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A new EPFL paper has found that students are cautious towards AI feedback, highlighting the complexity of integrating it into educational feedback systems. Feedback plays a crucial role in learning, helping individuals to understand and improve their performance, yet globally large and diverse student populations often mean that providing timely and personalized observations can be a challenge.

Whether it's folk music, a theater festival or game design: culture thrives on encounters between people, their works and their activities. Technology has always played an important role in this. But what are the current interdependencies between digital possibilities and cultural creation? A three-part TA-SWISS project is taking a close look at the opportunities and risks of digitalization in the cultural sector.

Toniebox, Tiptoi, and Tamagotchi are smart toys, offering interactive play through software and internet access. However, many of these toys raise privacy concerns, and some even collect extensive behavioral data about children, report researchers at the University of Basel. The Toniebox and the figurines it comes with are especially popular with small children.

In the USA, the world's most extensive neutrino experiment, DUNE, is being built at Fermilab. The University of Bern is playing a key role in this by developing the "ND-LAr" detector, which features new technology and an innovative design to observe neutrinos. The prototype of the "ND-LAr" has now been successfully tested and has detected its first neutrinos.

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have used one of the most advanced energy system models in Europe to calculate the impact of digitalisation on energy consumption. Many people now work partly or permanently from home. This saves petrol because they no longer have to drive to the office - which is good for the energy transition.

Researchers from ETH Zurich and Empa have developed a hydrogel implant that can help prevent endometriosis, a condition that affects a great many women. This innovation also acts as a contraceptive. Hydrogels have a variety of use cases, including contact lenses, delivering doses of medication within the body, moisturisers, water storage in soil, cleaning polluted water and as gelling and thickening agents.

Researchers at EPFL have made a breakthrough in understanding how neural network-based generative models perform against traditional data sampling techniques in complex systems, unveiling both challenges and opportunities for AI's future in data generation. The world of artificial intelligence (AI) has recently seen significant advancements in generative models, a type of machine-learning algorithms that "learn" patterns from set of data in order to generate new, similar sets of data.

Scientists at EPFL have successfully miniaturized a powerful erbium-based biber laser on a silicon-nitride photonic chip. Since typical erbium-based fiber lasers are large and difficult to scale down, the breakthrough promises major advances in optical communications and sensing technologies. Lasers have revolutionized the world since the 60's and are now indispensable in modern applications, from cutting-edge surgery and precise manufacturing to data transmission across optical fibers.

Cathodic corrosion protection is a widely used technique for protecting steel-based infrastructure from corrosion. researchers have now clarified the detailed mechanisms involved, thereby resolving a controversial issue that had preoccupied the engineering community for decades. Corrosion is a chemical reaction to which even the strongest structures fall victim.

Despite widespread skepticism, more and more retail banks are offering cryptocurrencies as a fully-fledged asset class. While some banks are specifically building up their own expertise in blockchain, most are relying on third-party providers. These are the findings of a new study by Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.

Researchers at the University of Basel have developed a new method for calculating phase diagrams of physical systems that works similarly to ChatGPT. This artificial intelligence could even automate scientific experiments in the future. A year and a half ago, ChatGPT was released, and ever since, there has been hardly anything that cannot be created with this new form of artificial intelligence: texts, images, videos, and even music.

Instead of burning coal or oil to produce cement or steel, in the future solar energy could be used for this purpose. Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a thermal trap that can absorb concentrated sunlight and deliver heat at over thousand degrees Celsius. The production of cement, metals and many chemical commodities requires extremely high temperatures of over a thousand degrees Celsius.

Experiments by ETH Zurich computer security researchers showed that smartphones can be manipulated to allow the owner to ride Swiss trains for free. The researchers also highlighted ways of curbing such misuse. It makes travelling by train, bus and tram super easy: instead of buying a conventional ticket, people using the EasyRide function in the SBB app can start their journey with a single swipe on their smartphone.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a safe and inexpensive device for reliable blood measurements. It works using a suction cup and could also be employed to diagnose the tropical disease malaria - even by non-medical personnel. Many people are afraid of needles, and having a doctor take a blood sample from their arm makes them uncomfortable.

Apoptotic cell death is a crucial mechanism that contributes to tissue homeostasis and prevents the onset of several diseases. However, this phenomenon is challenging to identify within microscopy movies that can encompass thousands of cells. Led by Santiago Gonzalez, the recent study carried at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB) in Bellinzona, affiliated with USI, introduces ADeS, an innovative approach based on artificial intelligence for the automatic detection of apoptotic cells in microscopy movies.

A high-profile study made headlines in 2023 stating that the scientific and innovation system is producing less and less completely new knowledge. Researchers at the University of Basel are now refuting this claim, at least for patents: It is based on a measurement error. The discovery of mRNA in the 1960s was groundbreaking.

Ultra-light, thermally insulating and biodegradable: Cellulose-based aerogels are versatile. researchers have succeeded in 3D printing the natural material into complex shapes that could one day serve as precision insulation in microelectronics or as personalized medical implants. At first glance, biodegradable materials, inks for 3D printing and aerogels don't seem to have much in common.

The Paul Scherrer Institute PSI and the Finnish company PiBond to collaborate in the commercialization of advanced EUV semiconductor lithography products.

A team from the University of Geneva has developed an AI capable of learning a task solely on the basis of verbal instructions. And to do the same with a 'sister' AI. Performing a new task based solely on verbal or written instructions, and then describing it to others so that they can reproduce it, is a cornerstone of human communication that still resists artificial intelligence (AI).

The cost of removing large quantities of CO2 from the air will fall in the medium term, but not as much as previously hoped. This is the conclusion reached by researchers on the basis of new calculations. Efforts to reduce carbon emissions should therefore continue at pace, says the research team. Switzerland plans to reduce its net carbon emissions to zero by no later than 2050.