wire - news in brief

Music can evoke strong emotions, and musical chords are the smallest musical units that convey emotional information.

Crowds, construction work, delayed trains, loudspeaker announcements: for people with disabilities, finding their way around train stations can sometimes be a real challenge.

An international team, including scientists from the University of Fribourg, has succeeded in extracting two ice cores over 100 metres long from a glacier in Tajikistan. A real technical and logistical feat at an altitude of 5,800 metres. The two-week expedition, which began on September 24, aims to safeguard several millennia of climatic history.

A research group from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, China and the USA has made a discovery that could form the basis of a new generation of visual prostheses. They have demonstrated that small mammals, known as tupaias, are able to 'see' even when their retina is not stimulated. To achieve this, the neurons in these animals were activated by light pulses, generating visual perceptions in their brains .

We had met him at the beginning of the year so that he speaks to us about his archaeological excavations in Peru.

Opinions on inclusive language are strong but often uninformed. Co-authored by Pascal Gygax of the University of Fribourg, the book Does the brain think in masculine? offers an easily accessible scientific update on the links between language and gender-related social constructions.