Technology Offers

Reversible adhesion can be used to transfer or to manipulate objects. Especially if the objects are small and/or fragile their manipulation become very challenging. Intermolecular forces such as Van-der-Waals can be used to achieve a strong adhesion between the objects. Moreover, surface functionalization and the creation of nano- and microstructures can be used to improve these adhesion properties. Unfortunately, the adhesion becomes insufficient if the surfaces are wet or rough. Another problems ...

With approximately 600,000 deaths annually colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most common cancer types worldwide. Early cancer and pre-cancer (polyps) detection by colonoscopy over the age of 50 until now is the best strategy for disease control and the chance of the cancer to be curable. Epigenetic changes such as DNA methylation has been shown to occur already at early stages of tumor development making such differentially methylated regions (DMRs) highly attractive for biomarker development ...

Cancer remains a major health burden and is the second leading cause of death globally (WHO). The microenvironment of cancer cells plays an important role in disease progression. In particular, the composition of the extracellular matrix regulates angiogenesis, cell proliferation, differentiation, cell survival and apoptosis. Dysregulation and accumulation of the extracellular matrix promotes cellular transformation and metastasis leading to cancer progression. A better understanding of the role ...

Human influenza A virus (IAV) is responsible for seasonal disease in people and can cause worldwide pandemics. The main lines of defense against IAV are vaccines and antiviral drugs.

Influenza vaccines, including killed and live vaccines, recombinant virus-like particles and viral particles, have been available commercially for many years. Typically, the composition of influenza vaccines is based on the major influenza virus strains causing infection in the previous season. Accordingly, ...

For sieving and separation purposes porous materials with adjustable sizes and shapes of the pores as well as tunable mechanical properties are required. The existing materials such as sintered materials, open-cell foams or cemented aggregates can be made porous but they are either fragile or can collapse for large deformation. Therefore, chemically inert and damage resistant porous materials with adjustable permeability as well as mechanical and geometrical properties that can sustain large deformation ...

This invention includes two alternative advanced methods to achieve a homogenous collector power distribution, which improves the collector capability of high power vacuum-tubes by a factor of two as compared to conventional methods. Furthermore the applied method has a high flexibility to vary the power distribution over a wide range of profiles and match the deposition profiles to different designs of collectors in existing or future electron tubes.

The dynamics of complex flows and turbulences are dominated by vortices of many different scales. In general, the vortex describes the group motion of fluid elements in a circular fashion, whereas the vorticity quantizes this spinning moment of a fluid element confined to a small neighborhood.

For diagnosis of flows, conventional techniques track the movements of small particles added into the flow (e.g., Lagrangian particle tracking, LPT, and particle image velocimetry, PIV). However, ...

Anthrax is an acute infectious disease caused by the spore-forming bacterium Bacillus anthracis. B.anthracis can cause human disease via the gastrointestinal, cutaneous or inhalational routes. There is still a considerably high rate of mortality from inhalational anthrax of up to 75 percent, even though fluorquinolone class antibiotics (e.g., ciprofloxacin) are being administered as a first-line therapy. This strategy, in addition, is being threatened by the spread of plasmid-mediated ...

Anti-IgG secondary antibodies are major tools for the detection or immobilization of primary antibodies in approaches such as western blotting, ELISA, Co-IP and immunofluorescence. Polyclonal anti-IgG secondary antibodies are produced in animals, such as mouse, rabbit, rat, and goat and are directed against the IgG classes of these animals. Thus, the generation of such secondary antibodies requires the keeping and use of a large number of animals, which is not only costly but also a major ethical ...

The development of the cation channel channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii by Prof. Ernst Bamberg and his colleagues and its application to light-induced modulation of neurons paved the way for the field of optogenetics.
Over time the light-gated cation channel channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) has become an indispensable tool in neuroscience. Based on the pioneering work on ChR2 new variants have emerged, differing in their spectrum of light absorption, their kinetic ...

PC-based software to construct lattice sections and clusters/molecules with extended graphical display and analysis options.

BiQ Analyzer is a software tool for easy visualization and quality control of DNA methylation data. With more than a thousand users worldwide, BiQ Analyzer has become a standard tool for processing DNA methylation data from bisulfite sequencing. BiQ Analyzer has been selected by ABI to be part of the Applied Biosystems Software Community Program.

Carbon fixation is arguably the most important biochemical processes on earth, supporting our biosphere by transforming inorganic carbon into organic matter and literally feeding all life forms. The reductive pentose phosphate cycle (rPP, also known as the Calvin–Benson–Bassham Cycle) is responsible for ≥95% of the carbon fixed in the biosphere. Although under a strong selective pressure for eons, this process displays major inefficiencies, some are due to the low catalytic rate and the ...

CellNetAnalyzer (CNA) is a MATLAB toolbox providing various computational methods for analyzing structure and function of metabolic, signaling, and regulatory networks. For metabolic networks, CNA supports a variety of stoichiometric and constraint-based modeling techniques, including flux balance analysis (FBA), metabolic flux analysis, elementary-modes analysis, or computational strain design (e.g., minimal cut set analysis). Signal transduction and (gene) regulatory networks can be ...

Applying high voltages in vacuum applications requires feedthroughs, which electrically insulate the conductor from the vacuum chamber whilst being vacuum-tight. In high- and ultrahigh vacuum environments, the materials used need to be low in outgassing rates. The current technology for feedthroughs withstanding tens to hundreds of kilovolts relies on vacuum-tight ceramic to metal connections, which are heavy, fragile and prone to contamination. Commercially available feedthroughs are stand-alone ...

Lock-in thermography (LIT) is a versatile and very sensitive tool to detect local heat sources in electronic components by 2d-images oft he sample. The DECONV program is a tool for converting these lock-in thermography images into local power density images or simulating LIT images by performing mathematical deconvolution or convolution and uses input image data in ASCII table form. Results are exported as ASCII tables or as bmp-files.

This software is a further development of an older ...

Engineering light distributions in a three-dimensional volume to achieve selective illumination profiles is an instrumental task shared by many optical and microscopy techniques. The optimization of the light distribution can lead to significant enhancement of relevant performance figures and ultimately to the extension of the instrument or experimental protocol capabilities^1,2,3,4,5. Targeted illumination profiles can be used either to mechanically interact with molecules at nanometer ...

The estimation of excitation lifetimes based on fluorescence or phosphorescence emission is an essential technique in basic and applied science. It provides information on molecular interactions
as well as on physical properties. Measuring the emission lifetime with spatial resolution provides an imaging modality, which in case of fluorescence is called Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging (FLIM). FLIM is applied extensively in biological imaging in order to determine the conformation, activation, ...

The invention relates to an innovative detector concept for the identification of analytes in a gas that is extremely versatile and yet easy to construct and to operate. The superior properties were reached by an optical readout system for electrical signal of multiple detector cells.

Detecting and quantifying concentrations of analytes of interest is usually achieved using materials that change their electrical properties upon exposure. As different materials combined in one sensor need ...

The invention relates to a new method for imaging setting optimization for electron microscopy
based on deep learning. The AI is a robust and simple to implement optimization possibility for
direct operation with various types of electron microscopes.

For a wide spectrum of applications automated precision electron microscopy is a powerful
method. Existing auto focusing routines are often based on physical models of the microscope
and are hence lacking general applicability ...

The invention relates to a new and durable system, which brings the possibility of accurate size measuring and simultaneous counting of airborne particles with an aerodynamic diameter of up to 2.5 microns.

Measuring the particulate matter contamination in a gas in the range of PM_2.5 is advantageous or crucial for various applications. Monitoring the concentration of the corresponding particles, for example in air, reveals information about pollution. The possibility of aerosol ...

Prof. Klaus-Richard Pörschke and co-workers at the MPI for Coal Research developed a novel cyclic process for the quantitative extraction of cesium with 100% selectivity from any given aqueous or acidic solution, irrespective of the other components.

The development of the cation channel channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii by Prof. Ernst Bamberg and his colleagues, and its application to light-induced modulation of neurons paved the way for the field of optogenetics.
Over time the light-gated cation channel channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) has become an indispensable tool in neuroscience. Based on the pioneering work on ChR2 new variants have emerged, differing in their spectrum of light absorption, their kinetic ...

Fusion Tags Comprising Ubiquitin-like Modifiers and Corresponding Proteases For Protein Purification From Selected Eukaryotic Expression Hosts

The invention relates to a new method for processing magnetic resonance (MR) data based on a neural network (NN). After training, the NN quickly delivers high quality CEST images with low computational effort. Additionally, it provides uncertainty data aiding to judge the images appropriately.

Typically, sophisticated MR contrasts are calculated based on complex mathematical models, which is computationally expensive, and it requires long processing durations. Besides that, the results ...

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is nowadays a leading mo¬dality for diagnostic imaging with about 100 million examinations per year worldwide. However, when invented by Paul Christian Lauterbur in 1973, MRI was too slow to allow for routine medical applications. A breakthrough was achieved in 1985 by the FLASH (Fast Low Angle Shot) technique developed by Jens Frahm and his team at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany. With FLASH the measuring time for a cross-sectional ...

An accurate dispensing device for powders and irregularly shaped particles

The RNA-programmable DNA-endonuclease Cas9 is widely used for genome engineering, where a high degree of specificity is required. Though this is a mechanism well controlled by canonical base-pairing, there is evidence that Cas9 does accept mismatches under certain circumstances.
This might be seen as a threat to precision needed in genome engineering at least in environments where such high precision is ultimately needed and acceptance of mismatches needs to be avoided, e.g.: cellular gene ...

Connectase is an enzyme that fuses target proteins or synthetic compounds via a small recognition tag, using a different reaction mechanism compared to known protein ligases. It prevents side reactions entirely and has absolute specificity, even in highly in complex solutions with minimum concentrations of target molecules.

We offer a new simple and low cost technology to fabricate graphene-encapsulated metal or metal compound nanoparticles. The resulting hybrid nanoparticles are protected by granted substance claims in US, CN, TW and EP (DE, FR, GB, BE). Currently the patent protected graphene coated nano particles are discussed as high performance electrode materials in the lithium ion battery business (for example Samsung's "Graphene Balls").

The CRISPR-Cas system is a powerful tool for site-specific genome editing. It allows for the inactivation or substitution of entire genes. However, most hereditary diseases in humans are caused by single point mutations, the correction of which requires only subtle changes to the DNA. Recently, base editors (BEs) were developed that allow the introduction of selective nucleotide substitutions. A Cas9 enzyme is fused to a nucleobase deaminase catalysing C-to-T mutations (by C-to-U deamination) ...

Ultrafast amplifier systems providing high average powers (>10W) at repetition rates in the kHz regime suffer from severe accumulation of nonlinear phase inside the laser gain medium and other optical components within the amplifier. Implementation of chirped pulse amplification (CPA) constitutes a well-established method to reduce the peak intensity of the laser pulse during the amplification process [1, 2]. However, state of the art laser materials supporting high average output powers such ...

Screening the level of specific blumenols in plant leaves allows simple implementation in marker assisted breeding and high-throughput analysis.

The efficiency of solar cells is strongly affected by local inhomogeneities. Especially inhomogeneities of the dark-current voltage (I-V) characteristic are of interest: The local dark current-voltage characteristic is a measure for the local recombination properties of the solar cell. Lock-in thermography performed in the dark (DLIT) can be used to detect and evaluate locally increased dark current densities.

The invention relates to a monolithic optical frequency comb generator. Furthermore, the invention relates to a method of generating an optical frequency comb.

An improved method to perform cell-free protein synthesis (CFPS) assays or other fluorescent assays in the context of CFPS with very low reaction mix volumes. Various additional advantages allow to significantly reduce costs and time.

Errors in super-resolution microscopy (SRM) can be identified with pairs of emitters that have fixed and precisely known relative positions. Such reference and calibration structures are exceedingly rare on the nanoscale. Here, Nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond (NVs) offer a formidable solution. These fluorescent defects are photo-stable and due to the excellent properties of their brilliant host, do not diffuse and are resilient against temperature or chemical environment changes.

On ...

Biological fixation of CO₂ is an important process carried out by plants and several microorganisms, which can be harnessed for sustainable, biobased production of fuels and chemicals. Particularly, the fixation of CO₂ by autotrophic microorganisms such as cyanobacteria and microalgae can be employed for converting CO₂ into value-added products, such as commodity chemicals or fuels. However, the sustainable autotrophic production ...

A scalable and easy to handle method for the creation of larger (up to square meters) low light level detectors is disclosed. While the fast read-out times of a single detector is kept, the area covered by the detector ensemble (dramatically) increases. The large area is enabled by transversal connection of hybrid “base cells”. These “base cells” consist of vertically stacked tiers of (i) a detector array, (ii) a first level electronic read-out, and (iii) and a second level read-out which ...

A novel tool to detect and quantify NETs using a molecular feature of NET formation that has never been proposed as a marker for NETs before

Exploiting the benefits offered by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at ultra-high fields (≥ 7 Tesla) requires optimized radiofrequency (RF) coils. MRI at UHF operates in a regime where the RF wavelength is comparable to the dimensions of the sample size, resulting in an inhomogeneous distribution of the transmit field (B₁⁺) and in an impaired image quality. An array of independent transmit coils arranged in multiple rows provides the degrees of freedom to influence the ...

We offer a new family of cationic ligands, namely N-alkyl/aryl pyridiniophosphines. The ligands can be synthesized through a short, scalable, and highly modular route.

Evaluation of their electronic properties evidenced weak σ-donor and quite strong π-acceptor character when used as ancillary ligands.

The invention relates to a new concept for a high efficiency light antenna, namely the Truncated Omnidirectional Reflector (TOR). It is well suited for obtaining directional emission and efficient fiber coupling from various types of light sources like single photon emitters.
Especially in the fast-growing field of quantum technologies efficient collectors for solid-state single photon emitters are needed. Achieving collector efficiencies of more than 95% into the fundamental Gaussian mode, ...

A promising target to develop treatment options for osteoporosis and other disease conditions associated with bone loss

The development of the cation channel channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii by Prof. Ernst Bamberg and his colleagues, and its application to light-induced modulation of neurons paved the way for the field of optogenetics.
Over time the light-gated cation channel channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) has become an indispensable tool in neuroscience. Based on the pioneering work on ChR2 new variants have emerged, differing in their spectrum of light absorption, their kinetic ...

The invention relates to a new light source exhibiting a high level of spatial incoherence. This enables microscopic imaging with reduced artefacts and low intensity noise. It comprises a pulsed laser whose beam properties are improved is by a multimode optical fiber.
Full field microscopic imaging is an essential technique in medicine and beyond, but the occurrence of noise strongly limits its applicability. Coherent light contributes considerably to the formation of artefacts. Hence the ...

Antiviral therapy against retroviruses and alphaviruses using tRNA^Leu(UUA) overexpression

Plant pathogenic fungi, oomycetes and bacteria have highly diverse lifestyles, infection strategies and morphologies. Therefore, pesticides frequently target basic cellular processes, as these are well characterized and often very similar among plant pathogens. Many pesticides target enzymes that play a role in e.g. nucleic acid synthesis, respiration, cell division and other essential cellular processes. However, the molecular ...

The Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in collaboration with the Institute of Biotechnology and Drug Research (IBWF) developed novel lignin nanocarriers that can be used for smart pesticide delivery in plants for crop protection. The nanocarriers are characterised by a narrow size distribution and an easy manufacturing, furthermore, they can be loaded with hydrophobic pesticides. Injected to plants, the nanocarriers act as a safe store of pesticide, which is released in situ by lignin degrading ...

Researchers of the Max-Planck-Institute for Colloids and Interfaces and the Paul-Ehrlich-Institute (PEI) have developed a novel codon-specific elongation model (COSEM), that is based on the question how codon bias affects protein expression in combination with a deep understanding of protein synthesis.

For the evaluation of crystallisation processes, process parameters like temperature and concentration can be easily measured. However, to measure the crystal size distribution continuously is a challenging task.
Different methods relaying on back scattering or reflection of monochromatic light can be applied that yield chord-length distributions, which often deviate from the actual crystal or particle size distribution. For analysing the true crystal dimensions and, additionally, the crystal ...

Scientists in the group of Atmospheric Chemistry at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz have developed a novel thiosulfate based ozone scrubber to ensure accurate measurements of trace analytes. It is known from the literature that commercial potassium iodide (KI) containing ozone scrubbers can cause errors in the measurement of carbonyl compounds such as aldehydes and ketones due to byproducts formed from the oxidation of KI. Commercial ozone scrubbers based on sodium thiosulfate ...

The state of an electron is completely defined by its momentum and spin. In processes like electron diffraction or photoemission electron ensembles are generated which have a characteristic 3D distribution of momentum and spin. To examine such events the three components of the momentum vector have to be measured. Up to now, the momentum distribution of an ensemble of charged particles was typically measured using energy-dispersive spectrometers based on sequential approaches (sequentially changing ...

Playful is a scripting language for orchestration of Python modules. Playful allows developers to both organize the logic of activation in reactive behaviour tree and setup sensory-motor couplings, making it especially useful for robotics

The invention relates to a new method for light beam angle detection that is based on interferometry. High precision and sensitivity for slight changes of the beam direction can be achieved with this method.
For high precision light microscopy, the light beam must be aligned accurately, and the beam direction stability must be ensured in order to maintain a sufficient imaging resolution over longer periods of time. In standard microscopy environments even small temperature changes can result ...

Mesoporous materials present a large surface-to-volume ratio providing sites for catalysis, molecular separation, adsorption or chemical sensing. Some of the classical mesoporous materials employed include silica, alumina, zirconia, zeolites, and other diverse oxides such Ti or Co, and they are synthetized by routes as self-assembly, sol-gel, spray drying and some variations of these methods known in the state of the art. Additionally, some elements of the platinum group such as Pd, Ru, and their ...

Speckle interferometry is an established metrology technique for the characterization of rough objects. Deformations of rough objects under a load can be determined, as well as – with the help of an additional second wavelength – the surface shape of the object under test. As an illustration, Figure 1 (left) shows the so called raw phase as a result of a deformation measurement on a metal plate. The shape and the density of the fringes indicate the response of the metal plate to the load.
Owing ...

We present a sensor for the carrier-envelope phase of a few-cycle femtosecond laser. The sensor uses the electron current emitted from a nanoscale metal tip onto which we focus high-repetition-rate laser pulses.

Possible applications of this sensor are in the field of the technique of controlling and using pulse lasers, in particular used for measuring or high-power irradiation purposes.

The size of such a simple stand-alone sensor device for the carrier-envelope phase could be in ...

A simple, one-step assay for reliable measurements of NAD(H) and NADP(H) in complex samples, with various applications such as enzymatic assays, clinicals tests, and as point of care tests in the field of ageing.

The invention relates to a new and improved concept for Depleted p-channel Field Effect Transistors (DePFET) detectors that provides a significantly higher intrinsic amplification. By the extension of the transistor layout, former limitations were overcome.
DePFETs are insufficient for many applications in terms of the achievable intrinsic amplification. This is since shorter transistor channels needed for high amplification would increase the detector noise caused by impact ionization events.
Additional ...

Im Zuge der stetigen Weiterentwicklung und Nachfrage auf dem Gebiet der minimal invasiven Chirugie wurde am Max-Planck-Institut für intelligente Systeme in Stuttgart im Team von Herrn Prof Sitti für patientenfreundliche Magen-Darm-Untersuchungen ein kabelloses kapselförmiges Endoskop in Pillengröße, das sogenannte "B-MASCE" entwickelt. Die aus einem Elastomer bestehende Kapsel dient hierbei sowohl als Gehäuse als auch als Federelement für die Nadel. Über in der Kapsel eingebaute Magnete ...

The ability of hypervalent iodine compounds to act as electrophilic group-transfer reagents has been extensively exploited during the last several years in a variety of synthetically useful transformations
like cyanations and alkynylations. Now it was found, that novel imidazolium sulfuranes, which are isolobal to I(III) species and also depict the key threecenter four-electron bond motive, can be used as an alternative platform for the development of new electrophilic group-transfer reagents.

Imidazolium ...

Novel gas exchange membranes based on superamphiphobic coatings applied on metal meshes were created and tested in different applications, like gas scrubbing and blood oxygenation.
By using the novel membrans drawbacks of traditional membranes - like insufficient wetting, plugging and depositions chemical incompatibility and temperature instability - can be avoided.

Proteins are the main functional units within cells. Their regulated synthesis and degradation are crucial for controlling biological processes. In all cells, protein synthesis is used to respond to extra- and/or intracellular cues to remodel cellular function. Previous studies probing the role of protein synthesis have used chemical inhibitors, often common antibiotics, which are effective but lack functional and cell-type specificity when applied to a mixture of cells.

The invention relates to a new, ultracompact non-invasive medical ventilation system. The BIPAP (Biphasic Positive Airway Pressure) ventilation unit, of size and weight of a tennis ball, is easy to handle and allows low-budget mass production. It can be powered by a rechargeable battery-pack – a great advantage in case of mobile use or damaged/unstable infrastructure leading to frequent blackouts. These benefits, ...

Pulsed laser deposition (PLD) facilitates efficient production of thin films using a laser ablation technique. Targets are selected according to the coating desired. Multiple targets are either moved mechanically to the incidence area, or they are fixed so that the laser beam is alternatively focused on each of them. Multiple targets are, however, known to cause discontinuities, whereas single multicomponent target usually doesn’t ensure compositional homogeneity. The technology presented here ...

In arid and semiarid regions biological soil crusts (BSC) cover about 1/3 of the soil surface. As far as it is known, these BSC (consisting of cyanobacteria, algae, fungi, bryophytes, and other bacteria living in contact with soil particles) are crucial for the global terrestrial carbon and nitrogen cycle. The water status plays a major role, since their water content directly controls the activity of these poikilohydric organisms.