wire - news in brief

Today, the Dynamic Imaging Center at sitem-insel, the Swiss Institute for Translational Medicine and Entrepreneurship, opened its doors. Here, for the first time, X-ray images of a moving person can be taken simultaneously from two different directions. This enables clinical research that is unique in Europe and that represents a milestone in the investigation of musculoskeletal disorders.

The ARRAKHIS consortium, for which EPFL has the science lead, has just successfully passed the mission definition review of the project, a very important first milestone towards full completion of the mission preparation.

SNSF Ambizione grants are aimed at early-career postdoctoral researchers who wish to conduct their first independent project in Switzerland.

The Swiss Light Source SLS at PSI will shut down temporarily as part of a major upgrade project. It will come back online in 2025, ready to supply even more powerful synchrotron light than ever for innovative scientific experiments. At 8 a.m. on the morning of Saturday 30 September, the Swiss Light Source SLS, one of PSI's five large research facilities, will be shut down.

3D printing can produce highly complex shapes. But printing ceramic objects with the help of a laser is a more difficult challenge. Now researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have for the first time taken tomograms revealing what happens at microscopic level during this fabrication process. The findings will help improve this very promising technology.

Physicist Lesya Shchutska, EPFL professor and winner of the Swiss Science Prize Latsis 2023, is paving the way for the discovery of new particles.

Quantum mechanics describes the forces that hold the world together on the smallest scale. The theory of relativity explains the world at the cosmic level. The two seem incompatible - and a unifying theory is nowhere in sight. Without quantum mechanics, many of the technologies that we take for granted would be inconceivable.

For his semester's project, Constant Panisset is developing a cheap, robust and portable device that can turn water into a disinfectant via the principle of plasma activated water.

Bruno Schuler and his young team are embarking on an ambitious research project: He will selectively generate defects in atomically-thin semiconductor layers and attempt to measure and control their quantum properties with simultaneous picosecond temporal resolu­tion and atomic precision. The resulting insights are expected to establish fundamental knowledge for future quantum computers.

John von Neumann was one of the most important mathematicians and computer pioneers of the 20th century - and an ETH alumnus.

The JUICE mission of the European Space Agency ESA, which aims to explore the planet Jupiter and its three largest moons, is all set to go. The space probe will carry on board the high-tech detector RADEM developed at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI. Among other things, this will provide information about the complex radiation conditions and the highly dynamic magnetic environment of the Jupiter system.

The European Space Agency ESA-s Juice space mission is scheduled to start its journey to Jupiter on April 13, 2023.

Empa researcher Amy Knorpp wants to bring systematics into the young research field of high-entropy oxides.

The Astrophysical Spectropolarimetry research project, led by Renzo Ramelli of the USI-affiliated Istituto ricerche solari Aldo e Cele Daccò (IRSOL), has been approved by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). The project aims to study the evolution and structure of the solar magnetic field, focusing on the formation of solar flares using modern equipment and innovative observation techniques.

Electronic components are becoming smaller, more complex and more powerful - this calls for new solutions for joining them. An Empa team is developing nanostructured joining materials for the next generation of microelectronics and other demanding applications. Gordon Moore was right. In April 1965, the US engineer and later co-founder of Intel predicted that the number of transistors on a chip would double about every two years.

In 1986, UZH physicist and IBM Fellow K. Alex Müller and his colleague J. Georg Bednorz revolutionized solid-state physics with the discovery of the first high-temperature superconductor.

Vira Bondar is fascinated by the fundamental questions of physics. She conducts research with ultracold neutrons and is working to make exercise sessions at ETH Zurich even more exciting.

Researchers at PSI have joined forces with employees of the technology transfer centre ANAXAM and the industrial partner Audi Sport to shed light on a potential sticking point: they have used neutrons to examine a brake calliper in action and reveal ways of optimising it. Human lives depend on brakes.

Scientists at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI are to receive two prestigious SNSF Starting Grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), amounting to 3.1 million Swiss francs.

Novel materials could revolutionise computer technology. Research conducted by scientists at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI using the Swiss Light Source SLS has reached an important milestone along this path. Microchips are made from silicon and work on the physical principle of a semiconductor. Nothing has changed here since the first transistor was invented in 1947 in the Bell Labs in America.

New work by FMI researchers shows that key proteins help to stabilize the interaction between otherwise highly dynamic DNA structures.

Stephen Herzog is researching how nuclear weapons could be better controlled and eventually eliminated. For him, Putin's threats are a reason to fundamentally question the nuclear "balance of terror." "I research nuclear arms control." For years, this line produced blank stares in social settings as I tried to explain my job's importance.

If the transition to renewables is to succeed, we will need a viable means of storing surplus heat and electricity.