Do differences in performance have an impact on the appetite for risk-taking in decision-makers? Economists at the University of Göttingen have addressed this question. The result of their study is that people's willingness to take risks increases as soon as they get a lower return than other people with whom they compare themselves. At the same time, decision-makers take lower risks if they get a higher return than their peers. The study was…

The German postal service “Deutsche Post” has dedicated a stamp to ESA’s comet mission Rosetta. The stamp with a value of 60 cents is officially released today as part of a special series of stamps devoted to topics related to space and astrophysics. In addition to the Rosetta spacecraft, the motif shows part of the surface of Rosetta’s comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko captured by the onboard scientific camera system OSIRIS. “Seeing the Rosetta…

A new study from the University of Göttingen and international partners has analysed the effects of Fairtrade certification on poor rural workers in Africa. The results show that Fairtrade improves the situation of employees in agricultural cooperatives, but not of workers in the smallholder farm sector, who are often particularly disadvantaged. The study was published in “Nature Sustainability”. When consumers of cocoa, coffee and other…

When a new life begins, only half of the genetic information is provided by the egg, the other half comes from the sperm. To this end, the egg has to eliminate half of its chromosomes. This happens during a specialized cell division, called meiosis. This process, however, is error-prone: It can happen that too many or too few chromosomes remain in the egg, resulting in an embryo whose cells have an incorrect number of chromosomes. Such embryos…

Four years ago, several red giant stars were discovered to pose a paradox: even though they are built from very old stellar material, their large masses indicate a clearly younger age. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (Germany), Aarhus University (Denmark), and Ohio State University (USA) have now solved the apparent contradiction. For the first time, they investigated the abundances of carbon, nitrogen, and…

Declining biodiversity due to man-made habitat destruction and climate change means that information about plant diversity and its distribution across the planet is now crucial for biodiversity conservation. With the Global Inventory of Floras and Traits (GIFT), a team of researchers from the Department of Biodiversity, Macroecology and Biogeography at the University of Göttingen has taken an important step forward in documenting and…

The Swiss-German economist Professor (HSG) Sascha Spoun will become President of the University of Göttingen in 2020. This was agreed on Thursday 20 June 2019 by the University Senate with a large majority. The University Foundation Committee has already confirmed the election. Spoun succeeds Professor Ulrike Beisiegel, who has been in office since 1 January 2011. Spoun advised the Findungskommission of the Senate and the University Foundation…