Environment

The images leave no one cold: giant vortices of floating plastic trash in the world's oceans with sometimes devastating consequences for their inhabitants – the sobering legacy of our modern lifestyle. Weathering and degradation processes produce countless tiny particles that can now be detected in virtually all ecosystems. But how dangerous are the smallest of them, so-called nanoplastics? Are they a ticking time bomb, as alarming media reports suggest? In the latest issue of the journal Nature Nanotechnology, a team from Empa and ETH Zurich examines the state of current knowledge – or lack thereof – and points out how these important questions should be addressed.

GenoRobotics is an interdisciplinary EPFL project to develop a portable, automated device for extracting and sequencing DNA in any type of environment. The project team hopes their invention will make it easier and faster to map our planet’s biodiversity.

EPFL scientists have found that streams and rivers – or “running waters” – emit on average four times more CO₂ at night than during the day. That matters because most estimates of global CO₂ emissions are made using measurements taken during the day, thereby introducing a potential bias into the calculation of the global carbon cycle.

EPFL scientists have been busy over the past two years collecting and analyzing samples from streams fed by the world’s biggest glaciers. We spoke with some of the researchers on the project about their globe-trotting adventure. Find out more about it on our brand new longreads website.

Tarpaulins can be used to protect parts of glaciers from sunlight. In ski resorts, the resulting reduction in ice melt may make the measure economical at a local level. However, for financial reasons, it is not really feasible to cover large glaciers, as a study by glacier researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), ETH Zurich and the University of Fribourg has demonstrated.