The summer semester 2020 is coming to an end next Friday, and with it the first lecture period in the history of the University that has been carried out almost entirely online. In a new video message to all members of the University, Rector Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Michael Hoch looks back at the soon-to-end semester and presents the University’s plans for the coming winter semester, which currently include a comeback of teaching on site.

The latest edition of the widely respected “Global Ranking of Academic Subjects 2020” placed the University of Bonn as the best university in Germany for Mathematics and Economics. Both Bonn departments already proved themselves in the competition for the award of a Cluster of Excellence. Many other departments in Bonn are following close behind.

Almost all land plants employ an army of molecular editors who correct errors in their genetic information. Together with colleagues from Hanover, Ulm and Kyoto (Japan), researchers from the University of Bonn have now transferred one of these proofreaders from the moss Physcomitrium patens (previously known as Physcomitrella patens) into a flowering plant. Surprisingly, it performs its work there as reliably as in the moss itself. The strategy could be suitable for investigating certain functions of the plant energy metabolism in more detail. It may also be valuable for developing more efficient crops. The study will be published in the journal The Plant Cell.

Increasing abdominal girth and shrinking muscles are two common side effects of aging. Researchers at the University of Bonn have discovered a receptor in mice that regulates both effects. Experiments with human cell cultures suggest that the corresponding signaling pathways might also exist in humans. The study, which also involved researchers from Spain, Finland, Belgium, Denmark and the USA, has now been published in the renowned journal "Cell Metabolism".

The start-up "Murmuras" of the University of Bonn has won a prize for its software solution in the "Digital Innovation" competition of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy. The new app and platform solution offers psychologists, sociologists and other human scientists new possibilities for conducting smartphones-based studies. The startup is an outcome of the Menthal Project of the University of Bonn, in which the mobile phone usage data of more than 700,000 participants have been examined for scientific purposes since 2014. The founding team of Ionut Andone, Konrad Blaszkiewicz, Qais Kasem and Alexander Markowetz will receive a prize money of 7,000 euros as well as coaching and webinar offers.

New research findings underline the crucial role that sea ice throughout the Southern Ocean played for atmospheric CO2 in times of rapid climate change in the past. An international team of scientists with the participation of the University of Bonn has shown that the seasonal growth and destruction of sea ice in a warming world increases the biological productivity of the seas around Antarctica by extracting carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in the deep ocean. This process helps to explain a long-standing question about an apparent 1,900-year pause in CO2 growth during a period known as the Antarctic cold reversal. The research results have now been published in "Nature Geoscience".

A tuberculosis vaccine developed 100 years ago also makes vaccinated persons less susceptible to other infections. While this effect has been recognized for a long time, it is not known what causes it. Together with colleagues from Australia and Denmark, researchers from Radboud university medical center the universities of Nijmegen and Bonn have now presented a possible answer to this question. Their results are also interesting against the background of the Covid-19 pandemic: several studies are currently testing the use of the vaccine in preventing severe disease progression in populations at risk such as hospital staff and elderly individuals. The study is published in the journal "Cell Host & Microbe".

Schools and daycare facilities have been closed for weeks and the economy is slowly being revived. This creates a dilemma: the revival goes hand in hand with more presence at the workplace, which working parents cannot afford. Moritz Kuhn, Professor of Macroeconomics at the University of Bonn and member of the Cluster of Excellence ECONtribute: Markets & Public Policy, is investigating the impact of a lack of childcare on the available working hours of working parents together with his colleagues Prof. Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln (Goethe University Frankfurt) and Prof. Michèle Tertilt (University of Mannheim). Result: The proportion of parents affected by closed schools and daycare facilities is twice as high as the total number of unemployed people in Germany.