wire - news in brief

In advance of the AI & Ethics Week conference, co-organized by EPFL's College of Humanities and Center for Digital Trust, ethics expert Johan Rochel talks about the importance of international and cross-sector debate on the impacts of artificial intelligence.

As businesses grow increasingly reliant on data to make strategic decisions, more and more companies and organizations decide to collaborate and share information with each other.

With the launch of the Digital Trust Label, developed by the Swiss Digital Initiative with the help of EPFL experts, users can clearly identify trustworthy digital services.

A PhD candidate at EPFL studied the use of automated control systems for blinds and electric lighting to regulate the amount of daylight in an office, and found that such systems can cut a building's energy demand and stimulate occupants' circadian rhythms, improving their health and well-being.

Two EPFL research groups teamed up to develop a machine-learning program that can be connected to a human brain and used to command a robot.

Engineers at EPFL have studied the use of construction slabs that serve both as structural building elements and floor heating systems.

Three EPFL studies on the effects of Switzerland's first COVID-19 lockdown have just been published. The research was based on a survey of Swiss residents carried out during the confinement, and illustrate how the restrictions caused higher stress levels and changed the way people view housing. The Swiss federal government put the country in lockdown from 16 March to 19 June 2020 in order to stem the rapid increase in COVID-19 infection rates.

Common experience tells us that oil and water do not mix. Yet, it turns out that they can mix when oil is dispersed as small droplets in water. This strange behavior has long vexed scientists because there is no explanation for it. A team of EPFL and ICTP scientists have studied this question using novel optical technology and discovered the mechanism by which these two neutral and immiscible compounds can in fact mix together and form emulsions.

EPFL's newest postdoc fellowship program - EPFLeaders4impact - will fund innovative research projects that address the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.

Policymakers need to reconsider the European Union's heavy promotion of cross-border mobility if they want to preserve cohesion among member states, according to a new book by three researchers drawing on urban sociology studies carried out at EPFL.

Switzerland's two federal institutes of technology have teamed up to offer a new joint doctoral programme in the learning sciences.

Fully operational for two weeks, the Dubochet Center for imaging was presented to the press on November 22.

Work is underway at the Ecublens campus to install gender-neutral bathrooms designed to protect people's privacy.

The dire need of dialysis therapies in lowand middle-income countries has prompted the creation of an interdisciplinary and international alliance that brings together experts from key organizations including EPFL.

Digital twins are computer-based models of an object or even a human organ, and the technology behind them is advancing at a rapid pace.

An international collaboration led by EPFL chemical engineers has overcome a problem in the manufacturing of perovskites that reduces their efficiency as solar panels. The approach produced perovskite solar panels with an efficiency of 23.9% and operational stability longer than 1000 hours. Perovskites are hybrid compounds made from metal halides and organic constituents, and show great potential in a range of applications, e.g. LED lights, lasers, and photodetectors.

Thanks to the enhanced light-field technology developed by EPFL spin-off Creal, augmented-reality and virtual-reality images appear increasingly life-like with less strain on users' eyes.

In a study of transactions involving non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which represent digital works of art, scientists have found that the NFT market has much the same structure as interactions on social networks.

The CLIMACT center brings together experts in climate change from the University of Lausanne and EPFL.

It's an age-old question - who lives on in a society's collective memory after they die? New EPFL research has tracked the mentions of thousands of public figures in the year following their deaths, helping to reveal who is remembered, and who is not, after they are gone. Cleopatra, Genghis Khan and Elvis are just a few historical figures that make up an elite group of people who live on in our history books and collective memory.

The Artificial Swissness exhibit - a larger than life-sized "design brain" developed by EPFL's Media x Design Lab (LDM) - is currently on display at the Seoul Biennale for Architecture and Urbanism, which runs until 31 October 2021.

Encryption provides a solution to security risks, but its flipside is that it can hinder law enforcement investigations. A new technology called client-side scanning (CSS) would enable targeted information to be revealed through on-device analysis, without weakening encryption or providing decryption keys.

An EPFL scientist has pinpointed the signs of brain activity that make up our brain fingerprint, which - like our regular fingerprint - is unique. "I think about it every day and dream about it at night. It's been my whole life for five years now," says Enrico Amico, a scientist and SNSF Ambizione Fellow at EPFL's Medical Image Processing Laboratory and the EPFL Center for Neuroprosthetics.

Valerio Piazza is creating new 3D architectures built from an inventive form of nanowire. His research aims to push the boundaries of miniaturization and pave the way to more powerful electronic devices.

EPFL has adopted a series of prevention, support and follow-up measures that were recommended by the School's Harassment Task Force.

Have you ever wanted to explore outer-space? Now you can, without leaving Earth, thanks to powerful, open-source beta software VIRUP that builds - in real-time - a virtual universe based on the most detailed contemporary astrophysical and cosmological data.

Researchers have built a footbridge prototype using reinforced-concrete blocks from walls of a building being renovated.

Urban brownfields represent a major challenge to sustainable transition that remains difficult to overcome.

Sometimes you have to take things apart - separate out their components, dig into the nuts and bolts and test various hypotheses - to figure out how they work.

EPFL spin-off Enerdrape has developed technology that can recover heat from underground parking lots and use it to warm the apartments above.

Immersive virtual reality disrupts the child's default coordination strategy, scientists show, something that should be taken into account when developing virtual reality rehabilitation protocols for children. While very little is known on the effects of immersive VR on adults, there is next to no knowledge on the impact of such systems on the sensorimotor abilities of young children.

Scientists have studied two mechanisms that can help bring oxygen to the depths of a lake - essential for preserving the lake's ecosystem.