A patient with mysterious symptoms refuses to give up: he wants to know what’s wrong. But no known diagnosis seems to fit. Professor Mike Recher explains how his team finally found the cause of the symptoms, and why a whole new field of immune disorders is emerging.
Transport incurs costs that are largely invisible today. A study by the University of Basel shows how these external costs could be charged for and the revenue redistributed in a socially acceptable way.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But how far does the freedom to alter one’s own body extend? The legal scholar Nuran Haydar Celik examines the limits the law is allowed to impose on interventions lacking medical indications.
Botany professor Ansgar Kahmen has been studying Switzerland’s forests for years. There has never been a summer as hot and dry as that of 2026 since records began. It is already clear that the forests of northwestern Switzerland are suffering severe damage. The forest of the future will look much different from today, the biologist is convinced.
Modern therapies have transformed care for people with multiple sclerosis (MS). Yet the disease continues to progress in some patients, even in the absence of relapses. Detecting and treating this gradual worsening of disability remains one of the greatest challenges in MS care. Researchers now report on a blood marker that could help track disease progression and monitor treatment response.
The University Council has appointed four new professors in the fields of medicine, Hispanic studies and psychology.
Few would dispute that greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced to slow down climate change. But how much CO2 do cities actually emit today? Postdoctoral researcher Stavros Stagakis from the Department of Environmental Sciences is exploring ways to measure these emissions.
How do blood vessels form to reliably supply the body with oxygen and nutrients? A research team at the University of Basel, has uncovered a key mechanism by which cells join to build new blood vessels. Their study reveals how pushing and pulling forces enable individual vessel segments to connect and form a continuous blood vessel. The findings deepen our understanding of vascular development and provide a foundation for the development of vascularized organoids.
How do religious themes change when they are repeatedly retold and reimagined? Lavinia Pflugfelder examines this question using the example of the male deity in the modern witchcraft religion Wicca. She is also interested in religious imagery within the metal scene and in horror films.
