wire - news in brief

Are humans or machines better at recognizing speech? A new study shows that in noisy conditions, current automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems achieve remarkable accuracy and sometimes even surpass human performance.

Until now, contraception has been the method of choice for zoos to avoid surplus animals.

People who use SRG news also consume commuter, tabloid, and subscription media more frequently than those who do not. Furthermore, the use of SRG news does not detrimentally affect people's willingness to pay for online news. These are the findings of the Yearbook Quality of the Media 2024 published by the University of Zurich's Research Center for the Public Sphere and Society (fög).

The UZH Space Hub leverages its strong interdisciplinary research and international network to help advance the fields of remote sensing, astrophysics, space life sciences and autonomous drone navigation.

Efforts to tackle false information through fact-checking or media literacy initiatives increases the public's skepticism toward "fake news". However, they also breed distrust in genuine, fact-based news sources, a UZH-led study using online survey experiments in the US, Poland and Hong Kong shows. Studies have shown that few people actually come across false information in their day-to-day lives.

UZH has made a spectacular acquisition of an important manuscript by Richard Wagner. In "Eine Mitteilung an meine Freunde" (-A Message to My Friends-), the composer takes autobiographical and artistic stock and looks to the future.

How does listening to live music affect the emotional center of our brain? A study carried out at the University of Zurich has found that live performances trigger a stronger emotional response than listening to music from a device. Concerts connect performers with their audience, which may also have to do with evolutionary factors.

Diagnosis of sepsis in children has been improved based on new research findings. An international research team co-led by the University Children's Hospital Zurich harnessed artificial intelligence to analyze data from over 3.5 million children suffering from this life-threatening disease. Sepsis is a life-threatening infection that can lead to organ failure.

Media Transformation The next generation of digital technology is spreading in Switzerland: Artificial intelligence has already arrived, cyborg technologies for self-optimization have not yet.

Media research People in Switzerland generally have a critical attitude toward the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the production of news coverage. There is currently little appetite to consume and pay for AI-produced news, and in addition, people fear that quality will decrease. These findings are shown in the 2023 Yearbook Quality of the Media published by the Research Center for the Public Sphere and Society (fög) at the University of Zurich.

Evolutionary Biology Genetic quality or genetic compatibility? What do female fruit flies prioritize when mating? Researchers at the University of Zurich show that both factors are important at different stages of the reproductive process and that females use targeted strategies to optimize the fitness of their offspring.

Media Research In the run-up to elections and referendums, the news media play an important role in shaping public opinion.

History An independent team of historians was given unprecedented access to archives of the Swiss Catholic Church to investigate cases of sexual abuse within the church. The researchers have now documented 1,002 cases of sexual abuse committed by Catholic clerics, church staff and members of Catholic orders that have occurred in Switzerland since the mid-20th century.

In a milestone for artificial intelligence (AI), the AI system -Swift-, designed by researchers, has beaten the world champions in drone racing - a result that seemed unattainable just a few years ago. The AI-piloted drone was trained in a simulated environment. Real-world applications include environmental monitoring or disaster response.

A sociological study by the University of Zurich confirms that a considerable proportion of employees perceive their work as socially useless. Employees in financial, sales and management occupations are more likely to conclude that their jobs are of little use to society. In recent years, research showed that many professionals consider their work to be socially useless.

Many women and men still work in sex-typed occupations. One important reason for this is that men are selectively leaving occupations that are increasingly taken up by women, a recent study from the University of Zurich has shown. This could explain swings in the sex compositions of jobs and why some specializations within occupations become female or male-dominated.

In 1986, UZH physicist and IBM Fellow K. Alex Müller and his colleague J. Georg Bednorz revolutionized solid-state physics with the discovery of the first high-temperature superconductor.

The newly established Postdoc Team Award allows UZH to recognize outstanding interdisciplinary research.

Over a dozen climate-related lawsuits are pending at the European Court of Human Rights, putting legal processes at the institution to the test.

Paul Glimcher, co-founder of the field of neuroeconomics and professor at New York University, recently held a keynote speech at UZH.

The challenges facing the global community today are complex and manifold: climate crisis, war, poverty, inequality, digitalization, a new political world order.

The perception that resources are unfairly distributed is at the root of many social conflicts. Researchers at the University of Zurich have investigated the motives influencing our perception of justice in resource distribution. They found that although people feel an aversion to inequality, they are also reluctant to harm others and to upend existing social hierarchies.

The remains of glyptodonts, a group of extinct giant armadillos, indicate that humans spread to South America earlier than previously assumed. Found in northwestern Venezuela, the fractured skulls could represent evidence of hunting by humans, says UZH paleontologist Marcelo Sánchez. Skilled human hunters are also likely to have contributed to pushing the large, heavily armored animals over the brink.

Blood stem cell transplantation is a radical but highly effective therapy for multiple sclerosis. A study led by the University of Zurich has now examined in detail the way in which the treatment curbs the autoimmune disease and how the immune system regenerates afterwards. A better understanding of these mechanisms should help the treatment approach, currently approved in only a few countries, to gain wider acceptance.

Vascular aging is the most common cause of fatal cardiovascular diseases. Can blood vessels be rejuvenated using fat cells? Cardiologist Soheil Saeedi is developing a novel method to do just that.

News media is reaching fewer and fewer people. Young adults consume just seven minutes of news per day on their smartphones. This poses a problem for democracy: news-deprived people are less interested in politics, have lower rates of participation in the political process and have less trust in political institutions.

Heart attacks in women are more likely to be fatal than in men. The reasons are differences in age and in comorbidity burden which makes risk assessment in women a challenge. Researchers at the University of Zurich have now developed a novel artificial-intelligence-based risk score that improves personalized care for female patients with heart attacks.

In times of war, the media fulfill a vital function as information providers. The quality of coverage about the war in Ukraine has been relatively high, a study by the University of Zurich has now shown. Swiss media have been offering reports on the war from various perspectives, providing background information and using images carefully.

Private banks across Europe are meeting more client demands, new regulations and pressure from stakeholders with better qualified advisors.

A German couple goes on a honeymoon to East Africa and return with hundreds of objects, including everyday items, jewelry, musical instruments and tools.