About one third of the payments received by farmers are linked to specific “greening measures” to promote biodiversity. The cultivation of nitrogen-fixing legumes is very popular. However, these measures have been criticized because the benefits for biodiversity are unclear. Now a team from the University of Göttingen, the Julius Kühn Institute and the Thuenen Institute in Braunschweig has investigated whether the cultivation of the faba bean (Vi…

Who was Paul de Lagarde? A research team from the Department of Egyptology and Coptic Studies at the University of Göttingen, in collaboration with the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European Jewish Studies in Potsdam (MMZ), has been working on a historical re-assessment of the life and work of the Göttingen Orientalist (1827-1891). In their work, the researchers have focussed on the political and ideological aspects of the scholar's œuvre, and in…

The drought that hit central and northern Europe in summer 2018 had serious effects on crops, forests and grasslands. Researchers from the European Research Infrastructure Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS), including researchers from the University of Göttingen, are showing what effects this had and what lessons can be learned. The results of 16 studies that are currently underway have been published as a special issue in the journal Ph…

The research report “Border Experiences and Practices of Refugees” by the EU project “Multi-level Governance of Mass Migration in Europe and beyond (RESPOND)” provides a unique documentation of the experiences of refugee-migrants with the borders of Europe. The events in 2015, which were labelled as the “European refugee crisis”, are still affecting the European public and politics. There has been much discussion about the 2015/2016 migratory…

Stefan Glöggler’s research focuses on nuclear magnetic resonance, or NMR for short. This method has had a massive impact on the world we live in today: It is the basis of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology, which is used by hospitals and medical practices worldwide to take millions of MRI images every year to identify and investigate diseases and to assess the progress of therapies. NMR is also one of the standard methods used to examine…

While high greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss are often associated with rapid land-use change in Indonesia, impacts on local water cycles have been largely overlooked. Researchers from the University of Göttingen, IPB University in Bogor and BMKG in Jakarta have now published a new study on this issue. They show that the expansion of monocultures, such as oil palm and rubber plantations, leads to more frequent and more severe…

Less than one percent of scientific literature on primates evaluates the effectiveness of interventions for the conservation of primates. This is the result of a new study compiled by a team of world-renowned experts from 21 countries, including researchers from the German Primate Centre (DPZ) in Göttingen, led by researchers from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), the Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary…

Antibiotics are among the most important discoveries of modern medicine and have saved millions of lives since the discovery of penicillin almost 100 years ago. Many diseases caused by bacterial infections – such as pneumonia, meningitis or septicaemia – are successfully treated with antibiotics. However, bacteria can develop resistance to antibiotics which then leaves doctors struggling to find effective treatments. Particularly problematic are…

Germany’s Scientific Advisory Board for Agricultural Policy, Food and Consumer Health Protection (WBAE), an interdisciplinary body that advises the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture on a voluntary basis about policy development, today presents its new report “Promoting more sustainable food consumption: Developing an integrated food policy and creating fair food environments” to Federal Minister Julia Klöckner in Bonn. In it, the WBAE…

Physicists at the University of Göttingen, together with pathologists and lung specialists at the Medical University of Hannover, have developed a three-dimensional imaging technique that enables high resolution and three-dimensional representation of damaged lung tissue following severe Covid-19. Using a special X-ray microscopy technique, they were able to image changes caused by the coronavirus in the structure of alveoli (the tiny air sacs in…