Geneva, Switzerland, (GenevaLunch) – More than 700 inventors looking to be discovered are exhibiting their creations at the International Exhibition of Inventions, New Techniques and Products of Geneva. The fair will take place until 6 April at Geneva’s Palexpo. Swiss Info reports that among the inventions presented are a self-making bed, bamboo T-shirts, water that cleans without detergent and a pillow for those who snore!
Lake Geneva Region, Switzerland – Another employment agency has launched a program to train and develop watch making labour in the Lake Geneva region. Qualified watchmakers are in demand in Switzerland but the working force is scarce. 20Min carries an article in which Kelly Services announces the creation of training and development centers in Neuchatel, Bienne and La Chaux-de-Fonds.
Photo: Klaus Zhang, one of two Chinese judges in Sierre for the Sial China competition. Zhang was also a judge in the 2007 Mondial du Pinot Noir competition in Sierre, the only one of its kind in the world.
Sierre, Valais, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Vinea in Sierre, Valais, is hosting 25 wine tasters during a two-day session to judge 450 international wines entered in the Sial China wine competition.
Sial is China’s main international food and beverage event and will be be held in Shanghai, China 14-16 May 2008. Vinea, best known in Switzerland for organizing the annual Vinea festival of Swiss wines in early September, also organizes and oversees international wine competitions for other organizations around the world, such as the Sial China one. Vinea provides technical expertise, which includes a completely computerized competition. This year’s Sial competition has 150 more wines than in 2007, from 17 countries, up from 16 in 2007.
Zurich, Switzerland (20 Minutes, Fre) – The 3,000 employees at Credit Suisse who are members of Facebook, according to 20 Minutes, can no longer view Facebook pages at work. The move appears to have been made to increase productivity at work and reduce the chances of the bank’s system being infected. At the BCV, reports 20 Minutes, blogs are also banned. [Ed. note: they won't be able to read GenevaLunch coverage of what the Swiss media are saying, since GL is a blog, in technical terms.]
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Two weeks after the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was moved into its bed below ground, Cern, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is opening "Science Grand Format," a major photo exhibit showing the history of the massive project.
The very large photos are on display at the Cern Globe of Science and Innovation on the Route de Meyrin, Geneva until 30 April and again during July and August.
Hours: Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 14:00-17:30. Saturdays 9:00-17:00 except Saturday 5 April 2008. Open also on Sunday 6 April 2008 for the Cern Open Day (LHC 2008), 9:00-19:00.
Geneva, Switzerland (from Cern) – The Atlas1 collaboration at Cern Friday celebrated the lowering of its last large detector element.
Photo: Cern, copyright 2009, reproduced with permission.
The Atlas detector is the world’s largest general-purpose particle detector, measuring 46 metres long, 25 metres high and 25 metres wide; it weighs 7000 tonnes and consists of 100 million sensors that measure particles produced in proton-proton collisions in Cern’s Large Hadron Collider3 (LHC). The first piece of Atlas was installed in 2003 and since then many detector elements have journeyed down the 100 metre shaft into the Atlas underground cavern. This last piece completes this gigantic puzzle.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss government Friday turned its attention to technology issues. Swiss Federal Councilor Doris Leuthard called for Switzerland to sharply increase spending on technology research, in comments made during an event to celebrate Alinghi’s technological innovations.
Councilor Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, minister for Police and Justice, told journalists Thursday that the Federal Council believes Switzerland’s Internet security laws are adequate but that the government must do more to combat three main forms of cybercrime: using the Internet for extremism, economic spying and pornography.
Leuthard noted that while Switzerland invests a total of 2.6% of GDP in research and development, only 0.6% is contributed by the federal government, a figure well below those for other governments, such as Sweden, Finland and Japan. And while the amount invested is growing by 3.4% a year, this lags behind other leading technology countries’ increases. "With investment growing by 3.4%, little has changed in this area in
recent years. Other countries are experiencing stronger growth; Austria
with 9% and Finland with 8.7%." Leuthard argues that Switzerland can be proud of its position as a leading technology and innovation country, but if the government does not increase spending in this area, the edge will soon be lost.
She cited three recent reports that give Switzerland a top slot. "The rankings show that we often win the prize for innovation.
- According to the Global Competitiveness Report 2007-2008 just
published by the WEF, Switzerland holds first place for innovation
after notching up a total of 5.8 out of 7 points. - In the European Innovation Scoreboard 2007, Switzerland is in the group of ‘leading countries’, a close second behind Sweden.
- In the last OECD report Swiss innovation performance is rated overall as being the best in the world."
Widmer-Schlumpf clarified the government’s intentions in the area of Internet crime prevention. Federal and cantonal police are better positioned to coordinate their work in this area following recent changes to the penal code, she pointed out. A law written in 2004 that would have created tighter Internet measures created so much furor when it was opened to public consultation, part of the Swiss lawmaking process, that a second version had to be drafted. Both draft laws were quickly outdated by changes in technology.
The cabinet has decided police must therefore concentrate on prevention, with greater surveillance of Internet activities by extremist Islamist groups and others. order to prevent terrorist acts. Widmer-Schlumpf, speaking to Swiss media Thursday, gave as an example of the efficacity of this approach the arrest and imprisonment in 2007 of the widow of one of the men who killed Afghan leader Massoud and her Tunisian husband, who operated an Islamist propaganda site from Fribourg.
Switzerland (Le Matin, Fre) – Switzerland’s third annual SwissSecurityDay, which focuses on Internet security, will offer individuals help from 3-6 March through a variety of activities, many of them organized by sponsors.
Neuchatel, Switzerland (TSR, Fre) – New software will help fight forest fires more efficiently by using real time data that is closer to reality than existing programmes, thanks to work at the University of Neuchatel. Tanya Garcia from the university’s statistical institute has worked closely with Canadian researchers to develop a new generation of software that takes better account of on-site realities such as wind direction and intensity, the terrain and forest type.
Geneva, Switzerland (Le Temps, Fre) – Jacques Taglang is interviewed today at length by Le Temp’s Isabelle Musy, and he makes the point that the legal battle currently weighing on the America’s Cup is hardly new: back in 1851 there were already fights over how the sailing race should be run. Taglang has written several books on the America’s Cup and he argues that the current popular view of today’s battle between Ernesto Bertarelli and Larry Ellison as a fight between two millionaires over their pretty toy is just an illusion. The tactical struggle between drama and the race itself is decades old, he says. Sir Thomas Lipton found himself part of a similar America’s Cup fight back in 1903.
Lausanne, Switzerland (EPFL) – There’s a kid waiting to meet you at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Like any kid, it will amuse you, it will ask you lots of questions, and it might even bother you a little bit. But unlike most kids, it doesn’t walk or talk, and it pays perfect attention. Meet Wizkid: part computer, part robot, a Swiss kid who’s changing our concept of how people interact with machines.
Wizkid is part of MoMA’s "design and the elastic mind" exhibit, 24 February to 12 May 2008. This unusual device is the result of a collaboration between an engineer, Fréderic Kaplan and an industrial designer, Martino d’Esposito. Kaplan, a researcher at EPFL, Lausanne’s polytechnic institute, worked 10 years for Sony, creating "brains" for entertainment robots. D’Esposito, who teaches at ECAL (The University of Art and Design Lausanne), designs objects and furniture for several companies including Ligne Roset and Cinna. Their collaboration was supported by the new EPFL+ECAL Lab, a joint initiative of the two Lausanne-based institutions that aims to merge engineering, design and architecture in new and innovative ways.
Photo: the sQuba, on land and sea, ready for its unveiling at the Geneva Motor Show.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – What the Swiss lack in the way of a major car manufacturer, they make up for in terms of auto design creativity, thanks to Frank Rinderknecht’s Rinspeed company. Its eXasis (image) was the hit of the 2007 Geneva car show and the designer promises to steal the limelight again in 2008 at the Geneva Motor Show, 6-16 March, with the new sQuba, a car that goes underwater.
This is not just any car, but a convertible that zooms along at 10 metres below the surface. For aficionados of underwater vehicles, this is a step above, literally, military vehicles that are limited to driving along the floorbed of a body of water. “It is undoubtedly not
an easy task to make a car watertight and pressure resistant enough to be
maneuverable under water," says Rinderknecht. Of course not. "The real challenge, however, was to create a submersible
car that moves like a fish in water.”
If you’re still wondering why you need a car that swims, consider this environmentally friendly feature: Rinspeed had to get rid of the combustible engine, not really suitable to the underwater world, so it has several electric engines, including three at the back, with one of these providing jet propulsion on land. A landworthy fish!
[Ed. note: GenevaLunch is carrying a series of articles on the Lift08 conference: articles on Lift08]
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – "Games are about ‘me’," believes Robin Hunicke, electronic game designer and artificial intelligence expert. As part of a panel about the future of the online gaming industry at the Lift08 Conference in Geneva, Hunicke calls games "beautiful," "amazing" and "magical."
Photo: Robin Hunicke on the stage’s large screen at Lift08.
Future games should be designed to make the user feel special and connected to a community, loved, Hunicke said. Games should make users feel "like they’re living".
According to Hunicke, the social networking site Facebook should be an inspiration for the future of online games. "Facebook is about me, and not about all of us," Hunicke said. "Facebook makes me feel like I matter." Gamers, Hunicke believes, want to feel at the centre of the world created by the game.
On the non-human side of gaming, Bruno Bonnell, founder and former CEO of the gaming company Infogrames says that entertainment will involve robotics in the future. "When you see a robot, it’s almost like a fantasy," Bonnell says. People want to interact with machines. He predicts that In the future our homes, cars, and workplaces will house numerous robotic devices with which we will carry on conversations, and which will follow our commands.
[Ed. note: GenevaLunch is carrying a series of articles on the Lift08 conference: articles on Lift08]
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – "In years to come, you may get into your taxi in Geneva and it’s going to be driven by a neural-driven robot," says British neuroscience researcher Kevin Warwick, who in 2002 plugged himself into the Internet as part of his research investigating the boundary that separates man from machine.
Photo: Kevin Warwick with stage large-screen image of his wife’s necklace, wired to his arm, which glowed blue when he was calm.
Sometimes called the "cyborg" (half human, half machine) researcher, Warwick presented his futuristic-sounding research at the Lift08 Conference in Geneva Friday. Warwick works as a scientist and professor at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom. He submitted himself to a surgical procedure that implanted electronic chips into his left arm in 1998 for the first time, wiring himself to a light. When he did it again in 2004, he goal was to link his arm to a computer to assess recent technology for use with artificial limbs. Previously, the procedure had only been tested on chickens.
Over a period of three months, Warwick served as a primary research subject, plugging his "external neural system" into a lamp, a wheelchair, and, of course, the Internet. "I had an IP address (Internet address)," Warwick told a rapt crowd that included many technology specialists. Internet spam, luckily, was not a problem. "Our security was that we didn’t tell anyone what we were doing until afterward."
Warwick was not the only participant in the experiment. His wife also had wires inserted into her arm. When she closed her hand, Warwick sensed her movement in his brain. "We were communicating, for the first time in the world, nervous system to nervous system."
Warwick’s wife also wore a necklace that glowed blue when her husband’s nervous signals were calm, and red when his brain became excited, even when they were on separate continents, sparking some comment in her office.
Warwick suggested to the audience that this invention has potential drawbacks. "When I’m excited, she might wonder what I’m doing, and with whom."
Beyond creating a human IP address, Warwick’s research also seeks to predict tremors and seizures in people with Parkinson’s Disease and epilepsy by reading their brain signals. His team is also creating a robot that runs off live neural tissue. The robot builds memories about where those objects lie in order to move around a room without bumping into them. As the robot "brain" builds memories, Warwick’s team studies how memories develop. He believes this could lead to discoveries about the development of Alzheimer’s Disease.
Ed. note: TSR has a lively video about Warwick’s arm and the implant.
[Update: photo and pdf link added, 8 February]
[Ed. note: GenevaLunch is carrying a series of articles on the Lift08 conference: articles on Lift08]
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – "First connect the rabbit, then connect everything else." That’s the simple business principle that keeps Rafi Haladjian moving his charming little digital rabbit, Nabaztag, through the world, hooking it up to lamps and books and more.
The rabbit, created in 2005, is the starting point of French entrepreneur Haladjian’s company Violet. Violet has an equally simple business mission: connect objects. Start with one and connect the other thousands, millions – a rabbit’s work is never done, it appears.
The rest of us have the simplest job of all: love the rabbit. It’s easy to do. In fact, even the web site that encourages you to buy or adopt a rabbit is lovable.
[Ed. note: GenevaLunch is carrying a series of articles on the Lift08 conference: articles on Lift08]
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Socially marginalized people are benefiting from online social networks to an extent never dreamed by the people who designed the systems, Jonathan Cabiria told 700 people at Lift08 in Geneva. "I challenge you to go deeper, go farther" when you create new social network systems, he said to the many programmers and developers who are attending the conference. Lift focuses on the society of the future.
[Ed. note: GenevaLunch is carrying a series of articles on the Lift08 conference: articles on Lift08]
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Our digital identities will become increasingly important to us, says Pierre Bellanger, as we build them into richer bases of information that other people can access. Social networks will grow in the direction of better access to this information so it can be shared with your other social partners.
Bellanger is the founder and CEO of the French media group Skyrock."Physical identity is merging with digital identity, because they are in the same place at the same time." he says. "In the future, your personality will reside in your mobile phone." Bellanger was addressing the LIFT08 Conference in Geneva 6-8 February.
Bellanger started the first radio station in France for 13 to 24-year-olds in the late 1970s. He says that despite being French in a heavily Anglophone Internet world, Skyrock’s goal is to become the social networking site for the world. Skyrock is the number two site in France and ranks 17th in the world in terms of page views, according to Bellanger.
"When you’re a teenager, you’re extremely productive. You’re constantly managing many contacts," he says. Social network systems that reach out to them are currently based on computer portals – large, solid machines. That will change, he argues. In an increasingly mobile world the mobile device, such as a mobile
phone or PDA (personal digital assistant), often serves as as a pocket-sized internet
portal.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Jonathan Buck is a front man for the eminent energy agency, the 100-year-old International Electrotechnical Commission, based in Geneva. He’s the first to laugh that you can’t get much more bureaucratic-sounding than this, especially when you consider that the group is comprised of 200 member nations who set electricity and electronics (electrotechnology) standards.
Photos: Jonathan Buck, left, with Laurent Haug, Lift conference founder, right.
Stop right there, the light bulb is coming on: these are the people behind the energetic, lively, even "sparky" to use one of their favourite words, online WattWatt community that is turning energy conservation into something interesting and fun. Jonathan Buck’s enthusiasm for the project that was started by the IEC is more than that of your average public relations officer. "What we want it to do is raise the profile of electricity, raise the profile of individuals and hopefully that will feed back" to the standards-setting system.
Among other thing, they want to give away $15,000 to three schools from anywhere in the world as a prize for coming up with "an innovative way to improve global electrical energy efficiency in the world."
WattWatt was created in October 2007 as a result of what Buck calls the "Al Gore effect, with climate change being talked up starting at the end of 2006." Reports that have come out in the past year, in particular the IPCG 2007 report "Climate Change 2007," showed that "if you’re efficient, you can actually have an effect, and what we do, setting standards, helps." The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shared the 2007 Nobel peace prize with US activist Al Gore.
The key words are "the individual." You. Me. "It’s all about bringing the individual to the forefront," Buck argues. "We’re trying to encourage the community that breaks the mold. We [the IEC] don’t have an agenda except to help people see that energy is primordial."
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – "I was the only one there recording them talk about those war crimes," recalled Jasmina Tesanovic, a Serbian writer also known as the "Balkan blogger" talking about her wartime online diary.
Photo: Jasmina Tesanovic, left
Tesanovic, wearing a shirt with an image of Che Guevara and seated confidently in front of her MacBook, was part of the opening morning of the LIFT08 conference in Geneva.
Lift seeks to connect entrepreneurs, bloggers, journalists, and investors through exchanges about the
social impact of new technologies. The brainchild of Laurent Haug, a French entrepreneur, LIFT08 marks the conference’s third year. Wednesday opened with a full day of workshops at Unimail, part of the University of Geneva, led by a range of presenters, many of whom have previously attended Lift.
Next to Tesanovic’s workshop was one run by Stephanie Booth, a Lausanne-based web consultant and blogger. She preached relaxed writing styles and interactive interfaces for blogs to a small group who were there to hear about getting started blogging, all seated behind laptops. "Blogs are for ‘now’ content," she explained, "whereas your website is where you put your static content and your thematic material."
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The financial services industry has been increasingly turning to biometric security technology to protect electronic transactions, which cut industry costs enormously. The use of biometric technology has critics, however, who question the security of confidentiality and in particular how well protected privacy is for stored data. The ISO, Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization, which Wednesday published new international standards for the financial industry, reports that with "trillions" of dollars in funds and securities are transferred around the globe every day, an "ironclad" authentification system is needed.
Biometric security technology includes systems such as voice identification, eye scans and facial image scanning.
The new standards "describe the architecture" to establish and manage biometric systems, and they attempt to cover many of the issues hotly debated in the security field, including "security of biometric information during its life cycle, encompassing
data integrity, origin authentication and confidentiality."
Geneva in June 2007 hosted the Geneva Security Forum, where several presenters talked about security in financial transactions.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Entrepreneurs typically face two problems, says Didier Mesnier of the ICT Cluster in Geneva. "The classic one is finding solutions that correspond to the reality of what the market needs. But they also need to find a way to put in place business structures that suit innovative companies, in particular getting the pricing policy right."
Photo: Didier Mesnier of the ICT Cluster, Geneva
Mesnier is a former entrepreneur who now works with the ICT
Cluster, housed in Geneva’s OPI (Industrial Promotion Office) which is co-sponsoring a "Venture night" event with the Lift08 conference that begins today, "to put promising ventures in the spotlight."
Eight entrepreneurs will stand before the public in Geneva Wednesday evening to present their young companies. The event, at the start of the Lift conference, gives a welcome boost, feedback and publicity to the company owners, but it is also a sign of how seriously western Switzerland is taking the need to encourage young, innovative businesses in the region.
Of the eight ICT (information and communication technology) companies, five are Swiss, two Italian and one from Russia/USA. Their products and services range from online file-sharing to reducing the costs of realtime video game production. The eight were selected from a starting group of dozens of companies from several countries – Swiss companies were given no special weighting during the selection. They were reviewed by a panel of experts that included Robert Scoble and Pierre Chappaz. Scoble came to fame as Microsoft’s official blogger and Chappaz is a successful ICT entrepreneur who founded Wikio, among other successful companies.
Laurent Haug, founder of Lift, is excited that Swiss companies did so well and that three of the finalists are from the Lake Geneva region because it underscores the dynamism in the area. The "Venture night" event is sponsored by Lift and the western Switzerland ICT Cluster "to put promising ventures in the spotlight," he told journalists at a conference briefing.
For Mesnier, the event is part of larger efforts by western Swiss cantons to acknowledge the value of
know-how," to draw attention to people who have ICT know-how and are trying
to commercialize it. The ICT Cluster is looking to identify good
potential companies and then work with them to "clarify their needs and
help sensitize them to the problem of finding a good business model."
It was organized by cantons Geneva, with Jura, Vaud, Valais and Neuchatel with Geneva given the mandate to run the ICT Cluster. It is financed through a mix of federal funds from Seco, the ministry for the economy, cantonal funds and member companies in the region.
Editor’s note: GenevaLunch, a media sponsor for Lift, will be carrying a series of articles on the Lift08 conference beginning today. Also see:
- "Why is GenevaLunch special for us at Lift?" 12 December 2007, Lift blog [update to the figures: GL has now had well over 200,000 pages viewed, with more than 100,000 visitors]
- "Conference network to give Lift08 major boost," 23 October 2007, GenevaLunch
- "Lift08 lines up key speakers," 23 October 2007, GenevaLunch
Venture Night, Wednesday 6 February, open to the public and free of charge, at the Salle Communale de Plainpalais, 52 rue de Carouge, 1205 Geneva.
GenevaLunch articles on Lift08 are all here.
Geneva, Switzerland (romandie/AWP, Fre and swissinfo, Eng) – BioData 2008, which pulls together investors, researchers and startup companies in the biotechnology field from the Lake Geneva and Rhone Alps regions, has kicked off in Geneva on an optimistic note despite fragile markets around the world, according to one of the organizers Christophe Lamps. The annual regional forum which serves as a match making event for many young biotech companies has drawn 300 participants in its seventh year.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A Swiss federal government investigator has called a temporary halt to data-collecting by a private company that secretly identifies Internet users of illegal file sharing systems, saying that the law does not allow for data privacy to be invaded in this way. The company currently gathers data that enables it to identify IP, or Internet address users, and it then sends this information at regular intervals to companies whose authors’ rights may have been abused. The information is used to press charges and to demand damages, which falls under civil rather than criminal law in Switzerland.
The investigator in charge of data protection and transparency does not question the illegality of some kinds of filesharing, mainly used for film and music, where authors’ rights are not respected. He has ruled, however, that data cannot be gathered and shared, under current Swiss law, simply to flag suspicious cases. A criminal case investigation must be underway. In practice, media companies are demanding damages, using the data they have obtained, before the criminal case is heard.
The investigator notes that this practice must be authorized specifically in the penal code, which is not currently the case. In the federal announcement about the case there is no reference to how the law might be changed.
The unnamed investigator has given 30 days notice to the the company, which was hired by the Swiss media industry to trace illegal file sharers, to state whether or not it agrees with the ruling, and during this period it must stop gathering data. If the company does not agree or continues to gather data, the investigator could open legal proceedings against it.
Bern, Switzerland (20 Minutes, Fre) – The Swiss Parliament has filed charges against an unknown attacker who disrupted the political body’s web site for two weeks during December. Parliament’s spokesperson says it is not even entirely clear that the attacks were voluntary, but the service was severely disrupted during two weeks of the parliament’s winter session.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Scientists at CERN are celebrating the successful installation underground of another giant piece of equipment. The world’s largest silicon tracking detector was put in place after five days of careful maneuvering into the Large Hadron Collider 90 metres below the France-Switzerland border.
The instrument will track charged particles produced in LHC collisions which are scheduled to begin in May next year. It is designed to operate for at least 10 years.
“The complete system operating at the Large Hadron Collider will produce data at a higher rate than the entire global telephone system,” says project manager Peter Sharp.
[Ed. note: today, 15 December is the last day for cheaper price earlybird registrations for Lift08!]
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Laurent Haug is sitting with a snappy new iPhone and a sleek Apple laptop, nodding his head enthusiastically.
"This is our third year, this year we are validated. Lift is on the map," he says, looking particularly techie in his glasses and chic clothes. Now in his third year as founder and director of the Lift conferences on technology and innovation, Haug’s project to support innovation and idea-sharing in the technology community is expanding worldwide. Best, he’s just attended a web conference where people mentioned Lift as a place you go to for ideas.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - YouTube will have pride of place when the World Economic Forum’s (WED) Davos conference opens in January.
The WEF in Geneva Friday announced that the video broadcasting giant which was bought by Google in November 2006 is inviting CEOs from companies around the world to walk up to a video camera in Davos and answer questions put to them by: anyone.
The new partnership in fact kicks off today with what WEF has labelled "The Davos Question," put to the world at large, with the option to reply via YouTube video. Here it is: What key action do you think countries, companies or individuals should take to make the world a better place in 2008?
The best answers will be screened during key public sessions at Davos, but this is really just the teaser.
YouTube will have a stand when the World Economic Forum’s annual mega-power gathering takes place in Davos 23-27 January 2008. CEOs will be invited over to the YouTube stand to answer other, possibly more probing questions from the public. The remarkable part is they’ll be doing it without their public relations minders in hand, since these people are not invited to Davos.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Cern Friday appointed Rolf-Dieter Heuer to succeed Robert Aymar as Cern’s director general. Heuer will serve a five-year term, taking office 1 January 2009. His mandate will cover the early years of operation and first scientific results from the laboratory’s new flagship research facility, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The LHC is scheduled to begin operation in summer 2008.
Photos: Rolf-Dieter Heuer, left and Robert Aymar, right. Copyright Cern, reproduced with permission.
Currently Research Director for particle and astroparticle physics at Germany’s DESY laboratory in Hamburg, a post that he took up in 2004, Professor Heuer is no stranger to Cern. From 1984 to 1998, he was a staff member working for the Opal collaboration at the Large Electron Positron collider (LEP) research facility. From 1994 to 1998, he was the group’s spokesman.
Rolf-Dieter Heuer obtained his doctorate in 1977 from the University of Heidelberg. Much of his career has been involved with the construction and operation of large particle detector systems for studying electron positron collisions. On leaving Cern in 1998, he joined the University of Hamburg as professor, where he established a group working on preparations for experiments at a possible future electron-positron collider. On taking up his appointment at DESY in 2004, he was responsible for research at the Hera accelerator, DESY’s participation in the LHC and research and development for a future electron-positron collider.
“Rolf Heuer has worked tirelessly for DESY as Germany’s main particle physics laboratory, while at the same time strengthening links between DESY, the German University system and Cern,” says Torsten Åkesson, President of the Cern Council, or board. “This spirit of collaboration will be a valuable asset to Cern as we move into LHC operation, develop strategic options for the long-term scientific programme, and develop collaboration with the European national laboratories and institutes.”
Geneva, Switzerland and San Francisco, California, USA (24 Heures, Fre) – Oracle, the new Challenger of the Record in the America’s Cup sailing competition, Tuesday sent a new proposal to Swiss-based Alinghi, reports 24 Heures. The two teams met Monday to discuss options for the race’s rules. Oracle became the official challenger, the team that sets the rules with the winner of the last race, when Alinghi lost a court battle at the end of November to have its team of choice as the challenger. Oracle had in October sent a proposal to Alinghi, to which it received no response, and the new proposal, according to 24 Heures, refines the earlier one. At issue is primarily the type of race(s) with the question remaining open for now of whether the two will have a catamaran duel or if the Cup will be run along more traditional lines.
Background:
- "Judge says no to Spanish Challenger," GenevaLunch, 27 November 2007
- search "Alinghi Oracle" on Scuttlebutt
Zurich, Switzerland (Le Matin, Fre) – Ringier, Switzerland’s largest publishing company, known primarily for its magazine business, has bought an 80% stake in media swiss ag, an online classified ads company. The move, combining traditional media products like Blick magazine, and mass online business, with sites like Gate24, makes Ringier the largest "cross-media" company in Switzerland.
Ed. note: Edipresse, Switzerland’s number two company, is the largest publisher in French-speaking Switzerland, as owner of the major daily newspapers, Tribune de Geneve, Le Matin and 24 Heures. Its Edicom site regroups news and classified ads.
