EPFL joins the fight against tuberculosis
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Testing new therapies in the fight to eradicate tuberculosis is high on the list of work that will be done at a new laboratory in Lausanne that specializes in air-borne pathogens. EPFL, the Swiss federal polytechnic institute in Lausanne, inaugurated the laboratory Wednesday 17 March. It is financed by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and the Swiss government and is open to researchers from EPFL and nearby universities.
The laboratory will study in vivo strains of Bacillus anthracis, the air-borne pathogen that causes tuberculosis, a disease that has thousands of new victims a year, including 500 new cases annually in Switzerland alone. The teams will be led by EPFL professors Stewart Cole, who is head of the EPFL Global Health Institute, and John McKinney.
Cole points out that the problem is not, as people often believe, limited to developing countries. “In Département 93 in France and in certain neighbourhoods in London the rate of tuberculosis disease is as high as in sub-Saharan Africa.And it is in Eastern Europe where the most virulent and antibiotic-resistant strains are found. Seventy percent of the patients do not survive if they don’t receive effective treatment, he says.
The researchers will work on strains used around the world, which are less aggressive than those found in nature, or even in hospitals, according to Cole.
The Life Sciences building at EPFL in Lausanne
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A team of researchers at the Brain Mind Institute at the EPFL in Lausanne has unraveled one of the mysteries that is part of the larger question of how Alzheimers works. In an article that appears Wednesday 3 March in The Journal of Neuroscience, the group of laboratories working with the Institute’s director, Pierre Magistretti, has studied studied how the functions of cells called astrocytes are impaired when “possessed” by aggregated, or built up, Amyloid-Beta.
Amyloid-Beta protein, found in cerebral plaques, is typically present in the brain of Alzheimer’s patients.
Rolex Learning Center / EPFL by Sanaa ©2010 Hisao Suzuki
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The CHF110 million Rolex Learning Center at EPFL in Lausanne opens officially Monday 22 February. The 21st century education center is notable for its waves of floors without stairs and ceilings seemingly without support columns. It has Swiss cheese-like holes in the roof for light and aeration. The building is quite simply extraordinary to behold, and time will tell if its innovative design is as functionally pleasing as architects of the Japanese firm Sanaa promise.
The center is more than just an unusual building visually and functionally: in keeping with the work of EPFL into materials and processes research, the Rolex Learning Center has been built using several new construction methods.
Students, faculty and visitors who enter the building Monday will find a center which acknowledges that traditional learning methods and materials have been replaced by group work, using interactive and digital tools.
Rescuers say finding a healthy survivor who had been under an avalanche for 17 hours is a rare experience. Swiss media flocked to the bedside of Cédric Genoud in Sion, where he is being observed for two days.
Update 09:31 Sion, canton Valais, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Cédric Genoud, the 21-year-old who survived 17 hours under an avalanche and was rescued Sunday near Evolène, recounts his ordeal in a lengthy interview on TSR and in the Tribune de Genève.
The EPFL student says he decided to ski off-piste for the first time without the equipment for it, and when he was caught by an avalanche the only thing he was able to do was move his head and make a small air pocket with his helmet, a move that saved him.
He remained conscious during the night, in part because the pain in one leg that was twisted kept him awake – and for the first time in his life he prayed, and then he began to hope that animals would smell and find him. He ate snow to keep from being dehydrated. But he never gave up hope or let go of his desire to live.
EPFL conference centre: exterior view from west
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A conference centre that will be Europe’s most modern in 2012 will soon see the light of day on the northern edge of the Swiss Federal Polytechnic Institute (EPFL). The university hopes to attract world-class scientific meetings to the centre, which will house a main auditorium of up to 3,000 seats along with five lesser meeting rooms of up to 250 seats each.
Work on the complex should start in the summer. It will include parking and access to the rest of the EPFL campus. The centre itself includes housing for 500 students and a commercial zone, including medical facilities.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Philippe Gillet, director of the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research cabinet becomes EPFL’s vice-president for education and research 1 April 2010. He replaces Giorgio Margaritondo, who has held the post for six years and who will return to teaching and research at the polytechnic institute.
Gillet, 51 and a native of Strasbourg, France, is a graduate of the Normale supérieure de Paris (Ulm), 1979, with a doctorate in geophysics. His specialties are the formation of mountain chains, the Alps in particular, and extreme pressure and temperature conditions found within planets. He was named director of the Ecole Normale Supérieure at Lyon in 2003, and in 2007 he became the director of the cabinet of Valerie Pecresse, French minister of Higher Education and Research. He has been involvd in the ministry’s reforms, including university autonomy, research and the elaboration of a national strategy for research and innovation.
Students regularly visit EPFL in Lausanne, but more boys than girls opt to go
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Only 15 percent of women in Switzerland are active in information technology, and only five percent of Swiss engineers are women. This brainpower deficit is addressed in Geneva for the first time by a leading US organization in the field, in a day of workshops in English and French for girls aged 11-15 and their parents. The workshops will be held at the International School of Geneva 14 November.
Expanding your horizons (EYH) chose Geneva, Switzerland to organize its first series of workshops in Europe. It regularly runs about 90 conferences a year in Asia and the USA to introduce girls to the sciences.
Participating girls choose workshops led by women who are recognized in their fields, says Jennifer Kealy, EYH Geneva conference chairwoman. The same subjects in school may be dry, but the workshops try to give young women a taste for the uses to which science and mathematics can be put in an environment that is dynamic and fun.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The man suspected of aiding terrorism who was arrested by French police 8 October was charged in Paris Monday 12 October and it appears likely he will remain in detention. Internet surveillance of terrorist groups led investigators to e-mail exchanges the 32-year-old man had with terrorist groups. Swiss television TSR quotes a source close to the man’s file who says that he had not moved to the stage of being involved in planning attacks but that he had shown his interest and desire to do so.
Update 12:50 Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – EPFL, Lausanne’s Polytechnic institute, said Monday morning 12 October that it has blocked all computer access to an area where a possible terrorist suspect has been working, but it cannot yet confirm that the person under suspicion is indeed the person arrested 8 October in France. If so, he has been giving courses once a week at the university although he has recently been off work on sick leave. Britain’s Telegraph reported late Sunday night 11 October that the unnamed man arrested last Thursday south of Lyons, France on terrorism charges was working on projects at both Cern and EPFL. EPFL has not been given a name by French police. The university and Swiss Federal Police say they are ready to help French police, but no official requests have been made.
Swisscube, EPFL, 10cm2 and 83 grams
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Switzerland’s first-ever satellite has begun transmitting from space after its successful launch at 08:22 from India’s Sriharikota space station. The 833-gram, 10 cubic centimetre satellite began sending signals at 09:37. It is equipped with a telescope to allow staff and students to study airglow, described by the university as ” a luminescent phenomenon in the planetary atmosphere caused by cosmic rays striking the upper atmosphere and chemiluminescence caused mainly by oxygen and nitrogen reacting with hydroxyl ions at heights of a few hundred kilometers.”
The satellite was built by the EPFL in Lausanne as an educational project, with several government offices and companies as partners.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – EPFL’s miniature “SwissCube” satellite cube, originally a student project developed with other universities, including Neuchatel, will become Switzerland’s first launched satellite Wednesday 23 September, when it leaves the Indian Sriharikota space station. The launch is scheduled for 08:34 Swiss time and EPFL is planning a live viewing session open to students and faculty, followed by a celebration. SpaceCube is a mere 1,000 cm3 in size and is designed to photograph airglow phenomena.
Life Sciences, EPFL, Lausanne
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The EPFL, one of Switzerland’s two federal polytechnic institutes (the other is in Zurich, EPZ), has just been awarded eight European Research Council starting grants for young researchers, worth CHF2.2 million each. For the second year in a row the university has been awarded more grants than any other school, including Cambridge and Oxford in the UK: in 2008 the ERC awarded advanced grants to older researches and the EPFL was awarded 11 grants of CHF3.7m each.
EPFL, campus in Lausanne
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A group based mainly at EPFL in Lausanne have identified a molecule that may provide a stronger tool in the fight against excess weight and diabetes type 2, both of which are increasing at alarming rates worldwide, according to the journal Cell Metabolism.
Researchers Kristina Schoonjans, Johan Auwerx, Hiroyasu Yamamoto and Chikage Matakiand at EPFL, the Lausanne federal polytechnic university, working with Charles Thomas at EPFL and Roberto Pellicciari at the University of Perugia in Italy, say the selective molecule, called INT-777, can activate the TGR5 protein. TGR5 controls secretion of a hormone that has a critical role in pancreatic function and regulating blood sugar levels.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – EPFL, the federal polytechnical school in Lausanne, estimates it will receive €40 million in grant money awarded to researchers by the European Research Council (ERC) a grant-making body for frontier research funded by the European Commission. EPFL researchers lead other institutions Europe-wide in the number of grants received.
Students highlight housing shortage. Félix Imhof © UNIL
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Students returning to EPFL and the University of Lausanne (Unil) for a start to classes 14 September face a severe housing shortage and are appealing to the city’s population to lodge students by offering rooms on the university site.
Unil launched an awareness campaign 27 August to highlight the shortage. Student volunteers in strategic locations around town “lived” in a simulated bedroom, a study, a kitchen, a laundry-room. Flyers were handed out to passers-by.
The event will be repeated from 10:00 to 12:00 at the Place St. François on Saturday 29 August.
Related: 24Heures
Vice-commodore Fred Mayer of the SNG, right, at 1 August arrival of Alinghi in Geneva. Alinghi President Ernesto Bertarelli, left and Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey. Image: © 2009 Guido Trombetta/Alinghi
Ras al-Khaimah, UAE, America's Cup venue 2010
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Update 3 10:35 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The next America’s Cup race, the top event in the sailing world, will be held starting 8 February 2010 in Ras al-Khaimah, in the United Arab Emirates, the Société Nautique de Genève (SNG) announced Wednesday morning 5 August. The SNG has the right to select the next race’s location, as the home club of Alinghi, holder of the America’s Cup.
”Our absolute priorities in making this decision are the prevailing weather conditions and the resulting safety that they bring to both [Ed. note: Alinghi and official challenger BMW Oracle] teams,” explains Alinghi skipper Brad Butterworth.
Al Hamra, Ras al-Khaimah, UAE
”We looked everywhere for a venue that suited having good racing for the Match dates in February. We had trained in the UAE in the winter with Alinghi before and in the end we settled on Ras al-Khaimah in particular because of the infrastructure in Al Hamra Village and because it has a great building sea breeze during the day, similar to Mediterranean conditions in the summer, making it good for these boats and safe for all concerned.”
Image: © 2009 Fina championships, Rome
Lausanne, Switzerland and Rome, Italy (GenevaLunch) – Swimming records continue to tumble at the Fina World Championships in Rome but the main issue has been “When is a swimsuit “performance enhancing?” Professor Jan-Anders Manson at EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Tecnnology) in Lausanne is leading a group of scientists to provide guidelines on acceptable materials. His group will ultimately decide what is a “textile” and what is not for new rules that ban non-textile swimwear, which go into effect in 2010. The Rome championships are the last major competition where polyurethane swimming suits are allowed, following a decision 28 July by the Fina (International Swimming Federation) to accept recommendations four days earlier by its Congress to change the rules at the start of 2010.
Olympic superstar Michael Phelps has threatened to stop racing until the ban on polyurethane suits is introduced, after seeing Paul Biedermann, an unknown German, beat him into second place and smash his 200-metre freestyle record by almost a second.
Swiss traffic jam, autoroute, 2009: doubling up might help
Update 16:25 Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Paleo Festival Nyon is well and truly over for this year, and we all had very good fun. The festival’s organizers tried even harder this year to encourage public transportation, as GenevaLunch described in its users’ guide to the festival.
Among those efforts was Klaxonne.com, an experiment in “dynamic ride-sharing“, bringing together demand and supply for a ride to a certain place at a certain time, using text messages or sms. Klaxonne was moderately successful at Paleo.
To those of you who subscribe to our Google/Feedburner rss e-mail feed, please note that it failed to include several articles from Wednesday 15 July. We’re sorry that you missed them and unfortunately have no explanation for this, but here they are: EPFL mathematicians crack elliptical curve encryption problem, Vaud and Schumacher agree to small dock, shoreline group opposed, Alinghi accused by US club of secretly plotting with Intl Sailing Federation, C0ngo people fail to get Mobutu money, Soldier killed, another injured, in parachute crash
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Mathematicians at EPFL, the Swiss federal polytechnic institute, used a cluster of more than 200 PlayStation 3 game consoles to spend six months solving an encryption problem, breaking a previous record set in 2002. The laboratory for cryptologic algorithms cracked a 112-bit encryption based on elliptical curves. The significance of the work is that it “may serve to boost our confidence in the strength of elliptic curve cryptography (ECC),” say the authors, led Joppe Bos and Marcelo Kaihara. Encryption is widely used in banking and other industries for security. The encryption industry struggles to stay ahead of code-cracking hackers, who are using increasingly sophisticated methods and calculators.
A 160-bit elliptical curve standard is scheduled to be phased out by the industry in 2010, but the EPFL calculation shows that “for the next decade no regular user needs to be overly concerned about the security of 160-bit ECC.”
Daniel Borel, Logitech, at the groundbreaking for EPFL's Innovation House (image: ©Herzog, 2009)
innovation houseLausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The groundbreaking ceremony was held Thursday 25 June for Innovation House, a group of five new buildings at EPFL, the Lausanne federal polytechnic institute. It is the latest in a series of major building projects at EPFL designed to turn the school into a full university campus, joining the Rolex Learning Center and student and guest housing, buildings now under construction.
Photosynthesis at work, inspiring the Graetzel cells
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A dramatic improvement in the energy efficiency of solar cells by adding a dye that is sensitive to the blue and green wavelengths of the spectrum was announced by researchers at Lausanne’s EPFL and Stanford University in California, USA. Graetzel cells, invented by EPFL scientists Michael Graetzel and Brian O’Regan in the 1990s, generate an electric current when light stimulates a dye. In today’s cells the dye is sensitive only to the lower-energy red range of the spectrum. By adding a second dye, perylene, which is sensitive to blues and greens and transfers its energy to the red-sensitive phthalocyanines, the solar cell’s range sensitivity is broadened, allowing it to make better use of the light it absorbs. The research is published in the June 2009 issue of Nature Photonics.
Rover robot, Mars
Lausanne, Switzerland (Genevalunch) – A data-collecting robot straight from Mars is one of the highlights at an international trade fair in Lausanne 12-15 May that brings together environment-minded companies in micro-technology, jewelry and watchmaking. Some 500 exhibitors are expected at the joint EPHJ (Environnement Professionnel Horlogerie Joaillerie) and EPMT (Environment Professional Micro-technology) International Show in Beaulieu, Lausanne, an increase of 40 percent from 2008 thanks to strong and growing demand in micro-technology. EPFL will be holding a day-long conference on nanotechnology and lasers during the fair, which serves as a showcase for new products.
Photo, ©Alain Herzog
Photo, ©Alain Herzog
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Thirteen laboratories at EPFL, representing a broad range of sciences, have contributed to a bus that will spend 10 weeks a year visiting schools in Switzerland to encourage young students, ages 10-13, to take an interest in science. Girls are particularly targeted, with the bus organized under the polytechnic university’s equality department.
Lausanne, Switzerland (24 Heures, Fre) – Claude Nicollier, the first Swiss astronaut to go into space, was mugged in Dniepropetrovsk, Ukraine 16 April, robbed of his money and cell phone and left unconscious on the street.
