news 2022

How did life on Earth first emerge? And how was it able to prosper and evolve? researchers are involved in the quest to find answers to these fundamental questions. Since time immemorial, humanity has pondered the question of how life on Earth first began. Ancient cultures declared the creation of the world and the origin of life to be the work of gods and other divine beings.

Residue from rinse agents is left behind on dishes after they are cleaned in professional-grade dishwashers. This damages the natural protective layer in the gut and can contribute to the onset of chronic diseases, as demonstrated by researchers working with organoids at the Swiss Institute of Allergy and Asthma Research.

In Switzerland, tire and road wear particles are one of the biggest sources of microplastics released into the environment, yet the chemical compounds contained in those particles - and their effects - remain largely a mystery. To remedy that knowledge gap, scientists at EPFL and two other Swiss research institutes are conducting a study of the toxicity of tire-particle compounds and how readily they're absorbed by living organisms.

Next week the UN intergovernmental negotiating committee (INC) on plastic pollution will meet in Uruguay to develop an international legally binding instrument against plastic pollution. There is concern among scientists that the negotiations will overlook the diversity and complexity of chemicals present in plastics.

Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope, an international team including scientists is building a complete picture of the atmosphere of the planet WASP-39b. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and its unparalleled images of our Universe offer us a new first: by combining several instruments, it draws a molecular and chemical portrait of the atmosphere of the exoplanet WASP-39b.

Liver cancer is one of the most deadly types of cancer. A team of University of Basel researchers has now uncovered how a healthy liver cell turns into a tumor cell. Comprehensive metabolic changes convert mature liver cells into immature progenitor cells. These cells proliferate rapidly and tumors develop.

Cells can generate vesicles as a response to changes in their environment. Although such cell-derived vesicles have great potential for biomedical research, their membrane is fragile and they have tendency to cluster together. Researchers at the University of Basel have successfully introduced a strategy to overcome these issues by equipping the vesicular membrane with a stabilizing shell.

Researchers at ETH Zurich and Eawag 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.

Chemical engineers at EPFL have developed a machine-learning model that can accurately predict the heat capacity of the versatile metal-organic framework materials. The work shows that the overall energy costs of carbon-capture processes could be much lower than expected. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are a class of materials that contain nano-sized pores.

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.

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.

An international collaboration led by researchers from the University of Bern and the University of Queensland in Australia has demonstrated that chemical compounds containing special metals are highly effective in fighting dangerous fungal infections. These results could be used to develop innovative drugs which are effective against resistant bacteria and fungi.

Chemists at ETH Zurich have found a facile method that allows a commonly used building block to be directly converted into other types of important compounds. This expands the possibilities of chemical synthesis and facilitates the search for new pharmaceutically active ingredients. Medications are continuously becoming more precise and efficient.

The Paul Scherrer Institute PSI and the start-up AlphaSYNT have a common mission. By signing a cooperation and licensing agreement, they aim to commercialise a novel approach to "power-to-gas" conversion, or to be more specific: "power-to-methane". The innovative methanation process developed by PSI will allow energy to be stored as methane gas in future.

Crystals consisting of wildly mixed ingredients - so-called high-entropy materials - are currently attracting growing scientific interest. Their advantage is that they are particularly stable at extremely high temperatures and could be used, for example, for energy storage and chemical production processes.

A team of researchers at Empa developed a water-activated disposable paper battery. The researchers suggest that it could be used to power a wide range of low-power, single-use disposable electronics - such as smart labels for tracking objects, environmental sensors and medical diagnostic devices - and minimize their environmental impact.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a method that enables time-resolved measurements of electron motion in water clusters lasting only a few attoseconds. The technique can be used for more detailed studies of water as well as faster electronics. Virtually all vital chemical processes take place in aqueous solutions.

As part of a new national research programme that aims to replace animal experiments in research, the National Science Foundation is supporting a project at Eawag. This opens up new possibilities for determining the toxicity of chemical substances based solely on tests with cultured cells and computer models.

Scientists at EPFL have found a way to synthesize large numbers of macrocyclic compounds, which are needed for developing drugs against difficult disease targets. When pharmaceutical companies begin looking for a drug candidate, they use a filtering process known as "high-throughput screening". Here, large numbers of different chemical compounds are tested to see which will bind to a protein that is the target of the disease they want to address.