‘Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda’: Young Swiss audiences’ attitudes, expectations and evaluations of audiovisual news and information content and the implications for public service television

Public service media (PSM) are still seen in most European countries as a core means of informing citizens of all ages. Nevertheless, PSM struggle to reach young audiences, who are often characterised as news-avoidant or news-deprived. This article asks what meaning the news and information offered by PSM have for young people. The qualitative study describes young people’s attitudes and expectations regarding audiovisual news and information content through observation of their media usage habits in an experimental setting. It provides insights regarding how young people find and select news in today’s digital media environment and highlights opportunities for PSM providers to reach and engage with young audiences more effectively

‘Shoulda, coulda, woulda’ : young Swiss audiences’ attitudes, expectations and evaluations of audiovisual news and information content and the implications for public service television

Public service media (PSM) are still seen in most European countries as a core means of informing citizens of all ages. Nevertheless, PSM struggle to reach young audiences, who are often characterised as news-avoidant or news-deprived. This article asks what meaning the news and information offered by PSM have for young people. The qualitative study describes young people’s attitudes and expectations regarding audiovisual news and information content through observation of their media usage habits in an experimental setting. It provides insights regarding how young people find and select news in today’s digital media environment and highlights opportunities for PSM providers to reach and engage with young audiences more effectively

The attempt to be up front despite major challenges : innovation in Switzerland’s public service media as a contribution to society

One of the core values of public service media (PSM), as described by the European Broadcast Union, is innovation. While innovation is usually written as an important contribution to society by public service broadcasting, there are only a few studies that examine how public service broadcasting organisations practice innovation management. This chapter uses a case study of the Swiss public broadcaster SRF to examine the ways in which innovation management has been practised in this organisation. Results show that SRF was able to foster innovation in terms of products, technology, and processes despite organisational inertia and various setbacks. These experiences of transforming the organisation in the direction of an innovation-promoting PSM might be its main contribution to society

Keine News und dann? Junge Erwachsene zwischen News Deprivation und Informationsorientierung

Wie zahlreiche Studien zur journalistischen Nachrichtennutzung von jungen Menschen zeigen, hat sich die Art und Weise des Zugangs zu solchen Inhalten im Umfeld von digitalen Plattformen stark verändert. Oft fokussieren sich entsprechende Studien primär darauf, diese Veränderungen in der Nutzung klassischer Nachrichtenformate zu beschreiben. In der Regel bleibt dabei jedoch unklar, welche Inhalte und Informationen aus Sicht der jungen Nutzer:innen in ihren Alltagspraktiken als News gewertet werden, wie sie mit entsprechenden Inhalten umgehen und welche Erwartungen sie an diese haben. Diesem Forschungsdesiderat nimmt sich die vorliegende Studie an und untersucht, anhand qualitativ erhobener Daten im Rahmen eines Media Use Lab, in dem vierzig junge Erwachsene im Alter zwischen 19 und 32 Jahren bei ihrer Mediennutzung beobachtet sowie interviewt wurden, welche Praktiken, Handlungen und damit verbundene Sinnbezüge für junge Menschen im Umgang mit News von Bedeutung sind. Die Resultate zeigen, dass klassische Nachrichtenangebote bei den interviewten jungen Menschen zwar eher eine untergeordnete Rolle in ihrer tatsächlichen Mediennutzung spielen, sie deren Nutzung jedoch als grundsätzlich wichtig erachten und sehr genaue Gründe für eine Nicht-Nutzung von News nennen können. Gleichzeitig interessieren und beschäftigen sie sich mit Themen, die einen Bezug zu ihrer Lebenswelt aufweisen. Junge Mediennutzer:innen scheinen deshalb zwar tatsächlich “news depriviert”, jedoch informationsorientiert zu sein.As numerous studies on young people's use of journalistic news show, the way in which they access such content has changed considerably in the environment of digital platforms. Often, corresponding studies focus primarily on describing these changes through the use of classic news formats. However, it remains unclear which content and information young users regard as news in their everyday practices, how they deal with such content, and what expectations they have regarding news. The present study addresses this research desideratum. Using qualitatively collected data, the study examines which practices, actions and associated meaning references are important for young people in their dealings with news. To this end, forty young adults between the ages of 19 and 32 were observed and interviewed as part of a media-use lab. The results show that although legacy media tend to play a subordinate role in the actual media use of the young people interviewed, they nevertheless consider news to be fundamentally important and can give very precise reasons for their non-use of news. At the same time, they are interested in and concerned with topics that have a connection to their life. Young media users therefore seem to be "news deprived," but information-oriented.[abstract translated by editor

MicroRNA in diagnosis and therapy monitoring of early-stage triple-negative breast cancer

Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease with distinct molecular subtypes including the aggressive subtype triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). We compared blood-borne miRNA signatures of early-stage basal-like (cytokeratin-CK5-positive) TNBC patients to age-matched controls. The miRNAs of TNBC patients were assessed prior to and following platinum-based neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NCT). After an exploratory genome-wide study on 21 cases and 21 controls using microarrays, the identified signatures were verified independently in two laboratories on the same and a new cohort by RT-qPCR. We differentiated the blood of TNBC patients before NCT from controls with 84% sensitivity. The most significant miRNA for this diagnostic classification was miR-126-5p (two tailed t-test p-value of 1.4 × 10−5). Validation confirmed the microarray results for all tested miRNAs. Comparing cancer patients prior to and post NCT highlighted 321 significant miRNAs (among them miR-34a, p-value of 1.2 × 10−23). Our results also suggest that changes in miRNA expression during NCT may have predictive potential to predict pathological complete response (pCR). In conclusion we report that miRNA expression measured from blood facilitates early and minimally-invasive diagnosis of basal-like TNBC. We also demonstrate that NCT has a significant influence on miRNA expression. Finally, we show that blood-borne miRNA profiles monitored over time have potential to predict pCR

Aktuelle Fragen zum schweizerischen und internationalen Kapitalmarktrecht - 17. Tagung zu Kapitalmarkt – Recht und Transaktionen – Tagungsband 2021

Der vorliegende Tagungsband „Kapitalmarkt – Recht und Transaktionen“ legt den Schwerpunkt wie jedes Jahr auf aktuelle Entwicklungen im Finanz- und Kapitalmarktrecht unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Transaktionen in diesem Bereich. Das Jahr 2021 stand noch immer unter dem Eindruck der Corona-Pandemie, war aber auch geprägt durch dynamische technologische Weiterentwicklung sowie die noch immer fortschreitende Zunahme der Regulierung. Die Beiträge im vorliegenden Tagungsband befassen sich mit dem für die Schweiz neuen Phänomen der SPACS (special purpose acquisition companies), Lombardkrediten und Margin Calls, Streitigkeiten mit ESG-Bezug, der FIDLEG-Umsetzung im Bereich Corporate Finance, Neuerungen bei der Emittentenregulierung, der LIBOR Ablösung sowie dem neuen Institut des Kapitalbandes im revidierten Aktienrecht

Ageing-associated small RNA cargo of extracellular vesicles

Previous work on murine models and humans demonstrated global as well as tissue-specific molecular ageing trajectories of RNAs. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are membrane vesicles mediating the horizontal transfer of genetic information between different tissues. We sequenced small regulatory RNAs (sncRNAs) in two mouse plasma fractions at five time points across the lifespan from 2–18 months: (1) sncRNAs that are free-circulating (fc-RNA) and (2) sncRNAs bound outside or inside EVs (EV-RNA). Different sncRNA classes exhibit unique ageing patterns that vary between the fcRNA and EV-RNA fractions. While tRNAs showed the highest correlation with ageing in both fractions, rRNAs exhibited inverse correlation trajectories between the EV- and fc-fractions. For miRNAs, the EV-RNA fraction was exceptionally strongly associated with ageing, especially the miR-29 family in adipose tissues. Sequencing of sncRNAs and coding genes in fat tissue of an independent cohort of aged mice up to 27 months highlighted the pivotal role of miR-29a-3p and miR-29b-3p in ageing-related gene regulation that we validated in a third cohort by RT-qPCR

Common diseases alter the physiological age-related blood microRNA profile

Aging is a key risk factor for chronic diseases of the elderly. MicroRNAs regulate post-transcriptional gene silencing through base-pair binding on their target mRNAs. We identified nonlinear changes in age-related microRNAs by analyzing whole blood from 1334 healthy individuals. We observed a larger influence of the age as compared to the sex and provide evidence for a shift to the 5' mature form of miRNAs in healthy aging. The addition of 3059 diseased patients uncovered pan-disease and disease-specific alterations in aging profiles. Disease biomarker sets for all diseases were different between young and old patients. Computational deconvolution of whole-blood miRNAs into blood cell types suggests that cell intrinsic gene expression changes may impart greater significance than cell abundance changes to the whole blood miRNA profile. Altogether, these data provide a foundation for understanding the relationship between healthy aging and disease, and for the development of age-specific disease biomarkers

Swarm Learning for decentralized and confidential clinical machine learning

Fast and reliable detection of patients with severe and heterogeneous illnesses is a major goal of precision medicine. Patients with leukaemia can be identified using machine learning on the basis of their blood transcriptomes. However, there is an increasing divide between what is technically possible and what is allowed, because of privacy legislation. Here, to facilitate the integration of any medical data from any data owner worldwide without violating privacy laws, we introduce Swarm Learning—a decentralized machine-learning approach that unites edge computing, blockchain-based peer-to-peer networking and coordination while maintaining confidentiality without the need for a central coordinator, thereby going beyond federated learning. To illustrate the feasibility of using Swarm Learning to develop disease classifiers using distributed data, we chose four use cases of heterogeneous diseases (COVID-19, tuberculosis, leukaemia and lung pathologies). With more than 16,400 blood transcriptomes derived from 127 clinical studies with non-uniform distributions of cases and controls and substantial study biases, as well as more than 95,000 chest X-ray images, we show that Swarm Learning classifiers outperform those developed at individual sites. In addition, Swarm Learning completely fulfils local confidentiality regulations by design. We believe that this approach will notably accelerate the introduction of precision medicine