wire - news in brief

Environmental phenomena and their consequences can disrupt social structures and destabilize political systems.

When parliamentarians disclose their additional income from lobbying work, they gain more trust from the electorate.

Mitochondria are the powerhouses in our cells, producing the energy for all vital processes. Using cryo-electron tomography, researchers at the University of Basel have now gained insight into the architecture of mitochondria at unprecedented resolution. They discovered that the proteins responsible for energy generation assemble into large "supercomplexes", which play a crucial role in providing the cell's energy.

Whether on your bank's website or your telephone provider's help line, interactions between humans and chatbots have become part of our daily lives.

How can we ensure that as many Swiss households as possible adopt not only solar panels, but also their own battery to store solar energy, a heat pump, and an electric car? Researchers at the Universities of Basel and Geneva have looked into just this question. Climate protection and the energy revolution must continue to make progress, and Swiss households could make a significant contribution to this goal if they would use environmentally friendly technologies such as solar panels, electric vehicles, and heat pumps.

Over time, the English language has acquired quite a few Yiddish words, such as bagel. Some are now no longer even recognizable as such.

In many countries in Africa, up to nine out of ten children suffer from a skin problem, and there are far too few local dermatologists.

Switzerland and China have maintained economic relations and cultural contacts for centuries, sometimes during critical periods.

The cultural significance of radio is the subject of the research project "Radiophonic Cultures", the second volume of which was recently published.

Dense settlement on one side, nature on the other. When space is short, we need to think hard about how to use it.

Whenever a child behaves aggressively at school, a lack of parenting is often assumed. This overlooks the possibility of underlying mental health problems.

The nursing crisis is on everyone's lips, and creates additional challenges for healthcare staff. A report by the University of Basel shows how satisfied psychiatric nursing staff are with their daily working lives. Irregular working hours, night shifts and overtime: it's not news that nursing is a challenging profession.

The Basel spin-off company Bottneuro is developing a personalized treatment helmet - the Miamind neurostimulator.

Stadt.Geschichte.Basel (City.History.Basel) provides the city of Basel with a new full representation of its own history in a total of ten volumes.

The diagnosis is followed by despair - then maybe a glimpse of hope. When parents of a child with the genetic disease LAMA2-related muscular dystrophy search around online, one of the things they will encounter is SEAL Therapeutics, a start-up company at the University of Basel.

The first comprehensive biography of Austrian writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal has been published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of his birth.

Immunologist Mike Recher sees a wide variety of health problems when he consults on rare immune disorders. Finding the cause requires both technology and lateral thinking. The range of symptoms that can occur when one of the cogs (or, perhaps, cogwheels) in the immune system's machinery gets stuck is enormous - from severe psoriasis to frequent infections to chronic diarrhea.

On December 15, 2023, the World Health Organization officially added noma to the list of neglected tropical diseases, which will make it easier to combat and research this poverty-related disease. The Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) and the University of Basel both played a key role in ensuring noma was recognized in this manner.

The animal caretakers at the Department of Biomedicine at the Mattenstrasse site have succeeded in significantly reducing the number of surplus laboratory animals. After helping to devise breeding programs, raising awareness and improving the culture of communication between researchers and the animal facility, the team has now received the Swiss 3RCC Culture of Care Award in recognition of this successful work.

How strongly are the ideas of Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk influencing today's digital economy? An economic sociologist at the University of Basel has analyzed speeches, book contributions and articles from Silicon Valley, demonstrating the emergence of a new spirit of digital capitalism. What justification is there for earning a lot of money? Nineteenth-century Calvinists interpreted economic prosperity as a sign that one was counted among God's chosen.

We provide transport companies with information about our mobility behavior when we use various modes of transportation. Researchers at the University of Basel and two technology and mobility consulting companies have jointly investigated what requirements could be put in place to ensure this mobility data is better utilized.

Influencers with a large following are expensive and usually not interested in promoting unknown brands.

Steps toward sustainability are an important topic for many administrations. How does -sustainabilization- work in the Swiss cantons? Marius Christen and Basil Bornemann from the University of Basel examined this question.

Gentler cell therapies for blood cancer and other serious blood diseases - this is the goal that Cimeio Therapeutics, a University of Basel spin-off, has set itself.

Nanomedicine involves packaging drugs in microscopic particles to make them more effective.

To date, inputting text in virtual reality has been difficult. Now researchers from the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Basel have discovered a way to make the process easier - by adapting the principle of the swipe keyboard for the VR world. Until now, inputting text in virtual spaces - when searching for a digital exhibition or using a business application, for instance - meant typing in every single letter individually on a virtual keyboard.

With cardiac arrest, the chance of surviving decreases with every minute that passes without blood circulation.

The Institute of Nursing Science at the University of Basel has carried out a large-scale study to take the pulse of home care provision in Switzerland. The conclusion: the organizations are delivering good work - but policy decisions need to be made if they are to continue to provide their services in the future.

Georg Rauter develops micro robots as tools for brain surgeons and dentists, and for operations on bones.