Courtesy of Randy Buckner and Bruce Rosen of the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Visualization group, Laboratory of Neuro Imaging
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND -Researchers in the US are seeing for the first time “and in stunning detail—how neural fibers crisscross the brain and connect its regions”, according Protomag, published Friday 13 January.
The new images show the connecting tissue, or white matter, of the brain and offer hope for tracking the fibers’ multiple pathways, which could in turn provide strong clues about the sources of mental illness and brain disorders.
Two major projects at Massachusetts General Hospital, the Superstruct Project and the Human Connectome Project with the University of California, Los Angeles, are collecting these images from thousands of people.
“Their goal is to understand what makes the human brain different from the brains of other animals and why some people are at risk for mental illness.
Courtesy of Randy Buckner and Bruce Rosen of the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Visualization group, Laboratory of Neuro Imaging
“Neuroscientists believe that diseases such as schizophrenia, bipolar disease and autism may be caused by subtle disruptions to the brain’s wiring. In compiling and comparing brain images of so many healthy and mentally ill people, scientists hope to see how connections go awry in disease so that they can develop early interventions and therapy targets.”
The imaging technique “greatly increases the power of conventional scanners and uses mega-magnets to map the way water molecules move in the brain’s gray matter, delineating in real time which neurons are activated and in which direction they are sending impulses.”
The images show less than 1% of the white matter, notes Protomag: “capturing too much of the dense neural pathways would obscure the brain’s underlying structure.”
CMS control room at Cern
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The birth of the child called Higgs Boson might or might not be coming soon, depending on what media you follow, but today is in any event a big day at Cern in Geneva, when the suspension ends and we’ll all learn out what scientists are seeing, thanks to the LHC (Large Hadron Collider).
Higgs Boson is not, of course, a child at all. The Cern website offers this explanation: “According to theory, the Higgs mechanism works as a medium that exists everywhere in space. Particles gain mass by interacting with this medium. Peter Higgs pointed out that the mechanism required the existence of an unseen particle, which we now call the Higgs boson. The Higgs boson is the fundamental component of the Higgs medium, much as the photon is the fundamental component of light. The Higgs boson is the only particle predicted by the Standard Model that has not yet been seen by experiments.”
Cern is holding a seminar where scientists will present their findings, with an announcement at the end of the day. Rumours are flying thick and fast that they have indeed spotted evidence of the elusive Higgs Boson, despite Cern’s dry warning:
“Atlas and CMS experiments will present the status of their searches for the Standard Model Higgs boson. These results will be based on the analysis of considerably more data than those presented at the summer conferences, sufficient to make significant progress in the search for the Higgs boson, but not enough to make any conclusive statement on the existence or non-existence of the Higgs.”
The Cern teams are already focusing on how the LHC must be developed further to carry research to the next stage. a luminosity upgrade workshop in mid-November brought together scientists and engineers from 14 European institutions, with others from Japan and the USA.
Luminosity gives a measure of the collision rate in a particle accelerator and therefore gives an indication of its performance, says Cern, and an upgrade is scheduled for 2020.
“The LHC already delivers the highest luminosity beams of any high energy proton accelerator in the world, which is vitally important for physicists wanting to study extremely rare processes”, Cern notes in a press release. “With the LHC colliding hundreds of millions of particles each second, some of the processes we’re interested in will happen just a few times a day,” according to Cern research director Sergio Bertolucci, and “with processes so rare, extra luminosity makes a big difference to our ability to make precision measurements and discover new things.”
Background reading: Cern, CS Monitor, Guardian, S California Public Radio KPCC
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”
Seventh annual Greenhouse Gas Report 3 main gases continuing to rise
Aletsch glacier, seen from the Jungfrau in August 2011; Swiss researchers are tracking Alpine permafrost changes (photo ©2011 Ellen Wallace)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Planet Earth’s three main greenhouse gases continue to rise significantly, says the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in Geneva.
It released the seventh annual World Greenhouse Bulletin Monday 21 November, showing that N2O, nitrous oxide, is now the third most important greenhouse gas, accounting for 6 percent of gases in the atmosphere. N2O plays an important role in the destruction of the stratospheric ozone layer which protects us from the harmful ultraviolet rays of the sun,” according to the WMO.
It is increasing far more rapidly than carbon dioxide (CO2), which accounts for roughly 80 percent and methane, roughly 18 percent.
The Bulletin “reports on atmospheric concentrations, and not emissions, of greenhouse gases. Emissions represent what goes into the atmosphere. Concentrations represent what remains in the atmosphere after the complex system of interactions between the atmosphere, biosphere and the oceans.”
Measurements are made by a network of stations in more than 50 countries which make up the WMO’s Global Atmosphere Watch Programme. The measurement data are quality controlled, archived and distributed by WMO’s World Data Centre for Greenhouse Gases, hosted by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA).
World’s growing use of fertilizers, including manure behind N2O rise
Nitrous oxide “is emitted into the atmosphere from natural and man-made sources, including the oceans, biomass burning, fertilizer use and various industrial processes,” the report states.
“The atmospheric burden of nitrous oxide in 2010 was 323.2 parts per billion – 20% higher than in the pre-industrial era. It has grown at an average of about 0.75 parts per billion over the past 10 years, mainly as a result of the use of nitrogen containing fertilizers, including manure, which has profoundly affected the global nitrogen cycle. Its impact on climate, over a 100 year period, is 298 times greater than equal emissions of carbon dioxide.”
Northern permafrost loss a concern as methane levels rise again
Scientists are also concerned about the rise again of methane, after a period of temporary relative stabilization from 1999 to 2006, according to the report. “Since 1750, it has increased 158%, mostly because of activities such as cattle-rearing, rice planting, fossil fuel exploitation and landfills. Human activities now account for 60% of methane emissions, with the remaining 40% being from natural sources such as wetlands.” Researchers are looking into the reasons for the new increase, “including the potential role of the thawing of the methane-rich Northern permafrost and increased emissions from tropical wetlands.”
Carbon dioxide remains largest contributor to “climate forcing”
(CO2) is the single most important man-made greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Monday’s report shows that it”
“contributes about 64% to total increase in climate forcing by greenhouse gases. Since the start of
the industrial era in 1750, its atmospheric abundance has increased by 39% to 389 parts per million
(number of molecules of the gas per million molecules of dry air). This is primarily because of
emissions from combustion of fossil fuels, deforestation and changes in land-use.
Between 2009 and 2010, its atmospheric abundance increased by 2.3 parts per million – higher than
the average for both the 1990s (1.5 parts per million) and the past decade (2.0 parts per million).
For about 10,000 years before the start of the industrial era in the mid-18th century, atmospheric
carbon dioxide remained almost constant at around 280 parts per million.”
Some improvement offset by other increases: CFCs
There is one bright spot in the report: some halocarbons are slowing decreasing, notably chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), widely used only a few years ago as refrigerants, propellants in spray cans and solvents but now widely banned. “However, concentrations of other gases such as HCFCs and HFCs, which are used to substitute CFCs because they are less damaging to the ozone layer, are increasing rapidly. These two classes of compounds are very potent greenhouse gases and last much longer in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.”
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.”
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.
CHUV in Lausanne
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – The Chuv university hospitals, which have greatly tightened their financial auditing systems since a neurologist stole nearly CHF5 million to feed his passion for precious books, Wednesday 5 October faced a new theft. A woman who worked in the visceral (internal organs, especially digestive) surgery unit as assistant to the director of the César Roux foundation has been suspended after admitting to taking CHF100,000 to support her gambling habit.
The teaching and research in surgery foundation is not technically part of the university hospitals but is closely linked; since it is not legally part of the Chuv its financial operations are not under the same close scrutiny, a situation the Chuv noted Wednesday it intends to clarify and put in order. The employee had access to documents and had use of a bank card for the foundation, in the name of her boss.
It was only when the professor, her boss, was confronted by the shortfall during an annual audit by a privatr company that the woman was asked to supply receipts corresponding to the amounts she had taken out. She was unable to do so and she then admitted to the crime.
Emys, a robot developed as part of the Lirec (Living with robots and interactive companions) project funded by the EC (photo, ©2011 LIREC)
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM – The European Commission 20 July agreed to commit €7 billion to research and development, in what it says is its “biggest ever European Commission funding package”, designed to create some 174,000 jobs in the short term and another 450,000 in the long term and to stimulate nearly €80 billion in gross domestic product (GDP) growth within the next 15 years.
Research, Innovation and Science Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn says the package will be used for stimulating European innovation through research funding.
The funding will take the form of grants to 16,000 recipients in European universities and research organizations and to industry specialists, with “a focus on small and medium-sized enterprises”.
“A common problem is bridging the gap between research and the market, and this funding can help demonstrate the commercial potential of a new technology, for example, or that a new idea can work on a sufficiently large scale to be industrially viable,” the EC notes on Cordis, its news site.
“Challenges like climate change, energy and food security, health and an aging population can be better managed if public sector intervention is used effectively to stimulate the private sector and remove bottlenecks stopping the best and brightest ideas from reaching the market, due to problems such as a lack of finance or fragmentation in research.”
How the money will be spent
The EC details how the funds will be distributed. Key points include:
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 – Energy research has been selected as the topic for the 2011-12 Swiss National Research Programme (NRP), overseen by the State Secretariat for Education and Research (SSER). The call for papers opened 8 July, with a deadline of 21 September for applications.
One to three new NRPs are selected for funding after proposals are reviewed, and the Swiss National Science Foundation is then responsible for implementing them.
The SSER says the NRPs “are the Swiss government’s research promotion tool intended to support research projects dealing with contemporary issues of national importance and which have the potential to make a scientifically sound and innovative contribution within a practical period of time to a solution to urgent societal or economic problems.”
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Two Swiss professors’ study of how the Swiss view Muslims, published 6 July, is attracting media attention in several Arabic and other Muslim countries (see links at the end). Their University of Zurich researchers’ two-year, CHF159,000 study was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundaton after the Swiss population voted to ban the construction of minarets.
Patrick Ettinger and Kurt Imhof concluded that in recent years a system has operated that has encouraged the Swiss to believe that Muslims are a danger. Three elements have created the situation, they say: terrorist attacks in other countries, the political strategy of right-wing populist political parties and a tendency for media to be more polarized and to generalize.
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).
Rock-a-bye zzzzzzzz (hammock, the perfect place to nap)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Every culture does it and has done it for centuries, but why rocking puts us to sleep has remained something of a mystery.
Now a research team based at the University of Geneva has provided the explanation, arguing that a swinging motion “exerts a synchronizing action in the brain that reinforces endogenous sleep rhythms.”
Twelve healthy male volunteers, ages 22–38, were asked to nap on a bed that could either remain stationary or rock gently.
All participants were “good sleepers, non-habitual nappers with no excessive daytime sleepiness and had low anxiety levels. Sleep quality and quantity were assessed by questionnaires and actimetry recordings.” The men took two 45-minute afternoon naps (14:30-15:45),
“one with the bed stationary, and one with the bed put in motion (condition order randomized). The motion parameters were set to stimulate vestibular and proprioceptive sensory systems, without causing nausea or any entrainment of cardiac rhythm. In both conditions the naps were spent in complete darkness in a controlled room temperature (21 ± 1°C) and the level of auditory stimulation was around 37 dB. During both sessions, polysomnography data were recorded continuously. Sleep stages and sleep spindles were visually identified by two experienced scorers, blind to the experimental conditions.”
The authors write in their summary in the journal Current Biology that “We show that lying on a slowly rocking bed (0.25 Hz) facilitates the transition from waking to sleep, and increases the duration of stage N2 sleep (ed. note: the deepest point of sleep during a nap). Rocking also induces a sustained boosting of slow oscillations and spindle activity. It is proposed that sensory stimulation associated with a swinging motion exerts a synchronizing action in the brain that reinforces endogenous sleep rhythms. These results thus provide scientific support to the traditional belief that rocking can soothe our sleep.”
The team was led by Laurence Bayer, Irina Constantinescu, Michel Muehlethaler and Sophie Schwarz, from the neuroscience department at the Hug university hospitals in Geneva and the Swiss Center for Afffective Sciences, joined by Stephen Perrig and Julie Vienne from the Swiss Laboratory at Hug and the CIG in Lausanne, with Pierre-Paul Vidal from the Unviersity Paris Descartes.
Zzzzzzzzzz
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
Former ICRC head Cornelio Sommaruga (1987-99) with Swiss President Micheline Calmy-Rey, guests of the Foreign Press Association in Geneva (photo: ©2011 Song Bin)
Update 24 May GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The caution that often typifies Swiss politicians’ speech disappeared for a moment Friday night when Swiss President Micheline Calmy-Rey, asked if Switzerland would like to become a member of the European Union, said bluntly and for the first time, according to local journalists, “I have to say no; the majority is not in favour of it.”
The Swiss voted against joining the EU in 1992, but the two have grown closer in the past 20 years, mainly through a web of more than 120 bilateral agreements.
Ed.note: The Swiss “Security report 2011″ published 24 May confirms the president’s point, showing only 19 percent of Swiss backed the idea of joining the EU, in 2011.
EU, Swiss grow closer, want simpler system for agreements, but Swiss will remain outside group
She was fielding questions 20 May during the annual presidential dinner hosted in Geneva by the Foreign Press Association. She had touched on the growing ties between Switzerland and the EU when the question came up.
“Issues are dealt with through bilateral channels”, she noted, without referring directly to 2010 tensions, when EU leaders called for a review of the situation, saying the hefty number of bilateral agreements was becoming unwieldy, just as Switzerland was asking for a third round of negotiations to begin.
“Swiss laws are influenced by EU laws. And the EU says we must take into consideration future European law; we’re discussing it.” Calmy-Rey’s remark Friday night appeared to confirm comments made in February by European Commission President José Manuel Barroso after he met with her. Barroso said at the time that they agreed the system needs to be streamlined, simplified.
Swiss regulations increasingly in line with European
Swiss President Calmy-Rey with EC President José Barroso, February 2011
Switzerland is increasingly adapting regulations and laws to match European-wide ones. Bern announced Friday that importing cars from the EU is likely to become easier soon, for example, with Switzerland preparing to accept European certificates of road-worthiness. It plans to adopt EU standards for fixed child seats and dusk lights on new cars.
Sticky tax issues could have solution “soon”
Asked to elaborate on comments made Thursday in Bern about tax discussions with Britain and Germany, she said “We hope to have solutions soon.”
Calmy-Rey, who is also Switzerland’s foreign minister, met this week with Germany’s foreign minister Guido Westerwelle. Thursday, after their working meetings, she said that “with the withholding tax model, a constructive solution has been found that protects the interests of both sides” and that they hope to finalize an agreement before the summer parliamentary breaks.
Germany and other European countries, notably France and the UK, are seeking ways to collect tax from their citizens’ holdings in Switzerland.
The tax arguments also include accusations by Switzerland’s neighbours that some cantons are offering tax deals to foreigners that smack of illegal subsidies.
IMF job not likely to go to a Swiss
The president laughed at what she called the expected question when the director’s job at the IMF (International Monetary Fund) was mentioned, saying that Switzerland is “realistic enough” to know its chances of putting its candidate in the job are slim.
Calmy-Rey told the group of journalists she is not unhappy with coverage of Switzerland by foreign media, but she wishes that in addition to chocolate and cows they would write more about innovation and research in Switzerland, two areas where the country excels.
A happy Swiss alpine bee, no cell phone nearby
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – (Ed. note: please see Daniel Favre’s comment on the impact of his research.) Turn on your cell phone, yes, but not around bees, if you appreciate what they do for the world. That’s the message from Lausanne researcher and bee specialist Daniel Favre, who in April published “Mobile phone-induced honeybee piping” in the bee journal Apidologie.
His research team studied the impact on bees of cell phone and discovered that they are disturbed by the signals. This is not just a sweet little gardener issue, for the economical role played by bees in worldwide pollination has been estimated to have a value of around 153 billion euros.
Bees have been suffering from a mix of problems for at least a century, but in 2004 or 2005 it became clear that, worldwide, there was a growing problem of CCD, or colony collapse disease, and bee specialists have been speculating about the possible causes. These include exceptionally cold winters, genetically modified crops and pesticide poisoning.
Most recently, highly controversial results have been found by researchers studying the impact on bees of man-made electromagnetic fields. Favre points out that bees honeybees “can be trained to respond to very small changes in the constant local geomagnetic field intensity. They can also communicate through chemical and acoustical means,” which led him to analyze the sound features of bee colonies.
Alpine honeybee
The mystery of why Europe’s bees are dying may have found its answer, if not a viable solution, since it could be difficult to convince the world to stop phoning. But the evidence is daunting, Favre’s abstract notes:
“The worldwide maintenance of the honeybee has major ecological, economic, and political implications. In the present study, electromagnetic waves originating from mobile phones were tested for potential effects on honeybee behavior. Mobile phone handsets were placed in the close vicinity of honeybees. The sound made by the bees was recorded and analyzed. The audiograms and spectrograms revealed that active mobile phone handsets have a dramatic impact on the behavior of the bees, namely by inducing the worker piping signal. In natural conditions, worker piping either announces the swarming process of the bee colony or is a signal of a disturbed bee colony.”
Favre’s research results show that bees react to mobile phones but his study goes one step further: he has provided instructions for other beekeepers to reproduce it and therefore vastly extend the scope and understanding of bee colonies and sound. “The goal of these experiments was to identify potential effects of mobile phone communications on honeybee behavior and to establish simple methodology to enable other beekeepers to reproduce the experiments.”
Mobile phone-induced honeybee piping (pdf) by Daniel Favre, Laboratory of Cellular Biotechnology (LBTC), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne and the Apiary School of the City of Lausanne
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
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Ten percent of the world’s Emmentaler Switzerland cheese is fake, and starting this month, the Swiss government is going after the pirated versions, with a new tool in hand. DNA tests developed by the federal research stations office, Agroscope, can identify cheeses that are not made with a live bacteria that has been delivered to certified cheesemakers since January 2011.
The cheese must sit for four months before it is sold, so the first cheeses from this winter’s batch are starting to show up in shops and supermarkets now.
Real-thing Emmentaler, the famously holey Swiss cheese, is protected by an AOC (appellation d’origine controlée), but this hasn’t been enough to keep people from copying it and using the name. Agroscope began a programme in 2005 to develop and deliver live bacteria for a number of milk products, including several cheeses.
The federal research stations have several related projects, including one to determine the geographic origin of Emmentaler type cheeses from around Europe.
The Swiss have been making Emmentaler cheese since the 13th century, according to Agroscope, at first in mountainous and hilly parts of canton Bern. The process was taken to the plains in the 18th century and today 10 cantons have a total of about 200 AOC Emmentaler Switzerland producers, most of them family operations.
Switzerland produces 32,000 tons a year, and of the estimated 3,000 tons that are copies, a large percentage are made in Switzerland, the quality control chef at Emmentaler Switzerland told Canada’s The Globe & Mail, which describes how Switzerland Cheese Marketing, working closely with the Emmentaler cheese producers group, will go after the fakes.
Emmentaler is made from fresh unpasteurized milk from cows that have fed on only grass and hay, with no silage. The holes appear during the fermentation process. Milk, salt, water, native bacteria and rennet are used; no additives are allowed. It takes about 12 litres of milk to make 1 kg of the cheese.
Swiss cheesemakers in general abide by a code in place since 2002 that bans artificial flavours and other additives.
Background, swissinfo video, 17 November 2010
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.
Are you a lark or an owl? Hormones may play a key role
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The University of Zurich’s Pharmacology and Toxicology laboratory is actively seeking “individuals suitable” for the next stage of its Chronobiology and Sleep Research project, already underway, using a method the laboratory has developed to text sleep patterns in real time.
Previous studies have been limited by the difficulty of observing normal sleep patterns under laboratory conditions.
“One major obstacle in studying the human circadian oscillator is the difficulty of measuring properties such as period length. So far, this task has been achieved in only a few heroic studies employing extensive subject observation under controlled conditions”, researchers note on their web page.
Journal report shows hormonal basis for changing sleep patterns
The work continues with research reported 11 April in the journal PNAS, a new study from researchers at universities in Basel and Zurich who have found a hormonal basis for the changing sleep patterns that people undergo during old age.
An article “Serum factors in older individuals change cellular clock properties“, paves the way for a possible drug-based remedy to counteract these changes in sleep schedules.
Each person’s daily circadian rhythm, the 24-hour cycle of sleep and consciousness, functions via a system of cell-autonomous clocks that can be found in nearly every cell of the body, all of which are controlled by the brain.
As the cells’ molecular make-up does not alter during the aging process, Lucia Pagani from Basel, Steven A Brown from Zurich and their group looked into a possible hormonal influence on the changes.
Val d'Herens cows fighting in Raron, Valais, at a spring "combat"
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Switzerland’s famous fighting cows, the short-legged Val d’Herens breed whose home is Alpine pastures, are less aggressive, it turns out, if they head outdoors at least 60 days over the winter, new research published by the federal veterinary office Monday 11 April shows.
The secret is to get them outdoors frequently, rather than for long stretches, to keep aggressiveness in check.
By law, farmers are required to let them out of the stables 30 days.
Calm young Val d'Herens cows in the barnyard, canton Valais
The cows are natural fighters in winter and spring, locking horns and occasionally flipping each other as part of the process of determining the “queen” of the herd, the most intelligent and fit cow who can lead them to the best pastures high in the alps. The cows maintain their hierarchy even if they are separated for short periods.
The cows have been in canton Valais since at least Roman times.
Fighting cow exhibitions are hugely popular in Valais, with large numbers of the animals enrolled in a series of spring “combats”. A winner becomes a valuable animal for its owner.
Researchers at the federal agricultural station Agroscope Reckenholz-Tänikon (Art) studied the cows at a number of farms in Valais to determine if too much time spent indoors made them more aggressive and thus more likely to injure each other.
When the queen cow says it's time to move out of the barnyard and up the hill, the others follow
Their findings: while 60 days with time outdoors in the stable yards seems to be about right, the key factor is the frequency, or spacing, of time outside. Three days indoors and the cows begin to get aggressive again.
The study also looked at whether spending more time outdoors reduces a cow’s chances of success in the leadership stakes: “Going outdoors frequently has no negative impact on a cow’s chances of being crowned queen,” the report shows.
GenevaLunch feature, Cows come out fighting in spring
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
Good for us breakfast cereal, but possibly with some not-so-food traces from packaging
Update 12 March Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Zurich’s Official Food Control office for canton Zurich made headlines in Canada, India and Britain this week when it showed that recycled cardboard boxes used for breakfast cereals contain far higher levels of mineral oils than levels recommended by UN food and health organizations.
The story was quickly spun by tabloids into one of cereal boxes causing cancer, but the NHS (National Health Service) in the UK, in a careful look at the research and the media stories, says this is jumping to conclusions the researchers haven’t made.
The study does indicate a too-high level of mineral oils, but it is as yet uncertain what this means, says the NHS: “While these reports have linked the chemicals to health problems such as cancer, there is currently only limited evidence showing how the body might be affected.”
Kellogg’s, meanwhile, one of the largest cereal producers in the US, announced Wedensday 8 March that it will stop using recycled cardboard for the boxes, according to foodanddrinkdigital.
Alessia and Livia Schepp, missing Swiss twins, in the summer of 2010
Mother flies over Corsican coast with police
Geneva and Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The mother of missing twins Alessia and Livia Schepp flew to Corsica in a private plane Saturday 13 February to help with the investigation there. Shortly after her arrival she flew over several of the island’s beach areas with two Swiss police inspectors and a French police team, reports TF1, French television.
She gave a press conference, looking exhausted, at the end of the flight, saying that the day had been long and fatiguing but that she still hopes her daughters are alive, and given that they were seen on Corsica, she appealed again to the public to provide police with leads.
TF1 ran a lengthy report Saturday morning on the French police investigation.
The two Swiss investigators sent to Corsica, with their French counterparts, used helicopters to check two beaches in the Porto Vecchio area Saturday, for three hours: Santa Giulia and Palombaggia, reports TF1. The request to check the beaches came from Swiss police.
Girls may have been seen with father and 45-yr-old woman on Corsica
Several French media report Saturday that, according to “a person close to the investigation”, which generally signifies a police leak in France, a witness who identified the father and two daughters 1 February in Propriano, Corsica, is being taken seriously by police there.
The woman, Olga Omeck, says she saw the twins eating croissants or pains au chocolat, then walking ahead of the pair, who were discussing something, as if they knew each other.
The woman appeared to be about age 45, with chestnut coloured hair with light streaks.
Search based in northern Corsica
Italian news agency Ansa said Saturday morning that police are basing their activities in Macinaggio, at the northern tip of Corsica, as they try to reconstruct the father’s flight.
French police provided no further details except to say that they are trying to locate all the places on the island that may have been known to the father, Matthias, from previous professional trips but also visits there with his wife.
Italian police hunt for GPS
Italian police said Saturday they have stepped up the search for the GPS used by the father, Matthias Schepp, given the possibility that he may have thrown it away shortly before committing suicide in the south of Italy, throwing himself in front of a train.
The GPS navigation system could provide valuable clues about where he drove, in Corsica and/or in Italy.
Matthias Schepp took his own life in Italy 3 February and sent a letter to his wife, Irina Lucidi Schepp that day, which arrived five days later in Switzerland, to say that he had killed their two six-year-old twins.
The mother was interviewed by news agency Ansa Friday and she said that she believes, in her mother’s heart, that the girls are still alive. She begged for people to continue looking for them.
Related articles, GenevaLunch
Mossy fiber–Purkinje cell contacts in the developing mouse cerebellum (source: PLoS Biology journal)
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Scientists have known for some time that the developing brain “learns” from its mistakes, but a research team at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel have now used advanced microscopy techniques to document the process.
Their findings were published 8 February in PLoS Biology and could have important implications for autism, epilepsy, cerebral palsy and other disorders that often involve motor problems.
Their work shed light more generally on the way neuronal networks, which lie behind brain functions, develop.
Peter Scheiffele’s research team in Basel, working with researchers in New York and Japan, used the techniques to study the cerebellum, a part of the brain that handles fine motor movements and emotional processing.
“Brain functions rely on highly selective neuronal networks which are assembled during development,” writes Scheiffele. “Network assembly involves targeted neuronal growth followed by recognition of the appropriate target cells and selective synapse formation.”
Through a process of elimination of inappropriate targets the brain improves its strategy during pre-natal and post-natal growth.
“How neuronal processes select their appropriate target cells from an array of interaction partners is poorly understood,” the author notes, and their study has focused on tracking this process.
He writes that in the young brain “we find that developing mossy fibers [neurons send out these fibers, called axons, to different parts of the brain] establish synaptic contacts rather promiscuously,” as they reach out to make good connections, but that “the specificity of the synaptic connections in the ponto-cerebellar circuit emerges through extensive elimination of transient synapses.”
The study is significant, according to Science Daily, in part because “Dr Scheiffele’s group has discovered that a protein traditionally associated with bone development is responsible for correcting errors while neurons connect to their correct partners in the cerebellum.” The protein, Bone morphogenetic protein 4 (BMP4), was not previously known to have a functional in stabilizing the neuronal network but the group has shown it to eliminate unwanted connections within a week, when develop is normal.
Ed. note: Science Daily’s report on the newly published research provides an accessible layman’s explanation of the work.
Click on image to view larger
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.
Antimatter trapped and stored - Photo Cern
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – One of the universe’s open questions may be a step closer to being answered thanks to over 30 atoms of antihydrogen that have been trapped and stored by scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, Cern.
This opens the path to new ways of making detailed measurements of antihydrogen, Cern notes in a written statement 18 November. It will allow scientists to compare matter and antimatter, the latter being what annihilates ordinary matter in a single explosive flash of energy.
The finding is related to the re-creation of the mini Big Bang at Cern in early November.
“At the Big Bang, matter and antimatter should have been produced in equal amounts. However, we know that our world is made up of matter: antimatter seems to have disappeared,” says Cern. Investigating a “tiny difference in the properties of matter and antimatter could point towards an explanation of what happened.”
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Tribune de Geneve‘s Wednesday edition carries details of the life of a Canadian man who committed suicide under the windows of Geneva government offices Monday 1 November. The man, an intellectual who recently turned 60 according to the newspaper, had gradually become marginalized and had reached the end of a long battle with the Haute Ecole Internationale and the canton over his academic work. He had been without steady work for years but had refused to sign on for unemployment and in October he was evicted from his apartment in the Old Town.
He had come to Switzerland several years earlier after meeting a Geneva woman. The Montreal taxi driver, passionate about the Alps and about learning, according to the newspaper, undertook several years of research into the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). His educational labours became the focal point of his fight for greater recognition for his work and his skills. Meanwhile, he had cut off links with his family and had gradually become isolated, his lawyer told the Tribune.
Left to right: William Chin, new EPFL/Harvard programme chair, Didier Burkhalter, Harvard, Ernesto Bertarelli, Bertarelli Foundation, Patrick Aebischer, EPFL
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The EPFL in Lausanne has been building a strong research base in bioengineering, including work in neuroengineering, but a grant announced Friday 29 October by the Bertarelli Foundation moves it a firm step closer to being a major international research centre in the area of engineered solutions to help people with neurological impairments.
The field covers a range of healthcare problems for people who have had neurological damage, from birth or from strokes, degenerative diseases and accidents.
The $9 million grant from the Bertarelli Foundation for a joint programme with Harvard in the US brings the two universities together to take neuroprosthetic devices developped at the EPFL to the testing stage at Harvard.
The Bertarelli Foundation in 2009 had already provided some of the initial funding to establish the EPFL’s Neuprosthetics Center, a joint project between the School of Life Sciences and the School of Engineering, where it is housed.
José del R Millán of the centre describes neuroprosthetics as “a rapidly growing discipline that brings together neuroscience and biomedical engineering and seeks to interface the neural system directly to prostheses”.
The centre works with university hospitals in Geneva and Lausanne and with biomedical companies in the Lake Geneva region, but a logical extension of its creation last year is a partnerships to coordinate development work with clinical trials.
Other programmes will be slowed down to accommodate cost cuts, no Cern accelerators to run in 2012
Aerial view Cern - Photo Cern
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will continue to operate at its current budget level, but several other programmes will be slowed at Cern, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in order to save CHF343 million between 2011 and 2015. Member states will contribute CHF135m less than originally budgeted and a “consolidation” of social security systems.The budget plan, presented to Cern’s Council in June, was revised it the council’s request, with cost-saving measures.
“The plan protects the flagship LHC programme, achieving cost savings by slowing down the pace of other programmes,” the organization said in its official announcement. “Cern management considers this a good result for the Laboratory given the current financial environment.”
Cern’s Director General Rolf Heuer, commenting on the cuts, notes that “it reduces spending on research and consolidation through careful and responsible adjustment of the pace originally foreseen in a way that does not compromise the future research programme unduly. The reductions will be painful, but in the current financial environment, they are fair.”
Details of the social security system cost-saving were not published with the announcement.
