Humboldt University Archives

How do power imbalances influence national corruption and welfare?

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A deep-rooted culture of equality provides high living standards for most citizens.

Professor Wolfgang Scholl of Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, has built a detailed model that shows how and where corruption thrives and the damage it causes to social welfare. The social-psychological, cultural, and economic causes and effects are disentangled, and the ethical imperatives are discussed that support a positive outcome. The model confirms empirically that unequal power relations induce corruption […]

Quantum light for biomedical imaging

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Normally, when we photograph an object, we rely on visible light from the sun that is captured directly by the camera sensor. When it comes to looking at cells and tissue samples though, it is often better to use infrared light. Inna Kviatkovsky and Dr Sven Ramelow at the Humboldt University Berlin, together with their collaborators at Max Delbruck Center […]

How context influences language processing and comprehension

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Prof Knoeferle argues that context influences language processing. Variation comes from how context is related to language and who we are as language

Words, words, words. They’re all around us, on toothpaste tubes, cell phones, cereal packets and television screens – and that’s before we leave the house! We read thousands of words every day and take our human ability to use language very much for granted. Yet language comprehension is a highly sophisticated process. Aided by technologies which track eye movement and […]