In the Media - August 2023

Could robots replace guide dogs for the blind?

external page A four-legged robodog that can see its surroundings could eventually replace the trusty guide dog for the blind, according to its developers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich's Department of Information Technology & Electrical Engineering).

Torsten Hoefler Joins CSCS as Chief Architect for Machine Learning

external page ETH Professor Torsten Hoefler has headed the Scalable Parallel Computing Laboratory (SPCL) at the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zurich since 2012. As of Sept. 1, 2023, he will also be part of the Architecture and Technology workgroup as Chief Architect for Machine Learning at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS).

Also reported in...

external page Inside HPC

How a new Parkinson’s blood test could speed up diagnosis by at least 10 years

external page Meanwhile, in November, scientists at ETH Zurich, in Switzerland, found a group of proteins in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in the brain and spine that have different shapes in healthy people and people with Parkinson’s disease...They hope these proteins may serve as a ‘biomarker’ for Parkinson’s disease that may be used as the basis of a screening or diagnostic test.

Valuable Raw Materials From Olive Waste

external page ETH spin-​off Gaia Tech transforms waste from olive oil production into high-​quality antioxidants for use in cosmetics or food. This turns waste into valuable raw materials.

WATCH: NASA reviews plan to recover Bennu asteroid sample via OSIRIS-REx

external page Commenting on how NASA researchers plan to retrieve rock samples plucked from the surface of an ancient asteroid next month: “OSIRIS-REx’s many accomplishments demonstrated the daring and innovative way in which exploration unfolds in real-time,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters, said in a statement when OSIRIS-REx began its return trip in 2020...“We have a primordial piece of our solar system headed back to Earth where many generations of researchers can unlock its secrets,” he said.  

An investment in more research to benefit children and adolescents

external page Launched in 2019, the Botnar Research Centre for Child Health (BRCCH) aims to drive innovative health research that benefits children and adolescents globally – especially those living in low- or middle-income countries. Within this centre, the University of Basel and ETH Zurich work in partnership with the University Children’s Hospital Basel (UKBB) and the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH).

Meat or eggs? New study shows value of dual-purpose poultry

external page To show the viability of commercial dual-​purpose poultry, a team of researchers from ETH Zurich tested novel and traditional dual-​purpose types for their performance, characteristics, and quality.

L'economia degli Appennini rinasce grazie agli orsi

(Article in Italian)  

external page Paula Mayer (ETH Zurich) evaluated twenty-one municipalities in the central Apennines, the territory of the Marsican bear, of which only about seventy specimens remain. “What we discovered by interviewing the population is that, even a few kilometers away, the attitude towards bears can be very different, not to say antithetical – she tells Wired.

Risk of heat-related deaths has ‘increased rapidly’ over past 20 years

external page Spikes in temperature-related deaths during extreme summer heatwaves “will eventually become commonplace” if societies do not adapt to the dangerous impacts of extreme heat, new research finds..."Typically, a population is very well adapted to the climate where it’s living,” explains Sam Lüthi – a PhD student at ETH Zurich and lead author on the study. This means that each city has a different exposure-response curve.”

Also reported in...

external page SciTech Daily

external page ZME Science

external page Futurity

external page Nepal News

external page Seoul News

external page Dublin News

external page The Economic Times (India)

external page South Africa News

external page Business Standard

external page PHYS.org

Note: This story appeared in numerous regional news publications in countries around the world!

How one device could help transform our power grid

external page A grid-forming inverter, though, can sense the changes in the grid and respond in real time to adjust its frequency, which injects more or less power as needed to stabilize the grid. Florian Dörfler, an electrical engineer at ETH Zurich, compares a group of grid-forming inverters in a power grid to a bunch of spinning bicycle wheels connected by an elastic band. If one of the wheels starts to slow a bit for some reason, the elastic band will transfer momentum from the others and bring it back into synchrony with the group.

Music can trigger cells to release insulin within minutes

external page ETH Zurich Professor, Martin Fussenegger and his colleagues have now developed another, novel stimulation method: they use music to trigger the cells to release insulin within minutes. This works especially well with "We Will Rock You," a global hit by British rock band, Queen.

Also reported in...

external page European Biotechnology

external page Health Reporter

external page Futurity

external page ScienceDaily

external page Pioneer Newz

external page Jerusalem Post

external page iHeart Radio and numerous syndicated radio stations in the U.S.

Diverse forests shut down non-native tree invasions

external page On a global scale, approximately 10 percent of non-native species become full-blown invaders that ultimately wreak havoc on ecological systems. Led by ETH Zurich, an international team of researchers has investigated the susceptibilities of various regions to non-native tree invasions.

Also reported in...

external page News Leaflets

external page ScienceDaily

external page Reporter Green

external page PHYS.org

external page eGreen News

external page TechExplorist

external page MyScience

India lands spacecraft near the moon's south pole, a first for the world as it joins elite club

external page NASA's former science mission chief, Thomas Zurbuchen, who now works at ETH Zurich, a public research university in Switzerland where he is leading its space initiative, said he felt proud of the achievement.

Also reported in...
Numerous broadcast, radio, and print publications including...

external page NBC Bay Area

external page Canada Today

external page Cambridge Today

First video of Nobel ‘pressure sensors’ in action at Imperial

external page Scientists from ETH Zurich and Imperial College London created (a pressure sensor) GenEPi to study...tiny cellular structures called mechanoreceptors that play a crucial role in sensing pressure and touch on the skin's surface.

Also reported in...

external page PHYS.org

external page MyScience

Scientists find new technique for predicting record-breaking heat waves

(Interview with ETH Zurich Professor, Erich Fischer) external page “The longer we measure, we should expect to see less and less records because we should have seen almost everything that’s possible. But with climate change, that’s quite different,” said Erich Fischer, a climate scientist at ETH Zurich and lead author of the study. “We see a lot more heat records [than] we should be expecting to see by chance, and these records are broken by larger margins.”

Also reported in...
KCBS-AM (radio) San Francisco and numerous syndicated radio and television broadcasts

external page Anchorage Daily News

external page ScienceDaily

external page Environmental News Network

external page AZO Cleantech

11 Swiss startups to watch, according to investors

external page The country also boasts Europe’s leading spinout centre (by spinouts produced) ETH Zurich. It has produced startups like ANYbotics — which raised $50m this year — and direct air capture scaleup Climeworks...

external page Also mentioned: Saeki is a spinout from ETH Zurich automating large-scale component manufacturing;...and Faive, based out of ETH Zurich, has developed humanoid robotic hands to help with industrial tasks.

Researchers reveal how Salmonella relatives grow together in the gut

external page “Recent observations seem to question this school of thinking, showing that several members of the Enterobacteriaceae family can co-exist in the gut,” says Ersin Gül, a postdoc in the group of Wolf-Dietrich Hardt, Professor of Microbiology at ETH Zurich and member of the NCCR Microbiomes.

Also reported in...

external page Technology Networks  

external page SpaceWeekly

external page PHYS.org

What previous avian influenza outbreaks teach us

external page Researchers at ETH Zurich (D-BSSE) have analysed the bird flu epidemic caused by the H7N9 strain that affected China from 2013 to 2017. New phylogenetic trees will help to improve monitoring of future bird flu epidemics...Their aim was to understand how the disease spread at poultry markets, and to draw conclusions that would help improve future efforts to monitor and control bird flu outbreaks.

New technique harvests antioxidants from olive oil processing waste

external page A great deal of peel, pulp and stone waste is constantly being generated in the production of olive oil. And while that waste is often just dumped or incinerated, it could soon be used as a source of valuable antioxidants...The extraction technique was developed by ETH Zurich mechanical engineering student Claudio Reinhard and Prof. Laura Nyström, the two of whom initiated the EU-funded Phenoliva research project in 2019. ETH Spinoff company Gaia Tech is now commercializing the technology.

Harnessing marine biodiversity data for a healthy ocean

external page At the Horizon 2020 AtlantECO project, researchers like Dr Meike Vogt (ETH Zurich) are creating a unifying framework to understand the Atlantic Ocean’s ecosystem services. A key area of study is the microbiome, a group which includes viruses, bacteria, and microalgae...“The species concept doesn’t work so well for some of these groups/taxa, but they do form functional groups,” Vogt explains. Functional groups vary by environmental preferences and the roles they play in the ecosystem.

Harvard Uses Google Cloud to Clone Supercomputer for Medical Research Runs

external page In initial tests involving thousands of virtual machines spun up on Google Cloud, Prof. Koumoutsakos and his team, which also includes researchers from ETH Zurich, achieved 80 percent of the efficiency available in dedicated supercomputer facilities with extensively tuned code...

Also reported in...

external page HealthCareBusiness Euro News

external page Silicon ANGLE

Scientific Exploration of Building Muscle in the Laboratory

external page ETH Zurich Professor Ori Bar-Nur and his team have successfully grown mouse muscle cells in the laboratory. Their research extends to human and cow cells, with potential applications in surgery, muscle disease treatment, and revolutionizing meat production...At the moment, the ETH team’s focus is on optimizing the generation of muscle stem cells and improving their safety. They have achieved this through a new approach.

Metal mesh harvests drinking water from pollutant-heavy fog

external page A specially coated metal mesh has harvested water from foggy air while simultaneously removing pollutants...Designed to harvest drinking water in largely dry areas with heavy atmospheric pollution, the mesh and its solar-powered water treatment method were developed by researchers at ETH Zurich in Switzerland.

Also reported in...

external page Eurasia Review

external page ScienceDaily

external page Verve Times

external page Berkeley Engineering

external page AZO Cleantech

external page The Weather Network

external page DesignBoom

external page TECH EXPLORIST

external page MSN

external page Techzle

external page Earth.com

external page New Atlas

external page Laboratory Equipment

external page Yanko Design

external page Water Quality Products Magazine

external page Environmental Science & Engineering Magazine

external page Futurity

Sensirion AG wins Best of Sensors 2023 Award in the Industrial Sensor Category

external page Water contamination by organic pollutants poses a significant threat to both our environment and public health. Sensirion AG designed the SWT50 UV absorption sensor to address this challenge...A spin-off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Sensirion boasts over two decades of experience in delivering sensor solutions tailored to meet the demand of critical customer applications.

How climate change drives heatwaves and wildfires in Europe

external page "On average on land, heat extremes that would have happened once every 10 years without human influence on the climate are now three times more frequent, according to ETH Zurich climate scientist Sonia Seneviratne."

Also reported in...

external page Today

external page CNBC AFRICA

external page Channel News Asia

external page Nasdaq

external page The Weather Network

Dead trees around the world are shocking scientists

external page How much of it boils down to starvation versus dehydration? Or does it depend on the species? Getting an answer is not unlike deciphering the ultimate cause of death in people who have multiple, intertwining health conditions, says Alana Chin, a tree ecophysiologist at ETH Zürich. “This is part of why we are surprised by these tree mortality events, because we’re not totally sure how it works.”

The farmers boosting crops with electricity

"...plant ecologist Nina Buchmann – who directs the World Food System Center at ETH Zurich, Switzerland – has little patience for critics. "Sometimes I'm tempted to ask them: Did you eat something today?" she told attendees at an agronomy awards ceremony organised by the investment company Vontobel."

Also reported in...

external page Agricultural Portal (South Africa)

Researchers are helping robots teach themselves to open dishwashers and doors

external page New research from ETH Zurich...points to a model that requires “minimal manual guidance.”...“Given high-level descriptions of the robot and object,” the research paper explains, “along with a task specification encoded through a sparse objective, our planner holistically discovers: how the robot should move, what forces it should exert, what limbs it should use, as well as when and where it should establish or break contact with the object.”

Also reported in...

external page MSN

external page 1BusinessWorld

external page Techosmo

external page The Tech Street

external page Communications of the ACM

external page Techeblog

external page Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Lifestyle, Yahoo! Life (roundup)

external page Wired Focus

external page TrendRadars

external page TECH EXPLORE

How can Synhelion’s solar receiver achieve such high temperatures?

external page (ETH Spinoff) Synhelion’s solar receiver achieves a temperature of 1,500°C and higher...That’s unprecedented.“The solar receiver is inspired by nature, by the greenhouse gas effect, to reach ultra-high temperatures,” (Carmen) Murer added. “The receiver cavity is filled with a greenhouse gas flowing from the aperture toward the back of the cavity. Typical gases employed are water vapor and CO2; both very potent greenhouse gases...

Study addresses the global need for human-wildlife coexistence

external page Paula Mayer, a Master’s student at ETH Zurich, has developed a coexistence model, plotting human-bear interaction areas on a map...“This project is an attempt to take a rational look at the landscape and figure out where and under what circumstances humans and large carnivores successfully coexist and where they don’t,” explained Mayer.

Also reported in...

external page ScienceDaily

external page PHYS.org

Favored asylum seekers are young, female and fleeing war

external page “Respondents are more in favour of accepting asylum seekers who are younger, female, Christian rather than Muslim, submit consistent asylum applications, possess better language and occupational skills, and who are in particular need of protection,” explains Dominik Hangartner, professor of public policy at ETH Zurich.

Carbon-based quantum technology

external page Graphene nanoribbons have outstanding properties that can be precisely controlled. Researchers from Empa and ETH Zurich, in collaboration with (international academic) partners...have succeeded in attaching electrodes to individual atomically precise nanoribbons, paving the way for precise characterization of the fascinating ribbons and their possible use in quantum technology.

Also reported in...

external page Verve Times

external page Insight EU Monitoring

external page Graphene-info

external page PHYS.org

external page Science Magazine

external page Bioengineer

Toward Quantum Resilient Security Keys

external page As part of (Google's) effort to deploy quantum resistant cryptography, we are happy to announce the release of the first quantum resilient...open-source hardware...This schema was co-developed in partnership with the ETH Zürich and won the ACNS secure cryptographic implementation workshop best paper.

How to Digitize Your Maintenance & Inspection Processes

external page Cris Grossmann, CEO and co-founder of ETH Spinoff, Beekeeper writes on "...smart manufacturers are looking for ways to use technology to enhance the experience of these frontliners, subsequently increasing productivity and their bottom lines."

JWST Spots Giant Black Holes All Over the Early Universe

external page ...in June, an analysis of two other surveys led by Jorryt Matthee of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich identified 20 more “little red dots” with broad hydrogen lines: black holes churning around redshift 5. An analysis posted in early August announced another dozen, a few of which may even be in the process of growing by merging.

AI bots are so good at mimicking the human brain and vision that CAPTCHAs are useless

external page ...A research paper published last month that has yet to be peer reviewed indicates that AI-automated attacks on various CAPTCHA schemes have been successful. The study, conducted by (an international) group of researchers including...ETH Zurich...and Microsoft, showed that AI bots are now better than humans at decoding the CAPTCHAs. They even create an impression of humans being more robots than the bots that the CAPTCHAs try to keep out. And they even do it much faster.

Also reported in...

external page MetaNews

external page MSN

Hackers red-teaming A.I. are ‘breaking stuff left and right,’ but don’t expect quick fixes from DefCon: ‘There are no good guardrails’

external page Researchers have found that “poisoning” a small collection of images or text in the vast sea of data used to train AI systems can wreak havoc — and be easily overlooked...A study co-authored by Florian Tramér of the Swiss University ETH Zurich determined that corrupting just 0.01% of a model was enough to spoil it — and cost as little as $60. The researchers waited for a handful of websites used in web crawls for two models to expire. Then they bought the domains and posted bad data on them.

Also reported in...

external page Techi AI

external page SanFrancisco Daily Journal

Elizabeth Holmes ruins the lives of Swiss researchers

external page ETH Spinoff (Hemetron) is convinced that with its technology, regular blood tests will soon become a part of everyday life. But the shadow of Elizabeth Holmes hangs over the sector.  

F1 Engineers Spin Up Ultimate Hybrid Controller: Shaving off milliseconds—not notching up mileage—is this smart box’s objective  

external page A team of Swiss engineers have proposed a new controller for F1 racing cars that analyzes maneuvers by drivers during a race, and helps to optimize the engine during future laps accordingly...“The current generation of F1 cars are highly complex systems,” explains Marc Neumann, Ph.D. candidate at the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control at ETH Zurich. “The challenge about designing controllers for these vehicles lies in the interaction between the thermal and the electrical components of the power unit.”

NIR Biosensors Use DNA Anchors to Target a Range of Molecules

external page To build a flexible sensor for optically detecting a range of viruses and bacteria, a group of researchers from Ruhr University Bochum (RUB), the Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems (IMS), and ETH Zurich used semiconducting, single-walled, fluorescent carbon nanotubes. The modular sensors, with fluorescence in the near-infrared (NIR), are based on DNA anchors that act as molecular handles.

ZuriMED closes CHF 14.5 million series A financing round to revolutionize surgery with Surgical-Fiberlock technology

external page ZuriMED Technologies, a Switzerland-based spin-off from the University and ETH Zurich, has closed a Series A financing round worth CHF 14.5 million with leading healthcare investors...With this funding, ZuriMED will accelerate the development and market uptake of its breakthrough technology for minimally invasive surgical repair of soft tissues, a platform technology it has dubbed the Surgical-Fiberlock™ technology.

SAEKI’s “microfactories” help large manufacturing scale up

external page ETH Spinoff, SAEKI Robotics launched from stealth today with $2.3 million in seed funding led by Wingman Ventures, along with participation from Vento Ventures, Getty Capital and angel investors.It is currently building its first production hub, which will have industrial robots that are capable of combining digital manufacturing methods, including 3D printing, milling and inspection. SAEKI says the robots each act as “microfactories,” which means they are self-contained units that can do all manufacturing steps.

EU-Funded Global Collaboration Hub for Hydrogen Industry Launched

external page The Hydrogen Helix brings together leading experts and organisations from across the hydrogen value chain (including ETH Zurich), including pioneering researchers, world-renowned industry leaders and thought-leading policymakers to drive innovation in hydrogen technologies.

“Downfall” bug affects years of Intel CPUs, can leak encryption keys and more

external page ...According to security researchers in ETH Zurich's COMSEC group, is a vulnerability that "leaks arbitrary data" on affected Ryzen, Threadripper, and EPYC CPUs. The group published a proof-of-concept video in which they cause a CPU using AMD's latest Zen 4 architecture to leak a system's root password.

Also reported in...

external page Semiconductor Engineering

external page Tech and Science Post

external page Hack Read

external page The TechStreet

external page The Tech Street (second related article)

external page Investor

external page Rodina News UK

external page Information Security Today

external page TechXplore

external page Washington Latest

external page MSN via Tech Radar

external page Business Telegraph

external page Security Week

As well as stories in numerous information security and investment digital and print publications.

A biochip that can be used to perform rapid genetic screening of thousands of molecules

external page A team of materials scientists and engineers at Stanford University, working with a colleague from ETH Zürich and another from Washington University in St. Louis, has developed a biochip that can be used to screen thousands of molecules and that was successfully tested with a live virus.

Also reported in...

external page Techwar.gr

Disney creates task force to explore AI and cut costs - sources

external page In 2008, Bob Iger, Disney CEO made technology one of his top priorities oepning up a major research and development initiative with top technology universities including ETH Zurich..."AI research at Disney goes back a very long time and revolves around all the things you see being discussed today...(ETH Alumnus) Hao Li, CEO and co-founder of...a Los Angeles-based company that creates AI-driven virtual avatars, said he worked on multiple research papers with Disney's lab while studying in Zurich from 2006 to 2010.

Also reported in...

external page The Japan News by Yomiuri Shimbun

external page Sydney News (Australia)

external page Edinburgh News (Scotland)

Syndicated regional news publications across the U.S. and numerous other countries on 6 continents.

‘Magnecko’ robot is like a giant mechanical spider crossed with a gecko

external page Engineers at Switzerland’s ETH Zurich...have created an intriguing and impressive little robot that they call the Magnecko. The robot is inspired by a spider’s design while also taking some inspiration from geckos. The Magnecko uses electro-permanent magnet modules on its four feet, allowing it to walk easily on walls and ceilings.

Also reported in...

external page Quick Telecast

20 years in, Singapore still searches for its biotech success story

external page To foster Singapore’s research capabilities, the government formed Create, a national project that brings in top global universities and research institutes. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California, Berkeley and ETH Zurich are among those that have established footprints.

Swiss Federal Councilor visits Indonesia and Singapore

external page Recognizing Singapore as a crucial partner in science, Mr. Cassis visited regional hubs like ETH Zurich's Singapore-ETH Centre.  

Also reported in...

external page Foreign Affairs

Time for lab-grown fish balls instead of burgers?

external page Bianca Wassmann is a researcher at the Urban Microalgae-Based Protein Production project at the Singapore-ETH Centre (SEC) offers an analysis of lab-grown meat.

Also reported in...

external page East Mojo

Scientists 'remote-controlled' designer human cells implanted in mice using only DC currents

external page Martin Fussenegger, a professor of biotechnology and bioengineering at ETH Zurich and the University of Basel, and his colleagues designed an interface called DC-actuated regulation technology (DART). It's powered by DC from standard 1.5-volt AA or AAA batteries...As a proof of concept, they tested DART in a mouse model of type 1 diabetes.

Also reported in...

external page Popular Mechanics

external page Aol.

external page Yahoo! Life

external page Tech Times

external page Medical Design & Outsourcing

external page Industry tap into news

Researchers Successfully Use a Drone to Open Doors

external page Researchers from ETH Zurich in Switzerland have managed to successfully use a drone to open doors. Technically speaking, the team used a Reinforcement Learning (RL) approach to learn reactive motion behaviors for a manipulation task while producing policies that are robust to disturbances and modeling errors.

Rapid test could help treat UTIs more effectively, researchers suggest

external page The new test, developed by scientists at ETH Zurich and Balgrist University Hospital, employs natural viral predators of bacteria, known as phages, which are highly specialised viruses that can selectively target bacteria.

Also reported in...

external page Archyde

Synhelion and Cemex Make Further Progress Toward the World's First Fully Concentrated Solar PowerCement Plant

external page (ETH Zurich Spinoff,) Synhelion and Cemex announced today a significant milestone in their joint effort to develop fully solar-driven cement production: the scaling of their technology to industrially-viable levels.

Also reported in...

external page The Engineer

external page Solar Paces

external page The Manchester Times

The 5×5—Cyber conflict in international relations: A policymaker’s perspective

external page ...“I would highly recommend a great 2012 piece by Dr. Myriam Dunn Cavelty at ETH Zurich, entitled ‘The Militarisation of Cyberspace: Why Less May Be Better.’ In light of the Biden administration’s recently released National Cyber Strategy, her piece was rather prescient for the time about the need for ‘governments and military actors [to] acknowledge that their role in cyber security can only be a limited one, even if they consider cyberattacks to be a major national security threat. Cybersecurity is and will remain a shared responsibility between public and private actors.’”  

Swiss-Singapore partnerships thriving in innovation and education  

external page Frank Grutter, the Swiss ambassador to Singapore comments: “Dual-hub” research approach...is exemplified well...by the Singapore-ETH Centre (SEC) – set up in 2010 as the Future Cities Lab by ETH Zurich – which ranks among the world’s top universities for science and technology – and Singapore’s National Research Foundation (NRF) as part of NRF’s CREATE campus.

Treating anemia with gene scissors

external page ETH Zurich molecular biologist Mandy Boontanrart is researching gene therapies that could be used to cure two of the most common types of inherited anemia.

Also reported in...

external page Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News

external page Technology.org

external page Jaun News UK

external page Opera News

external page Mirage

Puzzling Quantum Phenomenon: When Electrons Slowly Vanish During Cooling

external page Researchers at the University of Bonn and ETH Zurich have conducted an in-depth study of unique phase transitions in certain metals. Their findings provide a better understanding of quantum physics and potentially advance the field of quantum information technology.

Also reported in...

external page Today Headline

external page ScienceDaily

external page Science Magazine

external page Bioengineer

Chatbots sometimes make things up. Is AI’s hallucination problem fixable?

external page ...Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich said they developed a method to detect some, but not all, of ChatGPT’s hallucinated content and remove it automatically.

Also reported in...

external page Yahoo! Finance - Canada

external page Yahoo! Life

external page Business Telegraph UK

Numerous regional publications and syndicated radio stations in the U.S.

8 Swiss soonicorns to watch

external page Switzerland also boasts Europe’s leading spinout centre ETH Zurich, which has produced 545 spinouts and 12 unicorns so far. Research institutes like it are vital for developing the scientific expertise for one of Switzerland’s biggest exports — healthtech.  

Scientists can now control human DNA with electricity using new tech that ‘sparks genes back to life’

external page ...Biosystems engineers at ETH Zürich, a public research university in Switzerland, were able to successfully activate human DNA using electrical currents from two, medical-grade acupuncture needles — equipment already approved by the World Health Organization (WHO)...The system, dubbed ‘direct current (DC)-actuated regulation technology’ (DART), enables communication between electronic and biological systems that had been ‘largely incompatible’ before.

Also reported in...

external page Daily UK News

external page Rodina News UK

external page Vice

external page UK Times

Detecting exhaustion with smart yarn, no chips required

external page Pushing fatigued muscles past the exhaustion point can cause injury. Prevention—through the detection of exhaustion—is the goal of a new textile sensor that ETH Zurich researchers are working on in the Biomedical and Mobile Health Technology Lab.  

Using AI to protect against AI image manipulation

external page “The prospect of using attacks on machine learning to protect us from abusive uses of this technology is very compelling,” says Florian Tramèr, an assistant professor at ETH Zürich. “The paper has a nice insight that the developers of generative AI models have strong incentives to provide such immunization protections to their users, which could even be a legal requirement in the future.

Also reported in...

external page TechXplore

City of Hope's cancer-killing pill works like a snowstorm shutting down an airport

external page In a study published July 31 in Nature Metabolism, researchers from Swiss university ETH Zurich described how they developed an interface called direct current (DC)-actuated regulation technology, or DART, that uses an electric current to stimulate bioengineered cells. In a proof-of-concept study in mice with Type 1 diabetes, a once-daily stimulation of implanted insulin-sensing human cells was enough to correct their blood sugar...“We believe this technology will enable wearable electronic devices to directly program metabolic interventions,” the scientists wrote in their paper.

Six XPrize finalists emerge after testing conservation tech in Central Catchment Nature Reserve

external page The team (BiodivX), led by Swiss university ETH Zurich, was one of 13 from around the world that tested their technologies in Singapore from late May to early June, as part of the semi-finals of a US$10 million (S$13.3 million) global competition.

Also reported in...

external page EuroNews

external page Technology.org

external page Yahoo UK

external page Reuters

external page Drone Life

Mount Vesuvius 'could erupt soon' with 'millions' at risk from active volcano

external page Olivier Bachmann, professor at ETH Zurich, said this was largely a good sign, telling Futurity: "That’s why we think it’s more likely that a large, explosive eruption of Vesuvius would occur only after a quiescent period lasting for centuries."

The U.N. warns ‘an era of global boiling’ has started. What does that mean?

external page Sonia I. Seneviratne, professor of land-climate dynamics at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, said she believes that some previous terms — including the “code red for humanity” — were useful in underlining the importance of the issue...“But I guess at some point we run out of basically superlatives to convey how urgent it is to act. And then the main issue is maybe not so much wording, but just a realization that we are in the current climate crisis.”...“From my perspective, and I think many of my colleagues, I would definitely say that there is a feeling that the emergency, how urgent the situation is, is maybe not really perceived by the general public, or not sufficiently.”

Also reported in...

external page MSN

New Tree Tech: AI, Drones, Satellites and Sensors Give Reforestation a Boost

external page Tree-planting initiatives face myriad hurdles. For starters, tree planting isn’t always the right approach. “Many people think restoration means the mass planting of trees. [But] this is not how we achieve global restoration,” explains Tom Crowther, an ecologist at ETH Zürich in Switzerland.

Fueling Creativity in the Digital World SIGGRAPH 2023 Technical Papers research showcases innovation in further advancing the field of character animation

external page An international team of researchers from Disney Research Imagineering and ETH Zürich describe an innovative technique that enables the optimal retargeting of expressive physical motions onto freely walking robots.

Also appeared in numerous regional television broacasts across the United States.

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