The fourth Antarctic campaign of the -Beyond EPICA - Oldest Iceproject, funded by the European Commission, has achieved a historic milestone for climate science. An international team of scientists with participation of the University of Bern successfully drilled a 2,800-meter-long and over 1.2 million years old ice core, reaching the bedrock beneath the Antarctic ice sheet.

An international research team led by the University of Bern and the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology in Jena has excavated one of the most significant and ancient burial mounds in Siberia. These discoveries provide valuable insights into the cultural origins of the Scythians, a horse-riding culture of the Eurasian Steppe, and have now been recognized by Archaeology Magazine as one of the "Top 10 Archaeological Discoveries of 2024."

Rats release trapped companions, subsequently enabling them to collaborate for acquiring food. Experiments conducted at the University of Bern established this connection between obliging liberation behaviour and coordinated cooperation. These results may point towards a biological basis for empathy, presenting new perspectives on the evolutionary origins of compassionate behaviour.

An interdisciplinary study from the University of Bern reveals that gut bacteria play a crucial role in converting arsenobetaine into toxic arsenic compounds. Results show that arsenobetaine, commonly found in seafood and previously considered harmless, is partly transformed into toxic arsenic compounds by the action of gut bacteria in the mammalian body. These findings raise new questions about the safety of seafood consumption.

Large parts of the potential habitats of freshwater fish in Switzerland are negatively affected by human activities. Researchers at the University of Bern have shown this in a new study using explainable artificial intelligence methods. Measures to protect biodiversity and potential fish habitats will be developed based on the study.

Researchers at the University of Bern have developed a new model for the emergence of consciousness. The model suggests that one day artificial agents, i.e. systems which imitate human thought, could gain consciousness. To regulate our interaction with such systems, the researchers propose an agreement between humans and machines: the 'Human-AI Deal'.

Thanks to the support of the Bernese entrepreneur Walter Inäbnit, the University of Bern is able to establish a new endowed lectureship.

The search for the world's oldest ice in Antarctica is entering a decisive phase. In this major European project, researchers in Antarctica are attempting to extract drill cores containing climate information from the past 1.5 million years. The University of Bern is playing an important role in this.

With the support of Mobilière Cooperative, the University of Bern has been able to establish an endowed Professorship for Climate Impact and Public Health in the Built Environment. It is endowed with two million Swiss francs in total and is to investigate an important aspect of climate change which has so far only been insufficiently explored in Switzerland.

An international team of researchers involving the University of Bern has investigated the consequences of deforestation and degradation of tropical forests. They were able to show that there are "winner" and "loser" species, whereby the displacement of the "losers" can lead to a decline in the ecological functions of tropical forests.

Researchers at the University of Bern, in collaboration with international partners, have discovered that a 'gene desert' section of the genome plays an important role in the development of the embryo and the heart in both mice and humans. The study provides further evidence for the significance of gene-free DNA segments in gene regulation and offers approaches for early detection of cardiac diseases.

NASA's Europa Clipper was launched on October 14, 2024, on its mission to conduct a detailed study of Jupiter's moon Europa. It will determine if the icy moon currently has habitable conditions. Four researchers from the University of Bern are members of the scientific teams for the mission cameras, the Europa Imaging System (EIS), and the mass spectrometer MASPEX on board the spacecraft.

Researchers at the University of Bern and Bern University Hospital have developed a test to simplify the diagnosis of allergies. Its effectiveness has now been confirmed in clinical samples from children and adolescents suffering from a peanut allergy. The results could fundamentally improve the clinical diagnosis of allergies in future.

A team of scientists including researchers from the University of Bern, the University of Geneva and the NCCR PlanetS used the ESPRESSO Spectrograph to discover a sub-Earth mass exoplanet orbiting Barnard's star, the second-closest star system to the Sun. This discovery helps to understand planetary formation around red dwarfs and provides insights into the diversity of planetary systems in our cosmic neighbourhood.