insightLMU - 2011: Recent Episodes
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
insightLMU is the international edition of the LMU Munich newsletter. Supported by experienced education and science journalists, insightLMU provides up-to-date information on new University developments, and student and faculty achievements. It also features interesting people from across the institution and highlights latest research findings with appealing stories. It aims at LMU’s visiting fellows, partner universities and friends from around the world. insightLMU is published and emailed to subscribers on a quarterly basis. Please take a look at the current issue that LMU makes available below.
Waiting for the Big One. Many of the world’s megacities are located on the boundaries between two tectonic plates. Using computer simulations, seismologist Heiner Igel and his team are trying to estimate the shaking of future earthquakes in these urbanized areas.
A blueprint for a civil society. Martin Zimmermann’s work brings the Greek polis of Antiquity to life, and illuminates the enormous impact that cities had on the civilization of the Ancient World.
"Behind every window lurks a story." Modern urban films deal not with cities but the people who live in them. Isolation, lack of communication and the world of work are their major concerns, says film scholar Fabienne Liptay.
Anthropologist Eveline Dürr studies the culture of the slums, life in the shadow of waste dumps – and how terms referring to dirt take on xenophobic connotations.
Metropolitan Tokyo is the largest built-up area in the world. How does such an urban machine work? How does it deal with its own inevitable decay? Japanologist Evelyn Schulz has been studying how residents use its urban spaces and cope with the attendant risks.
What's inside:
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The Mega-Megacity
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Waste, want and other woes
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Babylonian complications
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Pergamon the prototypical
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On the brink
The logic of exploitation, risk-taking, and optimism in the face of disaster: Christof Mauch and his colleagues at the Rachel Carson Center study how the environment continues to impact culture and society.
Life most probably evolved from a "primordial soup". Biophysicist Dieter Braun wants to reconstruct in the laboratory the conditions that made biological evolution possible.
The job goes to the best candidate? Undoubtedly, qualifications should determine the choice. Should. Often, however, irrelevant criteria also play a role, according to social psychologist Maria Agthe. And sometimes in quite unexpected ways.
What's inside:
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The Power of Nature
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Followers of Humboldt
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Global postgrads converge on ProArt
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A dal dal bus ride through Africa
Hannes Leitgeb aims to push mathematics deep into the domain of philosophy. His goal is to uncover the logical rules governing the workings of the brain. This makes him a valued partner for neuroscientists. The internationally renowned expert was recently awarded one of the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Professorships. He is setting up the first university-based Center for Mathematical Philosophy in Europe – which will explore the interface between logic, mathematics and cognitive sciences.
Geophysicist Hans-Peter Bunge studies the dynamic interactions between the interior of the Earth and its surface. As part of a large-scale project he is now investigating the formation of the South Atlantic over the past 200 million years. The plan is to collect and analyze rock samples, survey the topography of the land surface and the seafloor, probe below the seafloor, and investigate the planet’s innermost structures using seismic waves that pass through or around the whole of the globe.
In Germany alone, 800,000 people currently suffer from Alzheimer’s disease. LMU biochemist Christian Haass has been studying the causes of the dementia for years. Great progress has been made, but an effective therapy that can halt nerve cell loss is not yet in sight. The quest for the origins of dementia has become a race against the relentless course of demography.
The unknown voter is a difficult creature to pin down. What are his personal, social and political priorities? What kinds of information guide his voting intentions? Who gets his vote – and why? The unattached voter gives campaign managers sleepless nights and poses a real dilemma for pollsters. The number of German voters who remain undecided until late in the campaign is on the rise. Communication scientists would like to know why − and what factors finally tip the scale.
Accused of being a major driving force behind the wars in Yugoslavia, Ratko Mladic eluded capture for 15 years. He now awaits trial before a UN tribunal in Den Haag. How did figures like the former military leader of the Bosnian Serbs come to wield such power? How could multiethnic Yugoslavia collapse within a single generation? According to Marie-Janine Calic, an expert on Southeastern Europe, the state was brought down not by ethnic hatreds, but by a deliberate policy of self-serving egoism.
What's inside:
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"Experiment" Earth
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A Need for Speed
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The calculator of truth
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LMU to participate in three new DFG research projects
Chronic illnesses often make their first appearance in early childhood. Recurring head- aches and neurodermatitis are two of the most common. Both of these conditions are due to a combination of genetic and environmental factors, and the lifestyles of patients play a significant role in their development. Researchers at LMU are actively investigating these links – in the hope of identifying the underlying genetic causes.
The domestication of the donkey, the genetic diversity of the cheetah and the ancestry of the cucumber. A pretty heterogeneous list – but the projects being pursued by the palaeoanatomist Professor Joris Peters and the botanist Professor Susanne Renner do have one thing in common. None of them would be possible without the many unique and irreplaceable specimens in the Bavarian State Collections of Natural History. And there is little doubt that the keys to many other scientific mysteries are slumbering in the storerooms.
Multinational firms are the driving forces of economic globalization. They invest in emerging markets and establish subsidiaries far from their home bases. Where these subsidiaries are located and what form they take depends crucially on an assessment of the political risks that foreign firms may encounter. Professor Monika Schnitzer and Dr. Iris Kesternich of the Institute of Comparative Economics have studied how such risks may affect the financial structures of subsidiary companies in foreign countries.
Raging marauders or heroic warriors? What were the Vikings really like? How did they master a demanding environment? How did they form trading networks and what did they use as trade goods? Answers to these questions may be found at Haithabu, now a candidate for inclusion in the UNESCO list of World Heritage sites. The anthropologist Gisela Grupe has been using chemical methods to tease clues to Viking lifestyles from skeletal remains and organic materials found at Haithabu. Her results challenge some cherished interpretations.
Professor Christoph Bode is looking at futures, in the plural – and not only in literature. He investigates ‘future narratives’ so as to design a conceptual framework for the analy- sis of this newly identified type of narration. Future narratives cannot only be found in fictional texts, they appear also in computer games and movies. What they have in common is that they are defined by multiple continuations and open-endedness. In the public sphere, they may well help to optimally communicate diverging scenarios of highly complex processes.
What's inside:
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Looking at tomorrows
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LMU ensemble plays Carnegie Hall
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LMU's main building celebrates two anniversaries
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Bridging gaps