Academy Of Sciences Leopoldina Research Articles

Beraten und Prognostizieren. Unsicheres Wissen in der institutionellen vs. der massenmedialen Politikberatung

Scientific policy advice provides a special framework for processing scientific uncertainties. Socio-political decisions often require a reliable scientific basis that can be used as orientation and legitimation for political decisions. On the one hand, policy advice takes place institutionalized (e. g. by the Office of Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag [TAB] and the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina), but also in public media discourse, when scientists give interviews or inform about scientific topics in talk shows. The need for advice concerns future actions and is thus closely linked to uncertain knowledge and the providing of forecasts, i. e. a look into the future. In this article, we focus on the practices of consulting and forecasting in the context of policy advice and capture them in their differentiations as well as show what role uncertain knowledge plays in their argumentation. In addition, we analyze to what extent the formulation of prognoses and advice is influenced by the genre and media context of the statement (expert opinion vs. interview / talk show, i. e. also: written and oral contexts).

Review: Occult Roots of Religious Studies: On the Influence of Non-Hegemonic Currents on Academia around 1900, edited by Yves Mühlematter and Helmut Zander

Review: <i>Occult Roots of Religious Studies: On the Influence of Non-Hegemonic Currents on Academia around 1900</i>, edited by Yves Mühlematter and Helmut Zander

Effective or predatory funding? Evaluating the hidden costs of grant applications.

Researchers are spending an increasing fraction of their time on applying for funding; however, the current funding system has considerable deficiencies in reliably evaluating the merit of research proposals, despite extensive efforts on the sides of applicants, grant reviewers and decision committees. For some funding schemes, the systemic costs of the application process as a whole can even outweigh the granted resources-a phenomenon that could be considered as predatory funding. We present five recommendations to remedy this unsatisfactory situation.

Development of vaccines at the time of COVID-19.

ABSTRACTIn December 2019, a working group of the European Academy of Microbiology assembled to discuss various aspects of vaccines and vaccinations. The meeting was organised by Jörg Hacker and Eliora Z. Ron and took place in the offices of the Leopoldina (German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina). Several important issues were addressed and a major part of the discussion focused on the need to develop new vaccines, especially to protect against pathogens that constitute a pandemic threat. Following the rapid and unpredicted spread of COVID-19 in the first seven months of 2020, the need to develop vaccines for pandemic viruses rapidly has been clearly established. Thus, this paper will concentrate on points that were highlighted by the recent COVID-19 pandemic and lessons learnt therefrom.

30 Years of Safe Genetic Engineering in Germany

The rapid development of new techniques for genome editing is a good reason to summarize the current state of the debate. In a joint statement, the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the German Research Foundation, and the Union of German Academies of Sciences and Humanities present proposals to regulate the use of genome‐editing methods.

Meet the First Author.

Meet the First Author.

The Role of Academies in Science-based Policy Advice: The Case of Biomedicine and the Life Sciences

The German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina is greatly honoured by receiving the Gold Medal of the Academia Europaea. On this occasion, it might be appropriate to talk about the role of academies in science-based policy advice. The authors would like to address the question: what general aims should the academies achieve – particularly in respect to biomedicine and the life sciences?

Ethics committees in security-relevant research according to the recommendations of Leopoldina and the German Research Foundation

The scientific freedom protected by the German Basic Law is aprerequisite for the progress and prosperity of society. However, free research is also associated with risks resulting from the fact that useful research results and methods can be abused, for example as weapons of war or as a means of criminal or terrorist activities.According to the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the German Research Foundation (DFG), meaningful control of these risks cannot be achieved through further legislation but only through appropriate awareness raising and self-governance tools within the scientific community. In order to make this more concrete, both organizations jointly published the "Recommendations for Handling Security-Relevant Research" in 2014. For the effective and sustainable implementation of these recommendations, the DFG and Leopoldina established the Joint Committee on the Handling Security-Relevant Research.In Germany, there are already numerous commissions with different names that deal with ethical issues in science. For some years now, in addition to the most numerous medical ethics committees primarily responsible for medical research on human beings and those committees supporting the authorities in deciding on the approval of animal experiments to protect animal welfare, an increasing number of so-called committees for ethics in security-relevant research have been set up. Following the recommendations of the joint committee of the DFG and Leopoldina, these committees advise researchers on site on questions concerning security-relevant aspects of research.

Elected to the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina: M. Sattler / Australian Museum Eureka Prizes: T. Maschmeyer and E. J. New / Alfred C. Egerton Gold Medal: K. Kohse‐Höinghaus

Angewandte Chemie International EditionVolume 57, Issue 44 p. 14325-14326 News Elected to the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina: M. Sattler / Australian Museum Eureka Prizes: T. Maschmeyer and E. J. New / Alfred C. Egerton Gold Medal: K. Kohse-Höinghaus First published: 19 October 2018 https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201810506Citations: 2Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Graphical Abstract Citing Literature Volume57, Issue44Special Issue: 150th Anniversary of the Technical University of MunichOctober 26, 2018Pages 14325-14326 RelatedInformation

Jorg Hacker

A lecture on combating infectious diseases and the role of science academies in this initiative was jointly organized by the Indian National Science Academy and the Indian Academy of Sciences on 4 December 2017 at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. The talk was delivered by Jorg Hacker, President of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

Leopoldina: a network for future Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine?

The Nobel Prize, awarded since 1901, is perceived as the most prestigious scientific prize around the globe. Thus, it is not surprising that scientific academies and universities use it strategically to boost their reputation. The German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina of Halle, Germany, proudly highlights the 174 Nobel laureates among its members. This paper explores Nobel Prize nominations of and by members of the Leopoldina and explores connections between nominator and nominee. Using historical network theory as a tool to structure large data sets and generate research questions, the core of this essay deals with the relevance of social networks for reputation processes in the sciences.

Personalized Medicine in Europe.

Personalised medicine is a promising new concept for dealing with challenges of health and health systems. With the launch of the International Consortium of Personalised Medicine, which brings together health research funders and policy making organisations, European countries aim to coordinate research and health policy to advance the implementation of personalised medicine. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

Public Health as a Pathway towards Optimising Human Beings in Terms of Better Resilience? The Leopoldina Statement on Public Health in Germany

The June 2015 political statement of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina on Public Health in Germany emphasizes the need to strengthen Public Health and Public Health research in Germany. The Leopoldina authors' discernable desire to take into consideration the largest possible number of aspects and disciplines related to Public Health, however, leads to an accumulation of concepts with little or no content or even contradictive statements. Besides highly welcome explanation, for instance on the relevance of social determinants, the policy statement one-sidedly argues in favour of promoting genomics and other "omics" technologies. Indeed, the Leopoldina paper overrates the relevance of this and other technological approaches within Public Health and focuses too much on biomedical solutions. The potential of such technologies in the context of the health-in-all-policies approach which Leopoldina asks for is rather limited, however, when it comes to creating healthy living conditions. Genetic and other innovative technologies of medical research are hardly able to improve these conditions; they can merely contribute to enhancing the resilience of human beings in view of the increasingly uncontrollable environmental conditions - rather than changing these conditions.

Gerhard Quinkert (1927-2015).

Gerhard Quinkert (1927-2015).

Memories of Annemarie Weber.

Memories of Annemarie Weber.

Advances in nanomaterials

In many cases new technologies are driven by the development of novel materials providing properties or combinations of properties that were not available before. The use of polymers and silicon-based semiconductor technologies are just two examples of how the availability of certain materials revolutionized existing technologies and products, giving rise to completely new technologies and having an enormous impact on our everyday life. During the past three decades, the field of nanomaterials experienced a tremendous rise from the early beginnings to modern-day technologies, and still, new ideas and breakthroughs keep opening new perspectives for future technologies, from cars to aircraft, from semiconductors and electronics to novel displays, from energy harvesting to energy storage technologies and from biomimetic structures to medical technologies, to mention just a few examples. One recent development in the field of nanomaterials is the ability not only to tailor the properties of nanomaterials (to achieve custom-designed, “tailor-made” values of certain properties) but to tune these properties. Tunable materials allow to change the properties of these materials reversibly and in a controlled manner after fabrication, e.g., by applying an electric field. Another remarkable development is the discovery of “nanoglasses”, based on the idea of introducing internal interfaces on the nanometer scale not between crystalline structures (leading to nanocrystalline materials) but between non-crystalline, amorphous or glassy structures. These glasses differ structurally from present-day glasses and thus are expected to open the way to an age of glass-based technologies comparable to the contemporary, primarily crystalline-based, technologies. This Thematic Series does not attempt to give a comprehensive overview over the vast and thriving field of nanomaterials. It rather gives a sequence of contributions on recent developments within this field. The volume is dedicated to Horst Hahn on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Horst Hahn is Executive Director of the Institute for Nanotechnology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Full Professor at the Technische Universitat Darmstadt. In addition, he is Founding Director of the Helmholtz Institute Ulm for Electrochemical Energy Storage (HIU). He is Distinguished Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India, and Honorary Professor at the University of Hyderabad, India, and at the Lanzhou University, China. Moreover, he is Elected Member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the European Academy of Science. As a Fellow of the Materials Research Society (MRS), his sustained and distinguished contributions to the advancement of international materials research were recognized. In the past two years, Horst Hahn was recipient of the highest award of the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Materialkunde (DGM), the Heyn Denkmunze, and of the renowned Robert Franklin Mehl Award of the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS). Horst Hahn has published more than 300 peer-reviewed articles in various fields of materials science. His main research interests are related to the synthesis and processing of nanocrystalline materials and nanostructures with tailored and tunable properties, with a focus on applications in printed electronics and energy materials. The nucleation point for this Thematic Series was an international symposium held in August 2012 at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology on the occasion of the 60th birthday of Horst Hahn – the “Nanomaterials Days” – which brought together renowned experts in the field of nanomaterials, each of them giving a short contribution on one recent research highlight in this field. A selection of these contributions is found in this Thematic Series in the form of original research articles reflecting recent advances in nanomaterials. The articles in this Thematic Series highlight recent developments, from nanoporous polymers to graphene quantum dots, from concepts for designing magnetic properties to nanoplasticity and to the remarkable mechanical properties of a novel type of nanowires, just to mention some of the developments described. We would like to thank all the authors for contributing their excellent work to this Thematic Series. Moreover, we would like to thank all referees for their promptly provided reports keeping the publication times short and attractive for contributors. Finally, we thank the team at the Beilstein Institut for their excellent support, and we acknowledge to the open access policy of the Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology, which provides the basis for unrestricted discussions on “Advances in Nanomaterials”. Herbert Gleiter, Horst Hahn and Thomas Schimmel Karlsruhe, November 2013

New Members of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities Academy / Prize of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities: H. Cölfen / Dr. Hermann Schnell Fellowship: F. H.

Angewandte Chemie International EditionVolume 52, Issue 48 p. 12481-12482 News New Members of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina and the Berlin–Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities Academy / Prize of the Berlin–Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities: H. Cölfen / Dr. Hermann Schnell Fellowship: F. H. Schacher First published: 31 October 2013 https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201308236Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Graphical Abstract Volume52, Issue48November 25, 2013Pages 12481-12482 RelatedInformation

Addressing the Question, What Is a Substorm?

Never in the history of magnetospheric research have there been more exciting opportunities to unravel the physical processes causing the most spectacular phenomenon in Earth's magnetosphere—the magnetospheric substorm. The four Cluster and the five Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) spacecraft, together with new ground magnetometer arrays, ionospheric radar systems, and optical networks, provide detailed observations of the complex dynamical features of the magnetosphere. The 11th International Conference on Substorms (ICS‐11), sponsored by the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, was held as a platform for the space plasma community to exchange recent discoveries in observations and theories.

Académie des Sciences Prizes / New Members of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina

Angewandte Chemie International EditionVolume 52, Issue 6 p. 1625-1626 News Académie des Sciences Prizes / New Members of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina First published: 21 January 2013 https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201209796Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Abstract Volume52, Issue6February 4, 2013Pages 1625-1626 RelatedInformation

GPCR Activation on the Microsecond Timescale in MD Simulations

G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) play a central role in signal transduction and consequently represent a major drug target. Structural similarities suggest a common working mechanism, which is typically deduced from crystal structures of activation intermediates. The latter have become available recently, in particular for the light sensing GPCR rhodopsin and other members of the rhodopsin-like GPCR family. These crystal structures provide snapshots along the activation pathway, however, the transitions between those remain speculative.Time resolved spectroscopy is able to provide crucial insights into dynamic details. However, another promising route to study receptor dynamics was opened by the recent occurrence of special purpose computers for molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, which allow to observe conformational transitions related to receptor activation/deactivation directly in unbiased MD simulations on timescales of tens of microseconds.The activation kinetics for GPCRs, such as rhodopsin, typically feature time constants on the order of milliseconds, which is still beyond reach for direct simulation. However, here we present microsecond simulations for a special case, squid rhodopsin from Todarodes pacificus. While it shares many structural features with its bovine counterpart, activation occurs with a time constant of 12.5 microseconds at room temperature. We analyze simulations of the light activated receptor spanning up to 20 microseconds, allowing us to identify activation events and focus specifically on the interactions between the retinal ligand and the receptor, that trigger the activation process.This work was supported by the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (fellowship to M.H.) and the NSF (grant CHE-0750175). We are grateful for an allocation of computer time on Anton at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (supported by the NIH).