We talk with Prof. Manfred Hild from the Beuth University of Applied Sciences in Berlin about intelligent robots and when machines become social beings.

Gerd Binnig won a Nobel Prize in 1986 for inventing the scanning tunneling microscope. It makes individual atoms visible and manipulable. It’s used to design materials with desired traits. Binnig also wrote software that analyzes microphotographs.

Mars One is a nonprofit organization based in the Netherlands that has proposed to land the first humans on Mars. They wouldn’t be coming back to Earth and establish a permanent human colony on the Red Planet by 2027. How serious is the project? We talk to Planetary geologist Ulrich Köhler from the German Aerospace Center.

Ingolf Baur:

Ulrich Köhler, what about you? Would that be something for you too? To take a trip to Mars without a return ticket?

Ulrich Köhler:

Well, not without a return ticket. But for a geologist of course, Mars is the target to beat. It's the most interesting planet in the Solar System, which we definitely want to investigate.

Would you personally like to go for a trip like that?

Well, two years return trip is a long way, so I'd really think about it. I'd say it this way.

And the Mars One trip -- this one-way trip -- do you think it's really going to happen? Is it realistic?

I can't answer this, but we all know that space programs of this dimension are extremely complex, and also there are a lot of soft factors that are very difficult to overcome -- like illness and psychological topics, things like this. But the biggest problem of course is to get all the infrastructure running on Mars. Nobody has done this before, so I'm very skeptical.

What's the key challenge if you wanted to set up a base on Mars?

It's the harsh environment on Mars. Its extremely cold at night, it has harsh radiation, it has no ingredients for everyday life, so we'd have to bring everything with us, and to produce it there. Nobody has done that before. So it's a big challenge.

But the first experiments are already taking place, as we have seen. Do you think that one day it might be necessary for humankind to actually emigrate? To colonize another planet?

Well, it's so far away that the sun will blow up -- turn into a big red giant....it's billions of years away. We can't say the least little thing about this period. So someday the earth will vanish. But whether this will make it necessary for humankind to move to Mars...I doubt that.

The bigger risk is that we'll ruin Earth....and need to take off!

We'll take care of the Earth. I'm sure about that.

Give us another hint about Mars. Why is it so special? Why is it so important for us to send a person there? Why do we need to find out more secrets about this planet?

Most interesting is that we can maybe look into the past of our Solar System -- and this also includes looking into the past of our Earth -- we don't know why these planets developed so differently. Why the Earth became so environmentally-friendly for life and Mars didn't. Did life ever exist on Mars, too? So these are maybe the most fundamental questions.

Thank you, Ulrich Köhler.

(Interview: Ingolf Baur)

Scientists at the Institute for Biology at the University of Aachen (RWTH Aachen) have examined the skin structure of the Texas horned lizard to figure out how the lizard manages to transport even tiny amounts of water from its environment to its mouth. It turns out that a special capillary system extending between the lizard's scales on the surface of its skin is involved.

The scientists have recreated this special structure on artificial surfaces, including plastics and metal. The structure enables passive and energy-neutral transport of fluids in the desired direction. One day, it could be used to improve technical processes and conserve natural resources.

Mojib Latif is a climate researcher who often uses the media to raise public awareness about the consequences of global warming. His fields of research include ocean circulation and climate dynamics.

Now Latif’s efforts have won him this year's German Environmental Award. We meet up with the researcher at his workplace in Kiel, the Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research. Find out what motivates him and what he expects from the 21st Climate Change Conference in Paris.

Artifacts are fragile. They are easily destroyed by natural disasters, environmental influences, or by conflict. Now researchers from the Fraunhofer IGD, a leading institute for research in visual computing, have devised a six-meter long conveyor belt scanner that could help preserve such artifacts.

It can be used to record form, structure, color and surface texture and create virtual models of sculptures, tools, fossils and more. The images can even be printed by 3D printers to create objects for pleasure or for research purposes.

For Alina Schick, trees don't always grow upwards. The biologist carried out an experiment at the University of Hohenheim in which she attached different plants in pots to a disc that rotates horizontally. This meant that light and gravity were no longer acting on the plant from a single direction.The researcher is interested in the role of gravitation, light and temperature on the growth of a plant, and the effect this has on its biochemical make-up. The continual rotation also affects the plant’s stability, because a tree which is made to grow horizontally has to endure a constant push and pull in various directions, which can completely alter the properties of the wood. Schick likes the uniqueness of her experiment too; a tree growing sideways across the wall is quite eye-catching.

A large number of animals die every year in laboratories, many killed testing medicines and cosmetics. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology are looking for alternatives. They are developing a method to produce human or animal tissue in a 3D printer.

The starting material is a special gelatin-based organic ink which nurtures living cells. The printed bio-ink can be given the properties of different natural tissues - from firm cartilage to soft fatty tissue. Once enriched with human or animal cells it could become a material that makes animal experiments unnecessary in the future.