Research

An unexpected discovery about temperature feedback has led to new bionic technology that allows amputees to sense the temperature of objects ­– both hot and cold – directly in the phantom hand. The technology opens up new avenues for non-invasive prosthetics.

If European countries collaborate, they can avoid severe energy scarcity due to a gas shortage. This is the finding of a new study by ETH Zurich researchers.

Yesterday, Swiss President Alain Berset toured the Carbfix plant in Iceland and visited the facilities where the pilot project "DemoUpCARMA" is implemented. The project aims at injecting and storing CO₂ in the Icelandic underground. Marco Mazzotti, project coordinator and ETH Zurich professor, explains why Swiss CO₂ is being shipped all the way to Iceland.

Container-based sanitation has the potential to generate carbon credits through avoided greenhouse gas emissions. Eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, worked on developing a draft methodology to quantify these emission savings.

A strong quake in the last year of the NASA Mars InSight mission, enabled researchers at ETH Zurich to determine the global thickness and density of the planet's crust. On average, the Martian crust much thicker than the Earth’s or the Moon’s crust and the planet’s main source of heat is radioactive.

The economy is supposed to become more sustainable and more resource-efficient. This will also increase the demands on forests - for example as a carbon storage or energy wood supplier. For this reason, four researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL have examined the possible future for forestry in the National Research Programme "Sustainable Economy" (NRP 73), which was concluded today.

Bad news for Swiss agriculture: several species of insect pests will benefit from a warmer climate. This is one of the findings of geographer Léonard Schneider, a doctoral student at the joint chair of applied climatology at the University of Neuchâtel and the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL.  His doctorate aims to model the impact of global warming in Switzerland on pests. He publicly defended his thesis on 12 May.

Switzerland is monitoring its biological diversity as part of a global effort to understand its changes and prevent further biodiversity loss. Researchers from ETH Zurich are working on a pioneering pilot study that includes the analysis of genetic diversity of native species.

Scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL have discovered microbes that degrade plastic at cool temperatures. This opens up new perspectives for recycling certain types of plastic. Most known microbes require at least 30°C for their decomposition work.

Eawag researcher Johannes Raths has won a prize for his study of increased pollutant absorption with rising water temperatures.

Scientists at EPFL have developed PeSTo, an AI model for predicting protein binding interfaces with proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, ions, and small molecules with high confidence. The model's low computational cost enables the processing large amounts of structural data, opening up opportunities for discovering new biology.

ETH Zurich researchers have succeeding in demonstrating that quantum mechanical objects that are far apart can be much more strongly correlated with each other than is possible in conventional systems. For this experiment, they used superconducting circuits for the first time.

EPFL engineers have found a way to control the interactions between excitons – quasiparticles that may one day transport data and replace the electrons in electronic devices. The engineers’ method involves applying an electric field to a two-dimensional (2D) semiconducting material.

During the course of Alzheimer's disease, protein fibrils appear in the spinal fluid of affected individuals. Empa researchers, together with the Department of Neurology at the Cantonal Hospital in St. Gallen, have now visualized the wide spectrum of protein aggregates from oligomers, protofibrils to fibrils in the spinal fluid. The conclusion: Ultra-long protein fibrils are a signature of severe Alzheimer’s disease. The study, recently published in Communications Biology, sheds light into the delicate role of protein aggregation in the development of Alzheimer's disease and is expected to improve early detection of dementia.

When glaciers retreat, the habitats for cold-water organisms also change. Researchers have now modelled where refuges that are vital for biodiversity in glacial rivers will remain in the future.