The University of Strasbourg will continue to confront the unknown in order to tackle the major scientific challenges of the future, and wishes you a very happy 2021.

The University of Strasbourg closes its doors starting from saturday 19th of december, until the 4th of january 2021 for the Christmas holidays. It is still a little early to know what the teaching and working conditions will be after the holidays: it looks like we will have to continue to function at the beginning of January as we did in December, with only certain exams and TPs taking place on site. We can therefore expect to continue as we have been doing until 20 January. If this were to change, you would, of course, be informed.

Different perspectives on Covid-19 research: virology. The statistics on Covid-19 indicate that men are more likely to develop a severe form of the illness. In April 2020, Samira Fafi-Kremer, the director of the Strasbourg Institute of Virology, piloted a study in collaboration with the clinicians from the CHU de Strasbourg and teams from the Institut Pasteur. The study, entitled Serocov-HUS*, shows that women have a longer immunity to the virus than men.

Different perspectives on Covid-19 research: mathematics. The epidemic poses health, economic and social problems. In order to alleviate these problems, a study based on mathematical models has highlighted the advantages of an alternating lockdown, which would have the same efficacy as the current lockdown. Nava Schulmann, a researcher with the Project Mimesis team at the Institut National de Recherche en Sciences et Technologies du Numérique (INRIA), explains.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have gained a better understanding of the physiological process at work in the brain during economic decision-making, proving that the value signals identified in the orbitofrontal cortex are indeed involved in decision-making. Sébastien Ballesta, a lecturer at the Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives et Adaptatives, who participated in the study published in Nature, explains.