The summer of 2015—the second hottest summer in Switzerland since 2003—caused more than 2,700 additional emergency admissions to Swiss hospitals. The most frequent causes were infectious diseases and diseases of the genitourinary system, as well as influenza and pneumonia.
Stargardt disease is a hereditary eye disease that leads to visual defects and the loss of sight. A study has now shown that autofluorescence imaging might offer a way to assess whether novel treatments are effective at slowing down vision loss.
Research groups at the University of Basel and the University Hospital Basel have uncovered how cancer cells in brain tumors promote their own growth. In order to achieve this, the cancer cells inhibit growth receptor degradation in the brain’s cells and intensify receptor signal transmission.
The neurotransmitter brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) acts in the muscle, so that during strength training endurance muscle fiber number is decreased. Researchers at the University of Basel’s Biozentrum have more closely investigated this factor. Their results also provide new insights into age-related muscle atrophy.
After nerve injury, the protein complex mTORC1 takes over an important function in skeletal muscle to maintain the neuromuscular junction, the synapse between the nerve and muscle fiber. Researchers at the University of Basel’s Biozentrum have now shown that the activation of mTORC1 must be tightly balanced for a proper response of the muscle to nerve injury.
Adjusting the thermal conductivity of materials is one of the challenges nanoscience is currently facing. Together with colleagues from the Netherlands and Spain, researchers from the University of Basel have shown that the atomic vibrations that determine heat generation in nanowires can be controlled through the arrangement of atoms alone. The scientists will publish the results shortly in the journal Nano Letters.
Acute myeloid leukemia stem cells elude the body’s immune cells by deactivating a danger detector. The underlying mechanisms and the potential new therapeutic approaches that this gives rise to have been detailed in the journal Nature by researchers from the University of Basel and University Hospital Basel in collaboration with colleagues in Germany.
The translation of the genetic code into proteins is a vital process in any cell. Prof. Mihaela Zavolan’s team at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, has now uncovered important factors that influence the speed of protein synthesis in the cell. The results, recently published in “PNAS”, serve as a basis to better analyze translational control in a wide range of cell types.
Sustainable means of mobility are becoming ever more popular. In Switzerland, around 15,000 people have registered with the online platform carvelo2go, which hires out electric cargo bikes. The use of this sharing service in the Basel area is now the subject of scientific investigation. Despite strong growth in member numbers, there are still fundamental barriers. The study by the University of Basel indicates ways that sharing providers and public authorities can promote the use of environmentally friendly cargo bikes.