news

Most European forests are primarily used for timber production. However, woodlands also offer spaces for recreation and they store carbon but it is not clear how forests can be managed for these multiple benefits. A new study under the direction of the University of Bern is now showing how forestry can be improved so that wooded areas can fulfill as many services as possible.

Researchers have developed an emotional intelligence test for the workplace that can be used to assess and predict an employee's abilities in interpersonal relations and leadership capabilities.

Media releases, information for representatives of the media Media Relations (E) In collaboration with colleagues from the ETH Zurich, researchers at the University of Bern have for the first time investigated a substance found in liverwort, which resembles THC. The psychoactive substance, which is consumed as a "legal high", also exerts analgesic and anti-inflammatory effects, which might be superior to that of THC.

On Saturday 20 October 2018, at 03:45 a.m. CET, the BepiColombo space probe is to set off on its journey to Mercury from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. On board the European Space Agency (ESA) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)'s joint space probe are instruments which were designed and built at the Physics Institute of the University of Bern: the laser altimeter BELA-the largest and most sensitive instrument of the mission-and the innovative mass spectrometer STROFIO.

Researchers from the University of Bern and Bern University Hospital have managed for the first time to differentiate human inner ear cells in a laboratory from somatic progenitors and to investigate their origin. This will make it possible to develop new treatment methods for hearing impairment in the future.

Patients with a rare disease, called narcolepsy, suffer of excessive daytime sleepiness and cataplexy. A study published in the renowned scientific journal Nature reports the cause of the disease, which has previously been a mystery. The study is the result of a close collaboration between researchers from the University Sleep-Wake-Epilepsy-Centre Bern at the University Hospital (Inselspital), the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Bellinzona and ETH Zurich.

Sleeping sickness-causing parasites contain an unusual protein synthesis machinery. A team of researchers from ETH Zurich and the University of Bern resolved its very special structure for the first time. Ribosomes are among the most important molecular machines within the cell that hardly changed in the course of evolution.

Reproductive hormones control a woman's monthly cycle and regulate fertility. Reproductive hormones are also related to how attractive a woman smells a study now shows. Researchers at the University of Bern demonstrate that some women smell better to men than others. Namely those who are "fittest" for reproduction.

How Jupiter was formed? Data collected from meteorites had indicated that the growth of the giant planet had been delayed for two million years. Now the researchers have found an explanation: Collisions with kilometer-sized blocks generated high energy, which meant that in this phase hardly any accretion of gas could take place and the planet could only grow slowly.

The MiARD project (Multi-instrument Analysis of Rosetta Data) was a 30-month international research project led by the University of Bern to make the best use of the vast amount of data produced by the Rosetta mission. The most important results, models and an artistic project on MiARD have now been presented.

For the first time, researchers of the universities of Bern and Geneva have proven the presence of iron and titanium in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. The existence of these elements in gas form was theoretically predicted by a team led by the Bernese astronomer Kevin Heng and has now been confirmed by Geneva-based astronomers.

The struggle for iron determines the fate of maize and insect pest: Maize plants release secondary metabolites into the soil that bind to iron and thereby facilitate its uptake by the plant. The Western corn rootworm, the economically most important maize pest worldwide, is attracted by these complexes, extracts the bound iron from the maize plant and uses it for its own nutrition.

Marine heatwaves can irreversibly damage ecosystems and, therefore, also present a threat to fishing. As a team led by physicist Thomas Frölicher from Bern showed in a study just published , the number of marine heatwaves has increased dramatically in past decades. This trend will further intensify as a result of climate change.

An international research team under the co-direction of the University of Bern and the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI) has discovered various mechanisms of resistance to cancer therapy. The findings help researchers to understand the self-repair of cancer cells after a therapy and thus help to fight resistant tumours more efficiently.

Zika virus (ZIKV) may be sexually transmissible for a shorter period than previously estimated, according to a systematic review published this week in PLOS Medicine by Michel Counotte and Nicola Low of the Institute of Preventive Medicine (ISPM), and colleagues from the World Health Organization, US Centers for Disease Control and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.

Old and frail patients have an increased mortality risk and increased memory problems when their blood pressure is lowered too much through medication. This is what has been discovered by researchers in a large-scale study - thus relativising the official recommendations for antihypertensive medications.

A series of new papers, that lay out strategies to search for signs of life beyond our solar system, assume that the detection of atmospheric signatures of a few potentially habitable planets may possibly come before 2030. Three years ago, NASA has gathered researchers from around the world to support and accelerate techniques to answer the question: Are we alone?

At the University of Bern, astrophysicists of the Center for Space and Habitability (CSH) teamed up with medical technology researchers to develop a new method to analyse spectra of atmospheres of planets beyond our solar system. The unusual collaboration applied an artificial intelligence tool to study the chemistry of exoplanetary atmospheres.

Oxygen radicals occur as a by-product when living beings burn carbohydrates or fat. They are suspected of accelerating the ageing process in humans and animals, and to be partly responsible for severe illnesses such as Alzheimer's or certain types of cancer. Researchers at the University of Bern and the University of Stockholm have now discovered a so far unknown defense mechanism against oxygen radicals which could serve as a base for various medications.

Bernese researchers have taken an important step towards new measurement methods such as quantum spectroscopy. In an experiment, they succeeded in uncovering part of the mystery surrounding the so-called "entangled photons" and gaining fine control on the measured correlations. Quantum technologies hold the promise to go beyond the capabilities of classical present technologies by making use of pure quantum phenomenon, such as "entangled particles".