Global biodiversity assessments require the collection of data on changes in plant biodiversity on an ongoing basis. Researchers from the universities of Zurich and Montréal have now shown that plant communities can be reliably monitored using imaging spectroscopy, which in the future will be possible via satellite. This paves the way for near real-time global biodiversity monitoring.

A German couple goes on a honeymoon to East Africa and return with hundreds of objects, including everyday items, jewelry, musical instruments and tools. This collection is now stored in the Ethnographic Museum of the University of Zurich. The new workspace exhibition “Honeymoon?” provides insights into how research is conducted on these objects based on five key questions. The exhibition invites visitors to rethink their views on museum collections and adds to the ongoing discussion on provenance research.

If a human comes down with a rash, they might go to the doctor and come away with some ointment to put on it. Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins get skin conditions, too, but they come about their medication by queuing up nose-to-tail to rub themselves against corals. In the journal iScience on 19 May, researchers show that these corals have medicinal properties, suggesting that the dolphins are using the marine invertebrates to medicate skin conditions.

Twenty million years ago, the Swiss Plateau region, or “Mittelland”, was an ocean in which dolphins swam. Researchers at the University of Zurich’s Paleontological Institute have now discovered two previously unknown species related to modern sperm whales and oceanic dolphins, which they identified based on ear bones.

More than half a billion Swiss francs have been granted over 10 years to groundbreaking research projects in Switzerland within three different Wyss Centers or Academy in Zurich, Geneva and Bern. This makes entrepreneur and philanthropist Hansjörg Wyss one of the major private donors for Swiss science. Wyss was celebrated today as the laureate of the 2022 Gallatin Award of the Swiss American Chamber of Commerce. The laudatio was given by Federal Councillor Guy Parmelin.

Graduates of the University of Zurich quickly find their place on the job market and earn significantly higher incomes than the Swiss average. UZH facilitates the transition into professional life through various programs that bridge the gap between academia and business, encourage innovative spirit and foster entrepreneurship. The University also wants to improve the situation of junior researchers by providing them with a wide range of career paths.

Childbirth in humans is much more complex and painful than in great apes. It was long believed that this was a result of humans’ larger brains and the narrow dimensions of the mother’s pelvis. Researchers at the University of Zurich have now used 3D simulations to show that childbirth was also a highly complex process in early hominins species that gave birth to relatively small-brained newborns – with important implications for their cognitive development.