Meet the IUPAB Councilor—Hans-Joachim Galla

As one of the twelve Councilors, it is my pleasure to provide a short biographical sketch for the readers of Biophys. Rev. and for the members of the Biophysical Societies. I have been a member of the council in the former election period. Moreover, I served since decades in the German Biophysical Society (DGfB) as board member, secretary, vice president, and president. I hold a diploma degree in chemistry as well as PhD from the University of Göttingen. The experimental work for both qualifications has been performed at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen under the guidance of Erich Sackmann and the late Herman Träuble. When E. Sackmann moved to the University of Ulm, I joined his group as a research assistant performing my independent research on structure and dynamics of biological and artificial membranes and qualified for the “habilitation” thesis in Biophysical Chemistry. I have spent a research year at Stanford University supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and after coming back to Germany, I was appointed as a Heisenberg Fellow by the DFG and became Professor in Biophysical Chemistry in the Chemistry Department of the University of Darmstadt. Since 1990, I spent my career at the Institute for Biochemistry of the University of Muenster as full Professor and Director of the institute. I have trained numerous undergraduate, 150 graduate, and postdoctoral students from chemistry, physics, and also pharmacy as well as biology resulting in more than 350 published papers including reviews and book articles in excellent collaboration with colleagues from different academic disciplines in our university and also internationally, e.g., as a guest professor at the Chemistry Department of the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing.

Identification of Risk Factors for Delirium, Cognitive Decline, And Dementia After Cardiac Surgery (FINDERI - Find Delirium Risk Factors): A Study Protocol of A Prospective Monocentric Observational Pilot Trial

BACKGROUND: Postoperative delirium is a common complication of cardiac surgery associated with higher morbidity, longer hospital stay, risk of cognitive decline, dementia, and mortality. Geriatric patients, patients undergoing cardiac surgery, and intensive care patients are at a high risk of developing a postoperative delirium. A gold standard assessment or biomarkers to predict risk factors for delirium, cognitive decline, and dementia in patients undergoing cardiac surgery are not yet available. METHODS: The FINDERI trial (FINd DElirium RIsk factors) is a prospective, single-center, observational pilot study. In total, 500 patients aged ≥ 50 years undergoing cardiac surgery at the Department of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery of the University of Göttingen Medical Center will be recruited. Our primary aims are to validate a delirium screening questionnaire and to identify specific preoperative risk factors and perioperative exposition factors for postoperative delirium, cognitive decline, and accelerated dementia after cardiac surgery. Our secondary aim is to identify blood-based biomarkers that predict the incidence of postoperative delirium, cognitive decline, or dementia in the context of cardiac surgery. CONCLUSION: This prospective, observational pilot trial might help to identify pre- and perioperative risk factors and biomarkers for postoperative delirium, cognitive decline, and dementia. The predictive value of a delirium screening questionnaire in cardiac surgery might also be revealed.TRIAL REGISTRATION: Ethics approval for this study was obtained from the IRB of the University of Göttingen Medical Center. The investigators registered this study in German Clinical Trials Register (DRKS) (DRKS00025095) on April, 19th 2021 https://www.drks.de/drks_web/navigate.do?navigationId=trial.HTML&TRIAL_ID=DRKS00025095.

Scholars and Literati at the University of Göttingen (1734–1800)

This note is a summary description of the set of scholars and literati who taught at the University of Göttingen from its inception in 1734 to the eve of the Industrial Revolution (1800).

Merchants, Measures and Money. Understanding Technologies of Early Trade in a Comparative Perspective

This second volume in the series collects papers from two workshops held at the University of Göttingen in 2019 and 2020. The international meetings tackled questions related to merchants and money in a comparative perspective, with examples spanning from the Bronze Age to the early Modern period and embracing Europe, the Mediterranean, Asia and East Africa. The first part of this volume presents historical case studies of how merchants planned and carried out commercial expeditions; how risk, cost, and potential profit was calculated; and how the value of goods was calculated and converted. The papers in the second part address current theories and methods on the development and function of money before and after the invention of coinage. The introduction of balance scales around 3000 BCE enabled the formation of overarching indexes of value and the calculation of the commercial value of goods and services. It also allowed for a selected set of commodities to take on the role of currency. Around 650 BCE, this led to the invention of coinage in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Ethical Aspects of Human Embryo Collections: A Historically Grounded Approach to the Blechschmidt Collection at the University of Göttingen

Human body donation and tissue collections are nowadays grounded on a legal framework centered around the concept of informed consent in most countries. Comparable regulations did not exist prior to the second half of the 20th century, when several of the most important collections of human embryos were established. As a particularly prominent example, the Human Embryology Collection (“Blechschmidt Collection”) at the Center of Anatomy, University Medical Center Göttingen, Germany, is described here with regard to how to approach a human specimen collection from the perspective of both collection ethics and the history of science. The methods and concepts used as well as the outcome in terms of historical and ethical knowledge will be discussed as a model for future projects of similar scope at other collection sites. It it also shown that general ethical recommendations published by museum and collection experts are of value only if they are related to profound knowledge about the history of the particular collection in focus.

Digitizing the Old English Anonymous and Wulfstanian Homilies through the Electronic Corpus of Anonymous Homilies in Old English (ECHOE) Project

This article first outlines the challenges involved in the editing of Old English anonymous and Wulfstanian homilies before introducing the Electronic Corpus of Anonymous Homilies in Old English (ECHOE) project. This new initiative at the University of Göttingen reverses the traditional collation of texts and instead celebrates the book-historical significance of every individual manuscript version, its textual and palaeographical idiosyncrasies, and its revisional layers up through c. 1200 AD. The project provides new forms of display to expose the complex interversional network of textual representations, and develops a range of digital tools to facilitate the identification and swift comparison of related passages. It includes digital facsimiles, palaeographical and rhetorical version profiles, and the Latin sources for each homily, creating opportunities for unprecedented research on the transmission, composition, variation, and performance of the fluid preaching text.

The impact of publications in core public choice journals: an analysis of institution rankings

This study examines the impact of research published in the two core public choice journals – Public Choice and the Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice – during the five-year period from 2010 through 2014. Scholars representing almost 400 universities contributed impactful research to these journals over this period, allowing us to rank institutions on the basis of citations to this published research. Our work indicates that public choice scholarship emanating from non-US colleges and universities has surged, with the University of Göttingen, University of Linz, Heidelburg University, University of Oxford, University of Konstanz, Aarhus University, University of Groningen, Paderborn University, University of Minho and University of Cambridge occupying ten of the top 15 positions in our worldwide ranking. Even so, US-based institutions still maintain a lofty presence, with Georgetown University, Emory University, the University of Illinois and George Mason University each holding positions among the top five institutions worldwide.