It has long been suspected that spiders are one of the most important groups of predators of insects. Zoologists at the University of Basel and Lund University in Sweden have now shown just how true this is – spiders kill astronomical numbers of insects on a global scale.
Confidence in doctors, therapists and nursing staff leads to an improvement in subjectively perceived complaints, satisfaction and quality of life in patients. This is the conclusion of a meta-analysis by psychologists at the University of Basel, published in the journal PLOS ONE.
Enzymes behave differently in a test tube compared with the molecular scrum of a living cell. Chemists from the University of Basel have now been able to simulate these confined natural conditions in artificial vesicles for the first time.
For the first time, theoretical physicists from the University of Basel have calculated the signal of specific gravitational wave sources that emerged fractions of a second after the Big Bang. The source of the signal is a long-lost cosmological phenomenon called “oscillon”.
In the future, the area covered by temperate drylands will shrink in favor of subtropical drylands. Rising temperatures are increasingly drying out deeper layers of soil in the remaining temperate drylands – with significant repercussions for plant life.
The decisions we make are influenced by other possibilities that we did not choose. At the same time, the options we missed out on determine our satisfaction with the outcomes of situations we were unable to control. Psychologists from the University of Basel conducted two experiments: first, they studied the decision-making behavior of students and, second, they measured brain activity and satisfaction when a set of possibilities is supplemented with another alternative. The Journal of Neuroscience has published the results.
Protein aggregates in neurons are characteristic for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other neurodegenerative diseases. These so-called amyloids arise from misfolded proteins and lead to cell death. Researchers at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel has demonstrated by the example of the hormone vasopressin that such amyloids in the cell are, however, not always harmful but can also play a quite useful role.
Researchers from the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research (FMI) and the University of Basel have identified two types of neurons in the amygdala, each of which generates a distinct fear response – freezing or flight. In addition, these two cell types interact, thus creating a balance, which shifts in one direction or the other, depending on the particular situation. The researchers’ findings were published in Nature.
Independent medical evaluations are often used to adjudicate disability claims. But different doctors assessing the same patient often disagree on whether the patient is disabled or not. This problem can be mitigated by applying standardized procedures, says an international study led by researchers at the University of Basel and the University Hospital Basel in Switzerland.