In the Media May 2024

Citizen Scientists Will Capture DNA From 800 Lakes In One Day

external pageA new project, lead by ETH Zurich professor Kristy Deiner, aims to harness the growing field of environmental DNA (eDNA) to detect species that might escape even the most intrepid ecologists. In the project, volunteers plan to take samples from some 800 lakes around the world on or around May 22, the International Day for Biological Diversity. Those samples will then be sent back to a lab in Zurich, Switzerland, where they¡¯ll be analyzed for the tiny traces of DNA that organisms leave behind in the environment.call_made

Breakthrough solar power technology could replace fossil fuels in heavy manufacturing

external pageA potentially groundbreaking solar-powered device has achieved temperatures over 1,000C, raising hopes for using green energy to run some of the most fossil fuel-intensive manufacturing processes on Earth...Our research showed that solar thermal trapping works not just at low temperatures, but well above 1,000C,¡± Emiliano Casati of ETH Zurich who co-authored the study said.call_made

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external pageAZO Cleantechcall_made

external pageTech Xplorecall_made

external pageSolar Dailycall_made

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external pageOptics & Photonics Newscall_made

external pageVN Explorercall_made

external pageEnvironmental New Networkcall_made

external pageEcoWatchcall_made

external pageInvesting.comcall_made

external pageCleanTechnicacall_made

external pageBioengineercall_made

external pageAol.call_made

Discovery Alert: An Earth-sized World and Its Ultra-cool Star

external pageAn international team (including researchers from ETH Zurich) using robotic telescopes around the world recently spotted an Earth-sized planet orbiting an ultra-cool red dwarf, the dimmest and longest-lived of stars.call_made (Uni Li¨¨ge, Cambridge, ETH Zurich, Birmingham Uni, Uni Bern, and MIT)

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external pageSciTech Dailycall_made

external pageScience Dailycall_made

Mosaic Grassland Landscapes Are the Most Beneficial

external pageLike forests, grassland provides numerous ecological, economic and social benefits. Researchers have investigated ways to maintain and improve these benefits in the Swiss canton of Solothurn.call_made

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external pagePHYS.orgcall_made

Strangely Curved Shapes Break 50-Year-Old Geometry Conjecture

external pageMathematicians (including researchers at ETH Zurich) have disproved a major conjecture about the relationship between curvature and shape.call_made

High-Resolution Microscope Reveals Electron Behavior in Graphene

external pageResearchers at ETH Zurich have successfully detected electron vortices in graphene for the first time using a high-resolution magnetic field sensor. The study was published in the scientific journal Science.call_made

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external pageThe Science Timescall_made

external pageTech Exploristcall_made

external pagePHYS.orgcall_made

external pageIFL Sciencecall_made

external pageGraphene Infocall_made

external pageClean Technicacall_made

New gel could make drinking alcohol less harmful

external pageResearchers have developed a protein-based gel that breaks down alcohol in the gastrointestinal tract without harming the body.call_made

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external pageThe Science Timescall_made

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external pageZME Sciencecall_made

BEHIND THE HEADLINES - Are we too lazy? Why America's work ethic threatens Europe ¨C and what Switzerland does better than Germany

external page...Are Americans, with their rigid work ethic, really a good role model? Michael Siegenthaler from the KOF Swiss Economic Institute at ETH Zurich expresses his doubts. ?In the U.S., work is distributed more unequally. If you have a job, you often work a lot. But fewer people are actively integrated into working life,? he says. On the other hand, Switzerland and Germany have achieved one of the highest employment rates in the world.call_made

How an audacious sonic survey could help revive damaged rainforests

external pageGiacomo Delgado, a doctoral researcher at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, and two other teams from Costa Rican universities have bounded across the country recording the soundscapes of its forests. The survey involves positioning microphones at more than 600 sites in every type of forest ecosystem in Costa Rica, making it, by some measures, the largest such ¡°ecoacoustic¡± survey ever.call_made

Quantum Fiber Optics in The Brain Enhance Processing, May Protect Against Degenerative Diseases

external page¡°These new results will be of interest to the large community of researchers in open quantum systems and quantum computation, because the theoretical methods used in this study are widely employed in those fields to understand complex quantum networks in noisy environments,¡± said Professor Nicol¨° Defenu of the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich in Switzerland, a quantum researcher who was not associated with the work. ¡°It¡¯s really intriguing to see a vital connection between quantum computing and living systems.¡±call_made

Ecolab and HeiQ introduce synbiotic cleaning products at Interclean

external pageEcolab, a global sustainability leader offering water, hygiene, and infection prevention solutions and services, and (ETH Zurich Spinoff) HeiQ Chrisal, a leading biotech innovator, are proudly collaborating to introduce advanced synbiotic cleaning products to the European cleaning industry.call_made  

Herzog & de Meuron and vision behind their designs

external page...Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron both started studying architecture, first at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne and later at the (ETH) Zurich campus, where they both graduated in 1975. In 1978, Herzog & de Meuron founded their firm in Basel, Switzerland. Together with their architectural practice...From 1999 to 2018, both Herzog and de Meuron held professorships at ETH Z¨¹rich...call_made

mimic joins race to develop the first AI-driven cobot

external pageETH Zurich start-up, mimic develops breakthrough collaborative robots with humanoid hands powered by generative AI to ease severe global labor shortages across industries involving complex, manual tasks.call_made
 

SpaceHopper robot wants to hop along small celestial bodies

external pageETH Zurich students are developing a robot that can navigate low-gravity environments using a jumping-like mode of locomotion. The team recently tested the SpaceHopper robot in zero gravity scenarios on a European Space Agency parabolic flight.call_made

Circular Solutions Vital To Curb Enviro Harm From Cement and Concrete

¡°A lot of focus is on how to mitigate [cement¡¯s] climate change impacts,¡± says Christopher Oberschelp, senior researcher and lecturer at ETH Zurich. ¡°But we¡¯re forgetting that we¡¯re also having other very big problems in terms of human health¡± connected to its production.

When the water runs dry: Why France is freaking out over a tiny Swiss dam

external pageThanks to its glaciers, Switzerland acts as the water reservoir of Western Europe, holding 6 percent of the entire Continent¡¯s freshwater reserves. But Alpine ice is melting at an alarming pace...Switzerland¡¯s glaciers have lost 10 percent of their volume in the last two years alone. And there are signs that the country has already passed ¡°peak water,¡± meaning glacial meltwater may soon decline, said Daniel Farinotti, a glaciologist at ETH Zurich...By the century¡¯s end, Farinotti expects to lose 60 to 80 percent of Switzerland¡¯s glaciers. And the Rh?ne Glacier, which feeds the river, is likely to fare even worse, effectively disappearing entirely by then, according to an ETH study.call_made  

Biomass pellet cooking in Africa gathers momentum

external pageA recent joint study on the cost of electrifying all households in 40 Sub-Saharan African countries, conducted by ETH Z¨¹rich, Princeton University, MIT, and Rwandan researchers, estimated that the total investment costs for electricity supply compatible for cooking (min 800W and 3.4 kWh/day per household) would be US$408 billion (US$428 per person on average)...The average cost for a Western standard wood pellet mill producing 30,000 tonnes per annum (tpa) is around US$6 million, assuming wet raw material.call_made

Mammoth undertaking: Climeworks starts up world¡¯s largest direct air capture plant

external pageClimeworks has come a long way since it was established in the labs of ETH Zurich in 2009. There, company founders Wurzbacher and Christoph Gebald were capturing just milligrams of CO2. A kilogram-scale prototype followed in 2012. By 2014 the company¡¯s first modular CO2 collector began capturing tonnes of CO2. The first commercial facility ¨C Capricorn ¨C opened in Switzerland in 2017 capturing hundreds of tonnes. The technology was then stepped up to the thousands of tonnes scale in 2021 when the Orca plant started operation in Iceland. Just a year later, Climeworks broke ground on Mammoth.call_made  

Analysis-Ukraine peace summit pushes neutral Swiss toward Western embrace

external pageA study published in March by the Center for Security Studies at the ETH Zurich showed 91% of Swiss felt the country should stay neutral, though 26% also backed taking "a clear stand" in favour of one side in foreign military conflicts, up 8 percentage points from 2021.call_made

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Study shows that astrocytes integrate information about past events in their soma

external pageResearchers at University of Zurich and ETH Zurich recently gathered evidence suggesting that this widespread description of astrocytes might be false or at least incomplete, as they do in fact integrate information about past events.call_made

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external pageMedical Xpresscall_made

Germany and Switzerland plan to implement large scale capture and storage of CO2

external pageIn Switzerland, more and more attention is being paid to CO2 disposal technologies: Take the ETH Zurich project called DemoUpCARMA (Demonstration and upscaling of carbon dioxide management solutions for a net-zero Switzerland), funded by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy and the Federal Office for the Environment, for example. This project is testing the transport of CO2 in containers by train to Rotterdam and then by ship to Iceland, where the gas would become harmless when it comes into contact with rock (NZZ of February 16, 2024).call_made

Quantum simulators solve physics puzzles with colored dots

external pageBy analyzing images made of colored dots created by quantum simulators, ETH researchers have studied a special kind of magnetism. In the future this method could also be used to solve other physics puzzles, for instance in superconductivity. Up close it looks like lots of colored dots, but from a distance one sees a complex picture rich in detail: Using the technique of pointillism, in 1886 George Seurat created the masterpiece ¡°A Sunday afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte.¡± In a similar way, Eugene Demler and his coworkers at ETH Zurich study complex quantum systems made of many interacting particles. In their case, the dots are not created by dabbing a paintbrush, but rather by making individual atoms visible in the laboratory.call_made

Cloud Server Vulnerability Found in AMD and Intel Chips, Computer Scientists Warn

external pageComputer scientists at ETH Zurich have uncovered critical vulnerabilities in the security mechanisms of AMD and Intel chips, potentially exposing sensitive data processed in public cloud environments to exploitation by hackers. The discovery illuminates gaps in the confidential computing technologies employed by leading chip manufacturers, raising concerns about the efficacy of current security measures.call_made

ETH spinout Mimic raises $2.5m for AI-powered robotic hands

external pageThe latest robotics company to enter the fray is ETH Zurich spinout Mimic, which has just raised $2.5m for its AI-powered robotic hands which are designed to ¡®mimic¡¯ real human movements...One of Mimic¡¯s strengths is that it is part of a supportive ecosystem in Zurich, largely shaped by ETH, which is the most successful university in Europe in terms of spinning out companies. The university, which has its own centre for robotics, currently has 26 companies working on robotics, though only a few are working on aspects of humanoid technology, according to its data.call_made

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external pageForbescall_made

external pageAI Insidercall_made

external pageTech EUcall_made

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external pageIOT World Todaycall_made

Using a hopping robot for asteroid exploration

external pageOne day the SpaceHopper (ETH Zurich) will be deployed on space missions to explore relatively small celestial bodies such as asteroids and moons. These are thought to contain valuable mineral resources that could be of use to humankind in the future. The exploration of these bodies could also give us insights into our universe's formation.call_made

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external pagePHYS.orgcall_made

external pageThe Robot Reportcall_made

Police Clear Protest From Swiss University as Gaza Demonstrations Spread

external page"ETH Zurich sees itself as a place where different opinions and perspectives can and should be expressed openly. However, unauthorised actions are not accepted at ETH Zurich," ETH university said, adding that protesters had been repeatedly asked to leave the building before police arrived.call_made

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external pageReuterscall_made

external pageAhram onlinecall_made (Egyptian news)

external pageAnadolu Agencycall_made (Turkish state media)

external pageDaily Mailcall_made (UK)

external pageRadio France Internationalecall_made

external pageThe Candian Newscall_made

external pageThe Straits Timescall_made (Singapore)

external pageThe Times Israelcall_made

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Smartphone app can unmask forged documents

external pageResearchers at ETH Zurich have developed a smartphone app that can be used to check the authenticity of documents and other items. Extracts from the debt enforcement register of the City of Zurich are being made forgery-proof as part of a pilot project.call_made

Researcher explains why we should care more about converging technologies

external pageProfessor Dirk Helbing of ETH Zurich and Austria's Complexity Science Hub expects future digital technologies to penetrate the human body even more in the future. However, he believes that society is not prepared for the risks involved. In a new article, he puts forward a new legal framework to protect our most intimate data from misuse.call_made

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external pageThe Techstreet Nowcall_made

Future research on bladder cancer should focus on mechanical changes in tissue, suggest study

external pageIn collaboration with University Hospital Basel, researchers from ETH Zurich are investigating the early stages of bladder cancer. Their findings show that future research should also focus on mechanical changes in tumor tissue.call_made

Women in Stem with Stefanie Fl¨¹ckiger-Mangual

external pageStefanie Fl¨¹ckiger-Mangual, Chief Executive Officer, is one of TOLREMO¡¯s scientific founders and an expert in drug resistance in cancer therapy. She is a biomedical scientist and biochemist by training (University of Fribourg and ETH Zurich, Switzerland) and holds a PhD in Molecular and Translational Biomedicine from ETH Zurich. She led the team of scientists who discovered novel molecular mechanisms that can be exploited to prevent the development of non-genetic resistance to cancer therapies.call_made  

New device draws blood samples like a leech

external page¡°For this earlier project, we had already studied leeches, which attach to their host with a sucker. We realized that we could develop a similar system to collect blood,¡± says David Klein, a doctoral student in the group led by Jean-Christophe Leroux, professor of drug formulation and delivery at ETH Zurich.call_made

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external pageNew Atlascall_made

external pageInteresting Engineeringcall_made

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external pageTechnology Networkscall_made

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external pageDesign and Development Todaycall_made

external pageHealth Medicine Networkcall_made

ETH Zurich spin-offs develop high performance batteries

The electrification of many areas of life is leading to an increased demand for high-?performance batteries. Two ETH spin-?offs are making waves in this field: while BTRY develops high-?performance solid-?state batteries, 8inks is working on a new standard for production.

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external pageInteresting Engineeringcall_made

How plants actively shaped Earth's climate cycle throughout history

external pageJulian Rogger, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics at ETH Zurich, is fascinated by the interplay of plant life and climate...Earth is the only known planet in the universe capable of supporting living organisms, thanks to its climatic conditions that allow for the presence of liquid water. Rogger explains, ¡°We¡¯re trying to understand processes relevant to the present using the geological past.¡±call_made

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external pageFuturitycall_made

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Northern Italy's 'problem bears' show the challenges of rewilding carnivores

external pagePaula Mayer, a research assistant at ETH Zurich University, specialises in human-bear conflict. She explains that attitudes towards large carnivores can often differ from one postcode to the next. ¡°In mountain regions in Italy, there can be a marked difference in community attitudes towards bears between those places where organisations have been in and spoken to the locals, and the places where they haven¡¯t,¡± she says. ¡°It¡¯s pretty remarkable.¡±call_made  

Meteorites in Antarctica Are Getting Harder to Find because of Climate Change

external pageAs climate change warms the poles, precious Antarctic meteorites will melt their way down out of scientists¡¯ reach...¡°Typically, once [a meteorite] is brought to the surface, it needs to kind of fight to stay at the surface,¡± says study co-author Harry Zekollari, a glaciologist at Vrije University of Brussels (VLB) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich). ¡°What we see is that there¡¯s kind of a magical threshold somewhere around minus 10 degrees Celsius [14 degrees Fahrenheit].¡± When temperatures are colder than that, the ice survives; any warmer and meteorites begin to disappear¡ªeven today. ¡°Every year we find about 1,000 meteorites, but we lose five times as many,¡± Zekollari says.call_made

European summers will be hotter than predicted because of cleaner air

external page¡°If models don¡¯t take air pollution changes into account, they will underestimate the intensity of future heatwaves even more than they underestimate mean summer warming,¡± says Dominik Schumacher at ETH Z¨¹rich in Switzerland. ¡°It¡¯s problematic because a lot of European countries strongly rely on these simulations to plan for the future.¡±call_made

Study finds mechanical changes in tumour tissue offer new insights for cancer research

external pageResearchers from ETH Zurich and University Hospital Basel have revealed new insights for cancer research when focusing on mechanical changes in tumour tissue after investigating the early stages of bladder cancer.call_made

ANYmal can do parkour and walk across rubble

external pageThe quadrupedal robot ANYmal went back to school and has learned a lot. ETH Zurich researchers used machine learning to teach it new skills: the robot can now climb over obstacles and successfully negotiate pitfalls.call_made

The Ecosystem: inside ETH Zurich¡¯s spin-off factory

external pageAfter a record-breaking year for company formation in 2023, the university is launching new initiatives to maintain this momentum...By the standards of most universities, ETH Zurich produces a lot of spin-off companies. In the past decade the total has ranged from 22 to 34 new ventures each year, with a record-breaking 43 new spin-offs created in 2023...As for how the university does this, Frank Floessel, head of ETH Entrepreneurship, gives the credit to its researchers. ¡°We cannot influence the number of spin-offs that come out of ETH that much,¡± he said. ¡°It¡¯s very much a grassroots movement. It comes from the PhDs, master¡¯s students and professors who think that one of their technologies might be right for the market.¡±call_made

Quantum biology's new frontier: Tryptophan networks and brain disease defense

external page"These new results will be of interest to the large community of researchers in open quantum systems and quantum computation, because the theoretical methods used in this study are widely employed in those fields to understand complex quantum networks in noisy environments," said Professor Nicol¨° Defenu of the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich in Switzerland, a quantum researcher who was not associated with the work. "It's really intriguing to see a vital connection between quantum computing and living systems.call_made

Work expected to begin on natural disaster mitigation plans for Seychelles

external pageWork is expected to begin this week on the natural disaster mitigation plans for Seychelles around the main island of Mahe following recommendations from experts from Switzerland on how to prevent rockslides, landslides and other such disasters...A group of experts from several companies in Switzerland, including the Gasse Felstechnik, PNP Geologie & Geotechnik and the ETH Zurich University, made the recommendations after a series of site visits were conducted earlier this week. The group looked at the damages in several areas and is working on ways to ensure it does not happen in the future.call_made

Autonomous Excavator Builds Stone Retaining Wall

external pageResearchers at RTH Zurich have trained a modified excavator to build a 215-foot-long stone retaining wall in Switzerland...The 12-ton Menzi Muck M545, known as HEAP, or "hydraulic excavator for an autonomous purpose," was equipped with satellite navigation, inertial measurement, joint angle sensors and multiple cabin- and arm-mounted LiDAR sensors and cameras to map the site and scan the building materials.call_made  

An affordable miniature car-like robot to test control and estimation algorithms

external pageA team of researchers at ETH Zurich's Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control recently introduced a new miniature car-like robot and an associated software kit that could simplify the testing of some algorithms for robotics applications.call_made  

Global warming threatens Antarctica¡¯s meteorites

external page¡°We need to accelerate and intensify efforts to recover Antarctic meteorites,¡± Harry Zekollari, a glaciologist who led the research while working at ETH Zurich¡¯s department of civil, environmental and geomatic engineering, said in a news release. ¡°The loss of Antarctic meteorites is much like the loss of data that scientists glean from ice cores collected from vanishing glaciers ¡ª once they disappear, so do some of the secrets of the universe.¡±call_made

Large Hadron Collider experiment zeroes in on magnetic monopoles

external pageThese trapping volumes¡ªwhich make MoEDAL the only collider experiment in the world that can definitively and directly identify the magnetic charge of magnetic monopoles¡ªare scanned at ETH Zurich using a special type of magnetometer called a SQUID to look for any trapped monopoles they may contain.call_made

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external pageTech and Science Postcall_made

New EU nature law will fail without farmers, scientists warn

external pageThe letter, signed by researchers from the University of Oxford, ETH Zurich and Wageningen University, reads: ¡°At no point in history has there been more pressure on farmers. They are responsible for feeding an ever-growing population. And now we want them to save us all from the global climate and biodiversity crises, at the same time as market forces keep making the financial situation harder.call_made

First reported in...

external pageThe Guardiancall_made

external pageAol.call_made

98 Amazon Research Awards recipients announced

external pageProf. Florian Tram¨¨r named among the Amazon Science Awardees, from 51 universities in 15 countries, who have access to Amazon public datasets, along with AWS AI/ML services and tools.call_made