science wire

What's the best way to translate research findings into clinical practice? A discussion with Monika Jänicke, CEO of the University Hospital Zurich, Rahel Kubik, head of radiology at Kantonsspital Baden, and Christian Wolfrum, VP for Research at ETH Zurich.

From the giant blue whale to minuscule microbes, all creatures on this earth continuously shed traces of their DNA. These clues help researchers to determine the degree of biological diversity. ETH doctoral candidate Anish Kirtane stands in the middle of the River Limmat near the Werdinsel island, below the city of Zurich, wearing a large pair of rubber boots.

On the road to recovery, patients come into contact with clinicians from a whole range of disciplines.

Sascha Quanz searches for traces of life on extrasolar planets orbiting alien stars. The astrophysicist believes that gaining an understanding of life and its origin on Earth is an important stepping stone. Our Earth was formed around 4.5 billion years ago, and fossil evidence of life can be found in rocks that are over 3.5 billion years old.

A doctoral researcher studying architecture at ETH Zurich is using 3D printing to produce lightweight insulation building components from cement-free mineral foams derived from recycled industrial waste. These could cut heating and cooling costs for buildings, and encourage more efficient use of construction materials.

What happens when cities gear their road space primarily to the needs of cyclists and e-bikers? On a new popular-science website, researchers use examples from the city of Zurich to show what such an "E-Bike City" could one day look like. What would the streets look like if a city took half its traffic space and gave it to cycling and e-biking?

Warfare is increasingly spreading to the realm of cyberspace. In response, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) wants to protect its digital infrastructure and that of humanitarian organisations with a digital emblem.

As society increasingly expects the responsible use of digital technologies, firms with better practices will have a distinct advantage, says .

How productive are we when we work from home? It's an increasingly common question. But Gudela Grote believes it's the wrong question, because it says more about our conceptions of human nature than about effective ways of working. 2020 proved that being flexible about where we work (and the hours we work) can benefit employees and employers.

The Alps are being increasingly affected by floods and droughts. According to Manuela Brunner, we can do something about this problem: use water more sparingly and think about hazard protection in broader terms.

ETH Zurich is present at the Olma trade fair in St Gallen. Using spin-offs and games, the ETH booth illustrates how research can contribute to making Swiss food and agriculture sustainable.

Students from ETH Zurich and Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts have broken the previous world record for acceleration with their hand-built electric racing car, mythen.

With the return of the original telescope from 1864, the year the observatory was founded, ETH is taking a further step towards collecting, documenting and preserving its architectural and scientific heritage.

Every year at ETH Zurich, hundreds of students learn the fundamentals of mathematics through lectures and exercises.

The risk of fatal heat waves has already risen sharply over the past twenty years. In the future, such extremes will become more frequent and heat-related excess mortality will increase. Europe is particularly affected by this, as researchers show . Heat waves like the one we are currently experiencing are particularly deadly for the elderly, the sick and the poor.

Work psychologist Petra Schmid studies the effects of social power. She favours an interdisciplinary approach that includes both lab experiments and surveys.

ETH students are mapping the groundwater in an area of forest near Bern. This fieldwork will give them the skills they need for a career in environmental engineering.

ETH spin-off Gaia Tech transforms waste from olive oil production into high-quality antioxidants for use in cosmetics or food.

The media uproar over wolf attacks on livestock in Switzerland and a bear attack in Italy show how charged the issue of large carnivores and humans coexisting in Europe is.

An ETH Zurich architectural centrepiece - the machine laboratory- has been renovated. The historically significant machine hall has been extensively restored to its original condition.

ETH Zurich molecular biologist Mandy Boontanrart is researching gene therapies that could be used to cure two of the most common types of inherited anaemia. She has now developed a promising approach for so-called beta-hemoglobinopathies. Many hereditary diseases have largely been considered to be incurable.

calls for more ambitious standards in the voluntary carbon offset market. While this would lead to fewer projects getting funded, the benefit for the climate would be greater overall.

Large language models such as GPT-3 are able to learn new concepts by interacting with their users. Researchers at ETH and Google may now have uncovered a key mechanism behind this capability. Despite their huge success, the inner workings of large language models such as OpenAI's GPT model family and Google Bard remain a mystery, even to their developers.

ETH Zurich and Roche are joining forces in Basel to advance the development of new methods that facilitate the search for medicines. Together, they will train specialists for the biomedical challenges of our time. ETH Zurich and Roche are to collaborate more closely in two new research and training programmes.

Mathematician Siddhartha Mishra has been awarded this year's Rössler Prize for his research on solutions for highly complex flow and wave phenomena.

Using applied mathematics, Yunan Yang finds solutions to the inverse problems that arise in seismology, weather forecasts, and machine learning.

Optical data communications lasers can transmit several tens of terabits per second, despite a huge amount of disruptive air turbulence. scientists and their European partners demonstrated this capacity with lasers between the mountain peak, Jungfraujoch, and the city of Bern in Switzerland. This will soon eliminate the necessity of expensive deep-sea cables.

Innovative production technologies are crucial to the chemical industry's net-zero endeavour - but they're not always enough, says Paolo Gabrielli. Chemical products, such as plastics, fertilisers and solvents pervade our modern lifestyle. The vast majority are derived from crude oil or natural gas - and producing them generates around 5 percent of global CO2 emissions.

Our visual perception depends more strongly on the utility of information than previously thought. This has been demonstrated in a series of experiments conducted by researchers at ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich. Cognitive biases can begin at the retina. (Photograph: Colourbox) Are our senses there to provide us with the most complete representation of the world, or do they serve our survival? For a long time, the former was the dominant view in neuroscience.