As far as the early-career researcher is concerned, water is also the elixir of life in a scientific sense: Dr. Clarissa Glaser, a hydrologist at the University of Bonn, has been investigating H₂O in a truly unique way. In a project funded by the Klaus Tschira Stiftung, she has set out to model how the water in rivers and streams all over the world is exchanged with that in the surrounding landscape, e.g. in littoral zones, stream sediment or floodplains. 

Asthma medications often lose their effectiveness over time, and do not prevent the bronchial tissue from thickening. Researchers at Ruhr University Bochum, the University of Bonn, and Bonn University Hospital, have successfully tested a plant-based agent that combats this dreaded remodeling process. Derived from the coralberry Ardisia crenata, the agent inhibits a specific protein, thus ensuring that less collagen accumulates in the bronchial tissue. Less mucus is produced and secreted as well. The researchers report their findings in the journal Molecular Therapy. 

Humanity has an insatiable appetite for ammonia: this substance is used to make fertilizer, which in turn is used in most modern agriculture. Until now, the Haber-Bosch process has been the method of choice for extracting nitrogen from the seemingly inexhaustible atmosphere and binding it in the form of ammonia. However, this method requires an extremely large amount of methane gas and energy. Prof. Nikolay Kornienko from the University of Bonn has discovered a more climate-friendly alternative for producing ammonia from renewable energy sources. The research team is now presenting its findings in the journal Nature Communications.

During a heart attack, heart muscle cells die and are replaced by scar tissue. This delays the electrical conduction in the heart and favours the onset of cardiac arrhythmia. To reduce this potentially life-threatening complication, researchers at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the University of Bonn intended to partially restore electrical conduction in the scar tissue. To this end, they developed a gene therapy in mice to enrich the gap junction protein connexin 43 in the scar area in order to improve electrical conduction. By this approach, the research team could significantly reduce the frequency of arrhythmia in lesioned hearts. The results are recently published in the Journal of Physiology.

Large language models, such as ChatGPT, perform significantly less well in Portuguese than in English despite both languages being spoken worldwide. This gap has now been closed with "GigaVerbo". The team led by Dr. Nicholas Kluge Corrêa from the Center for Science and Thought at the University of Bonn is now presenting the project in the journal "Patterns". The researchers were among the first to utilize the new "Marvin" supercomputer at the University of Bonn. Nicholas Kluge Corrêa and his colleague Aniket Sen are both members of the Transdisciplinary Research Area "Sustainable Futures" at the University of Bonn.

Thanks to a student initiative, four plantbox seating islands were recently created at Poppelsdorf Campus, making this area of the University of Bonn greener and more inviting. The plantboxes promote biodiversity, improve the climate and make the campus a more pleasant place to be.

Even many centuries ago, hormones controlled reproduction and breastfeeding. After all this time, however, it is very difficult to determine the hormone mix posthumously in ancient human bones. Junior professor Dr. Alice Toso from the Bonn Center for ArchaeoSciences at the University of Bonn now wants to attempt the almost impossible: Together with an interdisciplinary team of young researchers, she plans to develop reliable methods for determining sexual hormones levels in past populations contributing to the transdisciplinary research areas “Life & Health” and “Present Pasts”. “Pioneering Research - Exploring the Unknown” is the right name for the funding line in which the VW Foundation is supporting the project with over 1.4 million euros over the next four years.

Orion Nebula, Pleiades and Hyades: The latest research results indicate that these famous star clusters represent the different phases of life of one and the same star system. A team of astrophysicists at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences in Zanjan, Iran, and the University of Bonn have found evidence that these three star systems are not just located in roughly the same region of space but also developed in the same way. These results were recently published in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.”