From Bombay to Bremen: Dr. Mehul Bhatt is a long way from home, but is in any case involved in virtual worlds. He specializes in spatial cognition. With the help of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, he’s looking into how people behave in spaces that do not even exist and where the normal laws of nature do not always apply.Our "Billiant Minds" series introduces young scientists from across the world who live and research in Germany.

• 11/7/11
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Our guest this week is Hans Schöler, stem cell researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Münster

• 10/31/11
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Scientists say solar cells made of transparent synthetics could provide energy in the future. You can see through them and they are flexible. Scientists in Dresden are working on what they call "organic solar cells" that they want to eventually market.The aim is fascinating -- but there are some technological fixes that need to happen first. Among the issues to be addressed are poor durability and low efficiency. Once those problems have been solved, the organic solar cells could come in the form of colored foils to be used on building facades, vehicles and perhaps even handbags and mobile phones.

• 10/24/11
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Scientists at Clausthal University of Technology are investigating whether it is possible to use inactive mines to store energy. To address the problem of supplying uninterrupted power generated from wind and water, electricity producers need new storage technologies.The scientists say underground power plants can help. Solar and wind energy can be used to bring large quantities of water into basins above mines. At times when wind and sun is scarce, the water can be released through a shaft to drive a power producing turbine. They say it is a way to preserve the natural landscape and use decommissioned mines as rationally as possible.

• 10/24/11
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Hydrogen is being touted and the fuel of tomorrow, but there are still some problems to be ironed out. The gas is highly explosive and requires enormous storage tanks. Now, scientists doing basic research in Erlangen are proposing a solution. They call it carbazol, which looks similar to diesel fuel.The substance binds hydrogen in large quantities, thereby reducing its flammability and the risk of explosion. In a vehicle, the fuel is heated and used with a catalyst. Hydrogen is released into a fuel cell, which generates electricity to run the car. All the driver has to do is exchange the spent carbazol for fresh fuel at a filling station very similar to those of today.

• 10/24/11
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Roberto Rinaldi is a researcher at the Max Planck Institute in Mülheim on the Ruhr. He is looking for a way to use agricultural waste to generate energy.

• 10/24/11
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Where does wind come from? How does electricity work? Children are curious about the world. The Little Scientists' House Foundation wants to take that natural curiosity and help it develop.They've had projects in daycares, and are now bringing their program into primary schools. The foundation believes that children who enjoy learning about science and technology at a young age will remain interested in it as adults. And numerous studies have reported that early education programs such as this one can succeed in turning children on to science.

• 10/17/11
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Our studio guest this week is Detlev Ganten, president of the World Health Summit.

• 10/17/11
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Scientists in Munich are looking into the effects of ozone and rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere on plants that trigger allergies. Pollen has grown increasingly aggressive in recent years.Researchers are also working on an early warning system based on an innovative automated pollen counting system. With the help of software, this device can also be used elsewhere in the world to identify substances in the atmosphere that trigger allergies.

• 10/17/11
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This week's studio guest is Professor Helmut Schwarz, President of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and at the same time, a leading chemist in the field of molecular chemistry.DW-TV: Now Daniel Shechtman is being awarded this year's Nobel Prize for the discovery of quasi-crystals. Would that be to hard to explain to us what that actually is? Helmut Schwarz: I will do my best to do it. When you try to cover a table or a plane with small elements, you can only do it with triangles, with squares, with hexagons. It is impossible to do it with pentagons or with things having seven corners. But it was Shechtman who demonstrated that that is possible, and it it also possible for crystals. And he was the first to demonstrate that periodicity, which was kind of a dogma in crystallography, in a material understanding is not correct. He was really working against any kind of established knowledge. He was actually fired; his boss gave him a textbook saying, 'Look, read what is stated there.' He was fired because he became an embarrassment for the environment. DW-TV: So he obviously faced open hostility. Helmut Schwarz: Absolutely, even a Nobel Laureate mentioned, there are no quasi-crystals, only quasi-scientists. DW-TV: But doesn't that mean that our science is kind of moving wrong? We need the outsiders and not the straight-forward ones? Helmut Schwarz: We need outsiders everywhere, although in science, they are really the salt in the soup. DW-TV: The Humboldt Foundation gives grants and prizes to researchers. So maybe you know what it takes to win a Nobel Prize one day. What kind of key characteristics does a scientist have to have? Helmut Schwarz: You have to be excellent, you have to be excited and courageous, you have to be ready to challenge common knowledge - that makes a real Nobel Laureate. And, you have to be lucky. Of course, you have to be nominated. DW-TV: Of course. But you are a researcher of that type. You're a chemist, internationally working, so how come you haven't had a Nobel Prize so far? Helmut Schwarz: I'm the wrong person to be asked. Ask the Nobel Committee. DW-TV: But at the Humboldt Foundation, the people you have supported - quite a few of them - actually won a Nobel Prize afterwards. So you should know a bit more. Helmut Schwarz: It seems we really have a nose to identify, at an early stage, talents. We know that is the right person, a promising candidate, and it looks like out of the 47 Nobel Laureates in the Humboldt Stiftung, 44 were identified years ahead of the Stockholm decision. DW-TV: So Stockholm is looking at what you actually did. Helmut Schwarz: Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. In fact, if they do, it's good that they do it. DW-TV: And maybe one other thing: Do the researchers actually have to have good nerves? Because the beginning of October, we know, Stockholm might call. So what happens in this society of researchers? Helmut Schwarz: Well, a few of them get really nervous. There's a kind of Nobel Award disease, which affects them. But the majority, I think, they take it in a rather relaxed mood. They just wait, lean back, do your research, get excited about what you're doing. DW-TV: But you could get sick. Helmut Schwarz: A few do get sick, that's true. But they are the exception. DW-TV: I hope you won't get sick, I hope you'll get a Nobel Prize one day. Thanks a lot for the talk, Professor Schwarz. (Interview: Ingolf Baur)

• 10/10/11
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This week's studio guest is Professor Helmut Schwarz, President of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation

• 10/10/11
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Professor Thomas Lindel from Braunschweig University of Technology is looking for new medicinal substances.

• 10/3/11
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from Germany's DESY Accelerator Center.

• 9/26/11
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They are among the best in their scientific fields. With the series “Brilliant Minds,” DW-TV introduces top-notch young researchers from all over the world who live and work in Germany.Shigeyoshi Inoue is 30 years old, and is currently pursuing a career in chemistry at the Technical University Berlin. His field of research is the production and characterization of novel molecules such as chemical combinations of silicon and carbon. Organic silicon compounds aren't found in nature, but they could provide the basis for a whole new range of useful materials in both chemistry and medicine.

• 9/19/11
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This week's studio guest is Prof. Dagmar Fischer from the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. She is the head of the NanoMed project, a programme sponsored by the German Ministry of Science and Education that is examining the effects of nanoparticles on the human body.

• 9/19/11
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Our studio guest is Dr Joachim Winter, German Aerospace Center

• 9/12/11
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In our "Brilliant Minds" series, Tomorrow Today presents young scientists from around the world who live and work in Germany.34-year-old Mario D'Amore of Italy has been fascinated by far-off worlds since he was a child. Today, he works at the German Aerospace Center in Berlin. He analyzes a range of rock samples in a specially designed laboratory. He can use the insights he gains to decipher the chemical make-up of other planets such as Mars or Mercury. In his free time, Mario D'Amore tinkers with electronic components and dreams of developing research instruments for space expeditions.

• 9/12/11
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They are among the best in their scientific fields. With the series “Brilliant Minds,” DW-tv introduces top-notch young researchers from all over the world who live and work in Germany.Rajkumar Thummer does his research at the Life and Brain Center at the University of Bonn, one of the Germany’s leading institutes for stem cell research. The 30-year-old Indian is working on ways to transform human cells back into stem cells. By using stem cells, doctors are hoping they can treat conditions like Alzheimer’s disease in future. If this could be done by using stem cells from the body, problems such as patient rejection of transplanted tissue or organs could become a thing of the past.

• 9/5/11
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In the studio: Klaus Töpfer, IASS Potsdam, Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies.

• 9/5/11
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Prof. Werner Daum from the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) in Berlin

• 8/29/11
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Our guest on today's show is Dr. Paul Enck from Tübingen University ClinicDW-TV: Joining us in the studio is Professor Paul Enck. He’s a psychologist and he’s an expert on placebos. Now, is it actually possible that a doctor with an uncaring attitude could make a patient even worse – an ill patient? Paul Enck: Definitely, it can do. Think about the idea of doing a wrong diagnosis. Patients develop symptoms immediately after getting a wrong diagnosis, and that will make them very sick for quite a while, until this problem is solved. Better choose the right doctor, I guess. Can you judge how big a role placebos actually play in medical treatment? Well, we know from drug trials that when we test a drug, a new drug or a common drug against a placebo, that on average the placebo response is about 40% of what we see in the drug arm. So about 40 % of the medication response is attributable to the placebo, on average, across all medical conditions. Some more, some less. That’s amazing, that’s really a lot, isn’t it? It’s really a lot, yes. Obviously has to do with the self-healing powers of the body. Can you explain to us what happens really in our bodies? Well, I’m not quite sure what that is, the self-healing power of the body, because placebos do not heal – placebos just take symptoms away. But what happens when you take a drug such as this one and you expect this to treat your symptoms, but in fact it is empty, or it contains nothing that can do that. What happens are two processes: expectation – you expect to improve, your symptoms to be improved. And second, your previous experience was similar such as blue makes you feel sleepy, will continue to work for a while after you take an empty drug. But that’s actually then a process which should work differently with different illnesses? Yes, this is true. In fact placebos do simulate what the actual drug does. And therefore they actually depend on that you once in a while take a real drug – to make this work. The placebos do – a pain placebo drug does do pain inhibition, but does not affect the immune system. If you take a drug for a common cold or some other disease, and then this is substituted by a placebo, this will work on immune functions but not on pain. So you wouldn’t really feel comfortable in trying to heal somebody with just placebos – you wouldn’t rely on that? Oh no, absolutely not. We don’t know how long a placebo response works. We do know from drug studies it can work up to a year. But in everyday practice it might only work for up to a few days. And then it has to be reinforced by giving drugs again. So the best you can get out of it is probably substituting every second or every third drug application by a placebo. Or go below a threshold where you usually the medication would work. And of course it has to do with deception. I mean, if a doctor tells you hey, this is a pill with only sugar in it, it might not work that strongly. So what’s a doctor supposed to do? Well, a doctor should not use placebos at all in his practice because it is regarded as unethical to treat a patient, to give a patient a drug that does not work. What if he tells the truth? Well, that is something that is currently being tested in a number of situations, where we could show that still does give some benefit to the patient. Thanks a lot for the talk. Interview: Ingolf Baur

• 8/24/11
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We will address the issue of particulates in the candlelight in the studio with: Prof. Hartmut Herrmann of the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (IfT)DW-TV: Candles aren't all that much of a problem worldwide, but wood-burning stoves are. In developing countries people use wood as fuel for heating and cooking. How does wood-burning compare, say, with traffic in terms of pollution? Hartmut Herrmann: In Germany it produces about the same mass a year as the whole of the traffic, which is a lot. Worldwide it constitutes a lot of air pollution - especially in developing countries. There is, for example, the development of more clean-burning stoves to fight this pollution from wood burning in developing countries, so it's a big factor. Getting back to Europe, the EU has instituted legislation limiting the emissions of different kinds of fine particulates. How fine do they have to be pose a health risk? There's a regulation aimed at particles with a diameter of up to 10 micrometers, but these smaller particles are probably more risky – especially when they are very small and constituted of organic compounds such as we find them in diesel soot. Nowadays, nanoparticles are all the rage in all kinds of applications. Do these really tiny particles pose an even greater danger? Potentially yes, if they can be released into the environment, but the atmosphere produces very small particles by itself. This is an area of intense study. How can we keep these particles out of the air we breath? We need to go to the sources and do some abatement strategies. For example: we equipped some chimneys with filters, and so we have such regulation now in Germany. I think this is a way of doing it – to have some regulation at the sources. How much do particles in the troposphere affect our climate? They do it a lot: either directly by interacting with radiation or indirectly by triggering cloud formation, and the clouds also interact with the radiation. So they are essential for the atmospheric system and the climate system. Your institute monitors levels of airborne particles in Germany. Would you say this kind of air pollution has improved in recent years? Oh yes, it has much improved, especially in the eastern states since the reunification of Germany. But it has also improved for the whole of Europe. So the air quality is improving continuously, although we still have areas where we need to take care. Interview: Heather DeLisle

• 8/24/11
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Building standards conceived with earthquakes in mind are a matter of course in Japan. But in many other countries, quakes can cause major damage and loss of life because buildings often collapse, burying people beneath them.Under the auspices of the European Union, civil engineers in Karlsruhe, Germany, have developed a technology to stabilize even crumbling walls. They use special fiber mats that can be applied just like wallpaper. These mats then hold the structures together, even if they are already cracked. Initial tests in India and Italy show that there is far more to wall-coverings than making a room look nice.

• 8/24/11
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Many countries are relying on nuclear power as a vital part of their energy mix. At least 60 new nuclear power stations are being built or planned world-wide. But the disaster in Japan has raised awareness of the risks posed by the technology.The situation shows that even today, after decades of operating atomic power plants, unforeseen events can cause problems that have not been anticipated in safety plans. Scientists at the Institute of Energy and Climate Research in Jülich have long been exploring the issues surrounding nuclear safety. One thing they have done is simulate the synthesis of hydrogen within reactors. It is a risk that became a reality at the Fukushima power plant.

• 8/24/11
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Professor Volker Quaschning is a researcher on renewables and he comes from the University of Applied Sciences in Berlin (HTW).DW-TV: Professor Volker Quaschning, when in Germany the wind blows very strongly it can already overwhelm the electrical power grid. How come the big energy suppliers didn't invest in better grids a long time ago? Volker Quaschning: So, the grids are constructed for the distribution of the energy from central power plants, such as coal power plants or nuclear power plants to the consumers, so in the future it will be totally different. So we have distributive renewable energy systems, solar systems, on each roof and we have to change the grid. But the problem is that renewable energy system they compete with the old power plants, with the nuclear and coal power plants and the owner of these power plants they are not interested in constructing new power lines. So, if we turn off the nuclear power plants nowadays that's actually a good thing for the renewables? Yes. And you think that is possible, to turn them off? Yes, of course. At the moment we see that we are going fast into the renewable energy technologies. So if you are looking to the 90s, we have had about three percent of renewable energy electricity in Germany. Last year we had 17 percent. And we'll see that it will be possible in 20 or 30 years to install 100 percent of renewable electricity generation in Germany. You say it will be possible within a few years, 100 percent. How is that supposed to go? We have to keep the fast growing rates of the renewable installations. So, for example, last year we have produced two percent of photovoltaic power in Germany, and more than seven percent of wind power. And we see that we can install about 20 percent photovoltaic power within the next 20 years. It's no problem; we only have to keep the installation rates we had in the last years. You seem very confident. Already today we have 20 thousand wind turbines in Germany. Do you think people will accept even more wind turbines? A lot of the wind turbines have been constructed in the 90s, so they are small wind turbines. We can change the wind turbines or we can repower them with bigger ones and this will increase the generation at the same place of electricity by wind power. We can also use some sites where we have no wind power, for example in Bavaria we have really no wind power plants. And we have to install wind power plants offshore in the North Sea. There are very big potentials that we can even supply the whole of Germany with wind power. Remains the question of the money. Who's supposed to pay for that? In Germany we consumers already paid more than 10 billion euros just for the solar power last year. So who's going to come up for all the rest we need? How much is it going to cost? The problem is that we see the cost of renewable energy in our energy bill. But we have additional costs, for example the cost for the nuclear risk, the cost for climate change, the cost for the subsidies for coal mining. All these costs are covered by other person but not in the energy bill or electricity bill. So if you include these costs into the total calculation the renewable electricity or energy supply is not even much more expensive than conventional power today. Thanks a lot for the talk, Professor Volker Quaschning. Interview: Ingolf Baur

• 8/24/11
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Scientists at Germany's largest textiles institute in Denkendorf are researching new fabrics and materials. Sensors embedded in "smart" clothing might soon help protect firefighters and infants by measuring vital bodily functions and transmitting data that will issue an alert in case problems arise.But the sensors don't just need to function properly - they also need to be flexible, sturdy and resistant to laundering. Researchers in Denkendorf are also hard at work developing high-tech fabrics that can repel dirt and stains and help make our lives easier and better in other ways.

• 8/24/11
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Today's studio guest is Professor Bernd Rech from the Helmholtz Center Berlin. DW: Professor Rech, southern Spain has lots of sun, but it can get pretty dusty when the wind is blowing. Can all that sand and dust destroy a solar power plant? Bernd Rech: It can destroy a solar power plant, but in general I would say the engineers have taken care and it will work. And also you have to look where you will place your power plant. Now as solar energy generation becomes more cost-effective, the higher its yield. How high can we go? In principle, we can go up to 80 percent in conversion efficiency. In the lab we have shown up to 40 percent. But in typical applications today, they are in the range of 10 to 20 percent. So there is still a lot to do, but it’s already much better than nature. And is that a purely technological problem? It’s a technological problem, it’s a fundamental problem, from some side, but it’s also an economic problem. So the most efficient solutions are not the most cost-effective solutions today. All right – it’s a problem in a good deal of fields, actually. So if my electricity comes from a solar power plant, can I watch TV even when the sun isn't shining? If it’s photovoltaics, you can only watch TV when the sun is shining. If it’s a solar terminal plant, then there’s some storage included. So it will depend on the system that you use or if you have storage at home. What would you say is the best strategy for this type of energy generation? Using these huge central power plants, or small decentralized facilities? I think it will be a combination. So you should use as much as possible decentralized. But certainly an international or a big grid would help a lot. Why isn't solar power more prevalent here in Germany, and what can we do to make it more popular? In Germany it’s quite popular now, and it’s increasing. But I think the great future is in countries which have much more sun than in Germany. And I think the oil price will stimulate it and also the political will to fight the greenhouse effect. How do think we can cover our energy needs in the future? I’m quite sure that we will cover it mainly by renewable energies in decentralized and centralized solutions. How much sunlight would we need to capture to provide energy for the entire world? In principle, the sun shines in one hour as much energy to the earth as the global, world population needs the whole year. So there’s a factor of ten thousand in between. But we have to collect it, we have to store it – so a big potential, but we have to use it. OK, well that’s definitely some incentive for the politicians to get in gear here, if we need only one hour of sunlight. Professor Bernd Rech, thank you very much for joining us here today. Interview: Heather DeLisle

• 8/24/11
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Prof. Schorlemmer from the German Research Centre for Geosciences, GFZ, in Potsdam is an expert in the area of earthquake forecasting.DW-TV: Japan is a society that has played a pioneering role in a wide number of technologies -- including of course earthquake warning systems. But even then, people have just five seconds after the warning comes to brace themselves. Cutting straight to the chase, thousands of detection stations around the world, international networks, decades of research -- why can't we predict earthquakes yet? Danijel Schorlemmer: Well, even though we have thousands of stations, we have a big problem. We only measure the signals on the earth’s surface. Unlike in meteorology, where you can measure all the values you’re interested in, like humidity, wind-speed and so on in 3-D, we only see the earth’s surface. We cannot make measurements in the earth, which would be very important to understand what’s going on. And we’re also lacking a precursor phenomenon, a signal that would tell us that an earthquake is imminent. And there have been a lot of these precursors suggested, even animal behavior. But none of them has been shown that it works and that we can use it to forecast or predict earthquakes. Was there really no sign or hint of a magnitude quake of this size? Well there’s always a possibility, a small chance that after a large earthquake there will come an even larger earthquake. And now, in hindsight, you can say that the magnitude seven two days before the big destructive earthquake was this foreshock. But if you were to evacuate people every time you have a big earthquake, or sort of moderate sized earthquake, because there will be a bigger one, after the fifth time, nobody will follow you anymore. If we can't predict earthquakes, is there something else we could do to save lives? Yes, we can implement early warning systems. One is implemented in Japan, as you mentioned. It gives people some seconds of warning to get into a safe position or out of the house. We can install these warning systems in many places. Another thing is simply hazard estimates. We try to compute what can happen. What do we have to be prepared for. And then design building codes and other mitigation measures to save lives. You're working on a project with Japanese colleagues on understanding earthquake predictability. Can you tell us more about that? Yes, we have a so-called earthquake forecast experiment going on where different models are being tested to show what their forecasting performance is. But it has to be understood that this is not predicting particular large earthquakes, it’s a statistical estimate. Where do we have to expect earthquakes? And the better we are in this the better hazard assessments we can make. What about a system that’s going to be reliable? That can reliably predict an earthquake? Are we going to see that in our lifetime? I fear I have to say that I don’t think we will see this in our lifetimes. Why? Why are you so pessimistic? Because, as I said in my answer to the first question, we’re still lacking understanding of the basic measurements. But I think we can do a great deal in saving lives by having better hazard assessments. (Interview: Ben Fajzullin)

• 8/24/11
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