Veronika Rieger

Deutsche Bahn has published its new timetable, which comes into effect on the 13th of December. The company intends to offer 13,000 additional seats by the end of the year by expanding its train fleet. Among other things, the long-distance trains will then run between Hamburg and Berlin at 30-minute intervals. From June 13, 2021, the railroad plans to deploy its XXL-ICE with 918 seats on the Hamburg-Frankfurt-Basel-Zurich-Chur route for the first time.

An experimental study found that installing four commercial air purifiers in a classroom reduces aerosol concentrations by 90%. The team around Joachim Curtius of the Experimental Atmospheric Research Group of the Goethe University Frankfurt used one H13 filter in each of the devices, which can filter particles in a size of 0.1 particles in a size of 0.1 µm to 0.3 µm from the air.

Respiratory viruses such as SARS-CoV2 are transmitted by droplet infection, touch and aerosols. Air filters can serve as a protective measure against aerosols that are incompletely retained by masks.

For the first time in 50 years Tasmanian devils live on the Australian mainland again through a reintroduction action. Since Tasmanian devils play a crucial role in the ecosystem as scavengers, science has made great efforts to re-establish them in the mainland ecosystem. The 26 released animals now live in a 400 hectare fenced area of Wildlife Sanctuary north of Barrington Tops National Park.

The French National Assembly has approved a restitution law for the return of art treasures. France now plans to return 26 statues and other works of art from the so-called treasure of Béhanzin to Benin. The treasures were previously on display at the Paris Museum of Non-European Art. Furthermore, a sabre will be returned to Senegal, which was previously on display in the Paris Army Museum.

From October 2021, the "IKEA" Group will stop selling disposable alkaline batteries to reduce waste. According to its own information, the Swedish company sold about 300 million alkaline batteries worldwide between September 2018 and August 2019. By replacing this amount with rechargeable batteries, IKEA calculates that 5,000 tons of waste can be avoided annually.

The state of Hamburg decided that cruise ships may now donate their leftover food to the Hamburger Tafel. For customs and import law reasons, cruise ships were not allowed to donate food until now, as cruise ships are legally considered "third countries".

While surplus food had to be disposed of in the past, it is now possible both to reduce food waste and to support the distribution of food to those in need.

In intensive care units, artificial respiration causes most infections with antibiotic-resistant hospital germs. In his bachelor's thesis, medical technology student Ben Sicks researched the killing of germs and pathogens by irradiation with blue LEDs and found that the blue illumination of a tube caused a 99.9% reduction in the concentration of bacteria. For this discovery he was awarded the Applied Photonics Award by the Frauenhofer Institute Jena.