Biology

Bad news for Swiss agriculture: several species of insect pests will benefit from a warmer climate. This is one of the findings of geographer Léonard Schneider, a doctoral student at the joint chair of applied climatology at the University of Neuchâtel and the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL.  His doctorate aims to model the impact of global warming in Switzerland on pests. He publicly defended his thesis on 12 May.

Scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL have discovered microbes that degrade plastic at cool temperatures. This opens up new perspectives for recycling certain types of plastic. Most known microbes require at least 30°C for their decomposition work.

Researchers from Basel and Zurich are creating a high-resolution atlas that depicts the development of the human retina. One technique they use is a new method that allows them to visualise more than 50 proteins simultaneously.

The cells of our body interact with their immediate environment. Researchers have now studied this interaction in detail. In time, they hope to use these findings for improved diagnosis and treatment of wound-healing disorders and cancer.

Despite approved treatments being available, multiple myeloma remains incurable. But researchers at ETH Zurich and University Hospital Zurich set out to improve treatment outcomes by testing hundreds of existing therapeutics outside the body to predict their effectiveness.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have analysed the bird flu epidemic caused by the H7N9 strain that affected China from 2013 to 2017. New phylogenetic trees will help to improve monitoring of future bird flu epidemics.