The University Library will be closed from 16 December 2020 until at least 10 January 2021. For further information, please see this announcement. Classroom teaching at (Augsburg) universities is restricted and will be offered in digital form from 28 November. Exceptions apply to laboratory activities, internships, practical and artistic training sections and examinations.

The environmental damage arising from the production of foods is not currently reflected in prices. If the consequential costs of the greenhouse gases emitted are determined and added to current food prices, animal products such as milk, cheese and especially meat would have to become far more expensive. The price difference between conventional and organic products would also be less.  This was published in Nature Communications by a team of researchers led by economist Dr Tobias Gaugler.

Can a COVID-19 infection be detected based on your voice and sounds? This is what the speech and audio analysis app developed by Prof. Dr. Björn W. Schuller, Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Health is developed for. It estimates the probability of being infected with the corona virus based on prolonged vowels or a text that has been read aloud or free speech. First results are highly promising, but the app is still being improved and tested, in particular by collecting more data.

A major international study with participation of the University of Augsburg shows for the first time that flooding characteristics in recent decades are unlike those of previous centuries across Europe.

A study by the Augsburg pathologist Dr Tina Schaller from the University Hospital of Augsburg, together with an interdisciplinary medical team, shows that the lung tissue of deceased COVID-19 patients is irreversibly damaged. The cause of the damage was the virus, the genetic make-up of which could still be detected in the respiratory tract.

As part of the High-Tech Agenda, the University of Augsburg has received two new professorships from the Free State of Bavaria in the field of artificial intelligence. This is a great success for the university and complements the existing interdisciplinary research areas - especially in relation to medicine. The new professorship for robot-assisted surgery and intelligent systems is intended to investigate the integration of modern robotics and intelligent, data-supported assistance systems into everyday clinical practise. The research area of the new professorship for Mathematical Statistics and Artificial intelligence in Medicine is the statistical methodology for furthering the use of AI. The processes developed thereby are intended to help answer specific issues in medicine.

Physicists from the universities of Augsburg and Münster have presented a new type of emitter for generating terahertz radiation, which can be switched on or off by varying the temperature. In the future, it could possibly enable the construction of higher intensity radiation sources.

Registration at the University of Augsburg is now starting for the summer semester 2020. Due to the current situation, this will not take place in person as usual, but by mail. Find out more information on how to enroll correctly for your degree program.

Breaking a magnet into two pieces, reveals a north and a south pole in each of them. Independent magnetic monopoles have been known as emergent excitations in one special class of magnetic crystals only. Researchers of the University of Augsburg together with international collaboration partners found a new flavor of magnetic monopoles in a material which is even electrically conducting.

To participate productively in working life at an advanced age and to spend one's leisure time with a high quality of life is the wish of many older people. In an international project, the computer scientist Prof. Björn Schuller is investigating how digital technologies and artificial intelligence can support this goal.

An international research project with milion-euro funding from the EU looks at how medical students can learn to make decisions for the diagnosis and treatment of patients in later clinical practice.

A team of researchers from Peking University, China, collaborated with others from Germany, UK, Spain, Belgium, France, Australia and the USA, found that earlier spring greening causes a large water loss from land soils by evaporation. This loss raises the risk of soil moisture droughts and heat extremes in the following summer months, according to the latest study published in the journal Science Advances.