Tomorrow Today: The Science Magazine

Dr. Elizabeth Lauren Green arrived in Dresden in 2012 to continue her post-doctoral studies at the High Magnetic Field Laboratory. Green specializes in the study of high magnetic field, low temperature phenomena -- which could to develop new computer technology.She lives in Dresden with her husband and young son. Dr. Green says she's happy that Germany gives her the opportunity to combine her family life with a successful professional career.

Andreas Birkenfeld is searching for the key to a longer life. His theory goes: if your metabolism drops, your body ages more slowly, you stay slim and are less susceptible to disease. He's already proven it with mice by lowering their metabolism artificially through genetic modification. Now Birkenfeld wants to find out if the same can be applied to humans. And he wants it in pill form - one tablet for a healthy life right up to the ripe old age of 120.

Live long and stay fit, right into old age. Sound too good to be true? Scientists may be on the cusp of making it reality. Their theory is, if metabolism drops, the body ages more slowly. It works with mice, could it work for us too?

Jason Dexter is an astrophysicist from the US who was interested in black holes years before they were en vogue among researchers. He works at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics near Munich.

Francesco Castellini was fascinated right from early childhood by the concept of traveling into space and discovering distant worlds. He became a flight dynamics engineer and now works at the European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany. There he deals with all the calculations for flight maneuvers by space probes, for example. Right now he's mainly working on the Rosetta mission. His next project will be ExoMars - a scientific satellite scheduled to land on Mars...

Sensational images from the surface of comet "Chury” have translated into global exposure for the Max-Planck Institute for Solar System. The Göttingen-based research center is acknowledged as one of the best in the world when it comes to the development and construction of spacecraft cameras and similar devices. Our report explains the reasons for the institute’s excellence.

Cholera - a potentially deadly disease transmitted via contaminated water - remains one of the most feared pathogens on the planet. Scientists at the University of Bochum have found a new way of fighting the bacteria. They discovered that the gene in the microbe that makes people sick is inactivated when outside the human body, and is only ‘turned on’ by the body’s internal temperature of 37° C...

Manja-Christina Reuter is chief coordinator of a research group on sustainable and healthy food at the Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering. She says that farming will have to see greater rotation and individualization, although this will mean higher prices. DW: You head a project at your institute called "Sustainable Food Production and Healthy Nutrition". Two really big goals...

For more on the future of research in Africa, we're joined in the studio by Lara Petersen from the German-African Business Association. DW: There are excellent examples of how researchers are pursuing important work in Africa. But I think the general impression in Europe is that not much is happening there when it comes to research. Is that a fair assessment? Lara Petersen: There are quite a few projects like the one we've just seen...

In the future, Senegalese fishermen might be able to use an app to calculate how much they can catch today without devastating the fish stocks of tomorrow. That's vital as stocks are shrinking along the country's Atlantic coast, while the population just keeps growing. The app is being tested and developed by researchers at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Senegal...