A bunch of brainy students at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (Einstein was a student there) designed a prototype of a passenger pod that might one day carry commuters through a vacuum tube in magnetically levitating cars at more than 1,000 km/h. At this speed a trip between Zürich and Geneva could take 15 […]
Swiss government moves closer to personal digital IDs
The idea of digital IDs in Switzerland has been kicked around since 2002 when the government decided it was a good idea. Since then it has been hotly debated. Following a process of consultation, the government met on 15 November 2017, and announced it’s aiming to have some form of digital or e-ID written into Swiss […]
What one Swiss university learned by following student smartphone wifi signals
Researchers followed students on the EPFL campus in Lausanne, Switzerland, for ten days, by tracking their mobile wifi signals. Thanks to help from IT services at the university, researcher Antonin Danalet was able collect information on the movements of 2,000 individuals via their wifi signals over a period of ten days. By linking wifi access point […]
Swiss scientists find link between stress and social status
A study by scientists at EPFL in Lausanne Switzerland shows social status is a major risk factor for developing chronic stress. In addition, the team discovered a certain kind of identifiable brain activity associated with high risk, something which might make it possible to identify those at risk. Stress is one factor often associated with mental disorders, however […]
Switzerland scores well in exercise obesity study
Researchers at Stanford University gathered smartphone data on 68 million days of physical activity from 717,527 individuals around the world. Accelerometry features automatically detected and counted their steps. The study, focused on 46 countries and designed to gain insight into exercise levels and their relationship to obesity, combined daily step information with obesity metrics. An average Swiss […]
Swiss supercomputer now world’s third most powerful
A supercomputer ranking published on 19 June 2017, places Switzerland’s 19.6 petaflop1 Piz Daint supercomputer third in the world after Sunway TaihuLight and Tianhe 2, two Chinese supercomputers. Piz Daint’s recent upgrades allowed it to climb five positions up the ranking. With a performance of 93 petaflops1, China’s TaihuLight is by far the most powerful number-cruncher […]
Geneva hospital breaks european record for most robot operations
This week, Geneva University Hospitals (HUG) announced it had carried out the largest number of robotic surgical procedures in Europe, passing the milestone of 2,500. The exact total is 2,514, which include visceral (1,185), urological (1,053) and gynaecological (276) operations. The team has observed numerous benefits from robotic surgery, such as smaller incisions and scars, […]
Beer protects gut wall, suggests Swiss research
Le Matin. Researchers at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) think they have discovered the protective power of hops. A molecule in hops appears to strengthen a membrane formed from cells of the intestinal wall. This wall forms a barrier between what is ingested and what is absorbed and can prevent the absorption […]
Why Facebook needs to be replaced
Michael Casey, one of the speakers at yesterday’s TEDx in Lausanne, thinks the world needs something better than Facebook. Casey, a former Wall Street Journal journalist and cryptocurrency expert based in New York, thinks the social media giant now has so much impact on our lives it needs to become a public good, not something […]
Geneva is marching for science. Here’s why it matters.
On Saturday 22 April 2017, Geneva marches for science, one of hundreds of marches taking place around the world. But why would anyone march for science? Thank you science! There is a children’s book that encourages kids to say thank you for houses, the clean water that flows from the taps, cars, telephones, planes, radios, electricity and […]
