news 2022

The spectrograph developed by the UNIGE has enabled the discovery of the heaviest element ever detected in the atmosphere of a planet outside the solar system. An international team including researchers from the University of Geneva and the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS has detected the heaviest element ever found in the atmosphere of an exoplanet: barium.

Laughter is a form of vocal communication that can interfere with speech: who hasn't had a fit of laughter that prevented them from speaking? Thanks to functional imaging, a research team from the University of Fribourg was able to locate the areas of the brain in which these two systems interact. The results highlight the importance of brain stem circuits for the control of laughter .

A study by the universities of Zurich and Mainz has shown that teaching children how to manage their attention and impulses in primary school has a positive long-term effect on their later educational success. Self-regulation, i.e., the ability to manage attention, emotions and impulses, as well as to pursue individual goals with perseverance, is not a skill that we usually associate with young children.

Exploring the mechanics of anthrax infection, scientists at EPFL have discovered two proteins that are involved in controlling the levels of cholesterol in the membrane of our cells. "What our work shows is how a complex in the center of the cell, the ER-Golgi interaction region, controls plasma membrane cholesterol, which is essential for many cellular functions, if not essential for multicellular life," says Professor Gisou van der Goot at EPFL's School of Life Sciences.

They can live for more than 100 years and weigh up to 250 kilograms - Aldabra giant tortoises. Researchers at the University of Zurich have now decoded the genome of Aldabrachelys gigantea, one of only two remaining giant tortoise species worldwide. The findings will help to ensure the long-term survival of the threatened species.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed an approach to accurately record and fully track the biodegradation of plastics in soils. Modern agriculture uses a lot of plastic, especially in the form of mulch film that farmers use to cover field soils. This keeps the soils moist for crops, suppresses weeds and promotes crop growth.

Scientists led by groups at EPFL and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) explore the elaborate interplay between genes, sex, growth, and age and how they influence variation in longevity. Their results point at fundamental processes of aging that help in improving human healthspan.

For a long time, antibiotics were considered a silver bullet against bacterial infections. Over time, many pathogens have adapted to resist antibiotics, so the search for new drugs is becoming increasingly important. An international team of researchers including scientists at the University of Basel, has now discovered a new antibiotic by computational analysis and deciphered its mode of action.

In order to secure a place in the sun and to guarantee their growth, plants have developed different strategies. But what happens when plant density is so high that resources, especially light, run out? Plants go into survival mode and activate a recycling mechanism: autophagy. This process is at the heart of a study published on October 10, 2022 in "Nature Communications" by the team of Prof. Christian Fankhauser at the Integrative Genomics Center of UNIL .

One year after announcing an efficiency record, scientists have achieved a new mark of 22.2% for flexible CIGS solar cell on polymer film. Solar cells of this type are especially suited for applications on buildings, vehicles, satellites, airships, and mobile devices. researchers have - once again - improved the efficiency of CIGS flexible solar cells.

To gild sculptures in the late Middle Ages, artists often applied ultra-thin gold foil supported by a silver base layer. For the first time, scientists at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have managed to produce nanoscale 3D images of this material, known as Zwischgold. The pictures show this was a highly sophisticated mediaeval production technique and demonstrate why restoring such precious gilded artefacts is so difficult.

In science, specialization pays off - at least when it comes to career impact. That's the finding of a team of researchers who looked specifically at this subject. Is it better to be a generalist or a specialist? Gaétan de Rassenfosse, who holds the Chair of Innovation and IP Policy at EPFL, set about answering this question by digging through data on more than 30,000 biomedical researchers.

A team of scientists makes the case for reevaluating maligned non-native species. Awareness of non-native species - often called ''invasive'' - has vastly increased over the past fifty years, to the point where anyone with green conscience has heard of them and their negative effects, whether it is the zebra mussel or ragweed.

Nature conservation pays off: amphibians benefit from new ponds - despite many causes of endangerment that still affect them. This is what researchers from WSL and Eawag found in a joint study using data from amphibian monitoring in the canton of Aargau. The study was published in the scientific journal PNAS.

A high fraction of the endemic biodiversity of the Alps is very old. The endemics - species found only in a confined area - have developed over the past millions of years during the cycles of glacial and interglacial periods or even before these cycles began. Fish, however, are an exception: most endemic fish species emerged only after the end of the last ice age about 15,000 years ago.

By deciphering mutations in the GNAO1 gene, which cause severe mental and motor disabilities, a team from the University of Geneva is showing how zinc could improve the brain defects at stake. Paediatric encephalopathies of genetic origin cause severe motor and intellectual disabilities from birth. One of these diseases, first identified in 2013, is caused by mutations in the GNAO1 gene.

Researchers at ETH Zurich are growing human brain-like tissue from stem cells and are then mapping the cell types that occur in different brain regions and the genes that regulate their development. The human brain is probably the most complex organ in the entire living world and has long been an object of fascination for researchers.

Physicists at EPFL have developed a formulation to solve the longstanding problem of electron self-interaction when studying polarons - quasiparticles produced by electron-phonon interactions in materials. The work can lead to unprecedented calculations of polarons in large systems, systematic studies of large sets of materials, and molecular dynamics evolving over long time periods.

Researchers of the University of Bern and the Insel Hospital, University Hospital Bern, have developed a screening method to discover new drug targets for cancer treatment in the so-called -Dark Matter- of the genome. They applied their method to non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the greatest cancer killer for which effective therapies are urgently sought.

The cerebellum is known primarily for regulation of movement. Researchers at the University of Basel have now discovered that the cerebellum also plays an important role in remembering emotional experiences. The study appears in the journal PNAS. October 2022 Both positive and negative emotional experiences are stored particularly well in memory.