Patrick Aebischer, president of EPFL and Jacques Melly, president of the Valais cantonal council, sign an agreement of understanding 10 January to set up a branch of the polytechnic in Valais
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – Canton Vaud’s federal polytechnic institute, EPFL and canton Valais signed an agreement of intention Tuesday 10 January in Sion to establish a branch of the school in canton Valais, most likely in Sion but working closely with a number of existing services throughout the canton.
A formal agreement and plans will be developed later in the year, but EPFL President Patrick Aebischer is quoted by Le Nouvelliste as saying the new campus should be up and running by 2015.
The new branch of EPFL will have have 11 research and training chairs, the canton and EPFL announced at a press conference Tuesday.
Valais will have a teaching campus that focuses on energy, health and chemistry, according to Le Nouvelliste, with seven chairs in energy and the rest in bio-technology and bio-engineering, while Le Temps reports that four chairs will be in energy and the others in biotechnology and medical engineering.
EPFL has not yet issued a press release confirming details but Valais, for its part, says the focus will be on energy, health (with a focus on rehabilitation) and nutrition and the new school should help attract international companies. Nutrition studies would centre around work to produce components for vitamins and medicines.
A masters degree in energy is being planned.
EPFL is based in Lausanne but has a small campus in Neuchatel for nanotechnology.
Tunnel-FET technology set to take over from field effect
Tactile screens also on the way
Adrian Ionescu of the EPFL nanoelectronic devices lab
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – Computers, cell phones and other electronic devices could be using 100 times less energy starting in just six years, an EPFL researcher in Lausanne writes in a special issue of Nature devoted to transistors, published Tuesday 22 November.
The key: moving from today’s field effect technology to tunnel-FET technology.
Adrian Ionescu is head of the Guardian Angels mega research project, a finalist for a European Union one billion grant. The project aims to design ultra-miniaturized, zero-power electronic personal assistants for a variety of applications, including healthcare.
Tunnel-FET technology is one of the first major stages in the project’s roadmap.
“For research and industry, the power consumption of transistors is a key issue. The next revolution will likely come from tunnel-FET, a technology that takes advantage of a phenomenon referred to as ‘quantum tunneling’, the Lausanne polytechnic institutes says in a statement issued Tuesday. Ionescu’s article focuses on work at the EPFL and in IBM laboratories in Zurich and the CEA-Leti in France, all of which are taking part in Guardian Angels.
Field effect technology, used in today’s transistors, is fast approaching its limits, especially for power consumption, according to the EPFL. With field effect, voltage induces an electron channel that activates the transistor.
Today’s computers have a billion transistors in the central processing unit, the CPU, alone: small switches that turn on and off to provide binary instructions, the 0s and 1s that tell our devices to send e-mails, watch videos and so much more.
Tunnel-FET technology is based on a “fundamentally different principle”
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – Peugeot-Citroën Thursday became the 11th major firm to join the Innovation Square on the EPFL campus, the first company from the car industry to bring in a large research and development budget, according to the universiy. The square opened in August 2010.
The group said in a press release 3 November that “The mission of this innovative structure is to foster a long-term vision for PSA Peugeot Citroën’s products and services.” The new unit is called StellaLab@EPFL.
The polytechnic made world headlines 28 September when it announced that new research with Nissan is studying the brain-computer interface and looking at the option of a computer-piloted car. Then 28 October it announced that, working with a French company, it had solved a major problem for compressed air cars by reducing charging time.
“EPFL conducts a great deal of research that is of interest to the auto industry, in a wide range of different fields,” it says in a 3 November press release. “For example, the Materials Sciences and Engineering Institute works to create light, sturdy composites; several robotics-oriented laboratories are designing and producing all sorts of mechanisms to help with driving and move toward ever-increasing comfort and safety for users and their environment; and there are a large number of projects that aim to replace fossil fuels in the transportation systems of the future, both by storing energy in various forms (new electric batteries, hydrogen, and even compressed air) and by using it with greater efficiency.”
Wearing your heart on your sleeve to take on a new meaning
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – A tiny new device could soon provide real-time heart monitoring that might help prevent some of the 70-100,000 deaths annually from sudden onset heart attacks. The new tool has yet to be tested in real-life conditions, but cardiologists are enthusiastic about its potential, says EPFL, which developed the medical tool. It is one of several “wireless body sensor networks” (WBSN) tools being developed at the polytechnic university in Lausanne, as part of the huge Guardian Angels project, selected as one of six finalist mega-research projects by the European Union (winner to be announced in 2012).
The project is also looking at similar monitoring systems for other health problems, such as the immediate impact of diet on obese patients.
The device consumes very little electricity and is made up of high-precision body sensors applied to the skin, a ZigBee radio module and a chip that’s optimized for analyzing and processing biological signals.It monitors the heart and detects anomalies, immediately alerting the patient’s cell phone in the case of a problem. Medical personnel are immediately alerted by e-mail and message.
“This system collects very reliable and precise data, it’s equipped with a very effective noise filtering system, and it has batteries that can last for 3-4 weeks at a time,” notes EPFL professor David Atienza, head of EPFL’s Embedded Systems Lab. “Above all it provides an automatic analysis and immediate transmission of data in compressed format to the doctor, preventing him or her from having to work through hours of recorded data.”
New research shows mothers, not just baby bottles, transmit BPA, source of mammary gland changes
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – Researchers at the EPFL have shown through experiments with mice that indirect exposure by pregnant women and nursing mothers to Bisphenol A, also known as BPA, most likely predisposes infants to breast cancer by modifying their mammary glands.
BPA is an organic compound present in some plastics and it is the subject of growing concern in the medical world, especially concerning young children. The focus until now has been primarily on the role of plastic baby bottles that emit “a significant quantity of the molecule” when heated, according to the EPFL.
BPA has been the subject of numerous scientific studies, with conflicting research results. The World Health Organization and Food and Agriculture Organization in September 2011 published the results of their ad hoc review of the situation. The report described the widespread exposure to BPA:
“Bisphenol A (BPA) is an industrial chemical that is widely used in the production of polycarbonate (PC) plastics (used in food contact materials, such as baby bottles and food containers) and epoxy resins (used as protective linings for canned foods and beverages and as a coating on metal lids for glass jars and bottles). These uses result in consumer exposure to BPA via the diet.”
It concluded that for now it’s impossible to assess the impact of exposure, but noted that “BPA exposure during the perinatal period
has been reported to alter both prostate and mammary gland development in ways that may render these organs more susceptible to the development of neoplasia or preneoplastic conditions with subsequent exposures to strong tumour initiating or promoting regimens. In the absence of additional studies addressing identified deficiencies, there is currently insufficient evidence on which to judge the carcinogenic potential of BPA.”
The EPFL results would appear to challenge this conclusion.
The Lausanne-based polytechnic institute says that BPA is so pervasive that it is not possible to do a controlled study.
Zurich, one of three Swiss cities that will benefit from new jobs
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – The QS World University Rankings 2011-2012, published independently since 2010 and considered one of the main global education ranking systems, show EPFL in Lausanne slipping from slot no. 32 to 35, but ETHZ in Zurich holding its no. 18 place, just behind McGill in Canada and ahead of Duke in the US.
EPFL has gone up slightly with Leiden and remained at the same level with the Shanghai rankings in recent years, while since ETHZ has held steady with QS and Shanghai but gone up with Leiden. EPFL offers 20 programmes and ETHZ 44.
Swiss state universities that are given a world ranking: The University of Geneva is ranked 71, Basel University 137, Bern 162, Zurich 101.
The QS system was originally published jointly by universities by Quacquarelli Symonds, a UK-based company, jointly with Times Higher Education (THE), but the two split in 2010 to use different methodologies for determining rankings. The new QS system should not be confused with the older THE-QS World University Rankings.
THE publishes its new rankings in October.
Other major rankings systems, most of which show some national bias: Shanghai Jiao Tong, The CHE Ranking, The Leiden Ranking, CHE EUSID, Newsweek, several Financial Times specialty rankings, and the Karriere Hochschulranking.
The Swiss education department publishes a useful web site in four languages (including English) with a searchable data base of all the rankings for comparative purposes.
Highlights of the new QS rankings include:
- Cambridge is number 1 but close behind are Harvard, MIT, Yale and Oxford for the top five
- The top 10 are all US or UK universities
- Chinese mainland universities are inching up, with two of them, Peking and Tsinghua, in the top 50
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – The EPFL polytechnic institute in Lausanne and Aimago, a spinoff startup company, have been awarded CHF10,000 and given the top prize of the CTI (federal innovation and technology commission) Medtech Award. Aimago, which makes microcirculation cameras, has developed a camera that measures dermal blood flow. Its main application is likely to be for burns, to more rapidly and accurately determine the degree of burns.
CTI describes how the camera works:
“The Doppler effect allows the measurement of light reflected by red blood cells using a laser beam, to determine the quality of the blood flow. The precise measurement of dermal blood flow offers many advantages, not only for burns injuries, but also for plastic surgery, wound healing, diabetes, rheumatology and neurosurgery. The numerous areas of application provide the ambitious new company from Lausanne with promising business potential.”
The company placed first out of a field of 44 companies that applied for the award. The CTI Medtech Initiative was launched in 1997 and has since supported around 300 projects, says the federal office. Its 2010 budget of CHF10.2 million funded 33 projects; other partners provided an additional CHF14.4m.
Helium hemisphere could change the face of festivals, other events
Image:©2011 EPFL / Alice
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – EPFL and the St Prex Classics Festival have created what promises to be the region’s most talked-about architectural project since the Rolex Learning Center at the polytechnic institute, although far smaller, less expensive and mobile.
The two teamed up to solve the practical problem of how to hold an open-air music and dance festival in the small intimate spaces of a medieval village, protecting performers and concert-goers from bad weather while preserving good acoustics and allowing relations with the neighbours to remain healthy.
Moon over Saint Prex, filled with dance and music, visible from miles away
The project has resulted in an extraordinary architectural structure that will be visible from miles around, with a moon-like floating top of helium that can be lowered in bad weather or as needed.
The installation can be dismantled completely and will offer a rich option over tents for outdoor festivals and other events in the future.
Image:©2011 EPFL / Alice
“Ao” is the code name for the project, after the god of clouds of Polynesian mythology. It is being designed by EPFL’s Space Conception Workshop, known by its French acronym Alice, under the leadership of Alice’s director, Dieter Dietz, with a number of students involved.
Architects Sibylle Koessler and Sara Formery have designed the installation, which will be presented to the public in August 2012 for next year’s St Prex Classics, if the CHF2 million in funds needed to complete the project can be raised on time: fundraising for the newly launched project has just begun.
Saint Prex Classics 2011 is in temporary quarters while new project moves ahead
The 2011 festival (see GenevaLunch report on the festival) kicks off Tuesday evening 16 August with free concerts as part of the new Festival Off featuring student performers, a wide mix of music and food and drink stalls on the main street of Saint Prex, a 12th century village on the shores of Lake Geneva, near Morges. The first major concert, also Tuesday evening, was quickly sold out: Philippe Jarousky and friends, at the 11th century roman church that overlooks the old town and Lake Geneva.
The view from the arena (Image:©2011 EPFL / Alice)
St Prex Classics concerts are being held mainly in the Salle du Vieux Moulin in Saint Prex and the Theatre Beausobres in Morges this year, with three in the St Prex church, rather than in the Grand Rue of the village’s old town, as was the case the first five years.
The complexity of the performances, the growing size of the audience and renovations in the old town excluded the use of the main street for concerts in 2011.
Ticket information for remaining concerts: St Prex Classics.
How the planned new performance arena works
EPFL’s description of the new performance centre, which can be completely dismantled:
“The base of the installation, made entirely of wood, takes its inspiration from the famous theatre of Epidaurus that existed in Greece in the 4th or 3rd century BC, in particular the curve of the tiered seating, opposite the clock tower. The seating can normally hold up to 700 people; this is reduced to 500 when the modular stage is enlarged to accommodate large orchestras or choreography.
“Although the medieval façade, including the clock tower, remains one of the main features of the new structure, the most spectacular element is actually to be found above it. A vast hemisphere of helium – 25 meters in diameter and visible for miles around – will float above the ‘arena’ and the village. Its white polyamide envelope can be illuminated from the inside or be used as a screen to display projected images. In case of bad weather, this balloon can be lowered to completely cover the stage and seating area, thus forming a dome. A transparent membrane, tightened around its circumference would then transform the square into a closed concert hall, without however being
separated from the old walls.”
Image:©2011 EPFL / Alice
Ao can be assembled and dismantled in less than a week, says the Alice team, with only part of the equipment, including the balloon, kept in Saint‐Prex. The structures forming the base of the tiered seating and the
technical ring will be rented each year to specialized companies.
Festival founder calls new structure the perfect fit
Hazeline Van Swaay, founder and director of the festival, is enthusiastic about the new structure. It “will allow us to continue to use the Old Town, while offering an improved level of comfort to the performers and to larger audiences. The cooperation with EPFL has brought an architectural dimension which measures up to the artistic quality of the St Prex Classics, and which truly highlights the location’s historic heritage.”
About Saint Prex
Saint Prex’s clock tower, which will feature as part of the backdrop for the new performance area, is part of a 13th century forge, one of the oldest existing buildings in Saint Prex.
St Prex, vieux bourg (old town), preparing for the St Prex Classics Tuesday 16 August
The area has been occupied by people for more than 7,000 years, first by lakedwellers whose homes were on stilts, and then in waves, by the Helvètes, Romans, Burgundians and Franks.
In 1234 the people along the lakefront, whose lives were regularly in peril from attacks, were offered stability when the archbishop of Lausanne built the bourg, the triangle of land that juts out into Lake Geneva. Villagers, in case of attack, could alert the cathedral across the water by lighting fires.
The village flourished as an agricultural and artisanal hamlet, then in the 18th century it became a summer haven for citizens of Morges. It developed into a glass centre 100 years ago, with a new glass factory in 1911, which today is one of the main glass recycling centres in Switzerland, the world leader in glass recycling.
St Prex tourism office, old clock tower
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Chappatte cartoon from 2009: 2010 didn't see an improvement in revenues (©2011 Chappatte, distributed by Globe Cartoon. More cartoons on Chappatte’s web site. Geneva-based Patrick Chappatte works for the International Herald Tribune, for Geneva newspaper Le Temps, and for NZZ am Sonntag. All cartoons reproduced with permission.)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – GenevaLunch is on a slow-news holiday schedule for the next two weeks, but to make sure you don’t miss key reports we’re bringing you highlights from some of the news beats, with links to original sources:
EPFL plays key role in understanding Deepwater Horizon oil spill
EPFL is playing a key role in understanding how the properties of hydrocarbons are important in understanding the wellhead structure and pollution diffusion—how pollution spreads out—in the depths.
EPFL notes in a press release: “The main problem was the depth of the well, nearly 1,500 meters below the sea surface. It was a configuration that had never been tried before, and the pollution it unleashed after methane gas shot to the surface and ignited in a fiery explosion is also unequalled. Much research has been done since the spill on the effects on marine life at the ocean’s surface and in coastal regions. Now, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) professor Samuel Arey and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute reveal in the advance online edition of Proceedings of the national Academy of Sciences how escaped crude oil and gas behave in the deep water environment.”
Swiss pharma industry has good second quarter 2011
Novartis‘s second quarter results, announced 19 July, were strong: Net sales grew 27 percent (up 19 percent in constant currencies) to $14.9 billion. The Basel pharmaceutical company says four drugs received approvals: the US FDA approved Afinitor for advanced pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors and Arcapta Neohaler for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and the European Union granted approval for Lucentis in retinal vein occlusion and for hypertension medicine Rasilamlo. The company’s shares rose 3.15 percent Tuesday as a result, reports Le Temps (registration).
Roche is buying mtm laboratories AG (mtm), a privately-held company based in Heidelberg, Germany, the Basel pharma company announced 19 July, for CHF160 million up front and another CHF90m when agreed milestones are met: “mtm is a global leader in developing in vitro diagnostics with a focus on early detection and diagnosis of cervical cancer, the largest early detection market in oncology.”
Swiss media ads down sharply in June
Advertising revenue for Swiss media continues to fall, with June income down 6.5 percent overall from a year earlier to CHF132.3 million, show figures published 19 July by Remp, the industry research arm, reported in Le Temps. Worst hit was the economic and financial press, down nearly 23 percent, with revenues of CHF3.7m. Revenues for daily papers, which account for about half of all media advertising income, was down 8.9 percent. Sunday papers were a rare exception, with revenues inching up by 2.8 percent over a year earlier, to CHF11.8m.
Internet use continues to grow, with a report in mid-July showing that 80 percent of the population surveyed using the Internet several times a week and 67 percent daily, reports Cominmag.
SION, SWITZERLAND – Polyright SA, a Sion-based company jointly owned by Securitas and Kudelski in Lausanne, has been sold to US firm Identive Group. Polyright provides identity management solutions for the higher education and healthcare markets and is a leading Swiss provider of identity management platforms with open-ended rights and services management. The agreement was signed 18 July; the amount of the sale has not been made public.
The company describes its core competence as “the development, installation and maintenance of single-credential, multi-function identity management and cashless payment solutions integrated with third-party systems such as enterprise resource planning or access control. polyright’s platform allows integration of such functions as personnel and user management, physical and logical access control, cashless payment, and use of third-party services such as car parking, bicycle/vehicle rental, printing and photocopying and similar applications.”
EPFL, Rolex Learning Center
More than 150,000 students a day use a polyright card to access, pay, copy, print or ride a bicycle. EPFL, for example, began to use the system in 2005. The Bois Cerf and Cécile clinics in Lausanne, both owned by Hirslanden, use polyright card systems for parking, telephone and cafeteria purchases by patients.
Kudelski says the sale was prompted by its February 2011 strategic review, while Hans Winzenried, chief executive officer Swiss Securitas Group, says that the Identive Group will “further strengthen polyright’s products and services. I am glad that we can continue to offer and sell the polyright solution to our customer base.” Securitas, based near Bern, is a third-generation family business with some 12,000 employees, active in various parts of the security industry.
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – EPFL chose the right week to talk about a new field project, part of a larger study of how environment influences flood rates in mountain valleys.
Ticino and parts of Valais, including Zermatt, are worriedly watching rising waters from heavy summer storms.
The two-year-old project to better understand the hydrology of the Alps in order to reduce risks is run by EPFL’s Environmental Fluid Mechanics Laboratory (Eflum). It has set up 25 ground weather stations in a 20 km2 area that covers a large part of the Val Ferret watershed. The goal is to improve methods for predicting natural disasters to better warn populations in risk zones. “Mathematical models exist, but they still don’t take into account all the data that are needed to establish reliable predictions, such as the influence of air temperature, the formation of thermal winds or the impact of precipitation,” says Marc Parlange, the EPFL professor who heads the lab.
The field project this summer has involved setting up several new tools: two weather stations on 10m towers, a weather balloon that will be regularly deployed, and three Lidars, laser-based instruments which will be used to take continuous wind data over a height of nearly 2 km.
Water and wind input are two key aspects being studied this summer. Val Ferrat was chosen because it was the rare valley to meet a specific set of requirements, says Raphaël Mutzner, the PhD student responsible for hydrologic modeling.
There were not many options, he points out.
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The Swiss federal government reorganized several departments Wednesday 29 June, notably pulling together under the roof of the Department of the Economy the country’s polytechnic and research institutes, and ongoing professional training and technology programmes.
The move underscores the growing importance Switzerland is giving to technology and innovation by creating a common arena to improve education and research ties in these areas. “The Federal Council has taken notice that training highly qualified people, and research and innovation are important assets for Switzerland in terms of attractiveness, competitivity and growth.
The cantons will have closer ties under the new system to the federal polytechnics in Lausanne (EFPL) and Zurich (ETH), universities and specialized graduate schools.
The change takes effect 1 January 2013 but the run-up period and early months of the new system could spark a tough political fight over budgets, with two strong personalities heading the current research, and training and technology programmes, reports Le Temps (Fr).
Lake Geneva: more going on under the surface than we know
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – Elemo, short for Exploration des eaux lémaniques (exploring Lake Geneva’s waters) got underway Tuesday, with Russian Mir submersibles heading 200 metres down into the canyons and cliffs of Lake Geneva. The project is based at the EPFL, the federal polytechnic in Lausanne.
One of Elemo’s first tests will help researchers to understand how the cliffs, which are essentially unstable heaps of sediment as high as 50 metres at a depth of as much as 200 metres, were formed by the Rhone, through sampling and then dating the sediment. A second will measure the amount of methane released from the deep canyons as organic matter decomposes.
Methane is a greenhouse gas.
Stephanie Girardclos, from the University of Geneva, heads the project with these two studies, for which four researchers going on the dives will be gathering data this week.
Elemo includes 15 other projects, mostly environmental, with researchers looking at micropollutants, biology, geology and the physics of currents. A succession of teams will work throughout the summer on various dive sites, says the EPFL.
Flavio Anselmetti, a researcher for the Swiss aquatic research institute Eawag, who is part of the Elemo team, says new data could help us better understand the lake, including historical events. “A collapse of the canyon could be what caused the tsunami that swept across the lake and destroyed the bridges in Geneva in 563,” he says. “These are extremely rare events, but it’s important to assess the risk.”
The canyons are formed as the Rhone pours into it: the river is colder and sediment-rich from glacier-fed streams and rivers in canton Valais and eastern Vaud. It continues to flow through the lake. “It really is a river at the bottom of the lake, carving out valleys as it meanders along,” says Anselmetti.
The lake remains a mystery in many ways, surprising considering that half of the drinking water for the population of 1.5 million in the region comes from the lake.
Eawag is responsible for four of the projects.
International scientists have access to the submersibles for research purposes thanks to support from Ferring Pharmaceuticals in Saint Prex, canton Vaud, the Russian Federation’s Honorary Consulate in Lausanne and the EPFL. Ferring is financing most of the project and the company’s chairman, Frederik Paulsen, was at the site of the first dives Tuesday. He was joined by Don Walsh, an American oceanographer who was with Jacques Piccard during their famous descent into the Mariana Trench 23 January 1960, the deepest point of the world’s ocean, in the bathyscaphe Trieste. It went down to a record maximum of 10,911 metres.
Background story, GenevaLunch, 1 March 2011
"Man engaged", nViso screenshot (click on images to view larger)
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – A Lausanne-based startup has made a technical breakthrough that will provide market researchers with a significant new tool to understand consumer reactions. The company, nViso, this week unveiled in Amsterdam facial imaging software “that is able to accurately detect and decode facial micro-expressions and eye movements,” the company says in a press release issued 8 June.
Fast-moving consumer goods companies in particular have been testing facial recognition technology in retail research settings, but the new software goes a step further, with “exact emotional intelligence gathered in real-time,” says Tim Llewellynn, a co-founder of nViso. The company nViso uses artificial intelligence and machine learning systems to decipher human emotions, providing what it says is a cost-effective and scalable alternative to brain imaging or medical equipment used in neuro-marketing.
The nViso product tracks over 143 different facial points to identify a range of features and relates them to models developed with facial databases, the company says—significantly, using only a standard webcam or similar video equipment:
“The technology is based on theoretical work by Dr Paul Ekman which demonstrates that universal emotions are precisely and sub-consciously revealed by minor changes in micro-expressions in the face. For instance, someone who is surprised commonly raises their eyebrows, opens their mouth and drops their lower jaw.
“The search for ways to capture and analyze consumer emotions has been a research priority for years. Ventures into neuro-marketing have been difficult to integrate into existing research frameworks for broader use. Up until today, it has been difficult to link the measurement of emotions with analytics in a scalable way that can be put into a daily business practice.”
The company was one of 28 that received funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation in 2009 as part of its push to encourage innovation in the wake of the global economic downturn. The start-up has been collaborating with researchers at the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) to develop software that “deduces” which part of a computer screen a person is looking at; the NCCR presented its progress at the world’s largest trade fair in Hannover in April 2011, with the tempting promise of combining this application with one that would measure emotions. Read more…
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – A French-Swiss research team in Bescancon, France and Lausanne and two start-ups in the Lake Geneva region will soon be putting on the market a system for remote ultrasounds. The new diagnostic tool will make it possible for the first time for specialist physicians to work directly with technicians, in real time, in two separate locations. The system has been tested at Chuv (Lausanne University Hospitals) and the CHU in Besançon, France, and EPFL in Lausanne, where the laboratory research is being done, says it will be commercially available “within a few months”.
The same team has developed a second remote diagnostic tool, a server for analyzing medical imaging data that sends images securely via a network, so they can be analyzed in various ways: for example by slice, in 3D, and with colour contrast.
The two systems will allow specialists who are far from the equipment to access it readily, and teams of specialist physicians who are not in the same hospital, to work together far more quickly to diagnose cases where medical imaging is necessary.
Women who have had pregnancy complications and found it difficult to visit a specialist who is far from the local hospital, or neurology patients who are generally obliged to wait weeks for appointments in large university hospitals, will appreciate the value of the new system. Local hospitals that have ultrasound equipment and technical skills, but which are not home to the needed specialists, will more easily be able to work with them. Specialists who need to consult with other physicians will not need to wait for the results to be sent, and can provide input during the imaging process.
Cross-border partners developed device, diagnostic platform and tested new system
The equipment was developed by an EPFL team led by Jean-Philippe Thiran at the federal polytechnic’s Signal Processing Laboratory. An optical feedback system consisting of two infrared cameras, developed by Atracsys, an EPFL start-up headquartered in Le Mont-sur-Lausanne, films the transducer. Covalia, a project partner company based in Besançon, France, is developing the telediagnosis platform into which the device is inserted.
One rider's bike, from the 15% who cycle to EPFL
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – EPFL, the federal polytechnic institute in Lausanne, is pushing bicycles and will continue to do so until the end of June, in every sense, with its Bike to Work 2011 programme, which kicks off 23 May.
The school wants “to reduce by 10 percent by 2014 the 30 tons of CO₂ emitted daily by commuting vehicles on normal working days” and its previous Bike to Work programmes have made a good start: 15 percent of commutes are currently done on bikes, compared to 11 percent five years ago.
EFPL is registering Bike to Work riding teams until 31 May and will be giving out an electric bike to a winning team. The goal of this year’s programme is to get people used to riding bicycles for work. “To take part, you have to form teams of four people who are prepared to make 50 percent of their journeys to EPFL or to return home by bicycle, during the month of June”, the call for teams says.
The project is part of the larger Swiss Bike to Work programme, where companies register teams by 31 May, and the teams then ride at least part of the way to and from work 1-30 June, preferably combining this with public transport for the non-cycling part of the trip. The national programme has several prizes that include a weekend for two in Hamburg, to bicycles and bike accessories. Details
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The first full-face transplant patient in the US appeared in public 9 May for the first time since his 15-hour surgery in March 2011. Dallas Wiens, 25, from Fort Worth, Texas, received an anonymous donor’s nose, lips, skin, muscles and nerves.
“I adapted to it very quickly,” Wiens told reporters at a news conference, saying that as time went on “I was able to smell again and breathe through my nose. Every step of the way was amazing.”
Although Wiens’ surgeon Bohdan Pomahac said the transplant results were better than expected, the team was unable to restore his sight, and it is not yet certain if Wiens will regain all of his nerve and muscle function.
Wiens was severely burned in November 2008 when he hit a power line while painting a church. The surgery took place at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachussetts and was paid for by part of a $3.4 million research grant from the US Department of Defense.
The world’s first full-face transplant was done in 2010 in Spain and the first partial-face transplant was done in France in 2005. In the past year several partial-face transplants have been done, in the US and Spain, but also in China.
The transplants require a donor and use human skin, but research, including work at Switzerland’s EPFL polytechnic institute in Lausanne, holds out hope that artificial skin may also some day provide options.
Links to other sites: BBC, EPFL, LA Times, Medill News Service
EPFL to give away 2,500 tiny robots Saturday
iCub, an EPFL robot (photo, ©2011 iCub / EPFL)
(video at end) Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Why we are altruistic, sacrificing individual gains for the greater good of a group, has just become a little clearer, thanks to hundreds of generations of robots in Lausanne. Researchers in engineering and robotics at EPFL in Lausanne and in biology at the University of Lausanne 3 May reported their findings into the genetics of altruism, a project that involved using robots to more quickly see how altruism develops over generations.
Robotics Festival brings cutting edge robots to public
The latest robot success in Lausanne could increase the size of the crowds expected at EPFL Saturday 9 May when EPFL hosts its fourth annual Robotics Festival: 30 stands with robots, 21 workshops where you can make your own, a robot contest and 2,500 little Superpattt’s being given away are part of the attraction, with expected 10-15,000 people expected to take part (register now to get your Superpattt – in French).
The altruistic robots work was carried out by EPFL robotics professor Dario Floreano and University of Lausanne biologist Laurent Keller.
“Testing the evolution of altruism using quantitative studies in live organisms has been largely impossible because experiments need to span hundreds of generations and there are too many variables,” EPFL notes in a press release. “However, Floreano’s robots evolve rapidly using simulated gene and genome functions and allow scientists to measure the costs and benefits associated with the trait.”
Their paper was published in the journal Public Library of Science (PLoS) Biology. It provides support for what is known as Hamilton’s rule of kin selection, developed in 1964 by WD Hamilton. He proposed a precise set of conditions under which altruistic behavior may evolve. EPFL describes it:
“If an individual family member shares food with the rest of the family, it reduces his or her personal likelihood of survival but increases the chances of family members passing on their genes, many of which are common to the entire family. Hamilton’s rule simply states that whether or not an organism shares its food with another depends on its genetic closeness (how many genes it shares) with the other organism.
‘We have shown that Hamilton’s kin selection theory always accurately predicts the relationship between the evolution of altruism and the relatedness of individuals in a species,’ explains Markus Waibel, lead author of the paper and former doctoral student of both Keller and Floreano.
Hamilton’s rule has long been a subject of much debate because its equation seems too simple to be true. ‘This study mirrors Hamilton’s rule remarkably well to ex-plain when an altruistic gene is passed on from one generation to the next, and when it is not,’ says Keller.”
The study will help biologists but it has already had an impact on other robots at EPFL, notably swarms of flying robots. “We have been able to take this experiment and extract an algorithm that we can use to evolve cooperation in any type of robot,” says Floreano. “We are using this altruism algorithm to improve the control system of our flying robots and we see that it allows them to effectively collaborate and fly in swarm formation more successfully.”
How robots become altruistic after 500 generations
Henry Markram, Human Brain project
Adrian Ionescu, EPFL, Guardian Angels project
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – EPFL-led projects are two of the six accepted in the finals of a major research initiative by the European Commission, its FET (future technologies) flagship projects. At least two of the finalists will be funded by the EC to the tune of up to CHF1 billion over 10 years, with the decision about the winners to be announced in 2012.
The final project will make FET one of the largest research initiatives in the world, notes EPFL.
The two Lausanne-led international projects, both of which have already received EC funding to permit them to develop their proposals to date, are the Human Brain project and Guardian Angels.
Each will receive about €1.5 million to refine their proposals in the coming year.
The finalists were announced Wednesday 4 May in Budapest, Hungary, at a FET conference.
The other four finalists, listed by eGov Monitor, are:
- FuturICT Knowledge Accelerator and Crisis-Relief System: ICT can analyse vast amounts of data and complex situations so as to better predict natural disasters, or manage and respond to man-made disasters that cross national borders or continents.
- Graphene Science and technology for ICT and beyond: Graphene is a new substance developed by atomic and molecular scale manipulation that could replace silicon as the wonder material of the 21st century.
- IT Future of Medicine: digital technology has the power to deliver individualised medicine, based on molecular, physiological and anatomical data collected from individual patients and processed on the basis of globally integrated medical knowledge.
- Robot Companions for Citizens: soft skinned and intelligent robots have highly developed perceptive, cognitive and emotional skills, and can help people, radically changing the way humans interact with machines.
The first is the outgrowth of an earlier EPFL project led by Henry Markram, the Blue Brain project, now being developed by an international consortium. Human Brain integrates “everything we know about the brain into computer models and [uses] these models to simulate the actual working of the brain.
Ultimately, it will attempt to simulate the complete human brain,” according to the project’s web site.
Christofer Hierold, ETHZ, Guardian Angels project
GuardianAngels, under the direction of EPFL’s Adrian Ionescu and Christofer Hierold from ETHZ in Zurich is a zero-power project that “takes advantage of these recent developments in low-power electronics, energy harvesting and micro and nano-sensors to propose a new vision of the future: next-generation technology contributing to our wellbeing and our safety with simple, discrete and affordable high-tech accessories that seamlessly integrate into our daily life,” its web site notes.
Background, Human Brain project, GenevaLunch
Don’t eat armadillo meat and don’t handle them! researchers caution
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Direct contact with armadillos can lead to leprosy infection, a team of researchers in Switzerland and in the USA has confirmed, using what they call advanced DNA analysis and extensive field work.
The Global Health Institute at EPFL in Lausanne and NPHA (National Hansen’s Disease Program) report 28 April in the New England Journal of Medicine that a never-before-seen strain of Mycobacterium leprae has emerged in the Southern United States and that it is transmitted through contact with armadillos carrying the disease.
Only about 150 cases of the disease appear each year in the US, traditionally imported by people who have worked abroad in areas with leprosy. Researchers are quick to point out that the disease is treatable with antibiotics and that 90 percent of people who come into contact with leprosy, officially known as Hansen’s Disease, fight off the infection spontaneously.
Source: EPFL (click on image to view larger)
Public health authorities in the US became alarmed when they realized that one-third of the cases they were seeing were infected people who had never been outside the US.
Armadillos have been known since about 1970 to also carry the disease.
The new study shows inter-species contamination and the presence of a unique strain.
“There is a very strong association between the geographic location of the presence of this particular strain of M. leprae and the presence of armadillos in the Southern US,” says Stewart Cole, head of the Global Health Institute in Lausanne who is known as a leader in the field of leprosy bacilli genome. “Our research provides clear DNA evidence that the unique strain found in armadillos is the same as the one in certain humans.”
The new strain of the bacteria, named 3I-2V1, was found in 28 armadillos out of 33 wild ones included in the study, and in 22 patients, all of whom reported no foreign residence, out of the 50 who took part in the study. The researchers used genome sequencing to identify the new strain and cross check it with other known strains from Europe and Asia. They used genotyping to identify and classify the population infected. It became clear that leprosy patients who never travelled outside the US but lived in areas where infected armadillos are prevalent (see map) were infected with the same strain as the armadillos, EPFL reports.
The researchers make three recommendations: avoid frequent direct contact with the animals, don’t cook or consume their meat and monitor the expansion of their range, as they move north in the US.
José Ramirez is a former migrant worker from Houston who contracted the disease after hunting and eating armadillo meat. Ramirez offers a fourth recommendation: get rid of the stigma attached to the disease, which is a bacterial infection that can be cured. “We need to take this opportunity to give leprosy patients a voice and to learn to not use the word ‘leper’ that has negative connotations around the world, a stigma that should be replaced with an understanding of the disease and its causes.”
Ramirez struggled for more than five years with the disease before it was properly diagnosed. He is now disease-free after receiving antibiotic treatment.
Regular exercise from an early age is one key to reducing obesity
Geneva / Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A group of universities, including EPFL in Lausanne, is behind one of the latest encouraging signs of new treatments for diabetes, obesity and possibly several cancers. Their research into the cell metabolism action of a group of cancer drugs called Paribs indicates that the drugs do more than repair the DNA in cancer cells, the work for which they are now used.
At the same time, the UK has just published the results of an audit on the effectiveness of bariatric (weight loss) surgery at reducing Type 2 diabetes, which shows that 85 percent of patients who had the surgery showed significant improvement in their diabetes a year later.
The rapid increase in the rate of diabetes in the developed world has encouraged more research into solutions, often linked to obesity and excess weight. Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO) says more than 220 million people worldwide have diabetes type 2, but in 2005 it forecast that the number could double by 2030.
EPFL’s press release on the university researchers’ findings, published 6 April in journal Cell Metabolism, explains how Paribs might help:
“Cancer cells have the property of using glucose as an energy source instead of burning fatty acids. The scientists have noticed that Paribs enable their metabolism to be modified so that they begin to use them. This has the effect of weakening them and therefore stopping the progression of the cancer. The cells of patients suffering from type 2 diabetes, obesity or oxidation disorders share this characteristic of running on glucose.”
New UK study shows that diabetes risk is greatly reduced by weight-loss surgery
$10 million to be sought to finance the project
Rolex Learning Center, EPFL in Lausanne (photo©, Peter Brodbeck)
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – EPFL in Lauanne and the Hebrew University in Israel signed an agreement 28 March to form a new partnership in brain research. Finalizing the agreement was part of the visit of Israel’s President, Shimon Peres, to Switzerland.
The two have agreed to raise $10 million together for the first five years of operations, for joint laboratories, research projects and fellowships for graduate students.
The partnership is expected to focus on “brain mechanisms controlling behavior and cognition and to study effective methods for treatment of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s Alzheimer’s and autism”, according to a statement issued in Israel.
Landmine removal in Tirana, 2009 (photo, Cartagena Summit)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Landmine groups meeting in Cambodia this week are calling for more countries to sign the 1997 Landmine Ban Treaty. They are marking International Mine Awareness Day 4 April by drawing attention to the case of Cambodia, one of the world’s most heavily affected countries, with 44,000 survivors.
States Parties the convention, as well as the 2008 Cluster Munitions Treaty, “need to improve efficiency in clearance, including by more precisely identifying affected areas. For example, Cambodia is currently conducting a new baseline survey to better understand the extent of its contamination,” says ICBL, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
“Both conventions also require victim assistance to support landmine and cluster munition survivors’ efforts to achieve social acceptance, gain meaningful employment and ensure their rights are respected. In addition to enduring physical pain, survivors report that they are faced with a lack of services and job opportunities, limited capacity-building programs and, most importantly, insufficient financial and technical resources for victim assistance.”
ICBL says that Cambodia needs to fully implement its National Plan of Action for Persons with Disabilities, “which has faltered so far”, to ensure that “survivors receive the support they need to lead dignified lives.”
Two EPFL students use electromagnetic currents to explode mines remotely
Earth's airglow, viewed from space by the tiny SwissCube satellite
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – They won’t be competing with Nasa photography from space, but this doesn’t diminish the thrill for students at EPFL, the federal polytechnic institute in Lausanne, on seeing their first photo from space.
Students spent six years designing and building the tiny SwissCube satellite, which was launched 23 September 2009. It weighs only 854 grams and is 10cm3 in size.
It is designed 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.”
Video by the European Space Agency, 2007, on the project and the students’ work in the early stages
Video interview with Muriel Noca, 2011, on SwissCube’s findings
Certifying planes for biomass: EPFL works with Boeing
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – EPFL, the federal polytechnic institute in Lausanne and Boeing have jointly created this week a new research initiative, called the Sustainable Biomass Consortium.
Its focus is on “increasing collaboration between voluntary standards and regulatory requirements for biomass used to create jet fuel and bioenergy for other sectors.
The consortium also will seek to lower overall sustainability certification costs.,” according to a joint statement.
Biomass is a renewable energy source, often plant matter.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – (video) The Blue Brain project at EPFL has refuted the centuries-old belief that the human brain may start life as a blank slate, enriched and developed through experience alone, findings which are potentially of great significance for treatment of neurological disorders. The findings appear to be “common across animals”, says the research team.
EPFL’s researchers have demonstrated that “small clusters of pyramidal neurons in the neocortex interconnect according to a set of immutable and relatively simple rules”, the university says in a press release. In other words, the clusters are basic building blocks that contain within them “a kind of fundamental, innate knowledge”.
Experience builds on these clusters, each of which contains about 50 neurons.
The findings were published ahead of the print edition 7 March in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. The authors, under the lead of Blue Brain project head Henry Markram, write in their abstract:
“Neuronal circuitry is often considered a clean slate that can be dynamically and arbitrarily molded by experience. However, when we investigated synaptic connectivity in groups of pyramidal neurons in the neocortex, we found that both connectivity and synaptic weights were surprisingly predictable. . .
“We speculate that these elementary neuronal groups are prescribed Lego-like building blocks of perception and that acquired memory relies more on combining these elementary assemblies into higher-order constructs.”
The EPFL argues that “the discovery redistributes the balance between innate and acquired”, a considerable advance in our understanding of how the brain works:
Read more…
EPFL Brain Mind Institute shows role of lactate in memory
EPFL students, counting on memory
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The number of people with Alzheimers is steadily increasing, prompting fears of living with a crippled memory, or even dying from Alzheimers, which became the sixth leading cause of death in the US in May 2010. Researchers in several countries have set their sights on various aspects of cell life to get to the source of memory and to understand how, biologically, it functions.
Stem cell research is making it possible to grow, in the laboratory, basal forebrain cholinergic neurons (BFCN), a type of nerve cell lost when Alzheimers disease begins to develop, British media reported Monday 7 March. The research could, in the distant future, lead to therapies. It is the latest in a series of efforts to pinpoint key cells that affect the disease.
Astrocytes use lactate to feed neurons
A surprising cell finding is now opening thanks to recent discoveries at the EPFL Brain Mind Institute in Lausanne and Mt Sinai School of Medicine in New York, working together. In a paper published 4 March in the journal Cell, the two show the importance to memory of astrocytes in memorization.
“These cells, which exist in very large quantities in the brain (they are more numerous than the neurons) and which we know are found at the interface between the blood system and the synapses, turn out to be a supplier of energy for the neurons. They feed them with lactate, a ‘cousin’ of glucose in that it originates from the same precursor–glycogen–of which a stock is present in these star-shaped cells. The researchers have been able to prove that this lactate was an indispensable condition for memorization processes to occur.”
The research holds out hope that one day it may be possible to artificially stimulate memory “by acting on the production and transportation of this lactate”. For now, it is leading EPFL researchers under Pierre Magistretti, director of the Brain Mind Institute, in new directions. “The interest for the astrocytes and lactate, which have not been the object of significant study, will certainly increase over the next few years,” says Magistretti.
Ed. note: International Brain Week is marked in Lausanne by a series of lectures open to and aimed at the general public, mostly in French, from nutrition and the brain to understanding synapses: programme.
Mir submersibles, made in Russia, have been used for numerous scientific missions in the Arctic and Lake Baikal. They were also used to film the hulk of the Titanic for James Cameron's film about the sinking of the ship. They will be used in Lake Geneva to help scientists better understand western Europe's largest lake (source: EPFL).
Geneva and Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Russian Mir submersibles will soon populate the depths of Lake Geneva, the EPFL, the Swiss federal polytechnic institute in Lausanne announced Tuesday 1 March. Fifteen teams from five countries will carry out field research using the submersibles, from June 2011 to August, in a project dubbed elemo.
Geology, biology (especially micro-pollutants and bacteriology) and physics projects will be undertaken to better understand how human activity affects the lake.
The submersibles will operate in three main areas:
- Vidy, near Lausanne, a heavily-populated area where the impact of micro-pollutants can be studied
- mid-lake directly offshore from Lausanne, going as deep as 309 metres, a depth at which little is known about the lake
- Villeneuve, where glacial deposits and sediment have created 30-metre high canyons in the lake: a spectacular, unstable part of the lake that begs exploration.
Lake Geneva, looking from Saint Prex to Lausanne: windy on the surface and largely unknown at its depths (click on image to view larger)
International scientists will have access to the submersibles for research purposes, thanks to support from Ferring Pharmaceuticals in Saint Prex, canton Vaud, the Russian Federation’s Honorary Consulate in Lausanne and the EPFL. Ferring is financing most of the project.
“One-and-a-half million people live near Lake Geneva. Fifty percent of this population gets its daily drinking water from the lake. Yet there is still much to learn about the complex workings of this heavily human-impacted ecosystem,” the EPFL notes in its press release.
“The researchers will gain easy access to the deepest parts of the lake, at depths of over 300 meters, where they will be able to study how pollutants accumulate, and even perform field experiments. The lake consists of layers of water that are permeable to differing degrees. By using the submersibles to carry out a detailed study of the boundaries between these layers, the researchers will be able to better understand how the water circulates. Over time, these models will be of the utmost importance for measuring the local and overall impact of human activity on Lake Geneva.”
The 15 teams include scientists from several institutions: the EPFL, the Universities of Geneva, Neuchatel, Haute-Savoie and Newcastle, Eawag (the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and
Technology), Inra (the National Agronomic Research Institute) in Toulouse, the CNRS (French National Centre for Research), the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.
Anatoly Sagalevitch, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the expedition leader for many missions on board the Mir submersibles, notably in the Arctic and Lake Baikal, will join the project for the summer of 2011, with his team.
The 18.6 tons deep-diving vehicles are 7.8 metres long and 3.6m wide. They can reach depths of over 6,000 metres and move at a speed of 9 kph horizontally, 40 kph vertically.
Inside looking out could be the contact lens of the past (photo, wikipedia)
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Glaucoma and diabetes patients may soon find they are wearing contact lenses to monitor their health, with a Swiss company leading the way. New Scientist promises that we are about to see contact lenses whose purpose is not to help us look outward, but to aid doctors who want to better see what’s happening inside our bodies.
Glaucoma patients are first in line, already benefitting from a product that Swiss startup Sensimed, a 2003 spinoff from EPFL in Lausanne, commercialized in October 2010. It is, according to New Scientist, the world’s first smart contact lens that transmit information wirelessly: “Highly sensitive platinum strain gauges embedded in Sensimed’s Triggerfish lens record changes in the curvature of the cornea, which correspond directly to the pressure inside the eye,” and this information is transmitted to a recording device worn by the person.
Glaucoma can cause vision loss through damage to the optic nerve, often through too much pressure in the eye.
Sensimed’s technology, or similar smart contact lens technology, could be used to monitor a number of diseases. Researchers in the US, at Washington State University in Seattle are developping a solar-powered lens that can monitor glucose levels in diabetes patients.
Major building projects: cutting-edge neuroprostheses centre gets new home
Proposed EPFL hall, architect Perrault
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - EPFL, one of Switzerland’s two federal polytechnic institutes, is embarking on a new construction programme that will bring some of its older buildings into line with the new Rolex Learning Center.
The rationale behind the building work, which goes well beyond renovations, is to regroup part of the central services of the school and to create a number of new laboratories for engineering students.
“The work is a follow-up—to a certain extent—to the building of the Rolex Learning Center, since the content of the central library has been moved to EPFL’s flagship building, freeing up significant space,” the school notes in a press release.
“The Center for Neuroprosthetics, which was started at the end of 2008, and is supported by several foundations will thus benefit from a dedicated and perfectly equipped location.”
The Bertarelli family and Borel family (Defitech) foundations are major donors.
Architect Dominique Perrault, who is French, will work with the Swiss Karl Steiner company, which was awarded the general contractor work. Perrault is currently redesigning the Locarno rail station in canton Ticino.
Exterior view, Perrault's hall at EPFL
He is known for his architectural work on the French National Library (the François Mitterand site) in Paris in, 1995, the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg, the Ewha Women’s University in Seoul, South Korea and the Fukoku Tower in Osaka, Japan.
“The winning project convinced us because it establishes a strong link between the older buildings on the campus and the new constructions on the south side of the campus”, says Francis-Luc Perret, EPFL vice-president who is responsible for real estate and who was president of the jury.
