Research

The risk of fatal heatwaves has risen sharply over the past 20 years. In the future, such extreme weather will become more frequent and heat-related excess mortality will increase. Europe will be particularly affected, as ETH Zurich researchers show.

With its ability to write text and generate images, artificial intelligence is making inroads into many areas of life. Perceived as threatening, enriching or just plain gimmicky, AI also raises a fundamental question: what is it that makes us human?

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

EPFL researchers make theoretical breakthrough in thermoelectric material to better harness waste heat for sustainable energy.

The safety of insecticides is predominantly evaluated based on lethal effects on other animals. However, new findings from Eawag support the notion that also lower concentrations can be problematic, because they affect the nervous systems of fish and cause changes in their behaviour. This can indirectly affect the survival of fish populations and may be one of the reasons for the fish decline that we are observing in Switzerland.

"We will rock you": ETH Zurich researchers are developing a gene switch that triggers insulin release in designer cells by playing certain rock and pop songs.

For the first time, researchers combined human and ecological factors to analyse the global scale of non-native tree species invasions. Human activity in hotspots of global trade, such as maritime ports, is linked to an increased likelihood of non-native tree species invasions. However, a high diversity of native tree species can help to curb the intensity of such invasions.

Green spaces or trees can mitigate urban heat, but it takes time for the cooling effects to develop. Modelling using satellite data can show how much time is needed.

Empa researchers have developed an epoxy resin that can be repaired and recycled, in addition to being flame-retardant and mechanically strong. Potential applications range from coating for wooden flooring to composites in aerospace and railways.

The ability to utilize a mere single alternative food source is all it takes for diarrhoea causing Salmonella bacteria to bloom when a gut is already colonized by a closely related strain, according to researchers from ETH Zurich. This coexistence enables the exchange of antibiotic resistance.

Using high precision microfabrication and microfluidics, Clémentine Lipp has developed a tool with the potential to automate T cell screening and sorting—an essential task in immunology. 

A new method allows large quantities of muscle stem cells to be safely obtained in cell culture. This provides a potential for treating patients with muscle diseases – and for those who would like to eat meat, but don’t want to kill animals.

The number of microbes that acquire antibiotic resistance depends on the time at which the antibiotic is added. This is a conclusion reached by a research group at Eawag on the basis of experiments with genetically modified bacteria that glow in different colours when they exchange genetic information with each other.

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. ETH Zurich researcher Paula Mayer has now created a participatory model to help facilitate human-bear coexistence using the example of the Apennine brown bear.

In the scientific journal Nature, a team including a member of Eawag published a study on the development of biodiversity in European inland waters, based on invertebrates.