insightLMU - 2009: 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.
Bavaria has participated in diplomatic relations with the rest of Europe since the 16th century, and these contacts eventually gave rise to an astonishingly extensive international network. The historian Professor Ferdinand Kramer and his colleagues have been studying diverse aspects of Bavaria’s external relations during the modern period. A new database being assembled by his staff now greatly facilitates the often arduous task of evaluating the relevant documentary material.
Bullies are school kids who make life hell for other kids using physical or psychological aggression. Developmental psychologist Dr. Mechthild Schäfer has conducted several studies that explain important characteristics and mechanisms of mobbing at schools and demonstrate what is typical for perpetrators and victims. She also tackles the question as to whether or not they remain in these roles throughout their schooldays.
Some animal species produce – at great energetic cost – sperm cells that are longer than the male organism itself. It is not known how old, in evolutionary terms, this phenomenon is. Using a newly developed high-tech approach, it has become possible to investigate the internal organs of exceptionally well preserved fossils. In cooperation with an international team of scientists, the palaeontologist Dr. Renate Matzke-Karasz recently succeeded in demonstrating that tiny ostracods (mussel shrimps) already used giant sperm for reproduction some 100 million years ago.
For the past ten years researchers at LMU Munich have been engaged in intensive research on the fundamental social structural transformations which Western industrial societies are currently undergoing. The guiding question of their research was whether 21 societies can still be understood in terms of the concepts of the 19th and 20th centuries. The results of the Collaborative Research Centre “Reflexive Modernisation” are now available.
There are only three ingredients for evolutionary success: find enough to eat, avoid being eaten and − above all − reproduce. In its restless search for ways to achieve these goals, evolution also acts to sharpen the discriminatory capacities of sensory organs. Two research groups at LMU Munich have now exposed some of the tricks exploited by different species for this purpose.
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.
How can the needs of today’s generation be satisfied while simultaneously not unjustly restricting the developmental prospects for future generations? That is the core question of all deliberations that can be aggregated under the collective concept of “Sustainability”. Catholic theologian Professor Markus Vogt is convinced that problems such as climate change can only be translated into practical principles of behavior in close dialog between the natural sciences and social sciences. In particular, he sees a need for churches to undertake key ethical initiatives in politics and society.
Organometallic compounds are used in the production of plastics, fertilizers and even drugs. Chemists working with Professor Paul Knochel have now developed a new method that allows even highly sensitive functional groups to be combined with nontoxic metals such as magnesium. This promises wide applications in the pharmaceutical and fine chemical industries.
One of the most important tasks of the immune system is to identify what is foreign and what is self. If the body starts to attack its own cells or tissues instead of pathogens, then the result could be a dangerous autoimmune disease. Immunologists Professor Ludger Klein, Professor Thomas Brocker and PD Dr. David Vöhringer have detected new mechanisms that prevent the immune defenses from going off the rails.
Airports are worlds unto themselves, worlds where a beginner can easily get lost. Most passengers rush to their departure gate as quickly as possible, only to sit there for hours waiting for their flights to be called. To make for more efficient airport stays, a team of LMU computer scientists working with Professor Claudia Linnhoff-Popien has developed a system that can guide passengers through the vast airport environment and send them quickly and surely to their departure gate while also giving some freedoms along the way.
In 2006, LMU Munich has established a forum for neuroscientific research: the Munich Center for Neurosciences (MCN). Here, biologists convene with neurologists and psychologists, and mathematicians discuss with physicists and philosophers. Their different approaches to the same topics combine to produce new – and often surprising – insights into the functioning of the brain.
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.
New species can only arise if also new genes are formed. Duplication, which replicates already existing genes, is one of the most important mechanisms for increasing the number of genes. Evolutionary biologist Professor Wolfgang Stephan and his team were able to show the importance of natural selection in such processes. Plant biologist Professor Dario Leister, on the other hand, has demonstrated the existence of a hitherto unknown path to the generation of new genes: In this process, foreign genetic material that had been incorporated into cells millions of years ago is built into new gene arrangements.
In only a few months, the international banking and financial crisis has wiped out billions – around the globe and in an unimaginable magnitude. But how could this happen? What brought the equity capital supply on the international banking market and the apparently well-organized world financial system to collapse? Professor Bernd Rudolph examines the microeconomic background and details reform prospects for the post-crisis world.
Cyanobacteria are true survivors, and can produce sufficient energy from photosynthesis to stay alive even under poor light conditions. The specialized “light collectors” which they use for photosynthesis are known as biliproteins. Biologists from the Botanical Institute of LMU Munich have now identified the chemical features responsible for the intense color and luminance of these proteins and and the biosynthetic path- ways for their formation Biliproteins could in future be used as versatile labeling pigments in biology and in medicine.
Proteins determine the structure and function of all organisms. While they were formerly studied in relative isolation, today we know that they work together in a finely tuned manner. Nonetheless, it is only slowly that we are beginning to understand what happens in the human metabolism when a person gets ill. In the cluster of excellence “Center for Integrated Protein Science Munich” researchers in various disciplines are trying to find out more about the role of proteins. They use the most advanced new technologies to focus on proteins in living cells and different types of tissue.
Richard Gere, Tina Turner, Allen Ginsberg, Brad Pitt – these well-known figures are all fascinated by Buddhism, and are famous examples of the ever stronger influence of this Asian religion on western culture. At the same time, the cultural transfer into the west – and into other languages with it – is in turn having an effect on Buddhism itself. Professor of Religious Studies, Michael von Brück, has been investigating the reciprocal effects caused in the convergence of Buddhist and Christian cultures for many years. He asserts that religions are not firmly established, but are subject to a constant change process instead.
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.
Ethics are a resource in the “competitive environment”, states business ethics
expert Professor Karl Homann. He urges companies to include frequently overlooked ethical risks as a factor in their calculations, and considers it their duty to take responsibility for the framework of business rules. Within this framework, runs his thesis, profit motives also enhance general welfare. Given these premises, he believes that competition facilitates more solidarity than sharing.
The newborn screening program is identifying increasing numbers of children with hearing impairment. Such children can thus receive remedial support in good time, enabling them to attend normal schools and kindergartens. School integration is, however, not always without problems. Professor Annette Leonhardt examines the impact of improved provision of early support for such children, and on the integration of these children into schools and kindergartens.
Corals perform elementary tasks in a reef ecosystem: they build three-dimensional hard structures that provide a habitat to a huge number of different organisms. Corals also create stable limestone surfaces, which in turn are the substratum for sessile life forms. Marine ecologist and biogeochemist Dr. Christian Wild and his Emmy-Noether junior research group investigate material cycles in coral reefs around the globe. Their findings are helping to protect these threatened paradises in our world’s oceans.
Nanomaterials may be about to change all areas of human life in the very near future. Research and development into the realm of a millionth of a millimeter has captured enormous attention in the Munich region. Here, physicists, hemists, biologists and medical scientists have joined forces to form the cluster of excellence Nanosystems Initiative Munich (NIM). They are looking to develop new applications above all in medicine and biotechnology.
One person in every hundred will experience a schizophrenic episode at least once in their life. While this severe psychiatric illness is so common, its causes are still largely un- known. Two large international consortia, which included the work of Professor Dan Rujescu, have now identified genetic variations that could be linked to a risk of schizophrenia.
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.