wire - news in brief

Grégoire Courtine has been appointed as Associate Professor of Life Sciences at the School of Life Sciences (SV) .

Up to ten autonomous flying robots flock like birds in a real-sky experiment. A flock of birds suddenly taking off and flying in formation, acting like one entity, is a stunning and complex communication effort.

After scanning the thought patterns of its driver, the car of tomorrow will be able to predict its next move.

No less than 25000 people travel between the University of Lausanne and EPFL in the week, making the two campuses the canton's second largest city in the daytime.

The scientists working at EPFL didn't wait for Netvibes to get famous on connecting through a collaborative Web 2.0 platform.

Pyrazinamide—Old TB Drug Finds New Target More than 60 years after the discovery of pyrazinamide (PZA), a drug that is a mainstay of combination therapy for tuberculosis (TB), researchers have finally uncovered a mechanism of action that is convincing and novel. Stewart Cole (UPCOL - Chair of Microbial Pathogenesis ) comment (Science Perspective) on resent finding by Shi et al.

EPFL's Laboratory of Composite and Polymer Technology is participating in HIVOCOMP, an EU program to develop innovative materials for the automotive industry.

Do better with less. That is the challenge the researchers from EPFL have set for themselves. Their specialty: manufacturing solar cells that are one thousand times thinner than conventional cells.

The Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research is dedicating its 2011 Symposium to the famous Hallmarks of Cancer.

EPFL is taking part in the 2011 World Engineers' Convention which take place from September 4 to 9. Education, transportation and mobility, and energy storage are among the topics to be addressed.

One of the biggest financing rounds for furthering the work of a young researcher has just been completed at EPFL.

EPFL has designed an architectural project intended to welcome the audience and performers at the St Prex Classics festival.

A recent report shows that cyber attackers infiltrated the UN and U.S. government agencies.

Luca Ortelli is the new director of the Institute of Architecture and the City in EPFL's School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC).

A research platform partially funded by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy has been established at EPFL.

The standard established by the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels (RSB) at EPFL has recently been recognized as proof of compliance with the EU biofuel's mandate.

On Friday, July 8, 2011, the ETH board announced the nominations and internal promotions of eight professors, including a professor who has been appointed to the Bertarelli Foundation chair in EPFL's Center for Neuroprosthetics.

A study commissioned by PostBus Switzerland Ltd. and carried out in three EPFL laboratories identifies the needs and expectations of the Swiss public regarding "combined" mobility, which curre

A group of EPFL students is returning from Beijing with the third place prize from the international iCAN micro- and nanotechnology contest.

Today, at the HAVEit Final Event, 17 partners from the European automotive industry and scientific community, including EPFL, are set to demonstrate the highly automated future of driving.

Imagine you're in a museum, and you can point your smartphone camera to a painting or an object in an exhibit and instantly get additional information about what you're looking at.

A European research program is studying the feasibility of a new kind of individual transport that avoids traffic jams by taking to the skies.

A doctoral student from EPFL's Laboratory of Robotics Systems has developed a concept for modular industrial robots, based on the technology of parallel robots, whose precision is expressed in nanometers.

The arrival of the MIR submersibles on the shores of Lake Geneva kicks off the Elemo scientific campaign.

Launched today, the ecocloud consortium brings several EPFL laboratories together to tackle the skyrocketing electricity demands of Internet data processing centers.

Five energy-efficient piles are being installed between end-May and the beginning of June in the foundations of the future building. They will enable research to be performed on the leveraging of geothermal energy and the mechanical behavior of the foundations. A new crane has appeared on the building site.

It's possible to regain mobility in your arms using "Nano" after a cerebro-vascular accident (CVA). Developed by MindMaze, an EPFL spin-off company, this device can be used every day at home.

Can the financial sector regulate itself? A study carried out by EPFL's Swiss Finance Institute, involving 350 American institutions, shows that those that perform poorly in times of crisis will also be adversely affected the next time.

Thanks to the raising of three million dollars, Martin Odersky has just created the company Typesafe.

Could our drinking water resources be at risk from drought, among other things? The canton of Vaud has commissioned an EPFL laboratory to draw up a geological map of the conservation and the water resources.

How can regions be helped in recognizing their advantages and in putting forward their own strategies? Researchers from EPFL have developed a tool that will help them to develop a different kind of economy.

Transforming solar energy into a usable form is a real challenge. One technique is to use semiconductors to store the energy as hydrogen. Unfortunately, the most efficient semiconductors are not the most stable. An EPFL team has just discovered that it is possible to protect the semiconductor with a uniform layer just a few nanometers thick.

Renovated from top to bottom, EPFL's microengineering building is now prepared to house new, highly promising experiments in microengineering and bioengineering.

EssentialMed, a start-up based at EPFL's science park, has as its mission the development of medical devices specially designed for poorer countries.

New EPFL spin-off Pix4D generates 3D images from simple snapshots and drones using cloud computing and takes time into account as well.

Much more than an exhibition, the Robotics Festival will enable both children and adults to better understand the technology behind these devices - of varying shapes and astonishing abilities - through touching, building and programming.

A profoundly human experience is examined using brain scans and robotics. A new study uses creative engineering to unravel brain mechanisms associated with one of the most fundamental subjective human feelings: self-consciousness. The research, published in the April 28 issue of the journal Neuron, identifies a brain region called the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) as being critical for the feeling of being an entity localized at a particular position in space and for perceiving the world from this perspective.

Study confirms human contamination through contact with armadillos Using advanced DNA analysis and extensive field work, an international research team has confirmed the link between leprosy infection in Americans and the presence of armadillos. In a joint collaboration between the Global Health Institute at EPFL in Switzerland and the National Hansen's Disease Program, clear evidence was found that a never-before-seen strain of Mycobacterium leprae has emerged in the Southern United States and that it is transmitted through contact with armadillos carrying the disease.

The functioning of the new hydroelectric power plant in Veytaux is being studied in the machine hall of the EPFL Hydraulic Constructions Laboratory (LCH) on a 1:30 scale model.

Using lasers, EPFL scientists are dissecting the movements of fluids. The goal of the exercise: to obtain a better understanding of the internal dynamics of complex phenomena such as avalanches and torrential floods.