Today, the German eROSITA consortium released the data for its share of the first all-sky survey by the soft X-ray imaging telescope flying aboard the Spectrum-RG (SRG) satellite. With about 900,000 distinct sources, the first eROSITA All-Sky Survey (eRASS1) catalogue has yielded the largest X-ray catalogue ever published. Along with the data, the consortium released today more than 40 scientific papers describing new results ranging from studies of the habitability of planets to the discovery of the largest cosmic structures. Based on just the first six months of observations, eROSITA has already detected more sources than had previously been known in the 60-year history of X-ray astronomy. Now available to the worldwide science community, the data will revolutionize our knowledge of the high-energy Universe.

An estimated five to ten percent of blindness worldwide is due to the rare inflammatory eye disease uveitis. Intermediate uveitis is often associated with a chronic course of the disease and the need for immunosuppressive therapy. Intermediate uveitis primarily causes inflammation of the vitreous body, but blood flow to the retina can also be restricted. Researchers at the Eye Clinic of the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the University of Bonn have tested optical coherence tomography angiography as a new imaging monitoring method. The blood flow in the retinal vessels is associated with the severity of inflammation and allows conclusions to be drawn about the future course of the disease. Accordingly, this method could be used to monitor the disease and identify patients at risk of a future worsening of the disease. The results have now been published in Nature Scientific Reports.

Arab, Ottoman and Turkish caricatures and cartoons from the late and post-Ottoman context are the subject of a research project led by Prof. Dr Anna Kollatz, Islamic Studies scholar and Arabist at Heidelberg University. The aim is to develop a new approach to the society, culture and politics of an age between the world wars characterised by great upheavals. Another question is whether cartoons were not only the results of discourses “from the middle of society” but were themselves drivers of changes. The project is going ahead in cooperation with Dr Veruschka Wagner from the University of Bonn. The Volkswagen Foundation has allocated 80,000 euros to fund it for a period of 18 months. 

The University of Bonn’s election assembly today appointed Rector Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Michael Hoch for a further four-year office term starting in April 2025. This will be his third term of office.

Mobile robots enabling chronically ill schoolchildren to participate in lessons: this is the objective of a new joint development project by the universities of Bonn, Göttingen (coordinator) and Duisburg-Essen, in collaboration with chilli mind GmbH. Protecting the privacy of all parties involved poses a particular project challenge.

The economist Professor Christian Bayer from the Institute for Macroeconomics and Econometrics at the University of Bonn has been awarded a Proof of Concept (PoC) Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). This program hands researchers €150,000 in funding for up to 18 months to help them commercialize their ideas from previous ERC projects through excellent basic research.

Professor Carla Jaimes Betancourt from the Department for the Anthropology of the Americas at the University of Bonn and Heiko Prümers from the German Archaeological Institute have been presented with a prestigious Field Discovery Award by the Shanghai Archaeology Forum in recognition of their studies of extensive pre-Hispanic settlements in the Bolivian Amazon. 

For its second winter school, the Cologne/Bonn Academy in Exile (CBA) will be joined by researchers from various departments to examine the situation facing researchers in exile in the past and present. The academy’s fellows—all refugee researchers from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus—will present their research projects, while a number of experts have been invited to give lectures. The speakers will include Jürgen Warmbrunn from the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe in Marburg and Irina Shcherbakova, co-founder of the human rights organization Memorial, which was awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize.