Research

The next scientific mission to safeguard the heritage of the Valais Alps has started. After the challenges posed by increased melting on Grand Combin last year, the Italian-Swiss team of the international project Ice Memory now sets out again to save the valuable glacial archive in the Alps. If the team is successful, one of the ice cores will be taken to Antarctica for future generations of scientists.

Digital twins enable customized medical therapies. Empa researchers have now modeled several hundred such avatars based on real people and treated them experimentally. For the first time, the digital twins received feedback from real patients.

The Zambezi River Basin in southern Africa is a high-quality waterscape. But current rapid development threatens the waters of the Zambezi, particularly its tributaries. The challenge will be to ensure that mitigation measures keep up with population and economic growth to avoid degradation of water quality degradation.

EPFL researchers have developed a device that can continuously measure the blood concentration of propofol – one of the main compounds used in anesthetics – in patients as they’re being operated on. That will help anesthesiologists deliver more personalized doses.

How is matter distributed within our universe? And what is the mysterious substance known as dark energy made of? HIRAX, a new large telescope array comprising hundreds of small radio telescopes, should provide some answers. Among those instrumental in developing the system are physicists from ETH Zurich.

Scientists at EPFL and the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF have issued recommendations for what type of renewable energy should be produced in Switzerland’s various regions, to help achieve the country’s goals of carbon neutrality and energy self-sufficiency.

Researchers from ETH Zurich and University of Zurich have developed a new microscopy technique that lights up the brain with high resolution imagery. This allows neuroscientists to study brain functions and ailments more closely and non-invasively.  

In accelerators, strong magnets keep elementary particles on course and supply experiment stations with the beams needed to look deep inside materials. With the knowledge gained in this way, PSI researchers develop new applications for technology and medicine.

Sociologists at EPFL conducted a survey of the factors that prompt people to select one form of transportation over another, and then compared the results from cities across Switzerland.

ETH Zurich is launching a new Centre for Augmented Computational Design in Architecture, Engineering and Construction, known as Design++. 22 professorships from multiple departments are joining forces to develop digitally augmented design tools with a view to improving the efficiency and sustainability of construction.

An international team led by Empa and ETH Zurich researchers is playing with shape-engineered nanoscale building blocks that are up to 100-times larger than atoms and ions. And although these nano "Lego bricks" interact with each other with forces vastly different and much weaker than those holding atoms and ions together, they form crystals all by themselves, the structures of which resemble the ones of natural minerals. These new mega-crystals or superlattices that are depicted on the cover of the latest issue of "Nature" exhibit unique properties such as superfluorescence – and may well usher in a new era in materials science.

The shift from fossil to renewable energy sources is essential for climate mitigation but will also significantly reduce the atmospheric input of the nutrients sulphur and selenium into soils. Sustainable solutions are therefore needed to supply intensively used agricultural soils with sufficient nutrients and to ensure a safe and healthy diet for the world's population.  

EPFL scientists have discovered that an engineered interleukin-10-Fc fusion protein can boost the effectiveness of exhausted T lymphocytes – our body’s immune cells for fighting cancer, by reprograming their metabolism. 

When researchers at ETH Zurich compared the reference genomes between several breeds of domestic cattle and closely related wild cattle, they discovered genes with previously unknown functions.

Researchers from ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich deciphered the cellular mechanisms through which tendons can adapt to mechanical stresses. People who carry a certain variant of a gene that is key to this mechanism show improved jumping performance.