University of Fribourg

For the past ten years, Hamburg-based SkySails has been engineering and producing what are essentially giant kites, designed to help ships reduce their fuel use by catching the wind and pulling them across the surface of the ocean. The system was put into regular shipping use for the first time in 2008, when one of the

New technique could aid treatments for diseases that lead to paralysis Scientists working to develop new treatments for neurodegenerative diseases have been stymied by the inability to grow human motor neurons in the lab. Motor neurons drive muscle contractions, and their damage underlies devastating diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and spinal muscular atrophy, both

Volkswagenlaunched the “People’s Car Project” (PCP) in China as an open-source online project where people can submit their ideas for the Volkswagen of the future. Eleven months later, 33 million visitors to the website and more than 119,000 ideas were submitted, and Volkswagen announced during the Auto China show last week three of the vehicle

One laptop per child seems a simple slogan, chock full of benefit. What could go wrong when you put the power of the Internet and solar cells into the hands of children in the developing world? After all, not only does it train the global underclass in the tools of modern production, it also unleashes

The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world that allows the United States to conduct surveillance on those machines and can also create a digital highway for launching cyberattacks. While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer networks, the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of

CQT researchers and their collaborator present a quantum speed-up for machine learning One of the ways that computers ‘think’ is by analysing relationships within large sets of data. CQT’s Jansen (Zhikuan) Zhao, Anupam Prakash and their collaborator have shown that quantum computers can do one such analysis faster than classical computers, for a wider array

The 3-D printing revolution has changed the way we think about plastics. Everything from children’s toys to office supplies to high-value laboratory equipment can be printed. The potential savings of producing goods at the household- and lab-scale is remarkable, especially when producers use old prints and recycle them. Buying plastic filament for printing can be

New spongelike structure converts solar energy into steam. A new material structure developed at MIT generates steam by soaking up the sun. The structure — a layer of graphite flakes and an underlying carbon foam — is a porous, insulating material structure that floats on water. When sunlight hits the structure’s surface, it creates a