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.