March 2022
The best of ETH Zurich news from journalists around the globe.
This month's top story
external pageWhen Pigs Cry: Tool Decodes the Emotional Lives of Swine --The New York Times
The following international news content features in digital, English-language platforms. ETH Zurich also appears in numerous broadcast television shows, films, and print publications. Some publications may require a subscription to view content (noted by the symbol here), while others allow free access to a limited number of articles.
Mars more volcanically active than we thought, marsquakes hidden in NASA Insight data suggest
InSight's data is beamed twice daily back to Earth, where seismologists in the Marsquake Service manually pore over it as it comes in, searching for telltale quake signatures, external pagesays John Clinton, who leads operations at the Marsquake Service at ETH Zurich..."We learnt very early on that Mars data is exceedingly complex and noisy — far more noisy and variable than data we would record on Earth, and full of large spikes."
How UK and Swiss researchers are coping without association to Horizon Europe
The UK and Switzerland are normally stalwarts of the EU’s research and innovation frameworks. But this time around external pageboth remain un-associated to the €95.5 billion Horizon Europe programme, meaning London and Bern have had to work up contingency measures and replacement grants for their researchers to mitigate the damage.
The weird world of non-C operating systems
external pageWhen Niklaus Wirth got back home to ETH Zürich in 1977, he and his team designed and built the Lilith workstationcall_made as a cheaper replacement for the $32,000 Alto...He (also) designed the Ceres workstation, with an OS implemented in a new language, Oberon, whose text-based tiling-window interface inspired the successor to Unix, Plan 9 from Bell Labs...Later researchers at ETH built a language called Active Oberon, and using that, a newer OS with a slightly more conventional zooming GUI called “Bluebottle”. Originally the new Oberon OS was called AOS, but so are multiple other projects, so now it’s called A2.
Concrete fails. We need new ways to assess climate risk
external page“Corrosion of steel within concrete is a complex phenomenon,” says Ueli Angst, a materials durability specialist from ETH Zurich in Switzerland. “In the generally very high alkaline environment of concrete, where the pH may be higher than 13, steel is considered passive, which means it is covered by a thin layer of protective oxides and its corrosion rate is negligibly low.”
Paradigm change’ needed for forecasting corrosion damage of bridges
Also in...
Sustainability Times, 29 March 2022
external pageConcrete fails. We need new ways to assess climate risk.
Science Daily, 29 March 2022
external pageNew approach needed for forecasting corrosion within bridges, concrete structures
ScienceMag, 30 March 2022
external pageNew approach needed for forecasting corrosion within bridges, concrete structures
Costa Rica will be the First Country to use New Platform to Map Forest Protection
Costa Rica will be the first country to map its forest protection projects, with the help of a external pagenew science-based open data platform (ETH Zurich Spinoff) “Restor.”
Meet your new delivery driver - a robot that can stand on tow legs and call a lift
Also in...
MSN Lifestyle, 31 March 2022
external pageWatch: This four-legged robot on wheels can walk on two feet and drive itself
This new algorithm could help computers predict tipping points for the climate
external pageA group of scientists led by George Haller, Professor of Nonlinear Dynamics at ETH Zurich, together with researchers at the University of Bremen, have now found a new way to get computers to extract, directly from experimental data, nonlinear dynamical models that can make substantially more accurate predictions than previous algorithms.
Know Where the Crowds Are With the New CrowdMeter App
Initial research into the potential impacts of external pageCrowdMeter - an app developed to help reduce viral exposure in cities (e.g., shopping/dining) was conducted in collaboration with researchers from Harvard University, ETH Zurich, Microsoft Research and Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine.
Oink, oink: scientists decode pig emotions from their sounds
In the study published earlier this month, researchers from the University of Copenhagen, ETH Zurich and the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment recorded 7,414 sounds from 411 pigs in different scenarios. external pageThe researchers then developed an algorithm to decode whether pigs were experiencing a positive emotion, negative emotion or something in between.
Can diplomacy end the war in Ukraine?
external pageThe former state secretary of Switzerland, Michael Ambühl, may have some answers...
This Important Geophysical Robot on Mars May Die Soon
external pageIt is understandable that curious members of the public want to know why nothing was done to prevent this dust build-up in the first place, says Simon Stähler, a seismologist at ETH Zürich in Switzerland and member of the InSight science team. After all, other space missions have lasted well beyond their original timelines.
An Alpha Centauri planet? Astronomers make a leap
Astronomers at ETH Zurich have now made a leap in imagining a yet-to-be-discovered world within this nearby double star system. They used a external pagenew computer model to plug in what’s known about the two stars and extrapolated to find the characteristics of a possible world orbiting them. They’ve dubbed this hypothetical Earth-sized planet Alpha-Cen-Earth.
World Sleep Day: Diagnosing chronic respiratory diseases from within the bedroom
external pageFor World Sleep Day 2022, News-Medical speaks to Max Sieghold, Co-Founder and CFO of Sleepiz, about their technology and its ability to diagnose sleep apnea from the bedroom. Using machine-learning algorithms and low-power electromagnetic waves, Sleepiz AG has developed a revolutionary and patient-centered approach for diagnosing sleep apnea.
These are the most international universities in the world in 2022
The ranking is encouragingly diverse, with the top 10 featuring representation from five regions. external pageIn Europe, Switzerland’s ETH Zurich and EPFL take second and joint third place.
What would an alien 'Earth' look like around the star next door?
In a new study, researchers predict what an alien "Earth" could really look like, and how it could evolve (if one exists). external pageA team of scientists from ETH Zurich in Switzerland estimated what a rocky planet in the habitable zone in Alpha Centauri might really be like.
This topic was covered in more than a dozen articles and numerous television broadcasts. Here is a small selection:
Inference Sensing and In-Memory Computing Chip Startup Claims 20 TOPS/W
Reexen, a neuromorphic engineering startup based in Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Chengdu, China, and in Zurich, Switzerland...external pageReexen’s technology is based on neuromorphic computing concepts. Its founders were Ph.D. students under ETH Zurich professor Tobi Delbrück, a pioneering researcher in the field of neural perception computing and dynamic vision.
March 14 Birthday Albert Einstein
external pageIn 1897, at the age of 17, he enrolled in an associate’s degree in mathematics and physics at the Swiss Federal Polytechnical School. It was later renamed to Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich) in Zurich, graduating in 1900. In 1901 he received Swiss citizenship. which he kept for the rest of his life...
FluidFM - Where Nanofluidics and AFM Meet
Fluidic force microscopy (FluidFM) combines atomic force microscopy (AFM) with micro-channeled probes connected to a pressure controller that enables force-sensitive nanopipette experiments under aqueous conditions...external pageThe technology was initially developed in 2009 in the group of Prof. Tomaso Zambelli at ETH Zurich and later improved and commercialized by the spin-off company Cytosurge.
Scientists Create Tool to Interpret Pig Emotions
This story appeared in approximately 70 articles including 35 television broadcasts in the U.S. - small selection here:
external pageThe New York Times
New insight about how blood clots are formed during wound healing
Research carried out by RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences in collaboration with researchers at external pageETH Zurich, Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg, University of Freiburg and University Hospital Zurich has revealed new information about how blood clots are formed during wound healing.
How Robots Learn to Hike
The robot has learned to combine visual perception of its environment with proprioception – its sense of touch – based on direct leg contact using a new control technology, which researchers at external pageETH Zurich led by robotics professor Marco Hutter recently presented in the journal Science Robotics.
Kyiv’s hackers seize their wartime moment
Ukrainian cyber experts put their skills to use retaliating against Moscow. external page"What they're doing, essentially, is [violating] everything that bug bounty programs stand for. Bug bounty programs are supposed to do the opposite, and serve as conduits to help fix vulnerabilities," said Stefan Soesanto, senior researcher at the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich. "They're not supposed to give vulnerabilities to parties engaged in international armed conflict and they should never help anybody target civilian infrastructure."
Nanobots snap up pollutants with their polymer ‘hands’ to clean up water
Increasing concentrations of micropollutants in the aquatic environment is causing concern, and conventional wastewater treatment facilities struggle to remove them..external page.Commenting, Bradley Nelson, robotics engineer at ETH Zurich in Switzerland says, ‘The approach is quite clever...the big win here is that you can recycle your nanorobots and use them over and over.’ He adds that ‘one of the real challenges is going to be developing an industrial scale magnetic system for generating the magnetic fields’. Also, ‘it will be a relatively complex setup to develop at industrial scale’, says Nelson.
When Pigs Cry: Tool Decodes the Emotional Lives of Swine
An algorithm built by European researchers including external pageElodie Briefer and Edna Hillmann, affiliated with the Institute of Agricultural Sciences at ETH Zurich's Dept. of Environmental Systems Science (D-USYS) could help farmers “speak pig” to improve the animals’ welfare.
International Women's Day; In conversation with Dr. Nako Nakatsuka
Senior Scientist at ETH Zurich's Laboratory of Biosensors and Bioelectronics, external pageNako Nakatsuka says, "To break the bias that exists in our society, we need to push for initiatives that tackle the systematic causes that hinder equal opportunity rather than influencing outcomes."
Scientists Can Now Decode Pigs’ Emotions From the Sound of Their Grunts
Using thousands of acoustic recordings gathered throughout the lives of pigs, from their births to deaths, an international team of researchers is the first in the world to translate pig grunts into actual emotions across an extended number of conditions and life stages. The research is led by the University of Copenhagen, the external pageETH Zurich, and France’s National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE), and can be used to improve animal welfare in the future.
Burst of animal evolution altered chemical make-up of Earth's mantle
The Cambrian explosion 500 million years ago saw a huge variety of animals evolve – and also led to carbon being buried in the seabed and ultimately carried into the planet’s mantle. external page“We can link a major event that is happening at the Earth’s surface with a fundamental change in the deep Earth,” says Andrea Giuliani at ETH Zurich in Switzerland.
Also see...
Who is Hansjorg Wyss and what is his net worth? Swiss Billionaire interested in buying Chelsea
Hansjorg Wyss has reportedly admitted interest in purchasing Chelsea (the English professional football club), but only as part of consortium. Wyss has been labelled as external page'amongst the most philanthropic people in the world' by Forbes because of his multiple charitable foundations. He has pledged £89m to two universities in Zurich - the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich. Studying at (ETH Zurich) the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Wyss obtained a master's degree in civil and structural engineering at the age of 24 before earning an MBA from Havard in the US six years later.
Like bacteria firing spearguns
Biologists from ETH Zurich have discovered novel speargun-like molecular injection systems in two types of bacteria and have described their structures, for the first time, in two recent papers in the journal Nature Microbiology. While these phenomena of nature might seem like they are straight of a science fiction film, they are external pagenature's special nanomachines used by the microbes for the interaction between cells, and could one day be useful tools in biomedicine.
Also see...
external pageNews Medical Life Sciences
external pageTechnology Networks - Immunology & Microbiology
SWISS Plans to Become First Airline to Use Solar Fuel
external pageSWISS and the Lufthansa Group have concluded a strategic collaboration with the (ETH Spinoff) Synhelion company to bring its solar aviation fuel to market. This will make SWISS the first airline in the world to use ‘sun-to-liquid’ fuel. The process devised by Synhelion uses concentrated sunlight to produce carbon-neutral kerosene. With this collaboration, SWISS and Synhelion are playing a pioneering role in the production and adoption of sustainable aviation fuels.
