issues ...
DW-TV’s science program TOMORROW TODAY focuses on current topics in research, and is aimed at anyone who is interested in ongoing projects in Germany and Europe. Our reports use terms and concepts that are easily understood, portrayed in interesting ways, and address the core issues at stake. The show presents a comprehensive overview of the latest trends in science and research. The exploration of the deep sea is one of the great scientific challenges of the future. This is a gigantic area. Covering two thirds of the earth’s surface, it is an unknown world with bizarre geological structures and exotic inhabitants. So far, only one percent of the deep ocean habitat has been explored. TOMORROW TODAY takes a fascinating look into the work of marine researchers – a five-part series in cooperation with the MARUM Research Center in Bremen. Heiko Sahling is a biologist and deep sea geoscientist at the MARUM Research Center. The area he studies is in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Pakistan. There, at depths down to 3,000 meters, something fascinating is happening. Natural gas is emerging from the sea bed, to produce a surreal world of millions of tiny bubbles, which has already spurred the fancy of science fiction authors. In these exotic surroundings, the scientist has discovered both new animal species and communities and new geological truths. But the main questions that drive him are concerned with the methane gas emitted here. How much is emitted, how does it affect the biological world of the deep sea, and how much reaches the surface to enter the atmosphere? That is also relevant to climate researchers, because methane is a major greenhouse gas that increases global warming. Heiko Sahling takes Tomorrow Today viewers on an expedition on the METEOR research vessel. He tells us about life on board, about burning ice and about organisms that no one has seen before.
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Vaccines against malaria
Developing a vaccine against malaria is extremely difficult, but researchers ...
Developing a vaccine against malaria is extremely difficult, but researchers around the world are hard at work trying to create one. Scientists at Tübingen Unversity in Germany are now working on a new kind of vaccine that they hope would be more effective. It involves injecting the living malaria parasite into the patient, while at the same time given an agent that kills off the pathogen. That activates the immune system without allowing the parasite to take hold. The first clinical studies are underway, and the researchers hope to bring the vaccine to market within a few years.
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Studio Guest
Our Studio Guest is Dr. Axel Schippers, from the German ...
Our Studio Guest is Dr. Axel Schippers, from the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources in Hanover. He knows what resources can currently be exploited with which technologies, and is himself researching resource exploitation with the aid of micro-organisms. DW: What potential do you see in using high voltage to break up objects into their elemental components? Axel Schippers: I guess the potential is quite high, because the striking thing is that you can save a lot of energy. And energy costs are a huge bunch of operational costs in the mining industry. So if you save energy, you save a lot of costs and make metals cheaper for applications It's similar to the technology I'm working on. It's actually termed biomining or bioliging. It's also a technology with an extremely low energy demand. Tell me more about that. Your own research focuses on the use of bacteria. What materials have you been able to extract so far? So far it's already applied industrially for extracting copper, for example. Big operations for example in Chile in the mines, where you pile up low-grade ore, and it's irrigated with water and bacteria, so the bacteria can attach to the ore and dissolve it, so copper gets in solution and we can extract it. And we estimate that up to 15 percent of the global production of copper is due to biomining technology. So this is something that's already in use today. In use today - already. It's also applied for other metals like cobalt, nickel, and also uranium and gold. And certainly this is more environmentally friendly than traditional types of extraction. How does bacteria, your own field, stack up against high-voltage pulse-power fragmentation - that's a tongue-twister, there - that we saw on the report? What are some of the advantages and disadvantages? I guess it could be a bit complementary, because the technology we've seen in the clip actually is for separating minerals. But for further processing, you need also in many cases dissolution steps. And for the dissolution of the minerals you can use the bacteria. Now so far we've been talking about applications in mining. Do you see applications in other fields for this technology? Yes. We are also working on application in recycling, for example, waste from industrial processes. We have a running project, funded by the German Ministry for Research, on finding out methods, developing methods, for extracting metals from lignite combustion ashes. Lignite is actually combusted for power generation. And there are huge amounts, 10 million, 20 million tons, of ash produced per year which are deposited and we try to make use of it by extracting metals using classical extraction technologies in collaboration projects with many partners in Germany, and also using biological methods for extracting. You mentioned partners in Germany. I'd like to talk about how this is being promoted by the government, because it's clearly a more environmentally-friendly alternative. Do you think it's being promoted enough? Yes. We have quite significant funding at the moment. What we'd like to have is also more interest from the application side, from industry, to really go down the line for process development. You need a lot of engineering capacities to do that, to come up with industrial processes. All right. We'll be watching closely to see how that develops. Dr. Axel Schippers, thank you so much for being with us here on Tomorrow Today.
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Algae as a renewable resource in the future
"Algae could be one of the answers to solve a ...
"Algae could be one of the answers to solve a lot of our problems case of energy, and in case of feeding mankind" says Dr. Martin Ecke, from Anhalt University of Applied Sciences. DW: Are algae actually the answer to our rising demand for fuel? How do you judge the potential? Martin Ecke: Yes, I hope so. Of course it's not the absolute answer but it could be one of the answers to solve a lot of our problems - problems in case of energy, problems in case of feeding mankind and such. But I still can't buy algae fuel at the gas station today. So what's putting the brakes on this success story? Brakes? I would say at the moment that the most important brake is money. At the moment it's too expensive to cultivate algae in a highly efficient method. And what do you think? When will the prices actually drop? I think if we will do our job in a good way, I hope within the next five to ten years. And what is the challenge? What will you have to do within these ten years? We have to improve the techniques, we have to solve some logistical problems, we have to have more money for our research, and we have to open the market. We have to bring knowledge about the potential of algae to mankind, and that means if the potential is more now, lots of people will ask for algae and we have to cultivate it. That sounds great. Let's try to find the limit to that, actually, because algae also take carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas, out of the air to grow. So could that also be a way to stop climate change and global warming? Yes, it could be one part in this way. Of course the algae will capture the carbon dioxide only temporarily, as it means if you burn this algae the CO2 will escape again. But I think you can use it in a way of keeping the equilibrium at the same level. And how come actually these algae are such multi-talents? I mean they also have certain possibilities in the field of pharmaceuticals. So what's giving them this capacity? You must know the most common algae are really old organisms. That means they exist more than 2.5 billion years. That means they own a lot of experience of nature, and I must say it's a principle of nature never to change if not necessary and so we would be stupid if we don't use this experience. Do you actually like algae on your plate, too? How do you like the taste? Yes, if you know the potential and the components and you know how healthy algae are, then you will eat it. Thanks a lot for the talk, Dr. Martin Ecke.
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Artificial Intelligence: Data formula makes robots autonomous
They recognise how unfamiliar objects move, find their way in ...
They recognise how unfamiliar objects move, find their way in rooms they don't know, and securely grasp completely differently shaped objects. Oliver Brock has programmed his robots so they can almost learn the way people do. His trick is an algorithm that trawls through large amounts of data and subdivides movements into individual segments. That will make robots of the next generation autonomous and able to help in medicine, space travel and nuclear accidents. What's surprising is that the same formula can be used to predict complicated 3-D protein structures. The award-winning computer scientist conducted research in the US for sixteen years. Now he is a professor in Berlin.
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The Mathematics of Trees
Claus Mattheck is constantly amazed by what trees have to ...
Claus Mattheck is constantly amazed by what trees have to teach us about the world around us. The physicist at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology studies the shapes that trunks and leaves take, and has used some of them to describe fundamental properties of naturally-occurring forms. The research has helped engineers in a wide variety of fields to build components that are stronger and less apt to break.
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The virtual Forest
Researchers in Dortmund are computerizing forests. The aim of the ...
Researchers in Dortmund are computerizing forests. The aim of the "Virtual Forest” project is to streamline and mechanize operations inside the woods. Equipped with sat-nav and laser scanners, robots are scanning the details of Germany's forests. The information allows tree-harvesters to work with centimeter precision while minimizing damage to the environment. One day, the researchers would like to see their system in use all over Europe.
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How do trees react to climate change?
And what has to change in Germany's forests to cope? ...
And what has to change in Germany's forests to cope? This week we chat with Prof. Andreas Bolte, a forest ecologist who is the head of the Thünen Institute for Forest Ecology in Eberswalde. DW: Joining us here under the pine trees is Professor Andreas Bolte, an expert on forest ecology. What chances do these Scots pines actually have with the climate getting hotter and drier in this area? Andreas Bolte: I think they would have a good chance to survive, because Scots pine is well adapted to dry site conditions. So they have a good chance to survive in the face of climate change as it gets hotter and drier. These trees were planted in order to be able to harvest wood very quickly and easily. Would you still arrange a forest like this today? I think the foresters wouldn't do it like this now because on the one hand there is the idea to have more mixed forest as a kind of life insurance against climate change, because different trees are adapted to different site conditions and climate conditions. So if one tree species fails, another will take over, and could also more or less take over the function in the forest. The fittest will survive, so to say. And which tree species would you actually plant here? It would be a mixture of different tree species. It could be pine species like Scots pine, but mixed with other tree species -- broad-leafed species. For example European beech, or oak species, because they have different forest dynamics, different growth dynamics. And so that would be a good addition to a stand like this one here. And couldn't we just leave it to nature to find vegetation which is best for a different climate? We could do so, but the problem might be that we could then not foresee the products -- the timber which will then come out of the stand at the end. As you know, the forest also has a very important function in climate protection -- because it stores carbon. So we need vital and productive forests for the future. This is one management aim: to get this vital and very productive forest. It's best to do this with management, because when you think about natural development, there could be less vital or less productive species coming in and taking over. But that means that the economic aspect -- harvesting lots of wood -- is the most important one? No -- they should be balanced, both economic aspects and ecological aspects. But if you are also thinking about the use of timber, and if you have more or less a certain amount of timber that can be used for building houses for example -- instead of using steel or bricks or other materials that represent a high consumption of energy -- wood also has a good advantage in terms of climate protection. Interview: Ingolf Baur
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Brilliant Minds: Iranian Metals Researcher Javad Mola
Javad Mola is trying to make steel lighter and more ...
Javad Mola is trying to make steel lighter and more durable, and the Freiberg University of Mining and Technology is providing him with the perfect opportunity to do it.Mola heads a project at the university’s Institute for Iron Research, and is experimenting with ceramo-metallic alloys that can be tailored to specific applications in car or airplane manufacturing. We went to talk with the ambitious young metallurgist. "Brilliant Minds” is a series of reports on Tomorrow Today that introduces up-and-coming young scientists from all over the world who have come to live and work in Germany.
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Studio Guest
We talk with Prof. Manfred Hild from the Beuth University ...
We talk with Prof. Manfred Hild from the Beuth University of Applied Sciences in Berlin about intelligent robots and when machines become social beings.
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Gerd Binnig - Chemistry Under the Microscope
Gerd Binnig won a Nobel Prize in 1986 for inventing ...
Gerd Binnig won a Nobel Prize in 1986 for inventing the scanning tunneling microscope. It makes individual atoms visible and manipulable. It’s used to design materials with desired traits. Binnig also wrote software that analyzes microphotographs.
