The Swiss Connection

Send us Fan Mail Cities tend to get hotter than the countryside when a heatwave hits. What can be done about these urban heat traps? How can hot summers be made more tolerable for city dwellers? SWI swissinfo.ch asked an expert at the federal technology institute ETH Zurich. If you are interested in reading about this story or other science stories from Switzerland please visit www.swissinfo.ch/sc...

Send us Fan Mail This episode explores a groundbreaking Swiss innovation that could revolutionise the construction industry. Join us as we delve into Neustark's pioneering method of turning concrete waste into a carbon sink, permanently removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Discover how this technology not only helps decarbonise the concrete industry but also increases the strength of concrete. W...

Send us Fan Mail Swiss students are propelling the future of space travel with innovative reusable rocket technology, putting Switzerland on the map in the global space race. SWI swissinfo.ch took a closer look at their projects in northern and western Switzerland. Visit SWI swissinfo.ch for more on these exciting rocket projects and a video on this story. Please come to SWI swissinfo.ch for more...

Send us Fan Mail Using a new type of instrument, two astrophysicists from the University of Bern hope to get a little closer to unravelling the mystery of the solar system's origins. They believe the key to this lies in the ice that can occur in a dust layer on comets. Please visit SWI swissinfo.ch for more information about this research and a video about ice on comets. Please come to SWI sw...

Send us Fan Mail Swissinfo talks to Herwig Schopper, former CERN director, the grandfather of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, who helped promote peace through a Middle Eastern science hub and has his qualms about the Nobel Prize. If Herwig Schopper has learned anything during his 100 years on Earth, it’s that breakthroughs only happen when we work together. Please read here this in...

Send us Fan Mail For artist and researcher Şerife (Sherry) Wong the popular image of visionary geniuses who change the world from their garages is an illusion. “We are idealising the myth of the inventor, the American dream of the man who, from nothing, becomes super rich and changes the world for the better, but...for whom?” asks Wong, who studies the social implications of emerging technologies....

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we talk to Stanford University professor Fred Turner, who’s been studying the impact of new media technologies on American culture for decades. Turner is also among those most vocal in denouncing the injustices faced by people living and working in Silicon Valley. You can find more written content about this story on SWI swissinfo.ch:  in English   in Italian (ori...

Send us Fan Mail Pamela Munster, a world-renowned oncologist, has been working in San Francisco for 15 years.  In this episode, she recounts her battle against breast cancer.  You can find more written and video content about this story on SWI swissinfo.ch:  in English   in French (original)   in German   Journalist: Marc-André Miserez   Host: Jo Fahy   Audio editor/Video: Michele Andina   Distrib...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, SWI swissinfo.ch sat down with Claude Zellweger, Google's in-house design guru. We discussed the role of designers in tech innovation, AI, and the future of education. He also shared his thoughts on the challenges facing the tech industry and how we can overcome them by putting people first.  You can find more written and video content about this story on SWI...

Send us Fan Mail More than 150 Swiss start-ups have received a boost from California entrepreneurship, and three of them are already worth $1 billion. This is a source of pride for Swissnex in San Francisco and its CEO, Emilia Pasquier. Hear what she has to say about Swiss innovation in this episode.   You can find more written and video content about this story on SWI swissinfo.ch:  in English  ...

Send us Fan Mail In his 50 years in the USA, St. Gallen psychologist and consultant Herman Gyr has never lost faith in human ingenuity, the ability to learn and adapt to even the most adverse circumstances. This is despite the fact that climate change is his biggest concern. In this exclusive interview with SWI swissinfo.ch, Gyr shared his insight into what he thinks are the key influences that dr...

Send us Fan Mail Pharmaceutical giant Novartis invested billions in Slovenia, helping turn the country into a global player in generic drug production.  Now, as cheap Asian competitors increasingly dominate the market, Swiss drug companies see the tiny Balkan nation playing a key role in their shift to more complex, expensive medicines. Articles and videos on Switzerland's investment in Slove...

Send us Fan Mail Forensic science is critical in the search for justice and the fight against impunity. Africa suffers from a dearth of forensic pathologists and Switzerland is helping to boost their numbers with training.  In Mexico, forensic scientists need support to help identify the tens of thousands of victims of Mexico's drugs war. The University Centre of Legal Medicine Lausanne-Genev...

Send us Fan Mail Over the past two years, experts have unearthed thousands of Roman military artefacts littering a hillside in southeast Switzerland. The first Roman battle site ever discovered in the Alpine country offers clues about what happened there over 2,000 years ago. The article related to this episode and the video interview is available on swissinfo.ch . For other science stories from S...

Send us Fan Mail It’s 20 years since Concorde made its final commercial flight, ending the first era of supersonic travel. A Swiss start-up is part of a new generation of aviation pioneers trying to re-introduce high-speed travel using clean hydrogen. But the road ahead is long and expensive. The article related to this episode and the video interview is available on swissinfo.ch . For other scien...

Send us Fan Mail Researchers in Zurich are using drones to collect environmental DNA (eDNA) in a technique combining robotics and genetics that could change our understanding of Earth’s biodiversity. The article related to this episode and the video interview is available on swissinfo.ch . For other science stories from Switzerland please go to www.swissinfo.ch/science . Jounalist: Zeno Zoccatelli...

Send us Fan Mail Scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) near Geneva are taking the next steps towards creating a huge particle collider. With the Future Circular Collider (FCC), they want to search for new physics and answer fundamental questions about our universe. We visited the CERN sites to learn more about particle physics and their plans. The video version of thi...

Send us Fan Mail Artificial intelligence chatbots like ChatGPT generate remarkably human-like results. But how intelligent is it really? SWI swissinfo.ch visits Lab42, a new AI lab in Davos, which is deploying playful techniques to better understand the fundamentals of human intelligence. In addition to the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) gathering, Davos is home to several leading research inst...

Send us Fan Mail When and where the next avalanche will happen is hard to predict. In a special cold laboratory in Davos, researchers simulate the effects of wind on fresh snow to better understand the mechanisms that trigger avalanches. For centuries, avalanches have posed a threat to mountain farmers and their livestock. With the development of winter tourism, roads, railways and hydropower plan...

Send us Fan Mail Solar irradiance provides heat and light for life. It waxes and wanes with the cycle of solar activity, which currently cannot be predicted accurately. Solar storms can have a great impact on technology. In February 2022, a solar storm destroyed 40 Starlink satellites from Elon Musk’s company SpaceX. Researchers in Davos are collaborating on several space experiments to find out m...

Send us Fan Mail The small city of Davos in southeastern Switzerland, located at an altitude of 1,560m above sea level in the Swiss Alps, attracted tuberculosis patients back in the 1800s and 1900s after scientists discovered that clean mountain air had a positive effect on their health. However, with the development of antibiotics, the sanatoriums eventually lost their purpose. Today that same cl...

Send us Fan Mail Before 1960, broken bones were treated simply by using plaster casts or traction. Then 13 Swiss surgeons began rethinking fracture treatment: they standardised instruments, screws and nails, scientifically evaluated every operation, and started training surgeons. On their tour of Davos’s scientific communities, Sara and Michele go behind the scenes to see what new technologies are...

Send us Fan Mail The Swiss town of Davos is famous for mountain slopes, winter sports and the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. But did you know that it also attracts scientists and doctors from all over the world? In this six-part video series, SWI swissinfo.ch journalists Sara Ibrahim and Michele Andina take you on a journey to discover five of Davos’s research institutes. In this firs...

Send us Fan Mail Construction workers got a surprise recently while laying a pipeline underneath Lake Lucerne in central Switzerland. On the lake floor they found the traces of a prehistoric village! This finally confirmed a long-standing theory among archaeologists, who believed that people had lived in the area thousands of years ago. But why were the traces of their home so deep within the lake...

Send us Fan Mail In this second part of our two-part series on assisted suicide, SWI reporter Kaoru Uda tells host Susan Misicka what it was like to accompany two Japanese patients who came to Switzerland to die. SWI swissinfo.ch is a public service media company based in Bern, Switzerland.