wire - news in brief

Most patients with a spinal cord injury suffer from debilitating pressure drops or dangerous pressure peaks.

An EPFL study measured the carbon footprint of 20'000 residential buildings in Vaud Canton. The authors' findings show that a targeted approach will be key to lowering the emissions associated with residential real estate.

When we're healthy, activities like walking, sitting down, speaking and remembering things can be done with ease.

The new method developed by researchers in collaboration with colleagues in Germany, is efficient, fast and inexpensive.

Researchers have developed a new way to design complex, curved three-dimensional shapes using flat materials such as paper, aluminum sheets or plastic, combining creative thinking with a new computational algorithm. Have you ever rolled a piece of paper into a cylinder, or tried to wrap aluminum foil around an object without making it crumple? Imagine being able to simply turn a piece of flat material into beautiful, strong furniture, lighting or even the buildings and bridges of the future.

For her PhD in architecture at EPFL, Chloé Joly-Pottuz researched construction methods, and in particular those for timber structures on Easter Island.

Memory loss, tremors, paralysis: when parts of the nervous system start to break down - or get broken - the consequences for human health can be staggering.

Researchers are developing robotic beehive frames that help locate honey stores inside of beehives over time, without relying on cameras. The aim is to develop new observation tools to study honeybee behavior that better fit the bees' natural way to occupy space compared to current methods. Cyril Monette is fascinated by collective behavior.

A joint study by EPFL and the University of Geneva takes a sweeping look at international migration in Switzerland from 1966 to the present day.

Researchers have developed a customizable soft robotic system that uses compressed air to produce shape changes, vibrations, and other haptic, or tactile, feedback in a variety of configurations.

Scientists at EPFL have created MammAlps, a multi-view, multi-modal video dataset that captures how wild mammals behave in the Swiss Alps.

A team of international researchers led by EPFL developed a multilingual benchmark to determine Large Language Models ability to grasp cultural context.

Researchers uncover a notorious cholera strain that contains sophisticated immune systems to fend off viruses, which potentially helped it fuel a devastating epidemic across Latin America. When we think of cholera, most of us picture contaminated water and tragic outbreaks in vulnerable regions. But behind the scenes, cholera bacteria are locked in a fierce, microscopic war-one that could shape the course of pandemics.

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) suffers from several types of biases that reflect human failings.

Organoids are a promising breakthrough that scientists have been exploring over the past 15 years. These three-dimensional tissue cultures grown from human stem cells stand to revolutionize some aspects of biomedical research, but they won't do away entirely with the need for animal testing.

Autonomous mobility already exists.. to some extent. Building an autonomous vehicle that can safely navigate an empty highway is one thing.

A robotic hand developed at EPFL can pick up 24 different objects with human-like movements that emerge spontaneously, thanks to compliant materials and structures rather than programming. When you reach out your hand to grasp an object like a bottle, you generally don't need to know the bottle's exact position in space to pick it up successfully.

An edible robot made by scientists leverages a combination of biodegradable fuel and surface tension to zip around the water's surface, creating a safe - and nutritious - alternative to environmental monitoring devices made from artificial polymers and electronics. The boat-shaped robot takes advantage of the same phenomenon - the Marangoni effect - used by some aquatic insects to propel themselves across the surface of water.

EPFL atmospheric and climate scientists show that biological particles may induce rain events that could contribute to flooding and snowstorms, owing to their ability to precipitate ice formation in clouds. They call for an update of meteorological and climate models. Clouds form upon existing particles in the atmosphere, and extreme weather events like flooding and snowstorms are related to production of large amounts of ice in clouds.

A Swiss Italian team has created RoboCake, an edible robotic wedding cake that illustrates the advances in robotic food research.

A system developed at EPFL uses augmented reality (AR) to help carpenters make extremely precise timber cuts without having to measure or mark up beams.

Researchers developed a ground-breaking new tool to help build safer AI. Today, almost everybody has heard of AI and millions around the world already use, or are exposed, to it - from ChatGPT writing our emails, to helping in medical diagnosis.

Small language models are more reliable and secure than their large counterparts, primarily because they draw information from a circumscribed dataset.

Researchers at EPFL's Neuroengineering Laboratory, led by Pavan Ramdya, aim to replicate the workings of the brain of the common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster.

To get around the constraints of quantum physics, researchers have built a new acoustic system to study the way the minuscule atoms of condensed matter talk together.

The microorganisms in our intestines play an important role in many bodily processes, from digestion to emotions, and are a key factor in our overall health.

It takes ten times more electricity for ChatGPT to respond to a prompt than for Google to carry out a standard search.

Researchers, working with the Centre de Physique des Particules de Marseille, have developed a new method for identifying neutrinos using data from CERN's NA62 experiment-which recently observed the rarest particle decay ever recorded. Particle physics explores the smallest building blocks of nature, particles so tiny that trillions of them pass through us unnoticed every second.

Scientists at.Neurorestore (EPFL/CHUV/UNIL) have developed an approach that combines rehabilitation robotics with spinal cord stimulation to restore movement in people with spinal cord injuries. The technology enhances rehabilitation and enables activities like cycling and walking outdoors. Spinal cord injuries are life-altering, often leaving individuals with severe mobility impairments.