Research

Which trees should European foresters plant in order to prepare their forests to climate change? A researcher supported by the European Commission and hosted by the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL is distributing a special mix of beech and silver fir seeds to foresters across Europe to test the trees’ survival and growth in their forests.

Plastics are everywhere in our environment, even inside living organisms. This article looks at the impact of this major pollution risk and accompanies our report on the SEA Plastics expedition, which is currently crisscrossing the Mediterranean to raise awareness of the issue. 

An innovative new collaboration between EPFL’s HexHive Laboratory and Oracle has developed automated, far-reaching technology in the ongoing battle between IT security managers and attackers, hoping to find bugs before the hackers do.

Does nuclear power have a future? Are electric cars dirty? In a four-part series, the ETH Podcast takes a detailed look at popular theories about the future of energy.

Using a new method, scientists are better able to distinguish between mirror-image substances. This is important amongst others in drug development, because the two variants can cause completely different effects in the human body. Researchers from Paul Scherrer Institute PSI, EPF Lausanne (EPFL), and the University of Geneva describe the new method in the scientific journal Nature Photonics.

Scientists at EPFL have found a way to synthesize large numbers of macrocyclic compounds, which are needed for developing drugs against difficult disease targets.

ETH Zurich researchers have discovered a serious security vulnerability in computer hardware. The vulnerability, called "Retbleed," affects microprocessors from market leaders Intel and AMD. All commercially available operating systems worldwide that use these processors are affected. When computers execute special calculation steps to compute faster, they leave traces that hackers could abuse.

On 11 July, NASA published the first image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. ETH Zurich Astrophysicist, Adrian Glauser was also involved in the construction of one of the telescope's measuring instruments. In an interview, he explains what he thought and felt when he saw the image.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have redetermined the gravitational constant G using a new measurement technique. Although there is still a large degree of uncertainty regarding this value, the new method offers great potential for testing one of the most fundamental laws of nature.

The cement industry emits large amounts of climate-damaging carbon dioxide – but alternative binders based on magnesium carbonate could even bind CO₂. Concrete as a carbon sink? A research project at Empa is to explore the basics of this and prepare the stage for practical applications.

An international research team led by ETH Zurich proposes a new theory for the Earth’s formation. It may also show how other rocky planets were formed. (Image: ETH Zurich)

ETH researchers found that in mice, long-lived embryonic macrophages in the lungs die upon aging and during infection and are replaced by inflammatory bone marrow-derived macrophages. This causes severe disease progression when infected with viral flu.

On 15 September, after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, an Eawag Info Day will be held once again, dedicated to new technologies for monitoring surface waters. Physicist Damien Bouffard, Head of the Aquatic Physics Group at Eawag, was involved in its conception and explains in an interview what new opportunities and challenges these technologies bring.

Researchers from ETH Zurich have established that the destruction of ozone over the Arctic in the spring causes abnormal weather throughout the northern hemisphere, with many places being warmer and drier than average – or too wet.

The latest CRISPR-based genome editing systems function more like molecular taxis rather than a pair of molecular scissors. This makes them much safer for patients who will soon benefit from gene therapies, as Eric Aird explains.