News — University of Bonn

A new spin on the blue stellar sequence¹

Not only humans try to look younger than they really are – stars do, too. This is what an international team of astronomers investigates in their paper that was just published in Nature Astronomy.

The City of Bonn is renovating the road surface through the Koblenzer Tor—detour along the banks of the Rhine²

Drivers headed for the Koblenzer Tor passage will need to plan on a detour starting on Shrove Monday (February 28, 2022). It marks the start of a six-month renovation project by the Civil Engineering Service of the City of Bonn that will close the western passage to traffic.

Mathematician Ana Caraiani appointed to the University of Bonn³

Reinforcement for the University of Bonn: The internationally highly recognized mathematician Ana Caraiani has accepted the call to a Hausdorff Chair. These are professorships for outstanding scientists at the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics (HCM) Cluster of Excellence. The 37-year-old Romanian is the first woman to hold this position and will take it up this September. Ana Caraiani not only brings excellent mathematics with her to Bonn, but also her enthusiasm for promoting early career scientists.

⁴

Committed to sustainability⁴

Sustainability at the University of Bonn now has a name: Bonn Program for Sustainable Transformation (BOOST) encapsulates the wide-ranging knowledge, projects and commitment of University members for responsibility in how we treat our fellow human beings, our natural world and its resources.

⁵

German Language Proficiency Test awarded seal of approval⁵

It’s now official: the examination regulations for the “German Language Proficiency Test for Admission to Higher Education (DSH)” at the University of Bonn has been successfully accredited by the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK) in accordance with the provisions of the framework regulations for German language examinations (Rahmenordnung über deutsche Sprachprüfungen, RO-DT). This was preceded by a process that included review and approval by the Fachverband Deutsch als Fremdsprache (FaDaF), the specialist association for German as a foreign language. This means that the University can now use the “DSH-Zeugnis®” seal, which is protected by law.

⁶

Supporting Africa’s contribution to the World Biodiversity Council IPBES⁶

The Center for Development Research (ZEF) at the University of Bonn will receive around eight million Euros in funding over the next eight years from the International Climate Initiative of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection. The new CABES (Capacities on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) project aims to strengthen the interfaces between science, policy and practice in Africa and support networking with the international activities of the World Biodiversity Council (IPBES). Another goal of the project is to train early career scientists as intermediaries. To this end, new Master degree programs are being established in Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

⁷

Pollination by birds can be advantageous⁷

Why have some plant species changed pollinators in their evolution? An international team of researchers from the Universities of Bonn and Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University Suzhou (China) studied the reproductive systems of three sister species pairs, where one species is pollinated by insects and the other by hummingbirds. Mechanisms were discovered that explain the switch from insect to bird pollination. The study has now appeared in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

⁸

Sucking millipedes⁸

Whether nectar-sucking butterflies or blood-sucking mosquitoes - the ingestion of liquid food has long been known for many insects and other arthropods. A research team from Germany and Switzerland, led by the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change (LIB) and the University of Bonn, now shows that millipedes also use a sucking pump to ingest liquid food. A sucking pump has thus evolved independently in different groups of organisms over several 100 million years. In the process, astonishingly similar biomechanical solutions for ingesting liquid food have evolved in widely distant animal groups. The study results have now been published in the journal Science Advances.

Previous 8 items ⁹
1¹⁰
...
79¹¹
80¹²
81⁹
82
83¹³
84¹⁴
85¹⁵
...
128¹⁶
Next 8 items ¹³

Links