A work drafted by Alexander von Humboldt but no longer published is being edited at the University of Bern. It contains a pioneering study on global ocean currents, which is more relevant than ever in view of the dwindling Gulf Stream.

At the end of June 2024, the Faculty of Humanities presented a structure report on the new integration of the field of Middle Eastern Linguistics and Cultural Studies. At its meeting on Tuesday, August 13th, the Executive Board of the University of Bern approved the report. Thus, a new department will be created in which Social Anthropology, Religious Studies, and Middle Eastern Linguistics and Cultural Studies will work together.

An international team of researchers led by the University of Bern has used observation-based computer modelling to find an explanation for how macromolecules can form in a short time in disks of gas and dust around young stars. These findings could be crucial for understanding how habitability develops around different types of exoplanets and stars.

Cichlids living in groups tend to turn a blind eye to their relatives shirking their duty to help as desired in various tasks in the group, such as caring for the brood. Animals that are not related to them don't seem to be offered the same lenient treatment. Researchers at the University of Bern have now been able to prove the existence of this form of "nepotism" in fish for the first time in experiments.

The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) awards three researchers from the University of Bern an SNSF Consolidator Grant each. The funded research projects address indeterminacy in the world, the response of forests to climate change impacts, and age and aging as a multi-layered social and cultural phenomenon in the Roman Empire.

In the USA, the world's most extensive neutrino experiment, DUNE, is being built at Fermilab. The University of Bern is playing a key role in this by developing the "ND-LAr" detector, which features new technology and an innovative design to observe neutrinos. The prototype of the "ND-LAr" has now been successfully tested and has detected its first neutrinos.

A team including researchers from the Laboratory for High Energy Physics at the University of Bern has successfully measured the interaction rates of neutrinos at unprecedented energies using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. A better understanding of these elusive elementary particles can help answer the question of why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe.

Surgery carries the risk of infection at the surgical site. Proper skin disinfection before the incision minimizes this risk.