Word: planck
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Died. Werner Heisenberg, 74, iconoclastic German nuclear physicist who joined with Albert Einstein, Max Planck and others in repealing some of Newton's laws of physics during the 1920s and 1930s; in Munich. Heisenberg's outstanding contribution, for which he won the Nobel Prize at 31, was the formulation of the uncertainty, or indeterminacy principle. It states that there is an ultimate limit on physical measurement or observation in scientific experiments because the very act of measurement changes the behavior of objects under scrutiny. Unlike many of his scientist friends, Heisenberg remained in Germany under the Nazi regime...
...speed with which these cells can carry out their chemical transactions is, quite literally, mind-boggling. Manfred Eigen, 46, director of Germany's noted Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Gottingen, has found that some of the brain's chemical reactions take as little as one-millionth of a second. As many as 100,000 neurons may be involved in transmitting the information that results in as simple an action as stepping back to avoid being struck by an oncoming car. The entire process occurs in less than a second...
...represents Schmitt's attempt to get science's "wets" (chemists) and "drys" (physicists) together to work on the mystery of the brain. The organization is a loose federation of scientists who are themselves connected with such prestigious institutions as the University of California, Germany's Max Planck Institutes and the National Institutes of Health. These researchers constitute the faculty of an "invisible university." Meeting regularly to discuss specific topics and staying in constant communication by letter and telephone, | they hope to accomplish together what none could succeed in I doing alone. Five of the N.R.P...
With less experimental finesse, perhaps, but with greater intellectual capacity, another Viennese, Konrad Lorenz, began his studies of ducks and a gaggle of other animals in early childhood. Since then, in Austria and, after 1951, at the Max Planck Institute of Behavioral Physiology near Munich, he confirmed that his animal subjects inherited certain instincts, but that other kinds of behavior are learned or "imprinted." The newborn duckling will be imprinted to follow the first moving object it sees, whether it is its mother, a cardboard box or a balloon...
...smokers who would like to kick their habit, nothing seems to work. Between 1966 and 1970, 22 million American smokers made at least one serious but unsuccessful attempt to quit. In fact, more cigarettes are currently being sold in the U.S. than ever before. Now researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich have devised a new method for breaking the habit. It works so well, at least for Germans with systematic natures and a healthy respect for rules, that the Bonn Health Ministry is considering mass distribution of a booklet on the method...