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A new study led by researchers at ETH Zurich and the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI in collaboration with African partners shows that electric vehicles could be economically competitive in many African countries before 2040 - just as long as charging infrastructure is developed and geared specifically towards solar powered off-grid systems.

The bioconcentration factor shows the concentration of chemical substances in fish as compared to the surrounding water. It is the standard measure for determining the bioaccumulation of chemicals in the environment. Until now it was assumed that this factor, BCF for short, was a constant for each specific substance.

A new study by researchers from Mainz, Oxford, Berlin and Innsbruck shows that Pompeii's early baths were much less hygienic than long assumed. Geochemical analyses of lime deposits from the city's wells and pools reveal severe contamination and shed light on the ancient water supply in Pompeii. Innsbruck geologist Christoph Spötl was involved in the study published in the scientific journal PNAS.

Political opinion polls can do two things: they can reflect public opinion or they can shape public opinion. Florian Woschnagg and Matthias Karmasin recently conducted a study on the credibility of political opinion polls and how they are perceived - depending on the type of medium that commissions and publishes the opinion poll.

A UNIGE and HUG team has, for the first time, described the interaction between the cerebellum and the brain's reward system in people with schizophrenia. Apathy, social withdrawal, and loss of motivation - the so-called ''negative'' symptoms of schizophrenia - are among the most disabling and hardest to treat.

Short exercise sessions can help children build social relationships. This has been demonstrated by researchers from the Department of Sport, Exercise and Health at the University of Basel. An "active" short break could be a fun way to integrate these findings into everyday school life. Exercise is good for many things - including making it easier to establish social relationships.

A research team at the Medical University of Vienna has discovered a new approach to treating a particularly frequent and difficult-to-treat form of lung cancer. The study shows that a combination of two well-studied classes of drugs - ERBB inhibitors and Aurora kinase inhibitors - is significantly more effective against KRAS-mutated lung adenocarcinomas than existing therapies.

As runners set their New Year's resolutions, Simon Fraser researchers have dug thousands of Strava posts to map the emotional highs and lows of running and see what makes people stick with it. The first-of-its-kind study has unearthed what makes a run feel joyful-or miserable-by analysing more than 3,200 Strava posts from Metro Vancouver runners between 2010 and 2021.

Autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis arise when the immune system turns against the body itself. Yet for most of them, it remains unclear why this process begins. Researchers have now identified how the Epstein-Barr virus can, under specific conditions, initiate early multiple sclerosis-like damage in the brain.

One of the leading triggers for multiple sclerosis (MS) is an infection with the Epstein-Barr virus. However, certain gene variants also play an important role. Researchers at the University of Zurich have now shown that it is the molecular interaction between environmental and genetic risk factors that ultimately triggers the disease.

Air-polluting microplastics have been found in rural areas in greater quantities than in cities, researchers say. The study, led by the University of Leeds, detected up to 500 microscopic particles of plastic per square metre per day in an area of woodland during the three-month study - almost twice as much as in a sample collected in a city centre.

Veteran male athletes who have spent years training at high intensity may be at greater risk of serious heart problems while exercising, new University of Leeds research shows. Funded by the British Heart Foundation, the study shows that male endurance athletes aged over 50 may be more likely to experience abnormal heart rhythms during training if they already have scarring in their heart.

Tropical forests can recover twice as quickly after deforestation if they have adequate soil nitrogen, according to new research published today. A team of scientists led by the University of Leeds established the world's largest and longest experiment to see how nutrients affect forest regrowth in areas cleared for activities such as logging and agriculture.

A real world study led by University of Manchester neuroscientists has shown that higher daytime light exposure positively influences different aspects of cognition. The first study of its kind, published in the journal Communications Psychology and funded by Wellcome Trust, also showed that stable light exposure across a week and uninterrupted exposure during a day had similar effects.

Using images from cameras on Mars orbiters, an international research team led by the University of Bern has discovered structures on Mars that are very similar to classic river deltas on Earth. These are traces of rivers that have deposited their sediments into an ocean. This shows that Mars was a "blue planet" around three billion years ago.

Health Researchers from DTU have patented an invention that uses naturally produced substances from gut bacteria of the bifidobacteria type to reduce the risk of allergies and asthma. Allergies and asthma affect an increasing number of children worldwide, but now an international research group led by DTU has identified a previously unknown mechanism that can reduce the risk of allergies and asthma later in life.

A research team at the University of Würzburg has, for the first time, uncovered how E. coli bacteria sneak into the prostate. The discovery opens the door to potential new treatments for bacterial prostatitis. Bacterial prostatitis, an infection of the prostate primarily caused by the bacterium Escherichia coli ( E. coli ), is a common health problem in men.

Cereals have natural resistance to pathogenic fungi, but powdery mildew, for example, can overcome this resistance. A team at the University of Zurich has now discovered a new mechanism that enables powdery mildew to outsmart the immune system of wheat. This opens the door to targeted development of resistant varieties with a reduced risk of resistance breakthrough.

The fight against plastic pollution requires accurate, regional data on the origin of waste. A new study from the Vietnamese province of Phu Yen provides precisely this data. The study shows that most of the plastic waste that ends up in the region's waters comes from uncollected waste and leakage during collection and transport.

Researchers at the Universities of Prague and Bonn propose a scenario that could take place in the innermost regions of galaxies Galaxies contain black holes weighing between approximately five and 100 solar masses. There are also some with more than 100,000 solar masses. But do medium-mass black holes also develop in galaxies? A study by the Astronomical Institute of Charles University in Czechia, with significant participation from the University of Bonn, shows how medium-mass black holes can frequently form naturally.