Goethe-Universität — Press releases

Goethe University PR & Communication Department

Feb 24 2025

10:05

Country-wide survey conducted by Goethe University Frankfurt shows differences in rankings between degree programs

How important are the UN SDGs to students in Germany?

Students at universities in Germany have a consistently positive attitude towards the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals, but, depending on their subject of study, they rank the individual goals' importance differently. This is the result of a new country-wide online survey conducted by Goethe University Frankfurt. The poll also took into account students' personal connection to nature. The resulting study offers initial indications of how universities could better integrate the topic of sustainability into their courses in the future – including in the form of an interdisciplinary exchange.

FRANKFURT. Many of today's students will become tomorrow's decision-makers, taking on important roles in politics, business and society. As a result, they will also have a major influence on how sustainably society will act in the future, whether climate change will be consistently combated or nature adequately protected. But what attitudes do these future decision-makers have towards sustainability? Does it play a central role in their considerations or not? A Germany-wide study conducted by Goethe University Frankfurt provides new insights into these questions and more. The poll asked students from 18 different subjects about their connection to nature and how important they consider the 17 individual UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be. The SDGs include clean water, no poverty, zero hunger, social justice and economic growth.

“We asked ourselves three research questions," says first author Viktoria Feucht from the Department of Didactics at Goethe University's Faculty of Biological Sciences: “Do students from different study programs diverge in their connection to nature? Do students on separate programs rate the individual sustainability goals differently? Is there a correlation between one's connection to nature and the assessment of the individual goals' importance?"

Responses to the first question on “connection to nature" revealed that study programs that are thematically linked to nature – including geosciences and geo-ecology, but also architecture – had the highest values, while subjects such as business studies, chemistry and computer science had the lowest. The midfield included, among others, more human-oriented programs, including sociology and theology. “One interesting question to explore would be what causes these different levels of connection to nature," says Feucht, adding that “it could be the influence of the study program itself. Or it could be that the students were already influenced in one direction or another before starting their studies, by childhood experiences, for example."

The second question consisted of an evaluation of the UN sustainability goals, asking respondents to provide a ranking of 1 to 5 – i.e. unimportant to important. The responses show that the SDGs' individual ideas were rated as important – often even very important – across all subjects. The lowest subject-specific mean value stood at 3.5, the highest at 4.9, with at times significant differences according to the subject. As such, students of business studies ranked the economic SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure) much higher than students of geo-ecology. The latter and biology, on the other hand, assigned much greater importance to SDG 14 (Life Below Water) than the subjects of physics and computer science. An overarching trend was discernible for SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) and SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), both of which consistently received very high scores of 4.7 and above. Feucht interprets this as follows: “Food and drinking water are among the most basic human needs, and necessary for survival – something all respondents, regardless of their subject, consider to be very important."

As part of the third research question, the study's authors linked the mean values of respondents' connection to nature with their SDG ratings. “Since the UN goals also have the ecological dimension, we wanted to see whether personal connection to nature is reflected in some of the SDGs." This, however, was only the case for SDG 15 (Life on Land). The consistency of the values derived here shows that the more important a study program considers SDG 15 to be, the more connected to nature it is – and vice versa. “Of course, this does not prove causality, but it does show a correlation."

What conclusions can be drawn from the survey's results? “We have shown that students in Germany assign a high to very high level of importance to all 17 SDGs, regardless of their subject. The general attitude towards the SDGs is positive – a finding universities should use to train students from all subject areas more strongly in sustainability." One approach could be an analysis of the match between connection to nature and SDG 15. Study author Dr. Matthias Kleespies says: “Based on our results, we recommend a reflective and nature-oriented educational approach, as other studies have shown that such measures can improve the connection to nature."

It would also make sense to increasingly link subject-specific topics with sustainability aspects in lectures. “The UN goals are universal, which means many points of contact exist," says Feucht. That includes subjects in which sustainability aspects have not previously been a priority. One example Feucht points to is chemistry, which, like other subjects, holds great potential to initiate change. Topics like waste recycling and production processes, for instance, could be easily combined with sustainability issues. “We shouldn't categorically exclude any subject. Sustainability concerns all of us, which is why all study programs should address the topic in depth."

Inter- and transdisciplinarity is another promising approach. “Since every subject has its own inherent logic, an exchange between students from different subjects can help broaden the understanding of sustainability on both sides." Such an exchange would involve both common denominators as well as opposing attitudes, which could be a good thing, Feucht says: Once today's students become influential players in politics or business, they must also be able to reach common decisions – even if they may have contrary opinions on certain sustainability aspects.

Publication: Viktoria Feucht, Paul Wilhelm Dierkes, Matthias Winfried Kleespies: Ranking our future: University students' prioritization of Sustainable Development Goals and their connection to nature. Sustainable Development (2024) https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.3278

Picture download:
https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/167400832

Caption: Experiencing nature during their studies: Students in the Goethe University Science Garden. Photo: Paul Dierkes

Further information:
Goethe University Frankfurt
Department of Didactics in the Biological Sciences and Zoo Animal Biology
Professor Paul W. Dierkes
Tel: +49 (0)69 798-42273
dierkes@bio.uni-frankfurt.de

Viktoria Feucht
Tel: +49 (0)69 798 42276
Feucht@bio.uni-frankfurt.de

Dr. Matthias W. Kleespies
Tel. +49 (0)69 798 42276
kleespies@em.uni-frankfurt.de

Bluesky: @goetheuni.bsky.social
Linkedin: @Goethe-Universität Frankfurt

Feb 6 2025

14:48

New gravitational wave simulation links post-merger signal to neutron star composition

Tuning forks in space: a final pure “tone” may reveal interior of neutron stars

Scientists at Goethe University Frankfurt have identified a new way to probe the interior of neutron stars using gravitational waves from their collisions. By analyzing the "long ringdown" phase – a pure-tone signal emitted by the post-merger remnant – they have found a strong correlation between the signal’s properties and the equation of state of neutron-star matter. The results were recently published in Nature Communications.

FRANKFURT. Neutron stars, with a mass greater than that of the entire solar system confined within a nearly perfect sphere just a dozen kilometers in diameter, are among the most fascinating astrophysical objects known to humankind. Yet, the extreme conditions in their interiors make their composition and structure highly uncertain. The collision of two neutron stars, such as the one observed in 2017, provides a unique opportunity to uncover these mysteries. As binary neutron stars inspiral for millions of years, they emit gravitational waves, but the most intense emission occurs at and just milliseconds after the moment of merging. The post-merger remnant – a massive, rapidly rotating object formed by the collision – emits gravitational waves in a strong but narrow frequency range. This signal holds crucial information about the so-called "equation of state" of nuclear matter, which describes how matter behaves at extreme densities and pressures.

Prof. Luciano Rezzolla’s group at Goethe University Frankfurt now discovered that although the amplitude of the post-merger gravitational-wave signal diminishes over time, it becomes increasingly "pure"—tending toward a single frequency, much like a giant tuning fork resonating after being struck. They have termed this phase the "long ringdown" and identified a strong connection between its unique characteristics and the properties of the densest regions in neutron-star cores.

“Just like tuning forks of different material will have different pure tones, remnants described by different equations of state will ring down at different frequencies. The detection of this signal thus has the potential to reveal what neutron stars are made of,” says Rezzolla, adding, “I am particularly proud of this work as it constitutes exemplary evidence of the excellence of Frankfurt- and Darmstadt-based scientists in the study of neutron stars, which have been a central focus of the Hessian research cluster ELEMENTS.”

Using advanced general-relativistic simulations of merging neutron stars with carefully constructed equations of state, the researchers demonstrated that analyzing the long ringdown can significantly reduce uncertainties in the equation of state at very high densities – where no direct constraints are currently available. “Thanks to advances in statistical modeling and high-precision simulations on Germany’s most powerful supercomputers, we have discovered a new phase of the long ringdown in neutron star mergers,” says Dr. Christian Ecker, first author of the study, “It has the potential to provide new and stringent constraints on the state of matter in neutron stars. This finding paves the way for a better understanding of dense neutron star matter, especially as new events are observed in the future.”

Co-author Dr. Tyler Gorda adds: "By cleverly selecting a few equations of state, we were able to effectively simulate the results of a full statistical ensemble of matter models with considerably less effort. Not only does this result in less computer time and energy consumption, but it also gives us confidence that our results are robust and will be applicable to whatever equation of state actually occurs in nature."

While current gravitational-wave detectors have not yet observed the post-merger signal, scientists are optimistic that the next-generation detectors, such as the Einstein Telescope expected to become operational in Europe within the next decade, will make this long-awaited detection possible. When that happens, the long ringdown will serve as a powerful tool to probe the enigmatic interiors of neutron stars and reveal the secrets of matter at its most extreme.

Publication: Christian Ecker, Tyler Gorda, Aleksi Kurkela & Luciano Rezzolla: Constraining the equation of state in neutron-star cores via the long-ringdown signal. Nature Communications (2025) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-56500-x

Picture download: https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/166591276

Caption: The signal emitted by two merging neutron stars resembles that of a tuning fork (Credit: L. Rezzolla/pixabay).

Further information
Dr. Christian Ecker
Institute of Theoretical Physics
Goethe University Frankfurt
Tel. +49 69 798-47886
ecker@itp.uni-frankfurt.de
https://tinygu.de/1mxBS

Feb 6 2025

13:13

Goethe University Frankfurt and partners launch EXIST Women program.

New impetus for female founders

FRANKFURT. In what can be considered an important milestone for the promotion of start-ups in the Rhine-Main region, Goethe University Frankfurt and its start-up center Goethe Unibator, together with TU Darmstadt and Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, are delighted to have successfully applied for the renowned EXIST Women funding program. Aimed at supporting female founders, the initiative strengthens the cooperation between the Rhine-Main Universities (RMU) and Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences.

EXIST Women supports female students and researchers interested in founding their own company to either turn innovative ideas into their own start-ups, or to actively help shape start-up projects as co-founders. Participants benefit from individual coaching, mentoring and a strong network. At Goethe University, the program is known as females@Unibator.

“We need more female role models in the start-up scene. EXIST Women gives women the chance to confidently realize their ideas and actively shape the innovation scene. I am delighted to be part of this program as a mentor and to accompany female founders on their journey,” says Sally Schulze, successful founder and mentor at females@Unibator.

Program highlights:

Developing entrepreneurial skills: Workshops and coaching sessions strengthen participants' personal and professional skills.
Mentoring and networking: Experienced mentors and a broad network offer support and valuable insights into the start-up world.
Financial support: Participants receive a material budget of €2,000 as well as a three-month grant of up to €3,000 per month.

Participation in the program does not require a concrete start-up idea; instead, the decisive factors are entrepreneurial drive and a desire to explore new perspectives. Further information on the application process and the conditions of participation can be found on the Goethe Unibator website (www.goetheunibator.de/femalesunibator).

EXIST Women
The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection’s EXIST Women program supports women at universities and research institutions who are interested in setting up their own business, especially with regard to developing their entrepreneurial personality and further refining their start-up idea.

Further information on EXIST Women is available at https://www.exist.de/EXIST/Navigation/EN/Start-upFunding/EXIST-WOMEN/exist-women.html

Jan 30 2025

08:16

International study analyzes material from asteroid Bennu that was brought to Earth by NASA's OSIRIS-REx space mission

Dust from asteroid Bennu shows: Building blocks of life and possible habitats were widespread in our solar system

With the OSIRIS-REx space probe, the NASA space agency succeeded in collecting some material from the surface of asteroid Bennu, which arrived on Earth in a small capsule in 2023. The analysis of the material by more than 40 scientific teams worldwide – including the team led by Prof. Frank Brenker from Goethe University – revealed a number of organic substances that form the basis for biomolecules. In addition, the minerals in the sample also indicate that the protoplanet from which Bennu originated once had liquid, salty water. Thus, this protoplanet possessed both ingredients for life and potential habitats.

FRANKFURT. It took two years for NASA's OSIRIS-REx space probe to return from asteroid Bennu before dropping off a small capsule as it flew past Earth, which was then recovered in the desert of the U.S. state of Utah on September 24, 2023. Its contents: 122 grams of dust and rock from asteroid Bennu. The probe had collected this sample from the surface of the 500-metre agglomerate of unconsolidated material in a touch-and-go maneuver that took just seconds. Since the capsule protected the sample from the effects of the atmosphere, it could be analyzed in its original state by a large team of scientists from more than 40 institutions around the world.

The partners in Germany were geoscientists Dr. Sheri Singerling, Dr. Beverley Tkalcec and Prof. Frank Brenker from Goethe University Frankfurt. They examined barely visible grains of Bennu using the transmission electron microscope of the Schwiete Cosmochemistry Laboratory, set up at Goethe University only a year ago with the support of the Dr. Rolf M. Schwiete Foundation, the German Research Foundation and the State of Hesse. Its goal: to reconstruct the processes that took place on Bennu's protoplanetary parent body more than four billion years ago and ultimately led to the formation of the minerals that exist today. The Frankfurt scientists succeeded in doing this by analyzing the mineral grains' exact structure and determining their chemical composition at the same time. They also carried out trace element tomography of the samples at accelerators such as DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron) in Hamburg.

“Together with our international partner teams, we have been able to detect a large proportion of the minerals that are formed when salty, liquid water – known as brine – evaporates more and more and the minerals are precipitated in the order of their solubility," explains Dr. Sheri Singerling, who manages the Schwiete Cosmo Lab. In technical terms, the rocks that form from such precipitation cascades are called evaporites. They have been found on Earth in dried-out salt lakes, for example.

“Other teams have found various precursors of biomolecules such as numerous amino acids in the Bennu samples," reports Prof. Frank Brenker. “This means that Bennu's parent body had some known building blocks for biomolecules, water and – at least for a certain time – energy to keep the water liquid." However, the break-up of Bennu's parent body interrupted all processes very early on and the traces that have now been discovered were preserved for more than 4.5 billion years.

“Other celestial bodies such as Saturn's moon Enceladus, or the dwarf planet Ceres have been able to evolve since then and are still very likely to have liquid oceans or at least remnants of them under their ice shells," says Brenker. “Since this means that they have a potential habitat, the search for simple life that could have evolved in such an environment is a focus of future missions and sample studies."

OSIRIS-REx
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provided overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator. The university leads the science team and the mission's science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provided flight operations.

Publication: Tim J. McCoy et al.: An evaporite sequence from ancient brine recorded in Bennu samples. Nature (2025) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08495-6

Background information
Daniel P. Glavin et al.: Abundant ammonia and nitrogen-rich soluble organic matter in samples from asteroid (101955) Bennu Nature Astronomy (2025) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-024-02472-9

Inauguration of Schwiete Cosmo Lab (October 2023)
https://aktuelles.uni-frankfurt.de/english/study-of-asteroid-bennu-goethe-university-frankfurt-inaugurates-schwiete-cosmolab/

Picture downloads:
http://www.uni-frankfurt.de/165813816

Captions:
1) Studies of the smallest amounts of material: Cosmochemist Professor Frank Brenker shows three grains of a meteorite that the Goethe University team used to test research methods in advance. The quantity and type corresponded to the material from the asteroid Bennu. Photo: Uwe Dettmar for Goethe University.
2) A few specks of dust: The samples analyzed in the transmission electron microscope of the Schwiete Cosmo Lab at Goethe University are barely visible. Arrows indicate three of the samples. Photo without arrows: NASA
3) In the Schwiete Cosmo Lab: Dr. Sheri Singerling inserts a sample carrier into the transmission electron microscope of the Schwiete Cosmo Lab at Goethe University Frankfurt. Photo: Uwe Dettmar for Goethe University
4) In the Schwiete Cosmo Lab (2): Dr. Sheri Singerling analyzing the TEM images of the material from Bennu. Photo: Uwe Dettmar for Goethe University

NASA photo and image material:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/osiris-rex
and
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/osirisrex/

Contact for further information:
Professor Frank E. Brenker
NanoGeoscience / Cosmochemistry
Institute for Geosciences
Goethe University Frankfurt
Tel.: + 49 (0)69 798 40134
f.brenker@em.uni-frankfurt.de

LinkedIn: @sheri-singerling @goethe-universitat-frankfurt

Jan 28 2025

10:05

We smell faster than expected: Biologist at the University of Bonn discovers the temporal dimension of olfaction

A gateway to memory: Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Early Career Award 2025 goes to Tobias Ackels

Biologist Prof. Dr. Tobias Ackels (40) from the University of Bonn will be awarded the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Early Career Award 2025, the Scientific Council of the Paul Ehrlich Foundation announced today. The prizewinner has discovered that mammals smell faster than they breathe. He has shown that their nerve cells can derive new information from a dynamic scent cloud up to 40 times per second. Ackels has thus disproved the previously held assumption that the sense of smell is slow. At the same time, his research has opened a new door to understanding brain function as a whole, and he is exploring ways of using this fundamental mechanism for the early diagnosis of dementia.

FRANKFURT. Many animal species would not be able to survive without their sense of smell. They rely on it to locate food sources, find mates and avoid predators. For nocturnal animals, it is the most important tool for sniffing their way around dark spaces. That being said, “smelling” is no easy feat, given that every smell is made up of many different molecules and every natural scent cloud in turn consists of many different odors. Until now, a sniff was considered the smallest unit of information in odor processing – an assumption Tobias Ackels has proven to be false. To do so, he constructed an odor application device that allows him to release individual or mixed odors through valves in precise millisecond pulses. The experiment showed that even between each individual sniff, mammals absorb information that can control their behavior.

In mice, as in humans, odors are registered by olfactory cells in the nasal mucosa. Each of these nerve cells carries only one type of olfactory receptor. Mice have more than 1,000 such types, humans around 350, with a few thousand olfactory cells each carrying the same receptor. Once an odorant binds to this receptor, it triggers a – relatively slow – signaling cascade inside the cell: It transmits an information wave via the main cable (axon) of the relevant olfactory cell, which in turn leads to a kind of circuit station in the olfactory bulb at the base of the brain. Information from the axons of a single receptor type’s olfactory cells converges inside each such switching station (glomerulus) – with a slight time delay, because these cells are widely distributed in the nasal mucosa and therefore not all reached by “their smell” at the same time. This delayed convergence increases the information content delivered by the signals from the olfactory cells, which are mapped as a scent reservoir in the nervous input of the olfactory bulb, stored in the nasal mucosa after each breath, thereby making it receptive to rapidly changing stimuli that would otherwise be lost. Tobias Ackels first confirmed this hypothesis in a computer model and then in fluorescence microscopy measurements of nerve cell activity in mice exposed to such stimuli.

Simulating the situation in a natural environment, Ackels then presented synchronously or asynchronously correlated mixtures of two scents to a group of thirsty mice, whereby synchronous odors come from the same, and asynchronous odors from different places. Half of the mice were rewarded with water when they recognized a synchronous stimulus, the other half when they recognized an asynchronous stimulus. Both groups learned the difference and mastered it up to a frequency of 40 Hertz – suggesting that, to orient themselves in space, mammals can use this ability to differentiate between the sources of different odor signals at lightning speed. This ability is also important for us humans: we can smell a forest fire, for example, before we see it.

Ackels showed that this ability is encoded in the output of the olfactory bulb, i.e. in the mitral and tufted cells that, without taking a detour via the diencephalon, send the odor information from the glomeruli directly to the cortex of the olfactory brain and the limbic system, both of which are particularly strongly linked to emotion and memory. The only mediators integrated into these circuits are interneurons, granule cells in particular, which renew themselves in the olfactory bulb throughout life – disproving the former dogma that adult nerve cells are no longer capable of dividing. With the support of the European Research Council (ERC), Tobias Ackels is currently investigating how these cells contribute to extracting information from the olfactory bulb and communicating it to higher brain regions. Given that interneurons are increasingly regarded as the conductors of feeling and thinking, his findings could be of exemplary importance. There are also increasing signs that olfactory deficits precede the structural changes, memory impairment and clinical symptoms associated with dementia and could therefore be used for early detection – which could open the door for a translation of his basic research, a prospect about which Tobias Ackels is in close contact with clinicians at the Deutsches Zentrum für neurodegenerative Erkrankungen (DZNE, German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases) in Bonn.

Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Tobias Ackels studied biology at RWTH Aachen University from 2005 to 2011. He received his doctorate there in 2015 with a thesis on signal processing in the olfactory system of mammals. From 2015 to 2023, he was a postdoctoral researcher in Prof. Andreas Schäfer’s group at the Francis Crick Institute in London. In August 2023, he returned to Germany and took up a W2 professorship at the University of Bonn, where he heads the Sensory Dynamics and Behavior group at the Institute of Experimental Epileptology and Cognition Research at the University Hospital Bonn. In the same year, he was awarded an ERC Starting Grant.

The prize will be awarded – together with the main prize 2025 –by the Chairman of Paul Ehrlich Foundation’s Scientific Council in Frankfurt's Paulskirche on March 14, 2025 at 5 p.m.

Pictures of the award winner and detailed background information “On the trail of the deepest sense” are available for download at: www.paul-ehrlich-stiftung.de

Further information
Press Office Paul Ehrlich Foundation
Joachim Pietzsch
Phone: +49 (0)69 36007188
E-mail: j.pietzsch@wissenswort.com
www.paul-ehrlich-stiftung.de