Fighting disease-causing bacteria becomes more difficult when antibiotics stop working. People with pre-existing conditions in particular can carry resistant germs and suffer from repeated infections for years, according to a study by the University of Basel and University Hospital Basel.
Researchers at the Universities of Basel and Zurich have discovered the genetic material of the pathogen Treponema pallidum in the bones of people who died in Brazil 2,000 years ago. The new findings, published in the scientific journal Nature, call into question previous theories concerning the spread of syphilis by the Spanish conquistadors.
Researchers at the University of Basel have built a quantum memory element based on atoms in a tiny glass cell. In the future, such quantum memories could be mass-produced on a wafer.
Unknown germs are a common occurrence in hospitals. Researchers at the University of Basel have spent many years collecting and analyzing them. They have identified many new species of bacteria, some of which are significant for clinical practice.
The animal keepers of the Department of Biomedicine at the Mattenstrasse site have won the Swiss 3RCC Culture of Care Award. They have succeeded in significantly reducing the number of surplus laboratory animals.
For children, the world is full of surprises. Adults, on the other hand, are much more difficult to surprise. And there are complex processes behind this apparently straightforward state of affairs. Researchers at the University of Basel have been using mice to decode how reactions to the unexpected develop in the growing brain.
Artificial intelligence (AI) can reliably detect emotions based on facial expressions in psychotherapeutic situations. The AI system is also able to reliably predict therapeutic success in patients with borderline personality pathology.
Light in the evening is thought to be bad for sleep. However, does the color of the light play a role? Researchers from the University of Basel and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) compared the influence of different light colors on the human body. The researchers’ findings contradict the results of a previous study in mice.
Antibiotics have no effect on viruses, and that includes the coronavirus. Yet in the first year of the pandemic, primary care physicians in Switzerland prescribed antibacterial medications twice as frequently as before, report researchers at the University of Basel. A risky practice, warns the research team.
