Lung performance diminishes continuously with age. However, Sapaldia, the Swiss Cohort Study on Air Pollution and Lung Diseases in Adults, has now shown that the process can be slowed down if the number of microscopically small dust particles that we are exposed to is decreased. Surveys and examinations of over 8,000 people at eight places in Switzerland have emonstrated for the first time that improved air quality has a positive effect on adults' lung function – even in regions where air quality is already good. The results of the study will be published today in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine*.
Although everyone's anatomy is unique, medicine recognizes that there is something akin to the "average skeleton" for certain groups of people. Under the leadership of Dr Miguel Gonzalez Ballester, researchers at the Institute of Surgical Technology and Biomechanics at the University of Berne's MEM Research Center are using statistical and modelling methods to determine characteristic skeletal properties. These offer a technically uncomplicated way –relatively speaking – of providing surgeons with accurate information on patients' bone forms. As the picture shows, the project has involved averaging a vast number of individual pieces of data. The aim of the model yielded by this data is to deliver information about individual variations in bone form that is precise enough to enable non-hightech hospitals to perform minimally invasive surgery.
Searching for a picture of someone on the internet using search engines such as Google Image does not always deliver the expected results because the engines rely on the text accompanying the pictures to generate their results. Scientists working on the IM2 National Centre of Competence in Research, which is based at the IDIAP research institute in Martigny, have found a solution. They have developed a software capable of detecting faces in digital images. Their system, which has been christened Google Portrait, was launched in February, several months before a face detector bearing the Google name first appeared on the Internet. Google Portrait is suitable for biometric, videoconferencing and surveillance applications.
Nearly a quarter of all stroke patients are at risk of suffering another stroke as a result of atrial fibrillation. With funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation, cardiologists at Berne's Inselspital have developed a new strategy to identify and treat this risk group in good time. The new strategy proved successful in a trial involving 127 patients. Affected patients can be given anticoagulants to reduce the risk of an attack. The results were recently published in the scientific journal "Stroke".
The Bernese environmental historian Guido Poliwoda has investigated the Elbe floods that occurred in Saxony in the 18th and 19th centuries and shown how the people affected learned to cope with them. His investigation has now been published as a book. The Elbe floods became more frequent during the period under investigation, resulting in a system overhaul, a flattening of hierarchies, the involvement of all tiers of society and ultimately in efficient bottom-up disaster management. Guido Poliwoda is now comparing his results with other countries and periods in the National Centre of Competence in Research "Climate". Switzerland's current approach to managing natural disasters emerges creditably from the comparison.
Wood ants use resin to protect themselves against bacteria and pathogenic fungi. They collect globules of amber resin with their mandibles and take them back to their nest. As a result, more than twice as many of them survive pathogen attacks compared to unprotected ants of the same species. In the course of a study funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, researchers from the University of Lausanne have succeeded in proving for the first time that collecting a substance of vegetable origin enables wild animals to increase their ability to survive bacterial disease. The discovery demonstrates social insects' phenomenal ability to take "public health measures" within their colony.
In response to the trend towards miniaturization in electronics, scientists have started to explore nanoscopic dimensions. Constructing miniscule unidimensional systems such as atom chains and using them as conductive or magnetic nanowires is now a groundbreaking area of research. With funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation, physicists at the University of Neuchâtel have produced an "instruction book" for this kind of atomic-scale DIY. Their reference table describes all possible configurations of atoms and the effects they will induce on materials. As such it will facilitate progress towards real-world applications in molecular electronics, chemical sensors and optical systems.
For a long time lasers were felt to be unsuitable for cutting the heat-sensitive hard tissue of bones. Now a research team led by Robert Sader at the University of Basel's Hightech Research Center of Cranio-Maxillofacial Surgery is developing a CO2 laser system for surgical applications that employs extremely short pulses of light in combination with a fine air and water spray. This combination prevents damage to the surrounding bone tissue during cutting. With its computer-guided navigation the laser system can also make self-stabilising osteotomies, in which pieces of bone are separated and then joined back together like the pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.
Chondroitin, a frequently used food supplement, has probably no pain-alleviating effect in osteoarthritis. These are the conclusions of a study performed by researchers at the University of Berne involved in the National Research Programme "Musculoskeletal Health - Chronic Pain" (NRP 53). They analysed all clinical studies on chondroitin and found that carefully conducted studies with no methodological deficiencies did not reveal a larger pain reduction for chondroitin than for placebo.
High-altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE) is characterized by the accumulation of fluid in the lungs. The condition is a major cause of death among high-altitude climbers, but can also affect anyone who spends a protracted period at an altitude in excess of 2,500 metres. With funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), researchers from Lausanne University Hospital and the Inselspital in Berne have discovered one of the factors that facilitates the condition: the opening of a tiny valve, the foramen ovale, which is located between the two atria of the heart. The discovery of this phenomenon, which affects 25% of the population, could have interesting clinical implications.
Some children who are born with congenital heart defects have to be given prosthetic heart valves soon after birth. Now Simon P. Hoerstrup and his team at Zurich University Hospital have succeeded in creating living, functional heart valves from stem cells in vitro. The stem cells are taken from the amniotic fluid surrounding the unborn child. If the new valves prove successful in further tests, it should be possible at some point in the future to rapidly provide a lasting solution for children with congenital heart defects, since the living valves have the major advantage of growing with the child after the implantation. Hoerstrup's work was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation's National Research Programme "Implants and Transplants".
The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) is carrying out a series of reforms to its structure and organization, equipping it to meet future challenges in research funding. The reforms will enable the SNSF successfully to manage the increasing number of submitted project applications, to offer improved support to young scientists and academics and also to facilitate improved international cooperation, to reinforce the role of the SNSF in research policy and to harmonize the evaluation procedures for funding applications.