wire - news in brief

SUMMER SERIES: HOW SCIENCE WORKS - Looking to the past can help us better understand the workings of science today. Jérôme Baudry, Professor at the College of Humanities at EPFL, explains how the procedures for proving and communicating scientific results have changed over time. We often hear people talk about "the scientific method" as the ultimate guarantee of rigor in experimental research, but what exactly does it entail?

In recent years, nationalist leaders have staked claims on lost territories in order to restore the glory of former empires.

Roberto Gargiani, an architectural historian and professor at EPFL, has penned a new history of concrete in the United States from 1940 to 1970.

Researchers have investigated ancient leather balls discovered in the graves of horse riders in northwest China.

The city of Zurich supported slavery and slave trade in the 18th century financially and played a role in the deportation of thousands of Africans.

The Argentinian Tomás Bartoletti wants to tell history from a global perspective. Since the summer of 2019 he has been doing so at ETH Zurich, where he has been researching the story of the Swiss naturalist Johann Jakob von Tschudi and his travels around Latin America.

The Latin version of Théodore de Bry's Voyages is available on line in its entirety for the first time.

Media releases, information for representatives of the media Media Relations (E) An interdisciplinary team from the universities of Bern, Oxford and Thessaloniki was awarded a grant of 6.4 million euros from the European Research Council (ERC).

Béla Kapossy is the new director of EPFL's College of Humanities. He will take up his duties on 1 August.

On 7 May 1572, the heavens opened over Zurich - after years of extreme weather conditions and crop failures - and a bolt of lightning struck the Grossmünster church, the epicenter of the Zurich Reformation movement.

2018 will be a pivotal year for the Venice Time Machine project.

An EPFL study commissioned by the Canton of Bern has come up with three possible ways of protecting the Sutz-Lattrigen archaeological site, which offers a rare insight into the lives of pile dwellers.

With PSI's neutron beams, metal objects can be rendered transparent. This helps archaeologists not only to see what is hidden in their hollow spaces.

The interior of fossils and artefacts that are hundreds, thousands and yes, sometimes millions of years old can be examined at two PSI research facilities. A conversation with Federica Marone and Eberhard Lehmann, who are opening a new view into the past with their methods. Ms. Marone, Mr. Lehmann  -  palaeontologists and archaeologists regularly come to you to look inside fossils and ancient objects with your non-destructive analysis methods.

It is likely to be one of the oldest prosthetic devices in human history: Together with other experts, Egyptologists from the University of Basel have reexamined an artificial wooden big toe. The find is almost 3000 years old and was discovered in a female burial from the necropolis of Sheikh ŽAbd el-Qurna close to Luxor.

Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani hasn't just written definitive reference works on urban planning and shaped a generation of ETH architects; he has also run numerous projects of his own.

The «Last Swiss Holocaust Survivors» exhibition, which opens today at the ETH Zurich Archives of Contemporary History, tells the stories of how fourteen eyewitnesses survived the Holocaust and then went on with their lives.

Media releases, information for representatives of the media Media Relations (E) The people in Switzerland were on the move in the High Alps and running alpine pastures 7,000 years ago and therefore much earlier than previously assumed. A study by the University of Bern that combines archaeological knowledge with findings from palaeoecology comes to this conclusion.

South America's mining industry supplies half the world with copper. The world's largest mines are located in the Andes.

As buildings evolve from energy consumers to energy producers, architecture is seeing a major paradigm shift, with building renovations becoming a real challenge.

What began as a student initiative has today become one of Switzerland's most distinguished archives.

In the 16th century, Conrad Gessner set about the remarkable task of cataloging all animals of the then-known continents.

"Analysis of historical urban development broadens our perspective on how urban spaces are shaped and deployed.

Zurich - University of Zurich Die Malerei gilt als Inbegriff der Kunst. Wandteppiche und andere textile Kunstwerke werden dagegen als zweitrangig wahrgenommen und wenig erforscht.