According to estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO) more than five percent of the world's population is affected by hearing loss and deafness, which is mostly caused by loss of hair cells in the ear. For future treatment, researchers are focusing on optogenetics, a genetic engineering method that they hope will make auditory nerve cells in patients sensitive to light. The optical cochlear implants developed at the Göttingen Campus,…

The Covid-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed the world. It has also revealed many new questions. The fact that a vaccine can be developed, produced and distributed already during a global health crisis is a completely new phenomenon. But what principles should be used to distribute that vaccine? Insufficient production and inadequate distribution capacities around the world have pushed this question to the fore. A research team from the…

Tropical peatlands are one of the most efficient carbon sinks. The flipside is that they can become massive emitters of carbon if they are damaged, for instance by land use change, degradation or fire. This can lead to faster climate warming. In research led by the University of Göttingen, researchers show how peatland in the coastal areas in Sumatra and Borneo in Indonesia developed over thousands of years and how climate and sea level…

After two years in space, ESA's spacecraft Solar Orbiter, to which NASA is also contributing, is heading for the best vantage point of its flight path so far. Next Saturday, March 26, only about 48 million kilometers will separate the probe from the Sun. That is less than a third of the distance between Earth and Sun. In the days around the so-called perihelion passage, the space probe is expected to record its most valuable data to date; the…

Together with his group, David investigates the physical principles behind the organization of biological matter at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPI-DS) and the Göttingen Campus Institute for Dynamics of Biological Networks (CIDBN). He is one of 313 researchers in Europe passing the last round of the competitive grant selection process across all scientific disciplines to tackle big scientific questions. Since…

As of February 2022, the scientist Youchuang Chao is joining the group of Stefan Karpitschka at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPI-DS), supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. With its prestigious fellowship, the foundation enables respected international scientists to conduct their research at a German institution of their choice. “In Youchuang’s project, we will combine his expertise in liquid-liquid…

Mit 5,97 Millionen Euro fördert das COVID-19-Forschungsnetzwerk Niedersachsen (COFONI) dreizehn interdisziplinäre niedersächsische Kooperationsprojekte zur Erforschung von Wirkstoffen gegen SARS-CoV-2 sowie zur Untersuchung von Ursachen und Langzeitfolgen der COVID-19-Erkrankung. Mit dieser erneuten Projektförderung nimmt COFONI weitere Forschungspartner in das Netzwerk auf und stärkt die Zusammenführung der niedersächsischen Kompetenzen in der…

To provide important genomic data to inform research about Europe’s biodiversity, scientists from 48 different countries initiated the "European Reference Genome Atlas" (ERGA) in 2021. Along with over 600 researchers, scientists from the University of Göttingen contribute to ERGA to make up an essential transdisciplinary and transborder community of experts. Together, they want to produce extremely high-quality genome analyses, known as…

Stars like the Sun resonate like a giant water-filled balloon. In addition to these global acoustic oscillations that span the entire star, others are also known: Sunspots, dark regions on the Sun's surface, for example, can be the starting point for magneto-acoustic waves. Using the Dunn Solar Telescope in New Mexico (USA) an international group of researchers including the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) has for the first…