If you need to lurk at the bottom of a water body waiting for prey, it is wise to stay motionless without resisting against the buoyant forces of water. To do so you need a kind of diving belt that helps to sink. One large amphibian species Metoposaurus krasiejowensis, that lived more than 200 million years ago, compensated for buoyancy with a heavy shoulder girdle. Researchers from the Universities of Bonn and Opole (Poland) examined the bones of the girdle under a microscope. The compactness in the interclavicle shows a striking resemblance to the pectoral bones of modern manatees. The results are now published in the Journal of Anatomy.

Many young adults will be opening a new chapter in their lives over the next few weeks as they embark on their studies at the University of Bonn at the start of the winter semester. The University is keen to mark the occasion by inviting all first-semester-students to a welcome event. There will be plenty of information available and activities to join in with, allowing the students to find out all they need to know about living and studying in Bonn. The event will finish with a party in the University Main Building, giving them their first opportunity to make new friends.

For their outstanding research achievements, mathematicians Prof. Dr. Ana Caraiani and Jun.-Prof. Dr. Vera Traub of the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics (HCM) at the University of Bonn have each received an award from the Breakthrough Prize Foundation. The $100,000 New Horizons Prize in Mathematics recognizes Ana Caraiani as an early-career scientists who has already made a significant impact on her field. Vera Traub, junior professor at the Research Institute for Mathematics, receives the $50,000 Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize, which is awarded to up to three outstanding women mathematicians who have completed their PhDs within the past two years.

The zebrafish serves as a model organism for researchers around the world: it can be used to study important physiological processes that also take place in a similar form in the human body. It is therefore routinely used in the search for possible active substances against diseases. Researchers at the University of Bonn have now described an innovative way to do this. In this process, the larvae fish are made a bit more "human-like". This humanization could make the search for active pharmaceutical substances much more efficient. The results of the pilot study have been published in the journal Cell Chemical Biology.

Am I over the hill? This question comes up regularly among workers over 50. A common prejudice is that older people’s efficiency and stress-tolerance are continuously decreasing. But mental performance, self-confidence, psychological resilience and well-being can be improved in the 50-plus generation. This is shown in a study by researchers from the Section of Developmental and Educational Psychology at the University of Bonn, which was published online in advance in the European Journal of Ageing. The print version is expected to be released in December.

If everything is to run smoothly in living cells, the genetic information must be correct. But unfortunately, errors in the DNA accumulate over time due to mutations. Land plants have developed a peculiar correction mode: they do not directly improve the errors in the genome, but rather elaborately in each individual transcript. Researchers at the University of Bonn have transplanted this correction machinery from the moss Physcomitrium patens into human cells. Surprisingly, the corrector started working there too, but according to its own rules. The results have now been published in the journal "Nucleic Acids Research".

Prof. Dr. Christian Bayer, an economist at the University of Bonn, has received this year's Hermann Heinrich Gossen Award from the Verein für Socialpolitik (VfS) in recognition of his outstanding and internationally recognized research achievements. The prize is awarded once a year to an economist under the age of 45 from a German-speaking country. It is endowed with 10,000 euros and is intended to promote the internationalization of economics.

Queen Elizabeth died today at the age of 96, surrounded by her family. In 1965, she spent some time at the University of Bonn as part of her visit to the city, the capital of West Germany at the time. She subsequently founded the Queen’s Prize, which has been awarded at the start of every academic year since then in recognition of outstanding achievements in English studies.