news 2024

Biodiversity researchers tested vision systems on how well they could retrieve relevant nature images. More advanced models performed well on simple queries but struggled with more research-specific prompts. Try taking a picture of each of North America's roughly 11,000 tree species, and you'll have a mere fraction of the millions of photos within nature image datasets.

Scientists at The University of Manchester have achieved a significant breakthrough in using cyanobacteria-commonly known as "blue-green algae"-to convert carbon dioxide (CO2) into valuable bio-based materials. Their work, published in Biotechnology for Biofuels and Bioproducts, could accelerate the development of sustainable alternatives to fossil fuel-derived products like plastics, helping pave the way for a carbon-neutral circular bioeconomy.

After migrating to their wintering grounds, the animals move as little as possible to conserve energy In the fall, reindeer migrate from their northern grazing areas to the south.

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.

Mothers living within 20 kilometres of waste incinerators may have a small increase in the total levels of two chemical pollutants in their body. In an analysis led by researchers at Imperial College London, scientists have shown an association between women's exposure to emissions from municipal waste incinerators (MWIs) and small increased levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and dioxins found in their milk.

A team from the universities of Basel and Geneva has assessed which policy measures provide the best incentives for green technologies. How can we ensure that as many Swiss households as possible install solar panels, their own battery to store solar energy, a heat pump or adopt an electric car? Scientists from the universities of Basel and Geneva have been looking into this question.

The transition to low-emission technologies such as electric vehicles and photovoltaic systems is central to climate protection and also brings major benefits for public health, e.g. through less air pollution. However, these technological solutions use materials such as so-called technologically critical elements (TCEs), some of which are potentially harmful to the environment and human health.

Sustainable, renewable and good for the climate: Wood is the material of the future. But how much of it do we actually have and how do we make best use of it? Researchers from Empa and WSL have now analyzed the material flows of wood in Switzerland in detail - and discovered untapped opportunities. Switzerland has set itself a goal that is as ambitious as it is necessary: net zero by 2050.

There are still many unknowns about the causes leading to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) shift - a critical climate phenomenon in the Northern Hemisphere - to the east and west of Iceland. To date, some hypotheses suggested that this process known to the international scientific community might be related to the impact of greenhouse gases on the planet.

A team from the universities of Basel and Geneva has assessed which policy measures provide the best incentives for green technologies. How can we ensure that as many Swiss households as possible install solar panels, their own battery to store solar energy, a heat pump or adopt an electric car? Scientists from the universities of Basel and Geneva have been looking into this question.

MIT study confirms the climate impacts of hydrogen, recommends leak prevention be a priority as infrastructure for handling this clean-burning fuel is built. As the world looks for ways to stop climate change, much discussion focuses on using hydrogen instead of fossil fuels, which emit climate-warming greenhouse gases (GHGs) when they're burned.

HFC-125 is a greenhouse gas becoming a major contributor to global warming, and in the first study to use satellites to measure its concentration in the atmosphere, researchers found it has increased exponentially in the past 20 years. The Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment, a research group at the University of Waterloo, and under contract with the Canadian Space Agency, is the first to measure from space the atmospheric concentration of HFC-125, a hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) commonly found in fire extinguishers and commercial cooling systems.

Scientists from our Geography department have made a major breakthrough in understanding one of the most powerful forces shaping the ocean floor: turbidity currents. These dense, fast-moving underwater flows of sediment and water carve out deep-sea canyons and transport vast amounts of sediment, organic carbon, and nutrients across the ocean floor to the deep-sea.

To achieve net zero, we need to reduce our CO2 emissions quickly and efficiently. An EU project involving Empa has selected Zurich as one of three pilot cities in Europe to accurately measure and model their carbon dioxide emissions. The findings will help cities to achieve their climate targets. Cities are the largest source of greenhouse gases in the world.

Plants and water can mitigate heat in cities. Using Zurich as a case study, researchers tested a climate model which indicates how large the effect of green and blue spaces is. The model supports urban planning and shows where improvements would be particularly effective. As a result of climate change, heatwaves are becoming more frequent - with particularly harmful effects on human health, livelihoods and infrastructure in cities.

Changes in atmospheric particles since preindustrial times have masked some of the warming caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide. Atmospheric particles cool the climate by directly reflecting sunlight and by making clouds more reflective; they are also deadly pollution. Fifteen years ago, it was thought that sulfuric acid drove almost all particle formation.

An international team of researchers from the AMAP laboratory (Botany and Modeling of Plant and Vegetation Architecture), under the auspices of the University of Montpellier and INRAE, has investigated the consequences of deforestation and degradation of tropical forests. The study, published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution on December 10, identified "winning" and "losing" species, leading to the functional impoverishment of tropical forest ecosystems.

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.

Wildfires have turned the Far North into a carbon emitter, putting the region's permafrost at risk, according to an alarming new report co-authored by UdeM researcher Oliver Sonnentag. Increasingly frequent and severe wildfires have become a yearly concern for many Arctic communities, and a chapter of a new U.S. report involving one Canadian university - Université de Montréal - suggests that they are also having a significant impact on carbon emissions in the region.

New research has revealed less than a quarter of the remaining tropical rainforests around the globe can safeguard thousands of threatened species from extinction. The research, co-authored by The University of Queensland's Professor James Watson , evaluated the global availability of structurally intact, minimally disturbed tropical rainforests for more than 16,000 species of mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians.