Around 80 specialists from the fields of neutron and food research gathered in Garching during the week of 15–18 June for the eighth edition of the ‘Neutrons & Food’ conference. The focus was on fostering dialogue between the two disciplines, as the organisers from the Forschungszentrum Jülich emphasise.

Materials for future fusion power plants are to be developed at the Garching research campus. As part of a new program of the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR), several research groups from the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Research Neutron Source (FRM II) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) are pooling their expertise.

A South American research team has, for the first time, examined a 230-million-year-old mammalian ancestor in high resolution using neutrons at the FRM II. This has given the paleontologists an insight into brain development and a possible explanation as to why their lineage did not survive the mass extinction at the end of the Triassic period.