Snap-freezing reveals a truer structure of brain connections

Published:18.01.21 — Scientists at EPFL have used a snap-freezing method to reveal the true structure of the connections that join neurons together in the adult brain.

Biomass-driven technology allows for enhanced energy conversion

Published:15.01.21 — Organic waste – whether from households, agriculture or agroforestry – can be used as energy resource, but is often underexploited. A team of EPFL scientists has developed a methodology to better incorporate this resource into existing power grids and gas distribution systems, depending on local availability and demand.

How the circadian clock regulates liver genes in time and space

Published:14.01.21 — EPFL scientists have carried out the first comprehensive study of how genes in the liver perform their metabolic functions in both space and time of day. Monitoring almost 5000 genes at the level of the individual cell across a 24-hour period, the researchers have modelled how the circadian clock and liver functions crosstalk throughout the day in sync with the feeding-fasting cycle.

Rethinking urban planning for sub-Saharan African cities

Published:13.01.21 — For his thesis project at EPFL, Armel Kemajou studied the peri-urban areas of Lomé, Togo, and Yaoundé, Cameroon, where populations are expected to double in 20 years. He observed construction strategies that reflected coherent individual and collective approaches to planning, although they lay outside existing legal frameworks. Kemajou gives proposals for incorporating such an approach to construction, parting ways with urban planning patterned on European cities, which is unsuitable for these countries.

EPFL student creates a new language-analysis program

Published:12.01.21 — Jonathan Besomi, a Master’s student at EPFL, has developed a program called Texthero that lets users generate representations of textual data with just a few lines of code, thereby simplifying the analysis of natural languages.