On May 7^th we celebrated our Potsdam Science Day 2022 (Potsdamer Tag der Wissenschaften). Many people visited this exhibition. I was impressed to see so many stands of different institutions like universities, research institutes, colleges, etc. A huge exhibition indeed. Along with some of my colleagues, we presented to the general public some interesting facts about eggs and feathers of local birds and a couple of exotic ones. With the help of an egg model we explained to the people how interesting is an avian egg internal structure indeed. People was astonished with a cool experiment where an avian egg is treated with acetic acid. In this experiment it is easier to observe the egg membranes without the shell. We offered the publicum to see feathers under the magnifying glass and children were able to do some hand-crafting.

In the middle of the worldwide pandemic crisis because of coronavirus, together with Chilean collegues working at the University of Concepción and at the University of Santiago de Chile (among others institutions), we recently published a new chimeric capsid protein as antigen for the treatment of the Porcine Circovirus Type 2 (PCV2) disease. This virus causes the Postweaning Multisystemic Wasting Syndrome (PMWS) infecting cells of the immune system like dendritic cells, monocytes and macrophages. More information is available from the MDPI server: this article is published now in the journal Viruses. To view or read this article online just follows this link.

Together with the ProWissen Potsdam e. V. group, we made a video showing the situation of endangered wild bees in Germany. About 560 species of wild bees thrive in Germany and a population decline has been observed in almost half of these species which are found in the Red List of Threatened Animals of Germany. Other 25 species are categorized as endangered by extinction. You can view the YouTube video (in German) by clicking on this link.