ETH News

Researchers at ETH Zurich are utilising artificial intelligence to analyse the behaviour of laboratory mice more efficiently and reduce the number of animals in experiments.

Smart homes are intended to make life easier, but logging into individual devices is often still an onerous task. Researchers from ETH Zurich have investigated how everyday routines could be used for secure and user-friendly authentication – with no need for cumbersome passwords.

The brain chemical orexin is crucial when we choose between sport and the tasty temptations that beckon everywhere we turn. This research finding could also help people who find it difficult to motivate themselves to exercise.

On behalf of Raiffeisen Switzerland Cooperative, ETH Zurich researchers examined the beginnings of the Raiffeisen movement in Switzerland. Their focus was on antisemitism as well as Raiffeisen during National Socialism.

How productive are we when we work from home? It’s an increasingly common question. But Gudela Grote believes it’s the wrong question, because it says more about our conceptions of human nature than about effective ways of working.

Work psychologist Petra Schmid studies the effects of social power. She favours an interdisciplinary approach that includes both lab experiments and surveys.

Our visual perception depends more strongly on the utility of information than previously thought. This has been demonstrated in a series of experiments conducted by researchers at ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich. Cognitive biases can begin at the retina.

People who meditate every day are less likely to avoid negative information. This is a finding in a new study by a research team including researchers from ETH Zurich.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a model that detects workplace stress just by how people type and move their computer mouse. This might enable employees to prevent chronic stress early on.

Life is a constant stream of decisions that pit sober reflection against powerful emotions, conscious deliberation against gut instincts. Using complex models and sophisticated experiments, ETH researchers study how we combine these different decision-making strategies.

Emotional trauma can have far-reaching ripple effects and may even reverberate across generations. Professors Isabelle Mansuy and Katharina Gapp study how the effects of trauma can be inherited through epigenetic mechanisms.

Cognitive flexibility improves leadership, according to numerous studies conducted by ETH Zurich researchers. The Swiss Armed Forces are planning to employ this knowledge in the training of officers to better prepare them for future crises.  

In cities, those who earn more are better able to protect themselves against noise and its associated health risks. This is shown by two new ETH studies conducted in Bern, Zurich, Hannover and Mainz.

Researchers have developed a new method that uses artificial intelligence to analyse animal behaviour. This opens the door to longer-term in-depth studies in the field of behavioural science – while also helping to improve animal welfare. The method is already being tested at Zurich Zoo.

ETH researchers have shown that the Swiss population is willing to pay more to reduce food waste. It is in favour of government regulations that set strict reduction targets and ensure transparent monitoring of implementation.

A team of researchers led by ETH Professor Rafael Polanía has shown for the first time that decisions feel right to us if we have compared the options as attentively as possible – and if we are conscious of having done so. This requires a capacity for introspection.

Online hate speech can be curbed by inducing empathy for those affected. In contrast, the use of humour or warnings of possible consequences have little effects. A team of social scientists and 13 ETH Zurich students has demonstrated this in a new scientific publication.

We often hear that Swiss consumers want their agriculture to be free from genetic engineering. But consumer acceptance of genetically modified crops is likely to be higher than the media leads us to believe, Angela Bearth says.

Researchers from ETH Zurich have demonstrated the positive effects of productive failure on learning outcomes. The success rate for one of ETH’s largest courses was increased by 20 percent.

Is natural always good and artificial always bad? We talked to psychologist Angela Bearth and biotechnologist Sven Panke about science, scepticism, misunderstandings and how language influences the way we think.

How do you get more people to have vaccinations? Gudela Grote firmly believes that it’s worth looking at team dynamics.

Disruption has the power to upend our lives. But approached constructively, disruption and resilience can be positive.

Electricity providers have a simple way of encouraging households and companies to procure power from sustainable sources. This can help lower CO₂ emissions.

A digital twin of our planet is to simulate the Earth system in future. It is intended to support policy-makers in taking appropriate measures to better prepare for extreme events. A new strategy paper by European scientists and ETH Zurich computer scientists shows how this can be achieved.

For close to two months now, many of us have been working almost entirely from home. And it’s going far better than some people anticipated. What has now become normal will change the working world profoundly, believes Gudela Grote.

With many of us thrown into an unusual work situation, now’s a good moment to think about boundaries, says Gudela Grote.

When making decisions, we’re often influenced by our social environment. This can be used in a targeted way to encourage people to adopt a healthier, cleaner lifestyle, writes Suchita Srinivasan.

Climate change, global population growth and biodiversity loss are a threat to our food system. Four ETH researchers know how to produce, process and consume food more sustainably.

Rafael Polanía and his team of ETH researchers have developed a computer model capable of predicting certain human decisions. With it, researchers can predict for example which food someone in a supermarket will choose to buy – valuable information for marketing and health.

Although we have known the causes of our environmental problems and possible solutions for decades, not much has changed. Christoph Küffer asks why.

A secure and reliable internet generates trust. Just how the internet creates trust is a matter for debate between ETH computer scientists and social scientists – for example, in a public session on 9 May 2017.

Modern data science techniques can also be useful in conflict research. However, in an essay published in the journal Science, Lars-Erik Cederman, Professor of International Conflict Research at ETH Zurich, suggests that certain expectations regarding the predictability of armed conflict are unrealistic. ETH News caught up with him for a chat.

‘Science in Perspective’ is the name of a new study programme at ETH Zurich that will teach students of natural sciences and engineering the overarching normative, historical and cultural perspectives of their subject.

Whether young people behave prosocially or aggressively comes down to the kind of relationship they have with their teachers: this is the conclusion of a long-term study conducted by researchers from ETH Zurich and the universities of Cambridge and Toronto.

Westliche Kulturen verbinden Insekten eher mit Gefahr und Verdorbenem statt mit Essbarem – obwohl sie nachhaltige Proteinlieferanten wären. Wie können wir Insekten für Europa kulinarisch attraktiver machen, so dass die Menschen ihren Ekel überwinden?

Wer bewusst konsumiert, ist fast täglich mit der Frage konfrontiert, ob tierische Lebensmittel auf unseren Menüplan gehören oder nicht. Eine Orientierungshilfe könnte sein, wie nachhaltig produziert wird. Allein, was eine nachhaltige Tierproduktion bedeutet, ist in der Forschung umstritten.

A recent US survey suggested that, in shaping our attitude toward climate change, values are more important than our understanding of the issue. We reassessed this counterintuitive finding and showed that knowledge is indeed a driver of climate change concern, thus supporting the need to inform the public.

Climate change has been communicated as a global concern affecting all of mankind; but this message doesn’t seem to be getting through. If indeed the human brain responds better to experience than to analysis, then climate change must be told as a local and personal story – just as the Klimagarten 2085 exhibition is doing.

Secondary school physics teachers with little teaching experience handed out significantly poorer grades to girls than boys for the exact same performance. This was the conclusion drawn by an ETH learning specialist from a study she conducted in Switzerland, Germany and Austria.

One of the big questions intelligence researchers grapple with is just how differences in intelligence are reflected in the human brain. Researchers at ETH Zurich have succeeded in studying further details relating to suspected functional differences in the brains of intelligent people.

At its meeting of 8/9 July 2015, the ETH Board appointed six professors at ETH Zurich in accordance with the application submitted by ETH Zurich President Lino Guzzella.

When a person in a group violates a norm, he or she is often punished by the others. In a game theory experiment, ETH sociologist Andreas Diekmann shows that this defector is most likely to be punished if those injured by the violation have differing levels of strength. Among equals, in contrast, the defector tends to get away with it.

Researchers at ETH Zurich asked consumers in German-speaking Switzerland how often they used sunscreens and other personal care products. The collected data make for interesting reading: part of the population applies sunscreen to the skin in quantities that could potentially be harmful to health.

Traumatic and stressful events during childhood increase the risk to develop psychiatric disorders, but to a certain extent, they can also help better deal with difficult situations later in life. Researchers have studied this phenomenon in mice to learn how these effects could be transmitted to the next generation.