news 2024

Engineers at EPFL and ETH Zurich have come up with a new approach for reducing traffic congestion in large cities during rush hour. Their system is designed to be both fair and effective. Rush-hour traffic congestion is a major headache for commuters and a real problem for city planners. Worldwide, a huge amount of time is wasted stuck in traffic.

The way we memorise information - a mathematical problem statement, for example - reveals the way we process it. A team from the University of Geneva , in collaboration with CY Cergy Paris University (CYU) and Bourgogne University (uB), has shown how different solving methods can alter the way information is memorised and even create false memories.

Researchers have published a programmable framework that overcomes a key computational bottleneck of optics-based artificial intelligence systems. In a series of image classification experiments, they used scattered light from a low-power laser to perform accurate, scalable computations using a fraction of the energy of electronics.

Boys are good at math, girls not so much? A study from the University of Zurich has analyzed the social mechanisms that contribute to the gender gap in math confidence. While peer comparisons seem to play a crucial role for boys, girls' subjective evaluations are more likely to be based on objective performance.

Researchers at EPFL use neural networks to study proprioception, the sense the brain uses to "know" the body's movement and position. How does your brain know the position and movement of your different body parts? The sense is known as proprioception, and it is something like a "sixth sense", allowing us to move freely without constantly watching our limbs.

Scientists show that our mental representations of mathematical problems influence our strategies for solving them. Solving arithmetic problems, even simple subtractions, involves mental representations whose influence remains to be clarified. Visualizing these representations would enable us to better understand our reasoning and adapt our teaching methods.