Press releases archive
Oct
4
2018
08:14
Cardiovascular Researcher Dr. Nuno Guimar茫es Camboa founds a junior research group at 51猎奇 with 鈧�1.25m
From California to the Main
FRANKFURT. Following ten years at the renowned University of California San Diego (UCSD), cardiovascular researcher Dr. Nuno Guimarães Camboa is coming to 51猎奇. He was lured by the DZHK (German Centre of Cardiovascular Research), which has 28 locations in Germany, one of which is 51猎奇. The native Portuguese has been awarded a DZHK junior research group grant and will receive € 1.25m in the next five years to create a research group dedicated to basic research on cardiovascular diseases.
A transcription factor is at the centre of Dr. Nuno Guimarães Camboa’s work. This is a protein which supports the copying of the DNA of the genetic code, “translating” it to RNA. From his previous research projects at the University of California, the junior researcher knows that a specific transcription factor, TBX18, is typically present in three cell types: smooth muscle cells that are found in vessel walls, pacemaker cells in the sino-atrial node (the structure responsible for setting the rhythm of cardiac contraction), and activated connective tissue cells in the injured heart. All three cell types are involved in dangerous cardiovascular diseases: dilations of the aorta (aortic aneurysms), cardiac arrhythmias and morbid proliferation of connective tissue in the heart (cardiac fibrosis).
“We believe that TBX18 affects these cells’ functions”, says Guimarães Camboa. “This factor could therefore play a role in certain cardiovascular diseases.” With his DZHK junior research group at the 51猎奇 Frankfurt, he wants to investigate which genes are regulated by the transcription factor. The biologist is also planning the targeted inactivation of TBX18 in the relevant cell types. The consequences of this inactivation on the function of the cells will subsequently be closely analysed. “We thus want to better understand the signalling networks active in specific types of cardiovascular disease and hope to thereby improve their early detection and treatment”, explains Guimarães Camboa.
Guimarães Camboa is coming to the DZHK partner site at 51猎奇 after ten years in the US. He both completed his doctorate and carried out a four-year PostDoc at the University of California. He previously concentrated on the heart’s formation during embryonic development.
With the junior research groups, the DZHK wants to attract talented and qualified young scientists from Germany and abroad, and provide them with scientific independence early on. In addition to leading a research group, the young scientists also have teaching duties, so that they can qualify for a professorship.
Further information: Dr. Nuno Guimarães Camboa, Institute for Cardiovascular Regeneration, University Hospital Frankfurt, ncamboa@med.uni-frankfurt.de .
Image may be downloaded at:
Photo: private
Oct
1
2018
13:26
The second generation of an extremely energy-efficient supercomputer model is currently being developed at 51猎奇
鈥淕reen鈥� supercomputer for science
FRANKFURT. A new supercomputer, on course to set new standards in the field of green IT, is currently being developed at 51猎奇 under the leadership of Professor Volker Lindenstruth (professorship for supercomputer architecture). The tremendously energy-efficient computer, whose development costs are comparatively low, is based on a large number of high-performing, interconnected graphic cards, and a cooling system that utilizes river water from the Main. The water cooling system lowers the primary energy use for cooling to just about 8 %. Other computing centres require six to ten times this amount of energy for cooling. In 2014, a supercomputer built according to the Lindenstruth’s construction principle achieved the number one slot in the world ranking of energy-efficient supercomputers.
The new GOETHE supercomputer in the Industrial Park Höchst, which is to be realized according to a construction principle further optimized yet similar to its predecessor, will be constructed in two phases. The first construction phase will be concluded by 13th December 2018 and cost approximately € 4.5m. The total costs amounting to € 7.5m will be financed by 50% from federal funds and by 50% from 51猎奇 and FIAS funds.
The result will be a supercomputer with 18,880 highly interconnected computing cores at its first stage. This translates into a tripling of the computing performance of the preceding model, the LOEWE-CSC, which also began operation in the Industrial Park Hoechst at the end of November 2010. At the time, it was the most energy-efficient supercomputer in Europe according to the international ranking “Green 500”.
On Monday in Frankfurt, Hessen Minister of Higher Education, Research and the Arts, Boris Rhein said: “The GOETHE supercomputer is crucial in order to realize research projects in the natural sciences, medicine, life sciences and economics. … With the approved funding, 51猎奇 will receive € 3.75m for half of the total costs of € 7.5m. This is an impressive achievement. The state of Hessen supported 51猎奇’s application, because high performing computing capacities are essential for Hessen as science location.”
Professor Simone Fulda, Vice President for Research and Academic Infrastructure at 51猎奇, states: “51猎奇 began the realization of its own high-performance computer centre with significant financial effort many years ago, which was finally able to be built in the Industrial Park Hoechst. It was our good fortune to gain a specialist for supercomputers at 51猎奇 in the person of Volker Lindenstruth. He developed his own, extraordinarily efficient computer model that is setting standards in this area today and is in demand worldwide. The new Goethe supercomputer clearly continues this development line into the future. We look forward to presenting the completed first construction phase of our new supercomputer to the public on 13th December on location at the Industrial Park Hoechst.”
Professor Volker Lindenstruth, architect of the “Goethe Supercomputer“ emphasises: “The new Goethe supercomputer represents the fulfilment of a vision. High-performance computing is normally extremely expensive and energy-intensive. Thanks to our particularly efficient construction principle, we were able to decrease energy and operation costs to a minimum. This is particularly good news for increasingly IT-intensive science: we can provide maximum computing performance at costs that only would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.”
Sep
6
2018
15:33
Professor Frank Brenker has been appointed to the preliminary investigative team of the aerospace agency JAXA
First samples from the asteroid Ryugu will come to Frankfurt
The geoscientist Frank Brenker and his team will be among the first scientists to examine material from the asteroid Ryugu. It is currently being orbited by the Japanese aerospace agency JAXA’s space probe Hayabusa 2. The Japanese had originally intended to carry out the preliminary investigations themselves.
Ryugu (English: dragon palace) is a class C asteroid, among the most ancient objects in our solar system. Scientists believe it has not changed significantly over the past 4.56 billion years and can therefore offer a glimpse into our solar system’s childhood. Scientists around the world are therefore awaiting these unique samples with anticipation. When they are brought to earth by the space probe in 2020, Frank Brenker from the Institute of Geoscience at the 51猎奇 will be among the first non-Japanese scientists to examine the unique material first-hand. He and two of his Belgian colleagues have been appointed to the mission’s preliminary investigative team.
Investigating the solar system’s formation with super microscopes
The Frankfurt geoscientist and his team have developed a new measuring procedure with super microscopes that allows a three-dimensional and non-contact inspection of material. These super microscopes work with synchrotron radiation (high energy X-rays) and make it possible to inspect the chemical composition and structure of matter without destroying it. “We are world-wide leaders in measuring the contents of rare earth elements, which are of great significance for geoscientific and cosmochemical interpretation,” Brenker explains. The precise, high resolution technology was developed over the past several years by his team at the DESY in Hamburg.
Picture material may be downloaded under:
Caption: The asteroid Ryugu from an altitude of 6 km photographed by the “Optical Navigation Camera - Telescopic (ONC-T)”. Image from 20 July 2018.
Image credit: JAXA, University of Tokyo and collaborators.
Further information: Professor Frank Brenker, Institute for Geosciences, Mineralogy, Riedberg Campus, Tel.: +49 69-798 40134, f.brenker@em.uni-frankfurt.de.
Sep
6
2018
15:21
Heart MRT improves diagnosis of cardiac involvement in lupus
Patient-friendly and accurate
Systemic inflammatory diseases, such as lupus, often cause cardiac damage that goes undetected. An international research team headed by the Institute for Experimental and Translational Cardiovascular Imaging at the University Hospital Frankfurt was now able to show that cardiac damage can be diagnosed in a patient-friendly way by heart imaging– ahead of the clinical symptoms.
The number of diagnoses of systemic lupus erythematodes (SLE) has tripled over the past 45 years – due in part to improved diagnostic methods. Lupus is a systemic inflammatory disease which can affect several organs; most frequently the kidneys, skin, brain and the heart. Involvement of the heart is important as it determines these patients’ outcome, yet as it carries on silently for a long time, it may go undetected and untreated for a long time.
Heart involvement in lupus: disguised symptoms
This problematic situation has several causes. First, the natural course of lupus-caused heart disease often has few or no symptoms - this ‘subclinical course’ represents a major challenge for doctors to recognize it. It also affects mostly young, and predominantly female patients, for whom heart disease is not usual in the first place. Moreover, if symptoms occur, they are not classical symptoms of heart disease, such as angina. More commonly, symptoms are ‘atypical’: in other words, they do not explicitly indicate heart disease. Examples of symptoms are tiredness, dyspnoea, or sharp pain of the chest wall. Lupus patients are also frequently overwhelmed by symptoms in other organ systems, especially the kidneys, which are significantly more pronounced. This results in focus unintentionally being taken away from the heart during diagnosis and treatment. Ultimately, a small percentage of patients develops heart failure, which is often resistant to therapy.
Study allows non-invasive diagnosis
A study by the University Hospital Frankfurt in collaboration with partners from London and Tübingen has shown that imaging with cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) can improve detection of subclinical cardiac injury in lupus patients. The study was published in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, the top journal in the field of rheumatology, whose specialists most frequently look after patients with lupus. In the present study, the authors demonstrated that inflammation of heart muscle and the vessels is the defining underlying pathophysiological mechanism of heart injury and impairment in lupus patients, and not, as previously assumed, as a result of the accelerated atherosclerotic blockage of the coronary blood vessels. The research team developed and validated an imaging signature of disease presence and activity of involvement. Thus, they have shown that heart inflammation can be detected and monitored in a non-invasive way without radiation using CMR imaging. Furthermore, CMR imaging can help to adjust the anti-inflammatory treatment to treat the heart involvement directly.
Potential for paradigm change
The study has significant potential for a real change in the clinical care of heart involvement in patients with lupus: away from the less sensitive, highly invasive and radiation-intensive methods toward patient-friendly and secure diagnostic approaches, which are non-invasive, radiation-free, and aside from the baseline investigation, also largely free from contrast agents. The new diagnostic method informs the treating physicians accurately about the disease presence, stage and severity, and gauges the treatment response.
Course of the study
Ninety-two patients with lupus were examined using the CMR imaging; 78 healthy individuals served as a control group. This multicentre and multidisciplinary study was headed by Dr Valentina Puntmann from the Institute for Experimental and Translational Cardiovascular Imagery (Goethe CVI) at the University Hospital Frankfurt and builds on a decade-long record of investigation into cardiac inflammation by non-invasive imaging in systemic inflammatory diseases. In addition to the Goethe CVI, University Hospital Frankfurt’s Rheumatology, Cardiology and Radiology were also involved.
Successful Imaging
The heart muscle, its volume, and function were examined in all participants using CMR imaging. Various other blood values, such as troponin and NT-proBNP, which serve as biomarkers for heart impairment, were also examined. These markers were raised in 81 percent of lupus patients, but only in eight percent to a degree we usually see in the course of a heart attack. However, CMR imaging was able to point towards the presence of relevant inflammation of heart muscle much more frequently, making it more suited to detect inflammation, even if the blood tests remain only mildly raised. In addition, changes to the clinical activity can be more quickly detected using the imaging than with blood values, as these may remain raised for weeks on end. There are no disadvantages to CMR, as no invasive procedures or radiation are involved.
Publication: Winau, Lea et al. (2018): High-sensitive troponin is associated with subclinical imaging biosignature of inflammatory cardiovascular involvement in systemic lupus erythematosus. In: Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases. DOI: 10.1136/annrheumdis-2018-213661. "
Further information: Dr. Valentina Puntmann, Institute for Experimental and Translational Cardiovascular Imaging (Goethe CVI), University Hospital Frankfurt, Tel + 49 69 63 01 – 86 76 0,E-Mail: valentina.puntmann@kgu.de,
Aug
30
2018
14:56
K枚rber Foundation鈥檚 German Thesis Award for comparison of poverty trends in Germany and the United Kingdom
Great Britain: A model example?
FRANKFURT. In Germany, the risk of poverty has increased since the 1990s while in Great Britain it has decreased. Frankfurt sociologist Jan Brülle has explored the potential reasons for this in his thesis – the results are revealing.
What is poverty in the first place? Poverty researchers speak of “relative income poverty”: People who have at their disposal less than 60 percent of the average income in a country are threatened by poverty. They are more often unable to afford regular hot meals and their children might not be able to go to all their friends’ birthday parties because there is no money for presents: Poverty is a heavy burden on the individual and his or her situation in life. But how poverty develops in a society says a great deal about its structure and the transformation taking place in that society. A state that wants to allow all its citizens a minimum of economic, social and cultural participation must keep a close eye on this development.
Why has the risk of poverty risen continuously in Germany since 1992 and how is poverty structured? These questions formed the starting point for Jan Brülle’s thesis. A hypothesis viewed by many as obvious: It is due to the dismantling of the welfare state above all through the Hartz reforms. “My research showed, however, that especially the labour market and changes in family structures play a role. Changes in the welfare state only come third,” explains Brülle.
For his study, Brülle, now 33, analysed datasets released for scientific research by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) in Berlin – what is known as the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). This enabled him to include the data of about 12,000 German households in his research. For the part of his study on Great Britain he used the British Household Panel (BHPS) as a basis. The two datasets made it possible to track the situation in British and German households over several years.
Do the same people stay poor from year to year or are they able to free themselves from poverty? How does poverty develop in relation to different educational backgrounds and professions? Brülle examined these questions against the backdrop of both the data from Germany and those from the British panel. The outcome was that in Germany poverty became more widespread, lasted longer and became more unequal over the period examined. The lower the level of education, the greater the risk of poverty has increased. In addition, workers are more at risk of poverty than employees in higher positions. In Brülle’s opinion, knowing the causes for these developments is preconditional for implementing the right political measures to combat poverty.
In Great Britain, where more people were affected by poverty than in Germany, the opposite development could be seen: The targeted use of social transfers was also able to mitigate even high inequalities in income. Low-income earners in Germany also receive a little help from the state to make up the difference. However, with its Working Tax Credits, which according to Jan Brülle really improve people’s situation, Great Britain is more generous in topping up low earnings. Especially households with children receive additional allowances. In Germany, on the other hand, it is clear to see that the already precarious situation for some people is becoming entrenched, while social security safeguards higher incomes even in the case of unemployment better than in Great Britain.
According to Jan Brülle’s findings, the cause for the growing risk of poverty lies above all in the polarization of the employment market: More and more people are no longer able to live off their earned income. In addition, there are more and more single households, meaning that less and less people on a low income can rely on the resources of other household members. And the reforms in the welfare state (i.e. Hartz IV) have not helped to mitigate this situation. The example of Great Britain shows, however, that the state certainly has means at its disposal to change things for the better.
Jan Brülle compiled a detailed summary of his work for the Körber Foundation’s German Thesis Award. His paper was awarded the second prize worth € 5,000 and can be found online on the Foundation’s website from 27 August 2018 onwards. The prize is awarded every year for the nine most pertinent theses.
Publication:
A photograph can be downloaded from:
Caption: Sociologist Jan Brülle has received the German Thesis Award of the Körber Foundation. (Photo: Körber Foundation / David Ausserhofer)
Further information: Dr. Jan Brülle, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Sociology, Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 6, Westend Campus, Tel.: +49(0)69-798-36629, Email bruelle@soz.uni-frankfurt.de