The Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) has rolled out a comprehensive initiative to accelerate development of electric vehicles that could play at least two vital roles in the foreseeable future: as a greener means of mobility and as distributed energy storage devices networked to a "smart grid." Around fifty professors in eight faculties are engaged in relevant research projects, coordinated through the newly formed Science Center for Electromobility and strengthened by collaborations with partners in the energy and automotive industries. TUM is on track to unveil a concept car at the next Frankfurt auto show, IAA 2011, and some aspects of the electric vehicle's design and technology were presented to German media today. To further investigate how electric mobility might work in megacities, particularly in tropical regions, the university has established a one-of-a-kind facility in Singapore.

Physicists of the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM), the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen (LMU) and the Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) have discovered a time delay when using light pulses to emit electrons from atoms. Until now, it has been assumed that the electrons start moving out of the atom immediately after the impact of the photons. This delay is the shortest time interval measured in nature to date. Science reports on their findings in the issue of June 25, 2010.

Scientists in Munich report evidence that high concentrations of the molecular "chaperone" proteins GroEL and GroES – intracellular machines that can stabilize folding proteins under stress – play a critical role in increasing the maximum temperature at which E. coli bacteria can grow. Massively and permanently elevated levels of the GroE proteins were found in bacteria adapted, step-wise over a period of years, for growth at 48.5 degrees C. This genomic change persisted for more than 600 generations, and molecular analyses ruled out other mechanisms that might account for the increase in heat resistance. The researchers' findings, published in the June 18 edition of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, have important implications for both fundamental evolutionary studies and biotechnology applications.