Archive News

September 23, 2019 New species can evolve rapidly after adapting to new niches, a process called ecological speciation. But mutations are rare, so how is such rapid ecological speciation possible? Recently evolved lake and stream ecotypes of stickleback from Lake Constance reveal an unexpected answer.

September 17, 2019Implementation of the Montreal Protocol has successfully prevented depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer and associated increases in levels of UV-B radiation at the Earth’s surface. But many questions remain to be answered – for example, how does climate change affect the exposure of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems to UV radiation? This is one of the questions discussed in a review article, co-authored by former Eawag scientist Barbara Sulzberger, which was recently published in Nature Sustainability.

September 10, 2019Treating community wastewater takes a lot of energy. Eawag is currently supporting a project that not only presents an alternative to conventional treatment processes but is also designed to enabled increased throughput within a smaller amount of space.

September 9, 2019 Awareness of sustainable groundwater consumption is increasing in importance because of changing land use and climate change. As a result, the desire to better understand the natural and anthropogenic processes that have an influence on groundwater quality is growing.

September 4, 2019The 3RCC award has been conferred on two Eawag researchers by the 3R Swiss Competence Centre (3RCC) for their outstanding research work. For the first time ever, the researchers managed to obtain ISO certification for a toxicity test using cultured fish gill cells, thanks to their project work in this area. This represents a milestone in the promotion of alternatives to animal experiments. The prize was awarded on September 2nd in Bern.

September 3, 2019The energy strategy calls for a further expansion of hydropower. This puts pressure on Swiss water bodies and water landscapes. At today's Eawag Info Day, some 200 experts from practice, research and administration will discuss how the various interests in water can be met in a sustainable manner and where the competition between these interests calls for priorities to be set. The Eawag researchers will demonstrate that it is not only a question of technical solutions, but also of social acceptance, for example when measures in favour of water ecology lead to an increase in the price of electricity.

August 30, 2019 Amphipods are among the most important invertebrate organisms in water. They have central ecological functions, for example as food for fish or in the degradation of leaves. Nevertheless, surprisingly little is known about these animals, which are between a few millimetres and a few centimetres in size. And despite very different requirements, the species are hardly differentiated in water monitoring.

August 30, 2019On 1 September 2019, Benoît Ferrari will take over as interim director of the Ecotox Centre. Benoît Ferrari is an expert on the ecotoxicity of sediments and has been group leader for sediment and soil ecotoxicology at the Ecotox Centre in Lausanne since 2013. The current director, Inge Werner, will remain with the Ecotox Centre on a part-time basis until 2021.

August 28, 2019Not only women, but also most men, find that men more often walk right into a trap and are gender biased. More than twice as many women as men think that they are disadvantaged because of their sex. Likewise, almost twice as many women as men approve of a quota for women in academic positions. This is the result of an evaluation of a questionnaire published in the magazine Earth and Space Science.

August 15, 2019Swiss groundwater contains numerous pesticide degradation products. This has been discovered by an extensive screening by Eawag and ETH Zurich. The transformation products (metabolites) originate predominantly from pesticides from agriculture.