A new research project led by Professor Fabrizio Mazzonna of the Institute of Economics (IdEP) of USI Faculty of Economics has received positive feedback from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) . The study "Health and economic consequences of low-value mental health care: the case of benzodiazepines" focuses on the causes and consequences of the use of benzodiazepines to treat mental health problems. 

IDSIA's researchers Gabriele Maroni, Dario Piga and Gianvito Grasso have contributed to a research study focused on the development of a virtual machine able to accurately predict sweeteners/bitterants compounds starting from their chemical composition. 

Founded in 1930 in the United States, the Econometric Society (ES) is one of the oldest and most prestigious scientific societies in economics. Becoming a Fellow of the Econometric Society is considered an honourable distinction. Yet, among the newly elected fellows, women are a minority: hardly absent until 1970, they were under 5% until the 1990s, recently rising to 20%. Do the numbers reflect a lack of qualified women or are they related to a lack of recognition of women's academic work? And what is the cause behind the recent increase in female representation?  

The University of Zurich's Forschungszentrum öffentlichkeit und Gesellschaft (Fög) has published the Media Quality Yearbook 2022, which also features the study on the media market in the Swiss Italian-speaking region, co-edited by Colin Porlezza , professor at USI Faculty of Communication, Culture and Society , and Linards Udris , researcher and lecturer at the University of Zurich.

A new Research Project titled Visibility Reclaimed. Experiencing Rome's First Public Museums (1733-1870). An Analysis of Public Audiences in a Transnational Perspective [100016_212922]. Supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Project is directed by Carla Mazzarelli, full professor at the Institute of History and Theory of Art and Architecture (ISA) at the USI Academy of Architecture.

Evaluation of research conducted by academic institutions was one of the topics addressed during the fourth REHES workshop, Research on Higher Education and Science in Switzerland, which brought together some 50 scholars at Università della Svizzera italiana to discuss the challenges of the higher education system. In particular, the focus was on the impact of evaluations carried out outside the scientific community, mainly those carried out by governments to distribute funds or to accredit institutions of higher learning.

Conscious digitisation also comes with greater awareness of data processing, as Marta Fadda, a Postdoc researcher and lecturer in the Biomedical Ethics course at the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences at Università della Svizzera italiana, explains, starting with a shared experience, the passive approval of user licenses.

Dr Arianna Baggiolini, research director of the "Stem Cells and Cancer" laboratory at the USI-affiliated Institute of Oncology Research (IOR) , and Professor Michael Multerer of the Euler Institute (EUL) , USI Faculty of Informatics , have been awarded two Starting Grants 2022 from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) totalling 3,165,000 francs.

Professor John Ioannidis of Stanford University created a standardised index of the most influential researchers and published the results in the journal PLOS Biology. Several parameters, including the total number of citations and h-index, were taken into account for this calculation, leading to the calculation of an aggregate index.

The study "Subcapsular sinus macrophages promote melanoma metastasis to the sentinel lymph nodes via an IL-1?-STAT3 axis" has been published in the scientific journal Cancer Immunology Research.

Combining biomedical knowledge, mathematical principles, informatics and computing to study complex medical problems and help improve the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. This is the essence of so-called computational medicine. One example? Analysing the human body as if it were a social network where cells communicate or even monitoring the progress of a chronic disease by setting off automated "alarms."

The DigiPart Index records the extent to which it is possible to participate digitally in political processes in Switzerland's cantons on a scale of 0 to 100. In the second year of its survey, the average score across all cantons is still relatively low, but rose from 31 to 33 points.

The fifth Cantonal Day of Palliative Care was held this past May, promoted by palliative ti, the Ticino section of the Swiss Association for Palliative Medicine, Care and Support, to foster encounter and dialogue on the topic.

Some 50 researchers from Switzerland and several European countries will gather in Lugano on 6 and 7 October to discuss the many challenges that the future of the higher education system is facing. It is the fourth workshop organised by REHES (Research on Higher Education and Science in Switzerland). After the Universities of Bern and Lausanne and the Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Winterthur, it will be hosted by the Institute of Communication and Public Policy at Università della Svizzera italiana. We spoke about it with Benedetto Lepori, adjunct professor at the Faculty of Communication, Culture and Society and director of the research group on research policy and universities.