News — University of Bonn

Early mammal with remarkably precise bite

Paleontologists at the University of Bonn have succeeded in reconstructing the chewing motion of an early mammal that lived almost 150 million years ago. This showed that its teeth worked extremely precisely and surprisingly efficiently. Yet it is possible that this very aspect turned out to be a disadvantage in the course of evolution. The study is published in the journal "Scientific Reports".

Chemists synthesize "flat" silicon compounds

Chemists at the University of Bonn have synthesized extremely unusual compounds. Their central building block is a silicon atom. Different from usual, however, is the arrangement of the four bonding partners of the atom, which are not in the form of a tetrahedron around it, but flat like a trapezoid. This arrangement is usually energetically extremely unfavorable, yet the molecules are very stable. Their properties are completely unknown so far; researchers now want to explore them. The results will be published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, but are already available online.

University of Bonn becomes member of New University in Exile Consortium

The University of Bonn and the New School for Social Research in New York City (US) signed a cooperation agreement. Coming into effect December 21, 2020, the agreement confirms the nature of the cooperation.

Robotics and agriculture in the focus of young researchers

Another milestone for the Cluster of Excellence “PhenoRob – Robotics and Phenotyping for Sustainable Crop Production” at the University of Bonn and the agricultural research community: Together with two of the leading universities of the world, ETH Zurich in Switzerland and Lincoln University in the UK, PhenoRob will host the International Summer School “Agricultural Robotics” at the University of Bonn from August 23-27, 2021. The DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) provides 25,000 euros in funding for the Summer School.

Longest intergalactic gas filament discovered

More than half of the matter in our universe has so far remained hidden from us. However, astrophysicists had a hunch where it might be: In so-called filaments, unfathomably large thread-like structures of hot gas that surround and connect galaxies and galaxy clusters. A team led by the University of Bonn has now for the first time observed a gas filament with a length of 50 million light years. Its structure is strikingly similar to the predictions of computer simulations. The observation therefore also confirms our ideas about the origin and evolution of our universe. The results are published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Effects of the coronavirus pandemic on on-site teaching and on-site examinations

The new version of the North Rhine-Westphalia Ordinance on the Protection Against New Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 Infections (CoronaSchVO NRW) amends the provisions for on-site classes and examinations during the period from December 16, 2020 to January 10, 2021 in order to protect students and instructors.

Research Unit on robotics goes into the next round

The German Research Foundation extends the Research Unit 2535 "Anticipating Human Behavior" for three more years. Since 2017, scientists in the group have been investigating how artificial intelligence recognizes and anticipates human behavior. On the one hand, the researchers develop techniques to analyze complex interactions between humans and robots, and on the other hand, technologies for service robots. Due to demographic change, the importance of such robots is steadily increasing.