news 2017

Cornelius Senn, a measurement engineer in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering (D-BAUG), and his post-doctoral colleague Silvan Leinss have developed a new reflector for radar measurements.

Nearly 80% of the battery power in smartwatches is used up by the heart-rate monitor. But a new generation of sensors developed by EPFL startup ActLight consumes five times less energy.

The agent Atglistatin can reduce the level of fatty acid in the blood. Funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency, researchers at the University of Graz and TU Graz want to further develop the agent into a medicine to treat metabolic disorders. Worldwide, some 1.9 billion persons are overweight.

Asphalt does not last forever. At some point, it ages and starts to crumble. This has to do with the bitumen, the sticky binding agent, which holds and keeps the rock content in the asphalt. Bitumen is a petroleum product consisting of several organic components, which undergo a chemical change over time.

Two-dimensional materials, or 2D materials for short, are extremely versatile, although - or often more precisely because - they are made up of just one or a few layers of atoms. Graphene is the best-known 2D material. Molybdenum disulphide (a layer consisting of molybdenum and sulphur atoms that is three-atoms thick) also falls in this category, although, unlike graphene, it has semiconductor properties.

Diamonds with minute flaws could play a crucial role in the future of quantum technology. For some time now, researchers at TU Wien have been studying the quantum properties of such diamonds, but only now have they succeeded in coupling the specific defects in two such diamonds with one another. This is an important prerequisite for the development of new applications, such as highly sensitive sensors and switches for quantum computers.

Researchers at ETH Zurich's Department of Architecture (D-ARCH) have developed a concrete floor system that does not require steel reinforcement and is 70 percent lighter than conventional concrete floors.

The St. Gallen-based Empa biotech spin-off, MycoSolutions AG, has developed a new fungal product that improves the soil and controls pest fungi in an environmentally friendly way. Wooden poles remain in use much longer, leading to cost savings of millions for operators. A "Proof-of-Concept" is now available for the integrated wood preservation method.

EPFL researchers can now measure a slalom skier's exact time at each gate all the way down the slope. Their system also calculates the skiers' speed and trajectory more accurately than GPS. Whether they're racing the slalom or giant slalom, skiers all face the same imperative: to round the gates as fast as possible.