Politics

Whether a hydroelectric power plant is built, a pesticide is banned or a moor is placed under protection – a wide variety of political decisions have an impact on biodiversity. But does biodiversity play any role at all in such decisions? Researchers at Eawag and WSL have investigated this question and examined Swiss policy over the past 20 years.

It will take more than a long-term target for 2050 to achieve climate neutrality, says Reto Knutti. Policymakers must take a consistent approach towards net zero, and define a reduction path with specific measures and interim targets.

Encryption provides a solution to security risks, but its flipside is that it can hinder law enforcement investigations. A new technology called client-side scanning (CSS) would enable targeted information to be revealed through on-device analysis, without weakening encryption or providing decryption keys. However, an international group of experts, including EPFL, has now released a report raising the alert, arguing that CSS neither ensures crime prevention nor prevents unwarranted surveillance.

The National Council and the Council of States approved the cohesion contribution in the autumn session, which ended on October 1. The road to this point was rocky and full of twists and turns. A report.

Technologies that interfere with our brains have great potential. But their ethical implications are such that they may require an expansion of human rights frameworks, argues Marcello Ienca.

In his doctoral thesis, Dario Meili explores discrimination. Although there are instances of discrimination in our society, the certificate requirement is not one of them, he says.

In recent years, there have been several incidents of hacked databases, and the hackers published the stolen data on the internet. Are scientists allowed to use such data for their research? ETH Zurich bioethicists Marcello Ienca and Professor Effy Vayena have addressed this question in a paper published in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence. ETH News spoke with Ienca.

Since 13 September the autumn session is in full swing. Over the course of three weeks, the National Council and the Council of States will deal with issues that are equally important for the ETH Domain, such as the release of the cohesion billion to selected EU states or the Gene Technology Act.

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.

EPFL summer series: how science works. In the 1990s, the internet upended the scientific publication process. Today, it’s the whole culture of research that’s changing.

ETH Zurich ranks 15th place in the Times Higher Education World University Ranking for 2022 retaining its top position in Switzerland and continental Europe.

ETH Zurich ranked first place in the latest comparative study by WWF Switzerland on sustainability in Swiss higher education.

Martin Ackermann steps down as head of the Swiss National Covid-19 Science Task Force. Tanja Stadler succeeds him in this responsible position.

How can research support decisions in water management practice, even if much is still uncertain? When managing rivers, for example, the forecasts of what consequences various measures will have are often fraught with uncertainties. It is also not always clear which status is to be achieved in the end with river revitalisation projects, because different stakeholders sometimes pursue different goals, such as recreation, nature conservation, flood protection, fishing or energy generation – and therefore assess possible outcomes in contradictory ways. Nevertheless, a decision ultimately has to be made despite the uncertainties.

Climate researcher Sonia Seneviratne contributed to the latest assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). As she highlights here,  the new report clearly demonstrates that we can’t afford to lose any more time when it comes to climate change.