Without air traffic control, today's dense air traffic would probably be in complete chaos. Skyguide is responsible for aviation safety in Switzerland. With its 1,500 employees at 14 locations, it ensures safe, efficient and sustainable air traffic management in Switzerland and the neighboring areas of neighboring countries, probably the busiest airspace in Europe.

In the beginning there was Guglielmo Marconi

This year, air traffic control in Switzerland celebrates its 100th anniversary. It all started with Marconi Radio AG, a subsidiary of the company of inventor and radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi. It was founded a hundred years ago, on February 23, 1922, to develop wireless telegraphy - the birth of Swiss air traffic control. On May 10, 1928, the company name was changed to Radio Schweiz AG to emphasize its Swiss character. And on January 1, 1931, the Swiss Confederation entrusted Radio Schweiz with the provision of air traffic control services in Switzerland. Since then, aviation has undergone a great development. In the second half of the last century, the airplane was able to establish itself worldwide as an efficient means of mass transportation for passengers and cargo.

Air traffic control made today's development of aviation possible

A decisive factor in this was also the technological development by air traffic control, which ensured flying at all times of the day and in virtually all weather conditions by means of communication, navigation and monitoring systems. In 1987, most of Radio Schweiz AG's non-aviation-related business was transferred or sold to Swiss Post and private companies, and the remainder was subsequently transferred to the company Swisscontrol. In 2001, following a decision by the Federal Council, Skyguide was founded with the aim of integrating civil and military air traffic control. The company is majority-owned by the Swiss Confederation and has its headquarters in Geneva.

"Aviation has undergone a fundamental evolution over the last 100 years. In the coming years, we will be implementing innovative solutions such as the Virtual Centre, which will continue to have a major impact on air traffic control in the future," says Alex Bristol, CEO of Skyguide.

Skyguide is now honoring this centenary with various activities throughout the year: with simple local events at the 14 skyguide locations in Switzerland for employees and the media, with a publication and with a YouTube series and social media campaigns that bring the daily work and services of the air navigation service provider closer.

Source and further information: Skyguide

Hacking today is an illegal industry worth billions, comparable to international drug trafficking. Hard to grasp, highly dangerous for the economy and society, the perpetrators are rarely brought to justice. Justice lags behind the ubiquitous cybercrime, which is why it's best to find professionals yourself to protect you from high-consequence cyberattacks. But who?

Those who understand hackers best are hackers themselves. There are also good ones - so-called white hats. These are the professionals who also call themselves ethical hackers. They scan your entire network from a hacker's point of view, finding leaks that black hats (criminal hackers) could use as an open door for cyberattacks.

Bug Bounty - white hats vs. black hats program by professionals

You probably won't have the network and will have a hard time assessing which specialists are on your side and what they are doing in your systems. The company, run by Sandro Nafzger, Florian Badertscher and Lukas Heppler, specializes in providing its customers with "ethical hackers" who run through all possible scenarios - and show them security holes before they are used by "black hats" to sabotage them. In this way, they benefit from the collective intelligence of a global community of highly specialized security researchers.

Experience shows that the previous security measures are no longer sufficient to effectively protect against cyberattacks. In fact, every IT system that Bug Bounty Switzerland tested with their ethical hackers still has security gaps that could not be found with previous tools such as scanners and automated tests or proven methods such as penetration tests and audits - and are only discovered in a bug bounty program. In the process, protection expands, at best in the form of a real-life scenario. You deal directly with hostile thinking and proceed in exactly the same way as cybercriminals would.

Hackers of all types and persuasions are able to penetrate corporate infrastructures via combinatorial, analytical and technical thinking. However, the way to get there is often very different. But it usually involves intensive research that provides information about the corporate infrastructure.

This information can be compared with known vulnerabilities - and the first attempts to penetrate the company can be launched. Thinking like a hacker can also mean spending days reading lines of code from web interfaces in order to finally come across logic errors that open doors. A hacker's imagination is trained to deal with complex interrelationships - and can often draw broad conclusions from small pieces of information.

The recently disclosed vulnerabilities in the Log4j framework led to companies around the world becoming vulnerable to attack. The speed of the race between attacker and potential victim is both impressive and frightening. Companies that did not previously have a systematic and continuous system for dealing with vulnerabilities had to deal with them virtually overnight. It would have helped if those affected had dealt with the issue proactively at an earlier stage - and had better established the corresponding processes and competencies. Knowing vulnerabilities and knowing whether or how they apply to your own infrastructure are two different things. The Log4j gap has impressively shown that dealing with vulnerabilities is an unsolved problem of central importance. Numerous companies have felt the pain of such omissions.

The disclosure of vulnerabilities also leads not only to more protection, but also to a kind of "guidance" for "bad guys". Bug bounty programs can lead to fast and broad knowledge through their continuous execution, if they are well set up. In addition, a bug bounty program opens up the creation of an open and transparent corporate culture: a key factor in the success of digitization and transformation.

"Good" and "bad" proceed in the same way

But how do we know who are the so-called "good guys" and the "bad guys"?

The motivation of ethical hackers today is often economic - they make a living from it. Good hackers do more or less the same as the "bad" ones. By joining forces via crowdsourcing, they gain versatility and better intelligence. Underground organizations do the same. Depending on the hack, they drum up resources and structure their projects according to the goal. It is precisely this collective intelligence, which results from the combination of the ethical hackers' individual backgrounds, skillsets and experience, that makes the programs so successful.

www.bugbounty.ch

On March 8, the National Council will deal with the Federal Council's proposals on the Revision of the Road Traffic Act. According to the Swiss Council for Accident Prevention (BFU), there are also two points that would make Swiss roads more unsafe.

On the one hand, he said, there was still a lack of draft legislation for the introduction of mandatory follow-up training courses for people who had their driver's license revoked for at least eight months. Compulsory follow-up training was already decided in 2012. However, according to the AAIB, the Federal Council has not enacted the measure to date. On the other hand, the insurance companies' duty of recourse in motor vehicle accidents involving alcohol or excessive speed is to be restored to a much more benign right of recourse.

The BFU argues against this: "Anyone who does not have to reckon with financial consequences in the event of a traffic accident caused by gross negligence resulting in personal injury or property damage - because she or he can even co-insure such behavior - may be behaving even more riskily and indifferently in road traffic," the BFU statement reads.

Course costs would not burden road traffic offices

From the point of view of the BFU, there are important reasons to introduce the mandatory follow-up training now with the SVG revision. It has been scientifically proven that the recidivism rate decreases after a follow-up training course, provided that the courses meet certain quality requirements, according to a statement.

According to the BFU, there are enough course instructors in Switzerland and the courses would have the desired effect even with a short withdrawal period. Since the course costs would be borne by the course participants, it would also be possible for the road traffic authorities to provide the necessary resources, the AAIB added.

Source: AAIB

Health and social care workers are exposed to different occupational safety and health risks across Europe. A recent ESENER study (European Survey of Enterprises on New and Emerging Risks). investigates currently the risks and management of ergonomic and psychosocial factors. The data are based on comparisons between European countries and their industries.

Wearable devices as an opportunity for better processes

According to the conclusions, digitalization and mechanization, for example, could play an important role in mitigating ergonomic risks in this area and could assume greater importance in the future. The introduction and use of digital technologies such as wearable devices is an opportunity to improve occupational health and safety processes and procedures, he said.

Training and raising awareness among managers and employees is also an important tool, he said. This is of particular importance in outpatient and social care, he adds. The involvement of employee representatives in occupational health and safety management is also beneficial in terms of risk reduction, the study further concludes.

Recognition of psychosocial risks in the workplace

The focus, he said, is on identifying psychosocial influencing factors in the workplace to reduce the risks of musculoskeletal disorders. It is crucial, he said, that examples of good practice addressing the problems of the respective sectors are made available, ideally in several languages, for all European countries.

It is also crucial to acknowledge the psychosocial risks in the workplace, he said, as there were many cases of illness and death, especially during the pandemic, in acute care facilities such as hospitals, and nurses, for example, are still suffering from post-traumatic stress.

Source: EU-OSHA

Whether railroad wheels or generators in a power plant, whether pumps or valves - they all make noise. To trained ears, these noises even have a meaning: components, machines, systems or rolling stock sound different when they are functioning properly than when they have a defect or fault.

The sounds they make thus give professionals useful clues as to whether a machine is in good - or "healthy" - condition, or whether it will soon need maintenance or urgent repair. If you can detect in time that a machine is sounding faulty, you can pre-empt a costly defect and intervene before it breaks. Consequently, the monitoring and investigation of sounds are gaining in importance for the operation and maintenance of technical infrastructure - especially since recording sounds, noises and acoustic signals with modern microphones is comparatively inexpensive.

In order to extract the required information from such sounds, proven methods of signal processing and data analysis have been established. One of them is the so-called wavelet transform. Mathematically, tones, sounds and noises can be represented as waves. With the wavelet transformation a function is decomposed into a set of wavelets. These are wave-like oscillations, which are located in time. The underlying idea here is to determine how much of a wavelet is contained in a signal. Although such methods are quite successful, they often require a lot of experience and manual setting of parameters.

Detect defects at an early stage

Now ETH researchers have developed a machine learning method that can fully learn the wavelet transform. The new approach is particularly suitable for high-frequency signals such as sound and vibration signals. It makes it possible to automatically detect whether a machine sounds "healthy" or not.

The approach developed by postdoctoral researchers Gabriel Michau, Gaëtan Frusque, and Olga Fink, professor of Intelligent Maintenance Systems, and now published in the journal PNAS, combines signal processing and machine learning approaches in a new way. The new approach allows an intelligent algorithm, or computational rule, to automatically perform acoustic monitoring and sound analysis of machines. Due to its similarity to the well-established wavelet transform, the results of the proposed machine learning approach can also be interpreted very well.

The researchers' goal is that, in the near future, professionals who operate machines in industry will be able to use a tool that automatically monitors the equipment and warns them in good time - without requiring any special prior knowledge - when conspicuous, abnormal or "unhealthy" noises occur in the devices. The new machine learning method can be applied not only to different types of machines, but also to different types of signals, noises or vibrations. For example, it also recognizes sound frequencies that humans - such as high-frequency signals or ultrasound - cannot naturally hear.

However, the learning procedure does not beat all types of signals over a bar. Rather, the researchers designed it to detect subtle differences in various sounds and produce machine-specific findings. This is not trivial, as the algorithm has no examples of defective signals to learn from.

Focused on "healthy" sounds

In real industrial applications, it is usually not possible to collect so many meaningful noise examples from defective machines, since defects occur only rarely. Therefore, it is also not very possible to teach the algorithm how the noise data from defects sound and how they differ from the healthy noises. The ETH researchers therefore trained the algorithms so that the machine learning algorithm learned how a machine normally sounds when it is running properly and then recognizes when a noise deviates from the normal case.

In doing so, they used a variety of noise data from pumps, fans, valves and slide rails and adopted an "unsupervised learning" approach, in which they did not "tell" an algorithm what to learn, but the computer learned the relevant patterns without guidance and on its own. In this way, Olga Fink and her team enabled the learning procedure to recognize related sounds within a given type of machine and to distinguish between certain types of faults on this basis.

Even if the researchers had had a dataset with noise data from defects, and had thus been able to train their algorithms with both healthy and defective samples, they could never have been sure that such a labeled dataset actually contained all healthy and defective variants. Their sample might have been incomplete and their learning procedure might have failed to detect important error sounds. In addition, the same type of machine can produce very different sounds depending on the intensity of use or the location climate, so that sometimes even technically almost identical defects sound very different depending on the machine.

Learning bird calls

The algorithm can by no means only be applied to the sounds of machines. The researchers also tested their algorithms to distinguish between different bird calls. To do this, they used recordings of bird calls. The algorithms had to learn to distinguish between different bird calls of a particular bird species - in such a way that the type of microphone used did not matter: "Machine learning should recognize the bird calls, not evaluate the recording technique," says Gabriel Michau.

This learning effect is also important for technical infrastructure: Even for machines, the algorithms must exclude the mere background noise and the influences of the recording technology in order to capture the relevant sounds. For an application in industry, it is important that machine learning can detect the subtle differences between sounds. In order for it to be useful and trustworthy to professionals in the field, it must neither sound the alarm too often nor miss relevant sounds.

"With our research, we were able to show that our machine learning approach detects anomalies among sounds, and that it is flexible enough to be applied to different signals and different tasks," concludes Olga Fink. An important feature of their learning method is that it is also able to monitor the evolution of sounds, so it can detect clues to potential errors from the way sounds evolve over time. This opens up several interesting possible applications.

Source: ETH News

Switzerland has the highest fire safety standards in the world, according to the Fire Prevention Advisory Board (BFB). Already this year, many fires have broken out in apartment buildings. For this reason, the BFB recapitulates in a press release the most important rules that should apply to both tenants and owners:

In case of fire, building entrances, staircases, corridors and forecourts become escape routes for the
residents. For the fire department, ambulance or police, in turn, they are escape routes. Therefore it is
essential that these places are safe and free of combustible materials.

• Entrances, staircases, intermediate landings, niches, storage spaces under stairs, corridors
  and forecourts must be kept clear and safe to walk on at all times. They may not be used for any other
  serve. An apartment may not be extended into the stairwell.
• The passage width must be at least 1.20 m and remain free of objects.
• In apartment buildings, main entrance doors in the direction of escape must be locked at all times without a key.
  can be opened.
• Items such as baby carriages, bicycles, furniture and wardrobes do not belong in the stairwell.
• No storage of combustible materials such as waste paper, firewood or gas cylinders.
• Not allowed are additional finishes, ceiling and wall coverings, decorations,
  Floor coverings, large-scale pictures, etc. made of combustible materials.
• Extinguishing devices must be usable without hindrance at all times and in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions.
  be serviced periodically.
• Fire doors must be closed whenever possible. Tying down, wedging or
  Blocking is prohibited.

In the case of grievances, it is recommended to talk to the house owner or the
Property management to look for.

Source: BFB

In Ukraine, Nestlé operates three factories producing confectionery, beverages and ready meals. As the food company told Reuters communicatedHe said that he would resume production as soon as conditions were safe again.

Nestlé has been operating in the country for over 25 years and employs over 5000 people there. However, the situation has deteriorated drastically in recent days. According to a spokeswoman, the company has now temporarily closed all factories and warehouses.

The company is also no longer in a position to secure its supply chains. Nestlé recommends that employees stay at home. The protection of employees has top priority, the spokeswoman said.

The outbreak of war in Ukraine had an impact on the industry and the food sector. From social media, retailers such as Edeka show solidarity with common messages. Also the German food producer Rügenwalder Mühle published a photo with a peace dove on Instagram.

 

Check out this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Rügenwalder Mühle (@ruegenwaldermuehle)

However, Nestlé remains committed to providing its products to the local population. In the meantime, the company has drawn up contingency plans to ensure that deliveries of its products can be resumed, depending on the security situation.

Source: Reuters/lebensmittelpraxis.de

As part of quality assurance and service activities, the following was foundthat the touring ski boot "Travers Carbon Pro" may crack and the shaft may break. In the event of a sudden and unexpected breakage of the shaft, there is a risk of fall and injury for the user.

The product recall affects all sizes of the touring ski boot model "Travers Carbon Pro" of the brand "Fischer" delivered from October 2021. Consumers are asked to return the affected touring ski boot to their dealer. The purchase price will be refunded.

Source: Federal Consumer Affairs Bureau

Cars with keyless locking systems could be far more secure. This is shown by current tests of the German automobile club ADAC. According to the experts, the components for cracking such keyless car systems could even be purchased for a few 100 francs in electronics stores.

According to the security experts at the ADAC, car thieves only need to be near the car key with one small device - and near the car door with a second device. This "extends" the range of the signals by hundreds of meters - and the car can be conveniently opened and started.

Damage often not detectable later

As the tests on 500 cars with keyless systems by now would have shown, almost all vehicles could be opened and driven away without any problems. Only five percent of the cars checked were protected against the range extender attack and thus safe from this type of theft.

According to ADAC experts, once the engine is running, the car can be driven as long as there is fuel in the tank. If you refuel while the engine is running, car thieves can claim the vehicle even over very long distances. However, victims of such thefts are usually punished a second time: if the car is then found by the police, it is usually difficult to record the damage or the suspicion of theft, as there are usually no signs of break-in or theft on a hijacked vehicle.

Well protected by digital radio technology

Cars with keyless locking system can be equipped with digital radio technology easily be made more secure. This technique uses computer chips with Ultra Wide Band (UWB) technology in the locking system, with the help of which the distance of the key to the car can be determined very precisely from the runtime of the radio signals. When using a radio extension as is the case with this form of car theft, the car no longer reacts.

Since 2019, more and more car models from Audi (A3), Seat (Leon), Škoda (Octavia) and Volkswagen (Golf 8, ID.3, ID.4, Caddy) also protected with UWB. This shows that a keyless system with state-of-the-art security is also possible in vehicles in the price-sensitive Golf class. The first models are now also available from BMW, Genesis and Mercedes, which offer the same protection with ultra-wide band.

Source: www.adac.de

The government of Ukraine is not only afraid of an invasion by Russian troops, but also of an attack by Russian hackers. To better protect the country from cyber attacks, the EU has now set up its own Cyber Rapid Response Team (CRRT) put together. It is intended to support Ukrainian cyber defense both on-site and remotely and consists of twelve experts from six nations - Lithuania, Croatia, Poland, Estonia, Romania and the Netherlands.

Joint defense project

"The CRRT enables member states to help each other to achieve a higher level of cyber security and to respond jointly to security threats," reads the general statement on the new cyber task forces set up by the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) joint European defense project. The teams of designated specialists could be requested at any time by EU members, institutions and their partners.

"We have already seen in the past that cyber attacks play an important role within the framework of the hybrid Russian strategy," "BBC News" quotes from a statement by a CRRT spokesman. Against this background, it is only logical that in the course of the current conflict there will also be an increase in corresponding attacks, the expert emphasizes.

Prey for Russian cyber gangsters

An analysis by the blockchain data platform Chainalysis recently showed that Russia is still one of the absolute leaders in cybercrime. According to this, hacker groups operating out of the country were able to scam more than 400 million dollars (around 368 million Swiss francs) with ransomware attacks in 2021. That is 74 percent of all the money that was made with such attacks last year.

Source: Pressetext.com 

Prolonged sitting while working from home can lead to a significant aggravation of musculoskeletal disorders. In this context, the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) has published a new information sheet on the effects of long-term home office activities has been published. Included in the compact fact sheet are some tips for employees and employers on creating a safe and healthy telecommuting workplace. For example, if home office activity is constant, it is advantageous to start the workday with a short walk.

Long periods of sitting should be avoided. Ideally, people should move every 20 to 30 minutes, but if possible take a ten-minute break after every two hours of prolonged sitting. The lunch break, for example, is an ideal time to go for a 15-minute walk. While sitting, you should also constantly remind yourself of your sitting positions and stretch or lean back in your office chair from time to time so that you are not constantly adopting the same posture. The other advice in the leaflet includes some exercises that can be done while sitting in between to prevent various physical tensions:

• Tilt the head to the left and right
• Tilt the head forward and gently roll from side to side
• Let arms and shoulders hang loosely, then tilt shoulders toward feet
  Roll shoulders back and forward
• Extend arms forward at shoulder height and, with the backs of the hands together, stretch them out to the side
• Extend the arms to the sides and back
• Place the heels on the floor and lift the toes
• Place toes on the floor while lifting the heels

Source: EU-OSHA

If people increasingly perceive computer-generated faces as real likenesses, this may be worrying. AI creations could be used as so-called "deepfakes" for various criminal activities, such as revenge porn and fraud. With the help of an AI, for example, arbitrary images or videos can be inserted into the faces of ex-lovers and provided with synthetic facial expressions.

"We found that synthetic faces are not only very realistic, they are rated as more trustworthy than real faces," Hany Farid, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told Scientific American.

The research team has within the framework of a study studied over 400 AI-generated faces using 400 real photos. The 315 test subjects without training and 219 with training were tasked with recognizing fakes for 128 images each and judging which ones were genuine. Sobering: the hit rate for the untrained was only just under 50 percent.

According to the researchers, the fact that many synthetic faces were not recognized correctly could be related to the fact that people tend to trust "average faces" in everyday life. There were hardly any differences between faces of different ethnicities, for example.

Source: mimikama.at