wire - news in brief

"La Suisse de A(rbon) à Z(oug): Portrait en 12 villes", a new book published by EPFL Press, eschews the traditional focus on major conurbations.

EPFL officially joined the Multi Spectroscopic Telescope (MUST) project, led by China's Tsinghua University, as a founding member.

Green hydrogen could transform our energy system and solve many supply and emissions challenges. Whether this happens will depend on how economically it can be produced and attractive it will be to consumers.

By supporting a large-scale research project for carbon capture, utilization and storage, EPFL will shrink its carbon footprint while giving a boost to emerging technology.

Solar energy, which is both abundant and free, is poised to become the world's leading power source by 2050.

EPFL has teamed up with three organizations - the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag), the University of Lausanne (UNIL) and the Association for the Safeguard of Lake Geneva (ASL) - to develop Lémanscope, a citizen-science initiative to monitor the health of Lake Geneva.

EPFL engineers have developed new software called Pyxu that makes it easier and faster to reconstruct images taken at any scale. Their system employs reusable, and universally applicable, bricks of algorithms. Scientists use an array of imaging instruments to look inside living organisms, sometimes as they move, and to observe inert objects without altering their state.

As part of the MegaBites project, researchers will carefully analyze data on food production and consumption on the EPFL campus, with the goal of cutting the School's food-related carbon emissions.

To achieve a decarbonized world, clean energy sources will have to be widely adopted - yet there's a range of obstacles in the way. A number of researchers are studying these obstacles and mapping out strategies for getting past them. Here's a look at some of their findings. The first one is financial.

A new EPFL study has demonstrated the persuasive power of Large Language Models, finding that participants debating GPT-4 with access to their personal information were far more likely to change their opinion compared to those who debated humans.

An EPFL engineer has developed a forecasting model that factors in not just our commuting habits, but also our activities during the day.

22 March is the World Water Day. Water power has so much more to offer. Engineers are working hard to both expand this form of clean energy and make better use of existing hydropower plants. Hydropower fell out of fashion in the late 20th century owing to nuclear power and extremely low electricity prices.

One way to lighten the construction industry's heavy carbon footprint is to reuse existing materials - an approach being explored by numerous researchers.

Live streaming and recorded lectures mean students can easily keep up with a class without ever setting foot in the classroom.

Kevin Turani-I-Belloto has developed a low-cost method for breaking down ammonia to produce hydrogen.

Physicists at EPFL explore different AI learning methods, which can lead to smarter and more efficient models. In an era where artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming industries from healthcare to finance, understanding how these digital brains learn is more crucial than ever. Now, two researchers from EPFL, Antonia Sclocchi and Matthieu Wyart, have shed light on this process, focusing on a popular method known as Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD).

Five million rooftops in Switzerland - more than half of the nationwide total - are suitable for generating power.

Scientists uncover how cancer cells use certain proteins to shield themselves from immune attacks, offering new treatment perspectives with immediate application. A study led by the group of Didier Trono at EPFL has revealed a crucial survival tactic employed by cancer cells. The scientists have identified a group of proteins, known as "KRAB zinc finger proteins" (KZFPs), that help cancer cells maintain genetic stability and avoid immune system detection.

Exploring the climate crisis with Jérôme Chappellaz, environmental scientist and academic director of ALPOLE at EPFL.

With its secretariat hosted at EPFL, the Square Kilometer Array Switzerland (SKACH) consortium is celebrating two years' membership of a global project to develop the largest scientific facility ever built by humankind.

An EPFL Master's student in civil engineering has evaluated the effectiveness of new computer-based methods for inspecting potentially dangerous cracks in concrete. A crucial aspect of civil engineering is determining the exact condition of cracks in concrete bridges, dams, tunnels and other types of infrastructure.

Grégoire Courtine, Jocelyne Bloch and their research team have been breaking new ground in the treatment of neurological disorders for over a decade. Here's a look at some of the promising new therapies they've developed. A video of a Parkinson's patient went viral in early November. It showed how Marc, 62, was able to walk almost normally again - rather than "freezing" at every doorstep - thanks to a neural implant.

We published nearly 300 news articles on EPFL's homepage in 2023, detailing the latest developments in science, academics, student life, startups and EPFL in general.

EPFL's Habitat Research Center has created the first atlas of Paris landscapes, after winning a request for proposals by the French government and the City of Paris.

18% of Ukraine's scientists have fled due to the war and research capacity is down 20%, according to researchers in a study where they urge stakeholders to plan future policies to ensure the return of talent for rebuilding Ukraine.

ETH Zurich and EPFL are launching the "Swiss AI Initiative", whose purpose is to position Switzerland as a leading global hub for the development and implementation of transparent and reliable artificial intelligence (AI).

Researchers have just released Meditron, the world's best performing open source Large Language Model tailored to the medical field designed to help guide clinical decision-making. Large language models (LLMs) are deep learning algorithms trained on vast amounts of text to learn billions of mathematical relationships between words (also called 'parameters').

The ARRAKHIS consortium, for which EPFL has the science lead, has just successfully passed the mission definition review of the project, a very important first milestone towards full completion of the mission preparation.

Cut/Paste , a new exhibition at EPFL Pavilions , Pavilion A, delves into the history of comics and showcases how artificial intelligence is changing the art and adapting classic 1950s narratives for today's varied mediums.

Today, half of the world's population lives in urban areas. This is giving rise to major challenges in terms of securing a sustainable future - a topic that will be explored during the World Cities Day on 31 October. Here is an overview of EPFL research carried out in this field. For most of us, 31 October is Halloween.

Today, half of the world's population lives in urban areas. This is giving rise to major challenges in terms of securing a sustainable future - a topic that will be explored during the World Cities Day on 31 October.

GreenFjord is a four-year research program intended to investigate how climate change is affecting ecosystems in southern Greenland.