In the Media - June 2024

European Deep Tech Companies Partner To Produce E-Fuel From Forest Waste

external pageETH Spinoff, Synhelion, a global pioneer in the field of sustainable solar fuels, has developed a technology to produce next-generation synthetic fuels. At the core of the solution is a proprietary process that converts solar heat into syngas. This syngas is then fed into Ineratec¡¯s modular synthesis plant and converted into liquid fuels via the Fischer-Tropsch process. By combining these technologies, Synhelion and Ineratec says they can produce clean solar fuels that offer an economically viable, efficient, and scalable substitute for fossil fuels that is fully compatible with existing global fuel infrastructure.call_made 

Crowdsourcing eDNA for biodiversity monitoring: Interview with Kristy Deiner

external pageWhat do lakes tell us about life on the land surrounding it? When environmental DNA scientist Kristy Deiner and her team started thinking about this question, the answer seemed evident: probably a lot. Rivers flow through landscapes and end up in lakes or the oceans. Along the way, they collect and carry with them traces of the DNA, or environmental DNA (eDNA), of the biodiversity that lives in the catchment...¡°It became clear that lakes are eDNA hotspots, and that we could go and get this large-scale information and understand more about biodiversity on Earth,¡± Deiner, assistant professor at the department of environmental systems science at ETH Zurich, told Mongabay in a video interview. The big question, she said, was, ¡°Does the DNA that we expect on the landscape actually get into the lake?¡±call_made

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Robot Talk Episode 89 ¨C Simone Schuerle

external pageSimone Schuerle is Assistant Professor at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, where she heads the Responsive Biomedical System Lab. With her team, she develops diagnostic and therapeutic systems at the nano- and microscale with the aim of tackling a range of challenging problems in medicine. One major focus of her current research is addressing limitations in drug delivery through scalable magnetically enhanced drug transport. In 2014, she co-founded the spin-off MagnebotiX that offers electromagnetic control systems for wireless micromanipulation.call_made

5 Highlights From Art Basel 2024

external page¡°Intoxicating Objects: Fetishism in Art¡± at the Graphische Sammlung inside ETH Z¨¹rich (through July 7) likewise addresses desire, specifically obsession with objects, as seen through its extensive collection of works on paper from the Middle Ages up to today.call_made

Engineering Excellence: PCIM 2024 Honors Top Research

external pageThe Young Researcher Award recognizes an author 30 years old or younger affiliated with a science and research institution. This year¡¯s winner is: Andreas Horat, ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Highly-Compact Bearingless Axial-Flux Motor for a Pediatric Implantable Fontan Blood Pump...ETH Zurich, the University of Innsbruck, and the Medical University of Vienna are collaborating to develop a pediatric implantable rotary blood pump (RBP).call_made

Reinforcement Learning Enhances Urban Maneuverability for Wheeled Robots

external pageResearchers from ETH Zurich have unveiled an autonomous navigation system that significantly enhances the speed and maneuverability of wheeled robots in urban settings.The researchers developed a control system powered by reinforcement learning designed for wheeled-legged quadrupeds, enabling the robots to smoothly transition between walking and driving modes when navigating challenging terrain like stairs.call_made

Gaining a better understanding of brittle bone disease with 3D model featuring biodegradable hydrogel matrix

external pageSo far, scientists have had only a rudimentary understanding of how mutations in the collagen protein disrupt the formation of the bone matrix, as well as of how to go about treating these malformations. But now, a group of researchers at ETH Zurich¡¯s Institute for Biomechanics has taken a major step towards answering these questions...they have developed a 3D in vitro model that allows them to investigate bone formation in greater detail¡ªcurrently using healthy cells and in the future also using cells from people afflicted with osteogenesis imperfecta (OI).call_made

How Verity¡¯s Drones are Revolutionizing Inventory Management

external pageETH Spinoff, Verity has developed a unique solution for businesses to keep track of their inventory, components, and physical assets using autonomous drones. This technology eliminates the need for manual inventory checks, which are inefficient and prone to errors.call_made  

Thinning ice: Swiss Life Arena in Z¨¹rich, Switzerland by Caruso St John Architects

"The architects of the Swiss Life Arena agree that the building should mark the end of an era of concrete and steel megastructures ¨C (Adam) Caruso says he hasn¡¯t done a new building with his students at ETH Zurich for five years ¨C but frustratingly, it won¡¯t.

Geothermal model gives key insights into extracting renewable energy from superhot, super deep rock

external pageEarth scientists at ETH Zurich along with researchers in Iceland and Germany developed a computer model sheds light on the latter, describing for the first time what happens when rock at those depths and temperatures is exposed to fluids that can eventually transfer the rocks' heat to the surface.call_made

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Interview ¨C Myriam Dunn Cavelty

external page"We show that focusing too much on technology ignores three crucial aspects of cyberspace. First, like every technology, it is entirely built by humans. This means that people and their interests and ideas shape the development and design of technologies decisively. Technologies do not hold meaning on their own or act by themselves ¨C they are part of an assemblage of people, discursive processes and other material or immaterial things."call_made

Alarming Global Warming Rate: 92% of 2023¡¯s Record-Breaking Heat Levels Was Caused by Humans, Calculations Reveal

external pageSonia Seneviratne, a co-author of the study and head of ETH Zurich's land-climate dynamics, explained that the temperature rise for last year was not just a little jump. It was notably unusual during September.call_made

Synhelion partnering with Pilatus to scale its solar fuel

external pagePilatus and (ETH Spinoff) Synhelion are about to launch a strategic cooperation aimed at accelerating the scaling of solar fuels for the aviation industry. Pilatus intends to use Synhelion¡¯s solar fuels for its own operations...(and is making a) commitment to proactive defossilization of air traffic.call_made

Swiss startup Microcaps secures €9.6M to advance its microencapsulation technology

external pageETH Spinoff, Microcaps AG, an innovator in advanced microencapsulation technology, announced on Wednesday that it has secured CHF 9.3M (approximately €9.6M) in a Series A round of funding.call_made

Redox reactions ¡®mine¡¯ old fluorescent light bulbs for europium

external pageA new redox method can extract and recycle europium from real-life waste such as compact fluorescent lamps. in just three simple steps this protocol yields the lanthanide in quantities at least 50 times higher than state-of-the-art solutions used by the chemical industry. Researchers have already patented the technology and created a start-up to commercialise it....Rare Earth elements are mostly mined outside of Europe and North America and are difficult to extract, refine and recycle. ¡®The sourcing and purification of rare earth elements is expensive, labour-intensive and ecologically devastating,¡¯ says first author Marie Perrin from ETH Zurich in Switzerland.call_made

Hybrid humanoid robot dog takes on steps, streets, sidewalks independently

external pageETH Zurich¡¯s Robotic Systems Lab has recently taken its revolutionary legged-wheeled hybrid road out and about to test its mobility. Tested on the streets of Zurich and Seville, the robot could navigate a wide variety of terrains while also autonomously avoiding collisions with obstacles and pedestrians.call_made

In Highly Connected Networks, There¡¯s Always a Loop

external pageMathematicians show that graphs of a certain common type must contain a route that visits each point exactly once...Now at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, conjectured that an important class of graphs called expander graphs all contain Hamiltonian cycles.call_made

Technical Marvels...

external pageHerbert Bruderer is a retired lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zurich and a historian of technology writes about some of the earliest mathematical instrument Lebombo and Ishango bones.call_made

Shape-Shifting T Cells Signal Activity State

external pageT cells are small spherical immune cells with a standard shape and function that typically roam the circulatory system¡­ right? Maybe not. Berend Snijder, PhD, and his team at the Institute of Molecular Systems Biology in Zurich, Switzerland, are working to answer this very question...Using machine learning models to analyze images of T cells, which change shape from spherical to polarized bottle-shaped when activated, the researchers were able to group the cells into different categories based on activation level.call_made

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Study shows orexin neurons can track how fast blood glucose changes

external pageResearchers at ETH Z¨¹rich recently carried out a study investigating the potential role of a specific type of neuron, called orexin neurons, in tracking blood glucose levels. Their findings, published in Nature Neuroscience, suggest that orexin neurons in the mouse brain are responsible for tracking how fast blood glucose levels are changing.call_made

New study finds Earth warming at record rate, but no evidence of climate change accelerating

external pageLast year¡¯s temperature rise was more than just a little jump. It was especially unusual in September, said study co-author Sonia Seneviratne, head of land-climate dynamics at ETH Zurich, a Swiss university...The year was within the range of what was predicted, albeit it was at the upper edge of the range, Seneviratne said...¡°Acceleration if it were to happen would be even worse, like hitting a global tipping point, it would be probably the worst scenario,¡± Seneviratne said. ¡°But what is happening is already extremely bad and it is having major impacts already now. We are in the middle of a crisis.¡±call_made

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As well as numerous U.S. regional television and radio broadcasts.

¡®Google for DNA¡¯ indexes 10% of world¡¯s known genetic sequences

external pageIn 2020, bioinformatician Andr¨¦ Kahles, computer scientist Gunnar R?tsch, both at ETH Z¨¹rich, and their colleagues presented an early version of MetaGraph. The team used its tool, in which mathematical structures known as de Bruijn graphs represent overlaps between sequences, to index more than 1 million records from the SRA, totaling about 3 petabases. They have already employed MetaGraph in projects including identifying the microbial makeup of different cities.call_made

Switzerland takes a ¡®tech neutral¡¯ approach to AI regulations

external page"Switzerland¡¯s AI research competence and ETH Zurich have been praised across the board by figures like Yann LeCun, the ¡°godfather of AI¡± and head of AI at Meta," according to Alexander Brunner, an adviser to AI, blockchain and Web3 companies in Switzerlandcall_made.

Study resolves decades-long debate on cathodic corrosion protection

external pageCathodic corrosion protection is a widely used technique for protecting steel-based infrastructure from corrosion. ETH researchers have now clarified the detailed mechanisms involved, thereby resolving a controversial issue that had preoccupied the engineering community for decades.call_made

Synthara raises $11m to become the Arm of small chips in the age of AI

external pageThe company is developing chip designs to get portable devices up to speed with AI applications...Synthara, a small startup of 20 people spun out of ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich¡¯s Institute of Neuroinformatics in 2019,call_made

Five years after Brumadinho: New research unveils hidden risks in tailings dams

external pageFive years after the catastrophic failure of the Brumadinho tailings dam in Brazil, a team of researchers from science and technology university ETH Zurich have uncovered the physical mechanism that may have triggered the incidentcall_made

Oceans face ¡®triple threat¡¯ of extreme heat, oxygen loss and acidification

external pageThe study¡¯s lead author warned that the world¡¯s oceans were already being pushed into an extreme new state because of the climate crisis. ¡°The impacts of this have already been seen and felt,¡± said Joel Wong, a researcher at ETH Zurich, who cited the well-known example of the heat ¡°blob¡± that has caused the die-off of marine life in the Pacific Ocean. ¡°Intense extreme events like these are likely to happen again in the future and will disrupt marine ecosystems and fisheries around the world,¡± he added.call_made

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Solid State Quantum Magnetometers¡ªSeeking out water worlds from the quantum world

external pageScientists have discovered indications that liquid water might exist on a number of moons orbiting our solar system¡¯s gas and ice giants. The mantra of the astrobiology community is to ¡°Follow the Water¡± to find life, so subsurface oceans on Jupiter¡¯s Europa, Saturn¡¯s Enceladus, and other moons are compelling targets for future missions...NASA has been funding solid state quantum magnetometer sensor research through its PICASSO (Planetary Instrument Concepts for the Advancement of Solar System Observations) program since 2016. A variety of partners from industry and academia support this research, including ETH Zurich.call_made

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Data-driven model generates natural human motions for virtual avatars

external pageResearchers at Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and ETH Zurich recently developed WANDR, a new model that can generate natural human motions for avatarscall_made

Researcher discusses predicting the landslide in Brienz

external pageThe landslide in Brienz (GR) in 2023 kept Switzerland on tenterhooks for weeks. Researchers from ETH Zurich, WSL and SLF used a model to provide a highly accurate blind prediction of where the sliding mass would come to rest.call_made