Press releases – 2023

Renowned global scientists have come together at the United Nations General Assembly's Science Summit in New York City to drive forward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In his talk, Prof. Luciano Rezzolla of Goethe University Frankfurt will focus on the vital role international collaboration plays in scientific advancement. 

FRANKFURT/NEW YORK CITY. High-profile scientists from around the globe are convening at the Science Summit around the United Nations General Assembly in New York City for the ninth time today to present and discuss contributions to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This year, Professor Luciano Rezzolla from Goethe University Frankfurt's Institute for Theoretical Physics is among them. 

"It is a great honor and privilege to share my work in this context," says Rezzolla, who has been invited to offer insights into the creation of the first-ever image of a black hole and the first image of the black hole located at the center of our Milky Way. Images of these supermassive black holes, known as M87* and Sgr A*, are exciting not only to the astrophysical community, but have also generated significant media attention in recent years. What made these groundbreaking images possible was the global "Event Horizon Telescope" collaboration, which connects radio telescopes worldwide into a virtual telescope, the sheer size of which can be compared to that of Earth, and as part of which participating scientists and institutions process collected data, and conduct intricate theoretical calculations. 

Establishing such international scientific collaborations is also a declared goal of the Science Summit, which aims to bring the realization of the SDGs closer – a goal that is also reflected in the title of the session that will feature Professor Rezzolla as the keynote speaker: "Expanding Scientific Horizons through International Collaboration and Networking." Emphasizing the importance of interdisciplinary cooperation, he says: "Unlike a century ago, many scientific breakthroughs today are made possible only through close and interdisciplinary collaboration among countless scientists worldwide. The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration brought together more than 300 researchers from 80 different institutions and this has ultimately allowed what was till then thought to be impossible: take a photo of a black hole." 

Interdisciplinary collaboration continues to play a central role in Rezzolla's daily research activities. He is the spokesperson of the ELEMENTS cluster project, which brings together more than 100 astrophysicists and nuclear physicists, who work collaboratively and employ diverse methods to investigate how heavy elements originated in the universe. 

The 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly opened on September 5, 2023. Held concurrently from September 12-29, the 9th Science Summit brings together numerous stakeholders from the fields of science and politics to discuss the contributions of science to the implementation of the SDGs. The meeting also will provide input for the United Nations Summit of the Future, which will take place in September 2024. 

Virtual participation in the 9th UN Science Summit is free of charge. Professor Luciano Rezzolla's talk will be broadcast on September 15, 2023, at 2:45 p.m. CEST. For further information, please visit https://sciencesummitunga.com. 

Image for download: https://www.puk.uni-frankfurt.de/142418346? 

Caption: On September 15, Luciano Rezzolla will address the significance of scientific collaboration at the UN General Assembly's Science Summit. (Photo: Uwe Dettmar) 

Further Information
Prof. Dr. Luciano Rezzolla
Chair Theoretical Astrophysics
Institute for Theoretical Physics
Goethe University Frankfurt
Tel: +49 (0)69/798-47871
rezzolla@th.physik.uni-frankfurt.de
https://astro.uni-frankfurt.de/rezzolla/ 
@elements_uni

Editor: Dr. Phyllis Mania, Science Communication Officer, PR & Communication Office, Tel: +49 (0) 69 798-13001, Fax: +49 (0) 69 798-763 12531, mania@physik.uni-frankfurt.de

Oswin Köhler Archive continues collaboration with Namibia's Khwe: An exhibition at the University Library 

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen 

The Oswin Köhler Archive at Goethe University Frankfurt's Institute of African Studies houses the world's largest collection of documents on the Khwe language and culture in Namibia, compiled by the Africanist Oswin Köhler between 1959 and 1992. A process to research and catalog the collection began in 2015, with the parallel aim of developing ways of working together with members of the Khwe community and creating forms of presentation that meet their needs and interests. An exhibition on the results and challenges of this collaboration will be on display until September 4, 2023. Its title: 

“We are happy to see these things" – again 
Collaborations of the Oswin Köhler Archive with Namibia's Khwe 

With a view towards continuing the collaboration and developing further projects, a three-week workshop with four Khwe representatives from Namibia is currently underway, funded by the Centre for Interdisciplinary African Studies (Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Afrikaforschung, ZIAF). 

To mark the occasion, we hereby invite you to a press briefing, during which the four Khwe representatives from Namibia will also be present to answer questions. The event will take place 

on August 25, 2023, at 11 a.m. 
at the Johann Christian Senckenberg University Library, Central Library
Bockenheimer Landstraße 134-138, 60325 Frankfurt, Germany
Schopenhauer Studio (ground floor) 

Language: English, translation into German if required. 

The following people will participate in the discussion:

• Thaddeus Chedau, Khwe Headman from Mutc'iku, Bwabwata National Park, Namibia
• Sonner Ciayi Geria, Chairman of the Khwe Custodian Committee from Chetto, Bwabwata National Park, Namibia 
• Hendrik Mbangu, younger brother of Oswin Köhler's late field assistant Ndo Tinene from Mutc'iku, Bwabwata National Park, Namibia 
• Snelia Mangonga, granddaughter of former Khwe Chief Martin Ndumba from Mutc'iku, Bwabwata National Park Namibia 
• Professor Dr Axel Fanego-Palat, Managing Director of Goethe University Frankfurt's Institute of African Studies 
• Dr Karen Hahn, Coordinator of the ZIAF Centre for Interdisciplinary African Studies, Goethe University Frankfurt 
• Dr Gertrud Boden, Research Associate at the Oswin Köhler Archive (Research and Documentation Center for Bequests in German and International African Studies), Institute of African Studies, Goethe University Frankfurt 
• Moderator: Professor Dr Rainer Voßen, former director of the Institute of African Studies and head of the Oswin Köhler Archive 

We are looking forward to welcoming you and reading your coverage of this event! We kindly ask that you register by sending an email to pr-team@ub.uni-frankfurt.de

General press queries: Bernhard Wirth, Central Library Staff Departments for PR and Personnel Development, Tel. +49 (69) 798 39223; E-Mail: pr-team@ub.uni-frankfurt.de

Wastewater treatment plants are undoubtedly a great achievement. After all, they have made a significant contribution to improving the quality of natural waters. A study published in the journal “Water Research" shows, however, that substances still manage to enter the water cycle that have an impact on the composition of the organisms living in it. 

Effluents from wastewater treatment plants have a dual effect: Some species disappear, while others benefit. Especially certain insect orders, such as stonefly and caddisfly larvae, are decimated. Certain worms and crustaceans, by contrast, can increase in number. A team from Goethe University Frankfurt led by Daniel Enns and Dr. Jonas Jourdan has corroborated this in a comprehensive study, which has now been published in the journal “Water Research". They examined 170 wastewater treatment plants in Hesse in relation to species composition. 

Wastewater treatment plants are an indispensable part of our modern infrastructure; they have made a significant contribution to improving the quality of our surface waters. However, their ability to completely remove what are known as micropollutants from wastewater is mostly limited. These substances include, for example, active ingredients from pharmaceuticals and personal care products, pesticides and other synthetic substances enter waterbodies via the treated wastewater, placing an additional burden on rivers and streams. This exacerbates the challenges faced by already vulnerable insect communities and aquatic fauna. Previous studies – which have primarily focused on single wastewater treatment plants – have already shown that invertebrate communities downstream of such effluents are generally dominated by pollution-tolerant taxa. 

Until now, however, it was unclear how ubiquitous these changes are. That is why a team of biologists from Goethe University Frankfurt has now studied extensively how wastewater from 170 wastewater treatment plants in Hesse has an impact on the species composition of invertebrates. This has prompted a change in the common conception that human-induced stressors reduce the number of species in a habitat and thus their diversity: Rather, the findings indicate that a shift in species composition can be observed. The researchers were able to identify significant shifts in the composition of the species community between sites located upstream and downstream of wastewater treatment plants. Some species were particularly affected by effluents from wastewater treatment plants – such as stonefly and caddisfly larvae, which disappear entirely in some places. Other taxa, such as certain worms and crustaceans, by contrast, benefit and are found in greater numbers. This change can be observed especially in streams and smaller rivers. Overall, wastewater treatment plants alter conditions downstream to the advantage of pollution-tolerant taxa and to the disadvantage of sensitive ones. 

How can we reduce water pollution?
Modern treatment techniques such as ozonation or activated charcoal filtering can make water treatment in wastewater treatment plants more efficient, allowing a wider range of pollutants, including many trace substances, to be removed from the wastewater before it is released into the environment. Merging smaller wastewater treatment plants can also contribute to reducing the burden on the environment. Whatever measures are taken, it is important to make sure that upstream sections are not already degraded and are in a good chemical and structural condition. 

Publication: Enns D, Cunze S, Baker NJ, Oehlmann J, Jourdan J (2023) Flushing away the future: The effects of wastewater treatment plants on aquatic invertebrates. Water Research, 120388. doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2023.120388 

Picture download: https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/141365425

Caption:
Images 1+2: Treated wastewater is discharged into a nearby stream. In this way, numerous trace substances enter our waters. (Photos: Jourdan)
Image 3: The photograph shows a typical wastewater treatment plant. The wastewater passes through various treatment stages to remove pollutants before the treated water is discharged into the environment. (Photo: Jourdan) 

Further Information
Dr. Jonas Jourdan
Senior Scientist
Institute of Ecology, Diversity and Evolution
Goethe University Frankfurt
Tel.: +49(0)69-798-42149
Email: jourdan@bio.uni-frankfurt.de
Twitter: @Jourdan_Jonas

Editor: Dr. Anke Sauter, Science Editor, PR & Communication Office, Tel: +49 (0)69 798-13066, Fax: +49 (0) 69 798-763 12531, sauter@pvw.uni-frankfurt.de

To mark its 100th anniversary, the IfS Institute for Social Research is organizing an international conference, titled "Futuring Critical Theory", which will take place on Goethe University Frankfurt's Westend Campus from September 13-15, 2023. The conference sets out to determine where Critical Theory stands, and to reorient it in light of the existential challenges of our times. 

Several of the supposed certainties of Frankfurt School Critical Theory have in part been fundamentally challenged in the course of recent academic and political debates on, for example, post- and de-colonialism, queer feminism, as well as new materialism. Specifically, there are two fronts where the theory has been put to the test: On the one hand, the explanatory power of an approach that in its interpretation of crises has so far neither focused on the global interconnectedness of social phenomena nor on the material dimension of social reproduction has been called into question. On the other hand, it is debatable whether classical Critical Theory's normative tools are still appropriate for theorizing contemporary social relations. 

The "Futuring Critical Theory" conference marking IfS' centennial will be the place where the process of developing a new research program for the Institute comes to a preliminary conclusion, and the results presented to a broader public for the first time. The three conference days are divided into four sections: I Dissecting Critical Theory; II Globalizing Critical Theory; III Materializing Critical Theory; IV Recomposing Critical Theory. 

For further information and to register, visit: https://fct2023.ifs.uni-frankfurt.de 

Contact: Mirko Broll, Research Associate and PR advisor, Institute for Social Research, broll@em.uni-frankfurt.de

Editor: Dr. Dirk Frank, Press Officer / Deputy Head of PR and Communication, Goethe University Frankfurt, Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 1, 60323 Frankfurt am Main, Phone +49 (0)69 798–13753, frank@pvw.uni-frankfurt.de

Hospital-acquired infections are often hard to treat because the corresponding pathogens become increasingly resistant against antibiotics. Here, the bacterium Acinetobacter baumannii is particularly feared, and there is great pressure to devise novel therapeutic approaches to combat it. Bioinformaticians from Goethe University Frankfurt and Research Unit FOR2251 of the German Research Foundation have now detected an unexpectedly wide diversity of certain cell appendages in A. baumannii that are associated with pathogenicity. This could lead to treatment strategies that are specifically tailored to a particular pathogen. 

Each year, over 670,000 people in Europe fall ill because of antibiotic-resistant pathogens, and 33,000 die from the infections. Especially feared are pathogens with resistances against multiple, or even all, known antibiotics. One of these is the bacterium Acinetobacter baumannii, feared today above all as the “hospital superbug": According to estimates, up to five percent of all hospital-acquired and one tenth of all bacterial infections resulting in death can be attributed to this pathogen alone. This puts A. baumannii right at the top of a list of pathogens for which – according to the World Health Organization (WHO) – there is an urgent need to develop new therapies. 

Understanding which characteristics make A. baumannii a pathogen is one of the prerequisites for this. To this end, bioinformaticians led by Professor Ingo Ebersberger of Goethe University Frankfurt and the LOEWE Center for Translational Biodiversity Genomics (LOEWE-TBG) are comparing the genomes and the proteins encoded therein across a wide range of different Acinetobacter strains. Conclusions about which genes contribute to pathogenicity can be drawn above all from the differences between dangerous and harmless strains. 

Due to a lack of suitable methods, corresponding studies have so far concentrated on whether a gene is present in a bacterial strain or not. However, this neglects the fact that bacteria can acquire new characteristics by modifying existing genes and thus also the proteins encoded by them. That is why Ebersberger's team has developed a bioinformatics method to track the modification of proteins along an evolutionary lineage and has now applied this method for the first time to Acinetobacter in collaboration with microbiologists from the Institute for Molecular Biosciences and the Institute of Medical Microbiology and Infection Control at Goethe University Frankfurt. 

In the process, the researchers concentrated on hair-like cell appendages, known as type IVa (T4A) pili, which are prevalent in bacteria and that they use to interact with their environment. The fact that they are present in harmless bacteria on the one hand and have even been identified as a key factor for the virulence of some pathogens on the other suggests that the T4A pili have repeatedly acquired new characteristics associated with pathogenicity during evolution. 

The research team could show that the protein ComC, which sits on the tip of the T4A pili and is essential for their function, shows conspicuous changes within the group of pathogenic Acinetobacter strains. Even different strains of A. baumannii have different variants of this protein. This leads bioinformatician Ebersberger to compare the T4A pili to a multifunctional garden tool, where the handle is always the same, but the attachments are interchangeable. “In this way, drastic functional modifications can be achieved over short evolutionary time spans," Ebersberger is convinced. “We assume that bacterial strains that differ in terms of their T4A pili also interact differently with their environment. This might determine, for example, in which corner of the human body the pathogen settles." 

The aim is to use this knowledge of the unexpectedly high diversity within the pathogen to improve the treatment of A. baumannii infections, as Ebersberger explains: “Building on our results, it might be possible to develop personalized therapies that are tailored to a specific strain of the pathogen." However, the study by Ebersberger and his colleagues also reveals something else: Previous studies on the comparative genomics of A. baumannii have presumably only unveiled the tip of the iceberg. “Our approach has gone a long way towards resolving the search for possible components that characterize pathogens," says Ebersberger. 

Publication: Ruben Iruegas, Katharina Pfefferle, Stephan Götting, Beate Averhoff, Ingo Ebersberger: Feature-architecture aware phylogenetic profiling indicates a functional diversification of type IVa pili in the nosocomial pathogen Acinetobacter baumannii. PLOS Genetics (2023) https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1010646 

Picture download: https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/141211330 

Caption: Like a multifunctional gardening tool, the T4A pili of different Acinetobacter strains have evolutionarily modified the ComC protein at their tip (oval, in different colors) to settle in different niches within humans. Gray bars: cell envelope. Graphic: Katharina Pfefferle, Goethe University 

Further Information:
Professor Ingo Ebersberger
Institute of Cell Biology and Neuroscience
Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany
Tel.: +49 (0)69 798 42112
ebersberger@bio.uni-frankfurt.de
Website: http://www.bio.uni-frankfurt.de/43045195/ak-ebersberger
https://www.bio.uni-frankfurt.de/51172482/Forschergruppe_FOR2251 

Twitter: @goetheuni

Editor: Dr. Markus Bernards, Science Editor, PR & Communication Office, Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 1, 60323 Frankfurt am Main, Tel: +49 (0) 69 798-12498, Fax: +49 (0) 69 798-763 12531, bernards@em.uni-frankfurt.de