Max Planck Society

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The Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften Eingetragener Verein (abbreviated MPG, Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science in English) is an independent non-profit association of German research institutes funded by the federal and state governments.

The nearly 80 research institutes of the Max Planck Society conduct basic research in the interest of the general public in the natural sciences, life sciences, social sciences, and the arts and humanities. They have a total staff of approx. 13,000 permanent employees, including 4,700 scientists, plus around 11,000 non-tenured scientists and guests. Their budget for 2006 was about 1.4 billion euro, with 84% from state and federal funds. The Max Planck Institutes focus on excellence in research, with 17 Nobel Prizes awarded to their scientists since 1948, and are generally regarded as the foremost basic research organization in Germany.

Other notable networks of publicly funded research institutes in Germany are the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, performing applied research with a focus on industrial collaborations, the Helmholtz-Gesellschaft, a network of the national laboratories in Germany, and the Leibniz-Gemeinschaft, a loose network of institutes performing basic to applied research.

For more information about Max Planck Society, read the full article at Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.


News tagged with max planck institute

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Housing shortage alters reproductive behaviour in blue tits

Housing shortage alters reproductive behaviour in blue tits

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Mar 09, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (2) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Increased competition for rare breeding sites causes female blue tits to invest more time in their current brood, to spend more time feeding their offspring and also to produce more male offspring ...


Regions of the brain can rewire themselves

Regions of the brain can rewire themselves

Medicine & Health / Neuroscience

created Mar 09, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (10) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen have succeeded in demonstrating for the first time that the activities of large parts of the brain can be altered ...


A water splitter with a double role

A water splitter with a double role

Physics / Soft Matter

created Mar 09, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (10) | comments 4

(PhysOrg.com) -- There is a lot of hope invested in hydrogen, but it also presents some problems. It is energy-rich, clean and, as a constituent of water, of almost unlimited availability. However, so far ...


Schematic Section of a Plant Leaf

Novel electric signals in plants

Chemistry / Biochemistry

created Mar 09, 2009 | popularity 4 / 5 (1) | comments 1

Using ion-selective micro-electrodes electrical signals in plants moving from leaf to leaf could be measured. The speed of the signals spreading as voltage changes over cell membranes ranged from 5 to 10 cm ...


New explanation for a puzzling biological divide along the Malay Peninsula

Biology / Ecology

created Mar 06, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (2) | comments 0

Ecologists at the University of California, San Diego, offer a new explanation for an apparently abrupt switch in the kinds in of mammals found along the Malay Peninsula in southeast Asia - from mainland species to island ...


Here's looking at you, fellow!

Here's looking at you, fellow!

Biology / Other

created Mar 02, 2009 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Already Charles Darwin investigated facial expressions of monkeys in order to find out how closely related humans and monkeys really are. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biological ...


Trading carats for nanometers - and defective diamonds for crystal clear microscopy

Trading carats for nanometers - and defective diamonds for crystal clear microscopy

Physics / Optics & Photonics

created Mar 02, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (5) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Large, perfect diamonds are precious to almost all of us but to some scientists, it is the defects that really matter. This is because defects can form nanoscopic color centers, which play ...


Cataglyphis fortis

Desert ants smell their way home

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Feb 27, 2009 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (3) | comments 0

Humans lost in the desert are well known for going around in circles, prompting scientists to ask how desert creatures find their way around without landmarks for guidance. Now research published in BioMed ...


A little bit of spit reveals a lot about what lives in your mouth

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Feb 26, 2009 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (3) | comments 0

Like it or not, your mouth is home to a thriving community of microbial life. More than 600 different species of bacteria reside in this "microbiome," yet everyone hosts a unique set of bugs, and this could have important ...


How we think before we speak: Making sense of sentences

Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry

created Feb 20, 2009 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (10) | comments 0

We engage in numerous discussions throughout the day, about a variety of topics, from work assignments to the Super Bowl to what we are having for dinner that evening. We effortlessly move from conversation to conversation, ...


Forgotten and lost - when proteins 'shut down' our brain

Forgotten and lost - when proteins 'shut down' our brain

Biology /

created Feb 17, 2009 | popularity 3.5 / 5 (4) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Which modules of the tau protein, in neurons of Alzheimer disease patients, may act in a destructive manner were investigated by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry ...


Nerve Cell

Cells with double vision: How one and the same nerve cell reacts to two visual areas

Biology /

created Feb 17, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (7) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- In comparison to many other living creatures, flies tend to be small and their brains, despite their complexity, are quite manageable. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology ...


A new kind of counting: Scientists develop computer algorithm to solve previously unsolvable counting problems

A new kind of counting: Scientists develop computer algorithm to solve previously unsolvable counting problems

Other Sciences / Mathematics

created Feb 11, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (33) | comments 12

(PhysOrg.com) -- How many different sudokus are there? How many different ways are there to color in the countries on a map? And how do atoms behave in a solid? Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for ...


Looking Back 13.8 Billion Years: The countdown for Planck satellite has started

Looking Back 13.8 Billion Years: The countdown for Planck satellite has started

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Feb 05, 2009 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (3) | comments 1

The Planck satellite is set to eavesdrop with hitherto unsurpassed precision on the echo of the Big Bang, thereby providing a sharp image of the infancy of the Universe. The satellite is due to be launched ...


Single factor converts adult stem cells into embryonic-like stem cells

Biology /

created Feb 05, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (8) | comments 0

The simple recipe scientists earlier discovered for making adult stem cells behave like embryonic-like stem cells just got even simpler. A new report in the February 6th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, ...