News

7 October 2024

De winter van het jaar 1740

1740: coldest year in Europe

1740 was the coldest year in Central Europe of (at least) the past 600 years. A daily weather reconstruction shows the worst-case sequence of weather systems leading to this extreme.

9 December 2024

Graphik zu Arsen in Meeresfrüchten

How harmless is arsenic in seafood?

An interdisciplinary study from the University of Bern involving Adrien Mestrot and Teresa Chávez-Capilla reveals that gut bacteria play a crucial role in converting arsenobetaine into toxic arsenic compounds. Results show that arsenobetaine, commonly found in seafood and previously considered harmless, is partly transformed into toxic arsenic compounds by the action of gut bacteria in the mammalian body. These findings raise new questions about the safety of seafood consumption.