Pregnant women's attitudes and mindsets can influence the course of childbirth. This is what psychologists at the University of Bonn established in a longitudinal study with around 300 participants. Women who see childbirth as a natural process are less likely to need pain medication or a caesarean section. The results are now published in the “European Journal of Social Psychology.”
Dr. rer. nat. Lorenzo Bonaguro from the LIMES Institute at the University of Bonn is the winner of the inaugural Renate and Karlheinz Schmidt Prize for Basic Research in the Natural Sciences. The prize, which recognizes an outstanding publication in the field of biochemistry at the University of Bonn, is awarded in cooperation with the University of Bonn Foundation and is endowed with 10,000 euros.
The enzyme TBK1 is an important component of the innate immune system that plays a critical role in the defense against viruses. Upon mutation-induced loss of TBK1 function, patients show an increased susceptibility to viral infections. Strikingly, if TBK1 is not expressed at all, this clinical effect is not seen. The mechanism behind this supposed discrepancy has now been elucidated by researchers led by Prof. Martin Schlee from the University Hospital Bonn and the Cluster of Excellence ImmunoSensation2 at the University of Bonn. The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Immunology.
Whether people invest in stocks depends on what they think about stockholders. This is what a team led by Luca Henkel, a member of the ECONtribute Cluster of Excellence: Markets & Public Policy at the University of Bonn, found out. The study has been published as an ECONtribute Discussion Paper.
Livestock farming produces large quantities of greenhouse gases, especially methane, which is particularly harmful to the climate. Among other things, it escapes during the storage of animal excrement, the slurry. A study by the University of Bonn now shows that methane emissions can be reduced by 99 percent through simple and inexpensive means. The method could make an important contribution to the fight against climate change. The results have now been published in the journal Waste Management.
The success of cancer treatment depends not only on the type of tumor, but also on the surrounding tissue. Tumors influence it to their advantage, promoting the growth of blood vessels or fooling incoming immune cells. Developing methods to predict the nature of the resulting tumor microenvironment is the goal of researchers from the Clusters of Excellence ImmunoSensation2 and the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics (HCM) led by Prof. Kevin Thurley at the University of Bonn. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is funding the "InterpretTME" project with around 800,000 euros over the next three years.