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Researchers have shown for the first time that microvehicles can be steered through blood vessels in the brains of mice using ultrasound. They hope that this will eventually lead to treatments capable of delivering drugs with pinpoint precision. Brain tumours, brain haemorrhages and neurological and psychological conditions are often hard to treat with medication.

Surprisingly little is actually known about how the knee works. ETH professor Bill Taylor plans to change this with a unique technology and a new 22-metre-long experimental facility.   "The knee is the most exciting of all the joints in the human body," says Bill Taylor, Professor of Movement Biomechanics at the Department of Health Sciences and Technology.

Researchers from ETH Zurich, Empa and Stanford have taken snapshots of the crystal structure of perovskite nanocrystals as it was deformed by excited electrons. To their surprise, the deformation straightened out the skewed crystal structure rather than making it more disordered. Many a scientific and technical problem could be solved easily if it were possible to look inside a material and watch its atoms and electrons wiggle about in real time.

Modelled on nature: researchers have developed a new material that replicates the structure responsible for the blue feathers of the North American song bird, among many other birds. It also has other striking advantages. The eastern bluebird is a special bird. The blue of its feathers is unique. However, this colour is not based on pigments but on the special structure of the feather.

Protein-like aggregates known as amyloids can bind to molecules of genetic material. It is possible that these two types of molecules stabilised each other during the development of life - and that this might even have paved the way for the genetic code. How organisms develop from inanimate matter is one of the biggest questions in science.

A new AI model developed by chemists at ETH Zurich can not only predict where a pharmaceutically active molecule can be chemically modified, but also how best to do it. This makes it possible to identify new pharmaceutical ingredients more quickly and improve existing ones in a targeted manner. New active pharmaceutical ingredients lay the foundations for innovative and better medical treatments.

Geophysicists at ETH Zurich have shown that every single wave of a magnitude 3.9 earthquake registers in the noise suppression system of fibre-optic networks.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have now shown that a previously unknown protein plays a key role in a congenital malformation of the heart. Their findings point the way towards new treatment options. Through the experiments on the genetically modified mice, her team determined which molecular switches are involved and how they need to be thrown to halt the malformations that damage the heart.

Forschende klären auf, was geschehen kann, wenn Zellen ihre normale Grösse Überschreiten und seneszent werden. Die neuen Erkenntnisse könnten helfen, Krebstherapien zu optimieren. Growth is a fundamental biological process and a prerequisite for living organisms to develop and reproduce. The processes of cell growth (i.e.

Researchers have detected a new type of magnetism in an artificially produced material. The material becomes ferromagnetic through minimization of the kinetic energy of its electrons. For a magnet to stick to a fridge door, inside of it several physical effects need to work together perfectly. The magnetic moments of its electrons all point in the same direction, even if no external magnetic field forces them to do so.

For the first time, researchers have succeeded in printing a robotic hand with bones, ligaments and tendons made of different polymers using a new laser scanning technique. 3D printing is advancing rapidly, and the range of materials that can be used has expanded considerably. While the technology was previously limited to fast-curing plastics, it has now been made suitable for slow-curing plastics as well.

People living on the in low-lying coastal areas will be at even greater risk from cyclones in the future. Natural ecosystems offer protection, but this protection has decreased in recent years and is expected to continue to decline. This is a finding of a model study by an international team of researchers led by ETH Zurich.

New study estimates that natural forest recovery could capture approximately 226 Gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon, but only if we also reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Achieving these results requires community-driven efforts to conserve and restore biodiversity. Research results published in the journal, external page Nature call_made , show that realistic global forest carbon potential is approximately 226 Gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon.

Researchers are developing a low-carbon cement with a significantly lower embodied CO2 content than traditional cement.

A new ETH study compares 27 humanoid robots with humans and comes to the conclusion that while robots have better components, they are still not capable of achieving as much.

The brain's state of arousal is the key to many stressand anxiety-related disorders. Researchers at ETH Zurich have now found a way to influence it with a new biofeedback method. Our pupils are a mirror of our state of arousal: they dilate when we are tense, stressed or even panicky, and constrict when we calm down.

Using a new 3D printing technique, researchers at ETH Zurich have developed special ceramic structures for a solar reactor. Initial experimental testing show that these structures can boost the production yield of solar fuels. In recent years, engineers at ETH Zurich have developed the technology to produce liquid fuels from sunlight and air.

Sparkling water on the go at the touch of a button and entirely plastic-free. The new water bottle by ETH spin-off bottleplus makes this possible. by Nicole Davidson and Karin Kelly Like many other people, former ETH students Christian Käser and Linus Lingg love to drink sparkling water. There are dozens of convenient and well-designed reusable bottles for transporting tap water.

Mars's liquid iron core is smaller and denser than previously thought. Not only is it smaller, but it is also surrounded by a layer of molten rock. This is what researchers conclude on the basis of seismic data from the InSight lander. For four years, NASA's InSight lander recorded tremors on Mars with its seismometer.

How to bring a diagnostic process that has endured for 100 years into the digital age? Two researchers from ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich are developing a robotic platform that enables a more accurate diagnosis of cancer cells by rapidly quantifying tissue samples in their entirety. It all started with an innocuous question at the start of Francesca Catto's doctoral thesis: wouldn't it be nice if tissue samples could be coloured and digitally displayed as a 3D image?