news 2020

Every year, earthquakes shake the ground and volcanoes erupt around the edges of tectonic plates-the massive pieces of Earth's crust that slide slowly across the planet, creating and destroying mountains and oceans on the scale of eons. But the question of when this plate subduction actually began has been a hotly contested debate in earth sciences.

This year, Ghent University has no less than 25 researchers with Highly Cited status. This is another fine recognition of the quality of its publications and their scientific impact.

Scientists are using artificial intelligence (AI) to research past and present smells of Europe to identify and trace their link to language, places, cultural practices and emotions. The international research project, Odeuropa, has received €2.8m (£2.5m) of funding from the EU Horizon 2020 programme.

By Christoph Pelzl A project jointly initiated by the Austrian Society for Construction Technology (ÖBV), TU Graz and OTH Regensburg provides a more systematic understanding of shotcrete applications and forms the basis for new, even more durable concrete mixes and thus for more durable tunnels. The service life of tunnels today is designed to last at least for one hundred years - in the case of the Brenner basis tunnel it is even 200 years.

By Birgit Baustädter She investigates black-box-systems, while he predicts the state of networked systems. Andrea Pferscher and Markus Tranninger are two of 11 young researchers in the TU Graz project "Dependable Things". Eleven young researchers are working as doctoral students or post-docs in the TU Graz lead project "Dependable Internet of Things in Adverse Environments" - "Dependable Things" for short.

The use of touch screens is often difficult, especially for older people, since the information is captured primarily with the eye, but not with the sense of touch. Researchers at the Institute for Engineering Design and Industrial Design (IKTD) at the University of Stuttgart are now developing a technology that can be used to "feel" the information on the touch user interface by means of electrostatic fields.