wire - news in brief

Talk by Hans Gellersen December 15th, 15:15, Room BC410 Touch input and two-handed interaction were intensively studied in the mid 80's but it's taken 20 years for these ideas to emerge in the mainstream, with the advent of multi-touch interfaces.

An EPFL / ISREC team has shed new light on how cancer metastases develop. The results they have obtained will open the door to new therapeutic options for treating late stage cancers and preventing secondary tumors from growing. The proliferation of metastases is often the main cause of complications and death from cancer.

TGR5 activation inhibits Atherosclerosis by reducing macrophage inflammation and lipid loading.

A two-compartment mathematical model of neuroglial metabolism using [1-11C] acetate. Compared with 13C MRS studies, 11C radiotracer measurements provide a single uptake curve representing the sum of all labeled metabolites, without chemical differentiation, but with higher temporal resolution.

LTS5 will organize a workshop on high angular resolution diffusion MR Imaging (HARDI) at the IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI 2012) conference (Barcelona, Spain, May 2-5 2012).

Interfacial Complexation Reactions of Sr2+ with Octyl(phenyl)-N,N-diisobutylcarbamoyl methylphosphine Oxide for Understanding Its Extraction in Reprocessing Spent Nuclear Fuels. Stoichiometry and complexation equilibrium constants for the extraction of strontium from spent nuclear fuels at water room-temperature ionic liquid (RTIL) interfaces are very important for medicinal use of radioisotopes and remediation of contaminated environments.

Global kinomic and phospho-proteomic analyses of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. The role of protein phosphorylation in the life cycle of malaria parasites is slowly emerging. Here researchers from the Inserm-EPFL Joint Research Unit , headed by Christian Doerig , together with colleagues from UK and India, combine global phospho-proteomic analysis with kinome-wide reverse genetics to assess the importance of protein phosphorylation in Plasmodium falciparum asexual proliferation.

Melton and Professor Kaplan's work on climate change using a combined biophysical modelling, social science, and community engagement approach will be presented at the December meeting.

Attention is captured by nonretinotopic, noninformative cues. Attention is crucial for visual perception because it allows the visual system to effectively use its limited resources by selecting beha

The efficiency of solar thermal power plants is improved by more than 30% thanks to the combination of two technologies.

P-Rex1 is required for efficient melanoblast migration and melanoma metastasis. Metastases are the major cause of death from melanoma, a skin cancer that has the fastest rising incidence of any malignancy in the Western world. Molecular pathways that drive melanoblast migration in development are believed to underpin the movement and ultimately the metastasis of melanoma.

Population-specific expression analysis (PSEA) reveals molecular changes in diseased brain. Understanding molecular changes that occur in human diseases is the key to developing new drugs and therapies. In complex human tissues like brain or blood, however, the presence of heterogeneous cell types, each with a specific function and potentially different involvement in disease, makes this task very challenging.

Solar thermal systems are today the most efficient renewable choice for hot water production.

The relaxation of long-lived states (LLS) corresponds to the slow return to statistical thermal equilibrium between symmetric and antisymmetric proton spin states. This process is remarkably sensitive to the presence of external spins and can be used to obtain information about partial unfolding of proteins.

Sirt5 Is a NAD-Dependent Protein Lysine Demalonylase and Desuccinylase. Silent information regulator 2 (Sir2) proteins (sirtuins) are nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide-dependent deacetylases that regulate important biological processes.

Thomas Weber published a new book at MIT Press, which gives a rigorous introduction to optimal control theory, with an emphasis on applications in economics. Content This book bridges optimal control theory and economics, discussing ordinary differential equations, optimal control, game theory, and mechanism design in one volume.

EPFL scientists have developed an educational robot designed to introduce children to technology in schools.

Marc-Antoine Nuessli's thesis entitled "Dual Eye-Tracking Methods for the Study of Remote Collaborative Problem Solving" on December 21th, 2011, at 17h00, room BC 410 We have the pleasure to invite you to the public defense of Marc-Antoine Nuessli's thesis entitled "Dual Eye-Tracking Methods for the Study of Remote Collaborative Problem Solving" The talk will take place at 17h00 on Dec.

Eye, I, aye: investigating embodiment, identity and sociality and the Internet a talk from Elizabeth Churchill, on December 16th, at 10h15, in room BC 410 Abstract: In this talk I will discuss the increasingly broad remit of human computer interaction (HCI) as a discipline.

Electronics could be 100 times less energy-hungry thanks to a quantum phenomenon known as the tunnel effect - by 2017 in consumer electronics By 2017, quantum physics will help reduce the energy consumption of our computers and cellular phones by up to a factor of 100. For research and industry, the power consumption of transistors is a key issue.

In vivo loading increases mechanical properties of scaffold by affecting bone formation and bone resorption rates.

It was an era of massive construction projects - dams, roads, and bridges - and many felt there was a need to better understand and control the behavior of the soil and rock underpinnings of all these infrastructures.

GETPrime: a gene- or transcript-specific primer database for quantitative real-time PCR.

It was an era of massive construction projects - dams, roads, and bridges - and many felt there was a need to better understand and control the behavior of the soil and rock underpinnings of all these infrastructures.

Ceramic fuel cells convert the chemical energy of injected fuel into electricity with unprecedented efficiency, at small power scale.

ARVE researchers at EPFL/ENAC publish in "Global Change Biology" on the effects of land use and climate change on the carbon cycle of Europe over the past 500 years! Learn more on http://arve.

Chris Tucci ed at the University of Melbourne How to make radical product development happen within the firm?

An article by Emmanuel Rey of the Laboratory of Architecture and Sustainable Technologies (LAST) is published in the last issue of the Spanish journal "Revista de Edificación" (RE). This contribution deals with the topic of sustainable urban housing with, as a basis, the experiences encountered notably during the development of the Ecoparc district in Neuchâtel (Switzerland).

Gene regulatory networks play a vital role in organismal development and function by controlling gene expression. With the availability of complete genome sequences, several novel experimental and computational approaches have recently been developed which promise to significantly enhance our ability to comprehensively characterize these regulatory networks by enabling the identification of respectively their genomic or regulatory state components, or the interactions between these two in unprecedented detail.

Inhibitory Plasticity Balances Excitation and Inhibition in Sensory Pathways and Memory Networks. Cortical neurons receive balanced excitatory and inhibitory synaptic currents.

A team of researchers has improved the muscle structure and stamina of mice and nematodes by reducing the function of a natural inhibitor, suggesting treatments for age-related or genetically caused muscle degeneration are within reach. If they weren't held back by the effect of a natural inhibitor, our muscles would be stronger, more powerful and better formed than they are in reality.

In sites scattered across the Earth, the extraction and processing of uranium for nuclear fuel and weapons has left aquifers contaminated. Immobilizing the contaminant through the action of bacteria has been considered a potential solution to limit its transport away from the contamination site. A recent article by Professor Rizlan Bernier-Latmani and collaborators, published last week in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, points to new unknowns and paints a more complex picture.

Ripples and Layers in Ultrathin MoS2 Membranes. Single-layer molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) is a newly emerging two-dimensional semiconductor with a potentially wide range of applications in the fields of nanoelectronics and energy harvesting.

Increased expression of sirtuin proteins has been shown to enhance lifespan in several organisms.

Marc Gruber's recent paper entitled "Escaping the Prior Knowledge Corridor: What shapes the Number and Variety of Market Opportunities identified before Market Entry of Technology Start-ups?" (with. I.C. MacMillan, J. Thompson) has been accepted for publication in Organization Science.

The co-edited volume "Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research 2010" (Zacharakis, A. et al. Babson College, Babson Park, MA, 2010, has been published.