news 2021

The benefits of good education and lifelong learning extend into old age. The initial findings of a long-term study show that certain degenerative processes are reduced in the brains of academics. Their brains are better able to compensate age-related cognitive and neural limitations. A good education is an excellent way to embark on a successful career and develop your personality.

Buildings that own and run themselves: this idea, from the think-tank Dezentrum, was put into action for the first time at ETH Zurich in the form of a prototype. The result is a meditation cabin that shakes up the usual economic and social expectations. The outward appearance of the small, prism-shaped hut in the recently opened Student Project House on ETH's Zentrum campus is enough to arouse the curiosity of anyone looking at it.

While it is important for students to work in groups during their studies, that is not enough for them to acquire many of the transversal skills needed in the professional world. A recent EPFL study highlights the need for engineering courses to explicitly address professional skills through a combination of theory and feedback.

By confirming the link between children's cardiorespiratory fitness and their school results, researchers at the UNIGE underline the importance of physical education classes at school. Recent studies indicate a link between children's cardiorespiratory fitness and their school performance: the more athletic they are, the better their marks in the main subjects - French and mathematics.

Using the IBM Q computer, physicists at EPFL have verified for the first time the tight relationship between quantum entanglement and wave-particle duality, showing that the former controls the latter in a quantum system. "It is possible to do experiments in fundamental physics on the remotely accessible IBM Q quantum computer ," says Marc-André Dupertuis, a physicist at EPFL's School of Basic Sciences.

Better grades thanks to your fellow students? A study conducted by the University of Zurich's Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics has revealed that not only the grade point average, gender and nationality peers can influence your own academic achievement, but so can their personalities. Intensive contact and interaction with persistent fellow students improve your own performance, and this effect even endures in subsequent semesters.