Switzerland today
Greetings from Bern,
Switzerland has always been a high price island. However, supply chain woes, high energy prices and the war in Ukraine mean that Swiss salaries will be stretched even more in the coming days and months.
In the news: Preparing for tough times with belt tightening and defensive action
- Middle income households will struggle next year due to inflation and higher health insurance premiums, warn Swiss trade unions. They want employers to boost salaries to help workers keep their heads above water.
- High prices could even put craft beers out of reach of hipsters. Swiss breweries warn of a price hikeExternal link due to the higher cost of energy and raw materials like aluminium and glass. The war in Ukraine does not help, given that the country produced 18% of world’s barley.
- With a war raging on the continent, some have become more security conscious. Applications for gun licenses have shot upExternal link in cities like Zurich, Winterthur and St Gallen. It remains to be seen if new license holders will actually buy firearms, as they have six months to do it after their application is accepted.
- Fear of Russian aggression is not just limited to personal defence. Switzerland has sent a team of cyber experts to participate in a NATO-led cyber defence simulation exercise in Estonia. Around 2,000 cyber experts from 33 countries will be tested by 8,000 attacks on 5,500 virtual targets. The attacks are designed to cause disruptions to government and military networks, communications, water purification systems and the electric power grid.
Finding Nemo: Using environment DNA to determine fish diversity
Researchers at the Swiss federal technology institute ETH Zurich have come up with a technique to determine fish diversityExternal link in coral reefs. The sea creatures leave traces of DNA in their environment which can be extracted from sea water samples. The DNA fragments can then be compared to known DNA sequences of species to estimate diversity in a particular reef.
“Thanks to the eDNA method, we can detect many fish species and families much faster than with observations alone,” says Loïc Pellissier, Professor of Ecosystems and Landscape Evolution. The researchers found a 16% higher rate of fish diversity with this method than by simple observation.
Viral sensation: Elephantine balancing act
Videos featuring a bull elephant in Basel Zoo are making waves on the internetExternal link. The pachyderm has come up with his own version of Mikado or Jenga to pass the time. He seems to have a knack of balancing tree logs on a wooden pole. This skill is sometimes put to use to block the gates in his enclosure, much to the chagrin of his keepers.
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