Open Access Publications (Univ. de Genève)
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Increases in vegetation influenced past temperatures
No full textBetter representation of Northern Hemisphere vegetation may resolve a scientific debate over how global temperatures changed during the past 12,000 years. Our new climate model experiments that include these vegetation changes exhibit a peak in global temperature around 6,000 years ago. This peak agrees well with previous studies using paleoclimate archives to reconstruct past temperatures
Making nature compute for us
No full textArtificial intelligence is all the hype lately. Behind many of the mind-blowing breakthroughs of the past decade is a single workhorse: More compute. As engineers work hard to supply the necessary electronics, researchers are turning to less conventional ideas in hopes of finding the next big thing. We showed how to employ the complex computations nature does, free-of-charge, for neural networks.
How do people see, simplify, and solve problems?
No full textPsychologists, philosophers, and engineers have long known that the way we think about problems affects the way we solve them. Our recent paper proposes and tests a unifying theory of problem simplification that provides a new perspective on this age-old topic
Dust in the wind & the snowy Alps: a cautionary tale
No full textClouds are an indispensable part of our Earth’s atmosphere. Although closely associated with rain, water is not the only substance a cloud can carry. Using satellite images, we examined how vast plumes of atmospheric dust from the Sahara Desert found their way towards the northern Europe and investigated their impact on the snowy Alps
Poverty and unpreparedness make monsters out of ordinary hazards
No full textFlood disasters are expected to increase because of the climate change-related sea level rise. While impacts on regional and local scales may vary, mapping that variation is critical for understanding the risks our preparedness to tackle them. The historical and contemporary data show that ordinary hazards often turn into monsters because of poverty and unpreparedness
The impact of climate change on marine life in ocean depths
No full textLessons from past warm periods in the Earth\u27s history reveal that climate and atmospheric changes could lead to more intense seasonal rainfall, disturbing immense sedimentary systems, from mountain tops to ocean floors. Great amounts of transported clays are likely to cause muddy waters in the depths of oceans, making them uninhabitable for most marine species
Unravelling the Secrets of Pine Roots: A Tale of Nutrition and Adaptation
No full textA new nucleic acid sequencing technology can determine changes in the way RNA is modified, a process known as epitranscriptomics. When observed in maritime pine roots exposed to ammonium nutrition, these changes appeared to be related to the regulation of protein synthesis in the roots
Sharing a political ideology predicts more similar brain activity
No full textEven when presented with the same information, liberals and conservatives tend to interpret political information differently. By measuring brain activity while partisans watched political videos or thought about political concepts, we show that individuals that are similar in their political beliefs exhibit similar brain patterns whilst processing political information
Mutations in the germline: How the mother repairs the father’s damaged genome
No full textGermline mutations can have a severe impact on genetic diseases, genome evolution and the fate of a species. The vast majority of inheritable mutations are passed on by the paternal genome. We discovered how paternal DNA damage is repaired by maternal repair leading to the inheritance of structural variants
Heading underground with cold atoms
No full textSensors deployed down boreholes offer a glimpse into Earth\u27s subsurface properties. This article presents the first step towards a new generation of borehole deployable quantum gravity sensors based on cold atoms. Sensors, which once developed, have the potential to reveal Earth\u27s hidden depths with unparalleled precision