1.4 million people die of tuberculosis worldwide each year. Multidrug-resistant strains pose a particular problem because they are so difficult to treat. In a study in Georgia, Basel researchers have demonstrated that prisons play a key role in transmission. The consequences ripple out to Switzerland as well.
A blind patient has partially regained visual function. This was achieved through optogenetic therapy, which aims to treat inherited diseases of the photoreceptors within the eye. The accomplishment by the international research team represents an important step in the treatment of genetically determined blindness.
Scientists have succeeded in growing accurate replicas of human retinas that can be used to pinpoint the specific types of cells affected by genetic eye diseases. This achievement will accelerate progress in developing individual therapies.
Many diseases are caused by defects in signaling pathways of body cells. In the future, bioactive nanocapsules could become a valuable tool for medicine to control these pathways. Researchers from the University of Basel have taken an important step in this direction: They succeed in having several different nanocapsules work in tandem to amplify a natural signaling cascade and influence cell behavior.
Fake news is not a phenomenon that only affects the educationally disadvantaged in our society. Academics are also prey to it, says social psychologist Professor Rainer Greifeneder. He has recently published a new book on the subject.
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Young people make intensive use of digital networks to read, write and comment on literary texts. But their reading behavior varies considerably depending on whether the title is from the world of popular or classic literature, as revealed by a new study that takes the reading platform Wattpad as an example.
In the call for proposals for National Centers of Competence in Research (NCCRs), the University of Basel put forward two projects – and both have been given the green light. The Biozentrum and the Department of Physics are the leading houses for these major initiatives. Vice President Torsten Schwede talks about the preparations that led to this successful outcome, and about the long-term goals of the two projects.
A letter in the Basel papyrus collection describes day-to-day family matters and yet is unique in its own way: it provides valuable insights into the world of the first Christians in the Roman Empire, which is not recorded in any other historical source. The letter has been dated to the 230s AD and is thus older than all previously known Christian documentary evidence from Roman Egypt.
The world’s insectivorous birds consume annually 400 to 500 million tons of prey and they thereby use as much energy as the megacity New York. As zoologists calculated, insectivorous birds especially in forested areas play a significant role in the suppression of pest insects.