There are no statistics available for this player Thanks for visiting The use of software that blocks ads hinders our ability to serve you the content you came here to enjoy We ask that you consider turning off your ad blocker so we can deliver you the best experience possible while you are here Matthew Brennan's stage win saw him take over the overall lead and go into the yellow jersey Ben Zwiehoff and Gerben Kuybers in the day's breakaway Ineos Grenadiers and Visma-Lease a Bike led the peloton for much of the stage Brennan celebrates winning the sprint in Fribourg Young Brit powers away from everyone into Fribourg to continue stunning run of results in neo-pro season Matthew Brennan (Visma-Lease a Bike) sped to victory on stage 1 of the Tour de Romandie coming out on top in a mass sprint finish on the uphill run to the line in Fribourg The British neo-pro scored the third WorldTour win of his career with ease jumping from second wheel inside the closing 200 metres and crossing the line several bike lengths ahead of second place Aurélien Paret-Peintre (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) took second place some way behind Brennan while Artem Shmidt (Ineos Grenadiers) rounded out the podium seven seconds down on stage winner Sam Watson (Ineos Grenadiers) now vaults into the race lead thanks to the 10-second time bonus for the stage 1 victory He now leads his countryman by three seconds heading into stage 2 Ivo Oliveira (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) lies third overall with the same time as Watson while Shmidt moves up to fourth overall at five seconds down I think the guys did a really nice position pulling me into the early parts and keeping me out of trouble," Brennan said after the finish It was quite chaotic and a pretty tricky finish and when you really are fighting to find that wheel and I actually got a little bit further ahead than I maybe thought I would you have to react to the situation and keep going we really wanted to achieve something and to finally come out with it "Winning another stage would always be nice and hopefully we’ll support Jørgen [Nordhagen] into the GC battle on the hilly stages I am really looking forward to the next few days." The first road stage of the 2025 Tour de Romandie would take the riders on the first major climbs of the race bringing them on a 194km ride from Münchenstein to Fribourg including the second-category Col de Pontins (4.5km at 7.2%) though the final 60km was run over largely flat roads Attacks from the start saw the break form early on as Silvan Dillier (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and Gerben Kuypers (Intermarché-Wanty) jumped off the front a counter by Amanuel Ghebreigzabhier (Lidl-Trek) and Enzo Paleni (Groupama-FDJ) brought the number of riders out front to five and Visma-Lease A Bike settled in to lead the pacemaking at the head of the peloton the breakaway built their lead up over four minutes Kuypers led Zwiehoff over the day’s first climb the third-category test at Grindel (2.3km at 6.5%) after 28km He’d do the same at Mont-Crosin (2.3km at 7.2%) 63km later to build a four-point (10 to 6) lead at the top of the mountain classification would follow just past the midway mark of the stage while Zwiehoff led solo at the front with Ghebreigzabhier and Kuypers following The order across the top shifted the mountain classification rankings 16 to 14 in Zwiehoff’s favour On that third-category climb of Chaumont (3km at 11.9%) which peaked with 76km to go Zwiehoff once again went solo at the front The German put 30 seconds into Kuypers on the way up extending his mountain classification lead with 26 points to the Belgian’s 20 the remainder of the breakaway riders lay over two minutes down Kuypers would rejoin Zwiehoff on the flat following the descent The pair raced into the final 60km of the day with a 1:30 advantage on the Ineos- and Visma-led peloton as the pace behind went up as the finish line neared though that margin was swept away swiftly afterwards as Kuypers and Zwiehoff were brought back 25km from home a sprint for the finish was assured as the teams hoping to contest the final flowed to the front It was Soudal-QuickStep who took charge heading into Fribourg leading the way down the 2km descent heading into the closing kilometres before the final run to the line lining up with a concerted team effort in the final 2km No single team controlled the situation in the final kilometre although the red jerseys of Ineos and Arkéa-B&B Hotels were present He surfed an Arkéa wheel before launching into the wind The 19-year-old had few rivals in the dash to the line as his initial acceleration separated himself from the rest with ease Results powered by FirstCycling Dani has reported from the world's top races She has interviewed many of the sport's biggest stars and her favourite races are the Giro d'Italia you will then be prompted to enter your display name and a Swede with a Swiss licence all join the Dragons for the coming season Robert Hradil / RvS.Media HC Fribourg-Gottéron has revealed their roster for the coming season It includes three previously unconfirmed but speculated additions - defenseman Michael Kapla as well as forwards Henrik Borgström and Lucas Hedlund and Elijah Neuenschwander is listed as part of the main squad 27-year-old Borgström also joins from the SHL He started his career with Jokerit but went overseas at the age of 19 he made his way to professional hockey and played in both the NHL and the AHL he returned to Finland for one season with HIFK then had another two years overseas before joining HV71 The youngest of the trio, Lucas Hedlund, was previously part of the SC Rapperswil-Jona Lakers' youth department. Last season, the 19-year-old made his first appearances in men's hockey, suiting up 44 times on loan for EHC Winterthur the Swede is in possession of a Swiss player's licence Another young addition is Elijah Neuenschwander How much National League action the 18-year-old will get remains to be seen but he is listed on the main roster for now Reported to be in talks about a new contract it seems that the club and Kevin Etter have managed to come to terms as the forward is still figuring on the roster Rikard Franzén is confirmed to join head coach Roger Rönnberg as assistant World Athletics and European Athletics worked together to put on a Track Lab event in Fribourg to trial some of the new ‘innovations’ that have been tossed around From the much criticized long jump take off zone tweak to the undoubtedly popular changes to the false start reaction time this was an opportunity to test these changes out with elite athletes It was great to see the likes of Anderson Peters Alison do Santos and Nadine Visser take part as any changes do need to be tested by the very best athletes in the world who are operating on the finest of margins between success and failure Many of the tweaks to event presentation were actually great whilst several of the changes to competition rules fell fairly flat and left both the audience and athletes confused As many fans of the sport have been shouting from the sidelines the message to World Athletics is to work to better present and package the amazing product we already have rather than to mess around with event rules If you want to watch it back and judge for yourself check out the live stream here The reduction of the false start reaction time from 0.10s to 0.0s is definitely an improvement that many have been clamoring for, ever since the Devon Allen debacle at Worlds in 2022 At this test meet there was no clear information on how it impacted the meet or whether athletes did react more quickly but hopefully this is something that is easy to implement and long may it continue This was an attempt to turn the pole vault into an event like the horizontal jumps and throws where each athlete gets six attempts and their best attempt counts The highest height achieved wins the competition The problem with this was the bar was set much lower and it was unclear how the height was measured with some athletes looking like they got miles above the bar only for the measurement to be much lower than someone who appeared not to have jumped as high It was not great for spectators who had no idea what was a good jump nor did the athletes have any idea what was going on with their measurements Without an actual bar close to the relevant height it was clearly not so easy for athletes to maximize their high point correctly The greatness of the vertical jumps is in the clutch third attempts the instant reaction from both athletes and spectators knowing a bar has been cleared and the tactics around passing attempts and skipping heights The nightmare for meet organizers that World Athletics may be trying to solve is the uncertainty over how long a competition might take without a broader goal in mind around meet presentation this kind of change only serves to make the event worse rather than better The only potential benefit I can see to this would be to use it to break a tie to determine who wins a competition by looking at the height by which the highest bar is cleared Though not directly affecting the competition itself this was a genius idea to improve the presentation of the event and would be great to implement across all the long throws Each athlete’s furthest throw was marked with a flag which then made it much easier for the audience to engage with the distances thrown I wonder whether it may even help athletes better judge their throws The second innovation was not to measure a throw if it was shorter than that athlete’s previous furthest throw in the competition In theory this was to make the competition faster but it was unclear if it was successful in doing so Surely the best innovations would be in technology to more accurately and quickly measure throws I will never be convinced that judges ‘eyeballing’ the point of impact from a few meters away is 100% accurate particularly when the discus Olympic gold was won by a paltry 3cm This is the first time we got to see the much maligned long jump takeoff zone in action Things got off to an inauspicious start when the technology to measure the jumps (expected to be much quicker) failed spectacularly to deliver results in the first round Even when it did start working it didn’t seem to make things significantly quicker Athletes were unsure how far they had jumped and viewers on the live stream were left doing math in their head as the only information we received initially was the distance behind the foul line that we were trying to add to whatever distance we felt the athlete may have jumped into the pit And one athlete still managed to foul even with the larger take off zone I imagine it is something that will get trialed again but it does seem to be trying again to solve a different problem to the one that actually exists which is one of storytelling and presentation around the athletes over the course of a meet so I’d be happy to see this contested on more occasions after Lamecha Girma’s rather worrying fall in Paris it seems that having athletes tackle the immovable steeplechase barriers at a higher speed and likely with less separation from other athletes it could be slightly more fun as a championship event than the 3000m steeplechase but it would be a shame if there was nowhere for the 3000m specialists to go who at least (for now) have the steeplechase to try their hand at with six team captains drawing their teams the day before Many of the athletes really got into the spirit of the competition and cheering on their teammates and the likes of an injured Julius Yego even threw through severe pain to secure a point for his team With any sort of team competition it does require fans to build a relationship with a team over time but could add an intriguing angle to events like the Diamond League if implemented correctly Potentially shoe brands or other sponsors could bring together and send teams and this could help thread the season together better even where the same athletes are not competing at every meet Firstly a shout out to Matt Seddon who did an amazing job of commentating solo and keeping the energy up for the whole length of the meet as well as doing a creditable job on the field events given his distance speciality We hope to hear his voice on more international commentary streams soon There were multiple attempts at creative camera angles Some of the drone shots were cool and offered great new perspectives I prefer to see all the competitors in the field for the whole length of a sprint race to see how the race is playing out and who is winning a vomit inducing 360 spin around the bars whilst the athlete is airborne is most certainly not the way forward Preet is a London based accountant by day and now a track fan the rest of the time. Having never run a step in his life he’s in awe of all these amazing athletes and excited to help bring some attention to the sport. was born of ex-journalists, ex-pros, and superfans who came together to geek out on running. By spotlighting athletes and their stories, we’re on a mission to modernize track and field media coverage and give fans a home to engage with their favorite sport. Track and field news straight to your inbox Design By Butter Studio Code By Buena Suerte A range of new competition formats were put to the test at the Track Lab – a World Athletics Continental Tour Silver meeting – in the Swiss city of Fribourg on Sunday (1) The Track Lab Fribourg featured a variety of athletics disciplines such as in the sprints where the allowed reaction time was reduced to 0.000 instead of 0.10 While a few – like the 800m – were unchanged The pole vault was held as a mixed competition where the absolute effective height over the bar was measured The long jump had a 40-centimetre long take-off zone from which the full distance jumped was measured an athlete's throw was only measured and recorded if it was an improvement on their previous best All of these new formats were being tested for the first time and form part of a consultation process for the future of the sport to see if such changes can enhance the enjoyment and excitement of a competition Further testing and consultation with various stakeholders will be undertaken in the aftermath of this event Anything that doesn't pass extensive consultation will not be implemented there was also a team element to the competition as the live stream tested out filming angles shot by drones that had never been used for live coverage before European pole vault champion Angelica Moser received a great welcome from the Swiss crowd She cleared a best of 4.47m to finish second overall in her event Ethiopia’s Abrham Sime was a convincing winner of the mile steeplechase clocking 4:14.36 to finish comfortably ahead of Nicolas-Marie Daru of France World bronze medallist Alina Rotaru-Kottmann of Romania produced the best long jump of the day leaping 6.64m to finish five centimetres ahead of Slovenia’s Neja Filipic With athletes taking off from a 40-centimetre take-off zone all 18 jumps in the competition were valid and measured Two-time world champion Anderson Peters won a javelin contest in which throws were only measured and recorded if they were an improvement on a previous throw then extended his lead with 78.78m in round two before finishing with 81.18m in the third and final round He was part of the triumphant ‘Team Black’ that won the overall team contest Dutch sprint hurdler Nadine Visser was another winner on that team taking the women’s 100m hurdles in 12.67 from Australia’s Liz Clay (12.82) Switzerland’s Audrey Werro won the women’s 800m in 1:58.79 to win by more than a second while Dylan Borlee took the men’s 400m in 45.87 in a race in which Brazilian 400m hurdles Alison dos Santos placed third (46.07) announces it has ordered 24 Mercedes eCitaro electric buses They are set for delivery in December 2026 This first order will be followed by others as the carrier has committed to purchasing a minimum of 35 and a maximum of 183 eCitaro vehicles over the next […] Fribourg public transport company TPF, in Switzerland, announces it has ordered 24 Mercedes eCitaro electric buses as the carrier has committed to purchasing a minimum of 35 and a maximum of 183 eCitaro vehicles over the next five years as part of the tender awarded to Winterthur-based company Daimler Buses Suisse SA TPF is aiming to decarbonise its entire bus fleet on its concessionary routes by 2033. This currently only applies to 13% of vehicles covered with battery-electric buses and battery-powered trolleybuses (a Hess delivery took place in late 2020) The order includes 18-metre articulated buses and 12-metre fast-charging buses which are equipped with a lowerable pantograph Around CHF 20 million ( some 21 million euros) The buses will operate in regional transport but also in urban transport (Agglo and Mobul) from December 2026 these buses were thoroughly analysed and extensively tested on the TPF network The operator stresses that “in March 2023 the Fribourg electorate approved an increase in TPF’s equity capital of CHF 60 million This increase was also approved by the other two main shareholders namely the City of Fribourg (CHF 12.5 million) and SBB (CHF 3.8 million) These funds are intended in particular to enable TPF to invest in new decarbonised rolling stock without interest charges for the customers” TPF has committed to purchasing a minimum of 35 and a maximum of 183 eCitaro vehicles over the next five years “This flexibility allows us to adapt to the wishes of our clients but also to keep pace with the technological development of electric buses and batteries” © Copyright 2012 - 2025 | Vado e Torno Edizioni | All rights reserved | P.I The public transport company TPF of the Swiss canton of Fribourg has decided to purchase the Mercedes-Benz eCitaro model this could rise to 183 units within five years The Fribourg public transport company (TPF) has ordered two dozen eCitaro buses including 18-metre articulated buses and 12-metre standard buses that can be charged with a pantograph the investment is around 20 million Swiss francs (around 21 million euros) The electrically powered buses will be used from December 2026 in regional transport and urban transport (‘Agglo and Mobul’) in the canton of Fribourg these vehicles were the best in terms of technology and sustainability We also chose them because of the comfort they offer travellers they also impressed our drivers,” explains Thomas Hans An extensive test phase with various electric bus models preceded the award of the contract TPF also committed to purchasing a minimum of 35 and a maximum of 183 eCitaro vehicles from Mercedes-Benz over the next five years: ‘This flexibility allows us to adapt to the wishes of the customer but also to keep pace with the technological development of electric buses and batteries,” says Hans TPF aims to decarbonise its entire bus fleet on its concessionary routes by 2033 13 per cent of vehicles (electric buses and battery-powered trolleybuses) are locally emission-free the Fribourg electorate approved an increase of CHF 60 million in TPF’s equity capital to finance this feat the City of Fribourg (CHF 12.5 million) and SBB (CHF 3.8 million) these funds should enable TPF to invest in new e-buses on a large scale tpf.ch (PDF; in German) I agree with the Privacy policy electrive has been following the development of electric mobility with journalistic passion and expertise since 2013 we offer comprehensive coverage of the highest quality — as a central platform for the rapid development of this technology The World Council of Churches (WCC) Faith and Order Commission in collaboration with the Study Centre for Eastern Churches at the Ecumenical Institute in Fribourg is offering a colloquium entitled “The Council of Nicaea as an Ecumenical Guide for Christian Unity,” on 18 November Presentations will cover topics including “Where Now for Visible Unity?” “Living the Apostolic Faith Together,” “Triune Love as a Missiological Blueprint,” and more The event will promote reflection and dialogue by bringing together students from the University of Fribourg and students from the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey the Fribourg colloquium seeks to broaden participation in reflecting on the significance of the Council of Nicaea for global Christianity and of its ongoing inspiration for Christian life and witness in the contemporary world director of the WCC Faith and Order Commission said that the colloquium offers a unique opportunity to engage both academic and youthful voices in the ecumenical journey. “As we look toward the Sixth World Conference on Faith and Order this event serves as a testing ground for key ideas and themes inviting fresh perspectives and inspiring young people to actively participate in shaping our common ecumenical future,” he said. “I am thankful to the Study Centre for Eastern Churches at the Ecumenical Institute in Fribourg Barbara Hallensleben and Dr Mihail Comãnoiu for facilitating and supporting this remarkable event." Learn more about the conference "Towards Nicaea 2025: Exploring the Council’s Ecumenical Significance Today" Please fill in this form if you would like to receive news and updates from the WCC by email Ecumenical CentreKyoto BuildingChemin du Pommier 42CH-1218 Le Grand-Saconnex This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page Thanks for visiting Fribourg-Gottéron has completed its roster for the upcoming season With the American defenseman Michael Kapla and the Finnish forward Henrik Borgström The 30-year-old Kapla played the last three seasons with the Swedish first-division team Rögle Kapla signed a one-season contract with Gottéron who was drafted 23rd overall by the Washington Capitals in 2016 will remain in Freiburg for one year longer the Finn was unable to establish himself in North America It was a different story at Swedish club HV71 where he scored 79 points in 99 games over the past two seasons The other four foreigners are all Swedes: defenseman Patrick Nemeth and the three regular forwards Marcus Sörensen The steeplechase mile is a test race introduced by World Athletics introduced to showcase faster-paced events the World Athletics unveiled a plan to introduce events like the steeplechase mile on a trial basis with an aim to provide faster-paced and more exciting events Tracklab is a track and field innovation league that prepares athletes administrators and officials for qualifying and elite competitions while serving as a lab for youth athletes to gain experience The 29-year-old recently finished 14th in the men’s 3000m steeplechase at the Silesia Diamond League 2024 Meanwhile, Parul Chaudhary clocked a personal best but finished eighth in the women’s 2000m steeplechase at the ISTAF Berlin athletics competition, also a silver level event, earlier in the day. Parul Chaudhary finished her race at the Olympiastadion in 6:14.38 and broke her personal best in the 2000m steeplechase comfortably. The 29-year-old Indian athlete’s previous best performance in this event was 6:52.82, which came in 2014. Three-time Olympian Gesa Felicitas Krause of Germany won the race with a world-leading time of 5:56.77. Home - Featured - Anderson Peters Impresses with 81.18m Throw at Fribourg Track Lab Meeting FRIBOURG (SUI, Sep 1) – Grenada’s Anderson Peters delivered a strong performance at the Fribourg Track Lab meeting (WACT Silver) it highlighted Peters’ continued presence among the world’s elite throwers Nadine Visser claimed victory in the 100m hurdles clocking 12.67 seconds under modified false start rules that allowed reaction times of less than 0.100 seconds Australia’s Liz Clay followed in 12.82 seconds South Africa’s Shawn Maswangani won the 200m in 20.44 seconds while Belgium’s Dylan Borlee emerged victorious in the 400m with a time of 45.87 seconds narrowly defeating Olympic mixed 4×400 champion Eugene Omalla and Brazil’s 400m hurdles specialist Alison dos Santos Audrey Werro thrilled the home crowd with a winning time of 1:58.79 holding off European silver medallist Gabriela Gajanova and Italy’s Eloisa Coiro featuring a unique take-off zone instead of the traditional board saw world bronze medallist Alina Rotaru-Kottmann secure the win with a leap of 6.64 meters Ethiopia’s Abrham Sime clocked a world best of 4:14.36 followed by French veteran Nicola-Marie Daru in 4:15.67 In a special pole vault event with six attempts _________________________Dive into the vibrant track and field conversation – scroll down to leave your comment and stay connected with the Trackalerts Social community and website in this browser for the next time I comment Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value" TEHRAN-Three short films from Iran will compete in the 39th Fribourg International Film Festival (FIFF) set to be held from March 21 to 30 in Fribourg The three Iranian films include “Holy Heaviness” codirected by Farnoosh Abedi and Negah Fardiar “Farewell Paris” by Mohammad Ebrahim Shahbazi They will be screened in the International Competition section of the Swiss event the eight-minute “Holy Heaviness” is an animation with no dialogue It will have its world premiere at the festival this animated film captures resilience as an inevitable response to dependency A tender yet meaningful take on life's stages and ages “Farewell Paris” is a 19-minute fiction film made in 2024 It will have its international premiere at the event a teenager with Down's syndrome longs to visit Paris The “City of Light” has always held a strong attraction for him and he is ready to do anything to make his dream come true “My Endless Eclipse” is a fiction film produced in 2025 A woman is forced to hide her real identity if she is to survive On the verge of being forced into marriage she goes on the run and is forced to cross a hostile world populated by unsettling people The Fribourg International Film Festival is an annual film festival in Fribourg The Grand Prize is the main award of the Fribourg International Film Festival It aims to promote the understanding between cultures through films It gives preferences to productions that stimulate reflection and provoke discussion The festival shines a light on blind spots and put the history of cinema in context with exclusive approaches The festival takes place every year in March and takes part in projects all year long FIFF is one of the five most important film festivals of Switzerland it can pride itself on an exquisite reputation on the national and international levels its warmth and its simplicity make FIFF a meeting point that both the audience and professionals appreciate a lot Feature Films Database Southern Mediterranean films database Scriptwriters European Film Schools Production Companies Distributors International Sales Submit a Film Industry Reports Co-Production Podcast Online Screenwriting Training Course Guided Course for Feature Film Writing Script Analysis Analysis of the potential of your series Cineuropa's Training Catalogue Film Festival Photographs Newsletter Photogalleries EUFCN Location Award Euro Film Fest 27 Times Cinema GoCritic! Advertise on Cineuropa Logos and Banners FESTIVALS / AWARDS Switzerland by Giorgia Del Don 11/03/2025 - The Swiss festival looks to be "animated by a spirit of resistance" which places our freedoms and their fragility - especially true of them at present - centre-stage Running 21 to 30 March, the Fribourg International Film Festival (FIFF) is set to present 108 films - 17 of which in world premieres - hailing from 52 countries in its line-up This year’s edition has chosen resistance in the face of an increasingly inwards-looking world as its guiding line the festival will urge us to turn our gaze to countries often shunned by the film market audiences will get to travel to Sri Lanka (via the New Territory section) to discover the nation’s contemporary film offering as well as journeying to the heart of Cold War Africa (in the Africa Beyond the Cold War line-up) while Ben Sturgulewski’s co-production between Afghanistan has been selected as the festival’s opening film Shot through with this same spirit of resistance the 28 films gracing the international competition (12 feature films and 16 shorts) present tangible proof of the increasingly uncertain nature of freedom As pointed out by the festival’s artistic director Thierry Jobin: "the FIFF is used to projecting the voices of filmmakers who believe film to be an excellent vehicle for soft power the film selection in this year’s edition takes that approach even further telling primarily female resistance stories head-on" previously presented in San Sebastián’s Horizontes Latinos line-up which compares the life of a hippopotamus living in a zoo with that of a family fighting for survival This year’s three feature film jury members are the great British photographer Derek Hudson Nepalese actress and producer Asha Magrati and Swiss actress Anna Pieri Zuercher Other highlights from this 39th edition of the event include the presentation of Jérôme Paillard’s five favourite films with Paillard formerly being a producer who turned Cannes’ Marché du Film into the most important film market in the world and an encounter with the star authors of the Swiss detective movie genre Nicolas Feuz and Marc Voltenauer Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox 05/05/2025Festivals / Awards – Czech Republic Czech Republic’s Anifilm goes sci-fi 05/05/2025HOFF 2025 The Shadow and U Are the Universe win at Estonia’s Haapsalu Horror and Fantasy Film Festival 05/05/2025Crossing Europe 2025 – Awards The New Year That Never Came and The Flats crowned at Crossing Europe 30/04/2025Cannes 2025 16 works to be presented in the Immersive Selection at Cannes 30/04/2025Festivals / Awards – Romania The New Year That Never Came sweeps the Romanian Gopos 30/04/2025goEast 2025 – Awards Holy Electricity comes out on top at goEast Subscribe to our newsletter to receive the most important daily or weekly news on European cinema Cannes 2025 Marché du Film AFCI runs its second annual Global Film Commission Network Summit at Marché du Film Festivals / Awards Czech Republic Distribution / Releases / Exhibitors Europe European Arthouse Cinema Day set to return on 23 November Cannes 2025 Marché du Film Indie Sales presents a three-star line-up at Cannes HOFF 2025 Crossing Europe 2025 Awards Cannes 2025 Marché du Film Be For Films to sell Love Me Tender in Cannes Cannes 2025/Sponsored Latvia set to shine bright at Cannes, led by Sergei Loznitsa’s competition entry Two Prosecutors Las Palmas 2025 MECAS/Awards Manuel Muñoz Rivas and Joana Carro win awards at the eighth MECAS Cannes 2025 Marché du Film Playtime to present some high-impact and entrancing trump cards at Cannes Production / Funding Italy Shooting begins on Walter Fasano’s Nino, a portrait of scoring maestro Nino Rota goEast 2025 Review: My Magical World Market TrendsFOCUSA busy spring festival season awaits the European film industry. Cineuropa will continue to keep its readers up to date with the latest news and market insights, covering the buzziest events, including Cannes, Kraków, Karlovy Vary, Tribeca, Hot Docs, Annecy, Brussels, Munich and many others Distribution, Exhibition and Streaming – 02/05/2025Slovak crime-thriller Černák becomes the highest-grossing film in domestic cinemasThe second film in the saga about a local mafia boss, directed by Jakub Króner, outgrossed its first part, which dominated Slovak cinemas last year Animation – 30/04/2025Mirko Goran Marijanac • Media sales executive, DeAPlaneta EntertainmentDuring our chat, the exec shared key insights from this year’s Cartoon Next and touched on the current climate for the animation sector Jaśmina Wójcik • Director of King Matt the First The Polish director discusses her approach to taking on a 1920s children’s literary classic in an unexpected way Želimir Žilnik • Director of Eighty Plus The Serbian director discusses his deep suspicion of ideologies in relation to his irresistibly charming latest feature, which follows a man whose life spans three political systems Paulina Jaroszewicz • Distribution and marketing manager, New Horizons Association Cineuropa sat down with the Polish distributor to discuss her company’s strategy as well as the connection between its distribution line-up and BNP Paribas New Horizons Festival’s programme Lorcan Finnegan • Director of The Surfer The Irish filmmaker discusses his mystery-thriller, how he created the character with Nicolas Cage and his approach to the use of colours in the film Privacy Policy The images used on this website have been provided by journalists and are believed to be free of rights if you are the owner of an image used on this website and believe that its use infringes on your copyright We will remove the image in question as soon as possible We have made reasonable efforts to ensure that all images used on this website are used legally and in accordance with copyright laws About us | Contact us | Logos and Banners Mission | Partners | Team | Donations | Terms and conditions After spending my entire life in the vibrant capital of Saudi Arabia I made the decision to embark on a new adventure — relocating to Fribourg to pursue an LLM in Compliance at the Institute for International Business Law (IBL) With my wife and five-month-old daughter by my side this journey has been nothing short of extraordinary shaping both my professional career and our personal lives in ways we could have never imagined My professional journey has been marked by important transitions I began working as a technician for Saudi Electricity Company but I quickly realised that the challenging weather and harsh conditions of working in power plants weren’t what I wanted for my future and so I initially pursued mechanical engineering studies in the US which eventually opened doors to the field of compliance — a natural fit for my interests in legal frameworks and regulatory systems I now work for one of the leading healthcare providers in the Middle East When my company’s scholarship programme presented an opportunity for further specialisation in compliance Source: University of Fribourg – Institute of International Business Law When I began searching for a master’s programme I knew I needed something that wasn’t limited to a national legal perspective Many programmes I found were focused on specific local legal systems which wasn’t suitable for my goal of applying my knowledge back in Saudi Arabia The LLM at the University of Fribourg was different — it had a truly international scope The IBL’s global approach to compliance could give me the tools to advance in my field and think critically and globally The structure of the courses has broadened my understanding of how compliance systems work in various contexts helping me contribute to improving processes at my company and beyond Studying at the IBL in Switzerland has been a transformative experience The academic structure here is very different from what I was used to in Saudi Arabia and the US instead of following the traditional model of having a few courses stretched over an entire semester with exams at the end shorter courses with exams immediately after each one concludes This unique system initially posed a challenge and I’m able to fully immerse myself in each subject without the burden of multiple exams accumulating at the semester’s end One of the most meaningful aspects of this experience has been sharing it with my wife and daughter my wife was hesitant about leaving her family behind in Saudi Arabia crisp air have all made this move easier and more enjoyable One of the most memorable moments was our arrival in Zurich and the thought of how we’d handle everything was overwhelming But a kind stranger helped us with our luggage showing us that even small gestures can make a world of difference It was a perfect example of how welcoming Switzerland has been to us Switzerland is a wonderful place for a young family and we’ve found ways to make the transition smoother even relying on Switzerland’s vibrant second-hand market to keep up with our daughter’s ever-changing needs We also spend our weekends exploring Fribourg ‘s picturesque streets and admire the stunning architecture and natural beauty that surrounds us This city is perfect for family life — small enough to feel cosy and welcomed but big enough to keep discovering new places every week Switzerland has far exceeded our expectations Fribourg offers a perfect blend of high-quality education and an exceptional quality of life My wife and I often find ourselves enjoying the simple pleasures like sitting in a café and watching the seasons change with its historic buildings and serene landscapes My wife has even started thinking about studying here though we’re still working through the logistics of daycare for our daughter I am filled with optimism about the future This programme is giving me the tools and knowledge to expand my career opportunities and the international focus will certainly make me more competitive back in Saudi Arabia I would encourage anyone considering studying abroad to take this leap — it has truly been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life Follow the University of Fribourg on YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn Congratulations are in order to Abrham Sime on his new world-best time of 4:14.36… in the mile steeplechase The new middle distance event World Athletics wants to workshop was contested this past weekend in Fribourg As the meet’s lab’s website promised [it was] a lab.” Experimentation was prioritized over performance and the goal of the meet was to explore the feasibility of several “innovations.”  What that ultimately included was – in addition to the mile steeplechase – a somewhat contrived team scoring component significant changes to a couple of field events and the elimination of the reaction time false start for the sprints and hurdles And if you wisely would prefer to take our word for it here are the Lap Count Takes on our time in the lab The worst explored change to any single event in Fribourg was scoring the pole vault by “actual cleared height” rather than the usual “did you clear the bar?” The pole vault is exciting specifically because of that brief moment of beautiful tension when the athlete is suspended in space or even an official to tell whether a vault was valid The problem this change is trying to solve is “what if an athlete clears the bar by a considerable margin?” Guess what The team concept is something actual fans have actually asked for People don’t support their favorite NFL team because they want to root for a color They slather on body paint and drop their paychecks on nosebleed tickets because their team represents their hometown they enjoy watching the melding of different athletic specialties in the service of a singular goal you’ve gotta do more to make the team thing pop but no one has quite figured out a way to make it stick outside of NCAA championships One good idea: making DQ reaction times make sense WA tried out the possibility of taking out the “faster than human capability” threshold of 0.100 seconds instead going with the simpler “did you move before the gun went off?” This sort of DQ is probably something worth revisiting in the sprints and hurdles since it comes up and pisses everybody off frequently enough however – we aren’t sure about getting rid of it entirely Conduct some studies and determine what the fastest possible human response time to a starter’s pistol actually is There’s no way it’s a nice round number like 0.1 seconds Spare a thought for the broadcast director cutting between 1,000 camera angles That poor soul – seemingly an overworked octopus in a swiveling chair – may have had more cameras to cut to and from than anyone in the history of track and field televising but they need to be in service of the viewing experience at home During the 100m hurdles – a race that takes between 12 and 13 seconds to complete – the broadcast switched cameras four times One of them was a drone that was chasing the athletes But pretty useless in a straight-line race where a side view is really the only way to determine who’s gonna win Rather than an Oscar-winning filmmaker producing a magnum opus this felt more like a toddler jumping up and down saying “Hey mom – look what I can do!” Credit where credit is due: the meet lab organizers went out on a series of limbs here to try new things And while we agree that some changes need to be made to the sport if it wants to remain in the public eye outside of a quadrennial two-week blip We find it hard to believe that World Athletics conducted a meaningful survey of athletes No casual TV viewer will choose to embrace track and field fandom because the long jump is now measured from any point within a designated 40cm zone as opposed to from a standardized line The product is mostly great as it is – it’s the packaging that needs improvement For more of the top stories and analysis from the biggest stories in track and field from the past week, subscribe to The Lap Count newsletter for free. New edition every Wednesday morning at 6:00 a.m. ET. Paul Snyder is the 2009 UIL District 26-5A boys 1600m runner-up. You can follow him on Bluesky @snuder.bsky.social. You May Also Like Born and raised in a religious family in Fribourg Didier Grandjean’s motivation for serving the Church came naturally Having completed the Swiss Army’s recruitment school he served in the Pontifical Swiss Guards from 2011 to 2019 he started his journey as an official recruit and during his service he “often had contact with pilgrims” and was impressed by their deep faith It turned out to be a catalyst for his very own “enlightenment,” he told Vatican News so much so that he would take time to pray and reflect during his posts His service proved to be essential for his spiritual maturity a fundamental characteristic needed to officially transition along the path of priestly vocation It was a path to which he felt he belonged their initial surprise of this change of path was to be expected the consequent positive response and support from his loved ones further spurred on his determination and confidence towards his religious destiny “Go; this is your path” was the message from Grandjean’s father before his passing Grandjean experienced a pivotal moment during the 2013 conclave witnessing the grandeur and symbolism of the Church The values he understood in this moment resembled those of tradition and innovation values that lie at the core of both the Vatican City State and the Pontifical Swiss Guard Corps as institutions Among the value of service that bridges both the essence of being a Swiss Guard and a priest is that of discipline and camaraderie Grandjean is aware that committing oneself with unwavering devotion to others or a cause requires perseverance Both in the Swiss Guard and as a seminarian Grandjean draws inspiration from the title Servus servorum Dei He interprets this ancient papal title with a desire to commit himself selflessly with great humility without necessarily expecting anything in return The Fribourg seminarian noted the social aspect of being a Servus servorum Dei recognising the feeling of loneliness in being unable to marry he said he has sought to find this familial feeling of love in his service to fellow believers Grandjean expressed preoccupation for the ever-growing “society of comfort” in which secularisation is more present than ever and the importance of sacrifice and long-term commitment is fading not only in priesthood but also in marriage he urged people to have courage to follow a path of faith and find joy in doing so Regardless of the decreasing number of priestly or religious vocations people still seek the advice of experienced priests and their presence gives them joy and direction Grandjean concluded with a message that encompasses the sentiment he felt all those years ago in the Guard Corps because “what you may give up from your previous life is returned to you hundredfold.” Thank you for reading our article. You can keep up-to-date by subscribing to our daily newsletter. Just click here Dijon also into last eightReviewTofas Bursa had Alex Perez to thank to seal their placeThe Quarter-Final lineup is now confirmed after a big night of action JDA Bourgogne Dijon and Tofas Bursa all punched their ticket to the Quarter-Finals on Wednesday collecting the wins they needed to advance It went down to the wire in Group K with a game-winner from Alex Perez sealing the deal for Tofas and leaving FC Porto falling short despite victory of their own MHP RIESEN Ludwigsburg and Bilbao Basket had both already qualified for the Quarter-Finals but will take momentum into the next phase after securing contrasting wins on Tuesday Alex Perez game-winner sends Tofas Bursa through; Tofas Bursa qualified for the Quarter-Finals in the most sensational circumstances, as Alex Perez was the hero in their 80-79 win over Casademont Zaragoza Perez drove inside to score the game-winning lay-up on the final buzzer to spark scenes of utter euphoria as the Turkish side sealed their spot Yigitcan Saybir had a double-double of 18 points and 11 rebounds to lead Tofas Tofas' win meant that FC Porto missed out on the last eight. They beat Maroussi BC 80-76 in their final game of the FIBA Europe Cup season but they needed the other result to go their way Fribourg joined MHP RIESEN Ludwigsburg amongst the top two from Group N, as the Swiss side overcame Anwil Wloclawek 107-101 in a high-scoring battle as his side got the victory needed to advance failed to get the 20-point win they needed to qualify JDA Bourgogne Dijon sealed their berth into the Quarter-Finals, beating PAOK mateco 97-93 in Group M The French side led from the start as Gavin Ware's 24 points and 55 percent shooting as a team helped them over the line Jackson Kreuser paced PAOK with 24 points and 7 rebounds but fell to defeat in their final Group M game having already advanced to the Quarter-Finals Elsewhere, CSM Oradea led from start to finish as they convincingly saw off BC Kalev/Cramo 94-66 Paulius Petrilevicius led the Romanian side with 18 points shooting a sublime 71 percent from the floor Quarter-Final-bound Cholet Basket edged Banco di Sardegna Sassari 78-75 to win their group as T.J Campbell rattled in a three with 6.4 seconds to go to settle the tie Mohamed Diawara paced the winners with 13 points On Tuesday night, MHP RIESEN Ludwigsburg completed a perfect Second Round campaign with a comfortable 95-67 win over Spirou Basket Trailing for the entirety of the first period the German side bounced back in the second to turn a 23-17 deficit into a 49-35 lead and never looked back Ezra Manjon-Van Ewyk led the victors with 20 points - shooting 8-of-12 from the field - as they finished 6-0 in Group N Meanwhile, Bilbao Basket narrowly defeated ESSM Le Portel 78-74 to finish 5-1 in Group L. Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman finished with 16 points to lead the Spaniards, with Deandre Gholston leading the already eliminated Le Portel with 18. Stay up to date with all of the FIBA Europe Cup action! you agree to the use of cookies in order to offer you content and services that are tailored to your interests Sommaire de la ficheShareFacebookMailFavoriteFermerContents as well as representatives based in the U.S The organisation currently brings together more than 1,000 French cinema and TV content professionals (producers etc.) working together to promote French films and TV programmes among foreign audiences Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker The ultimate student experience is what you are getting at the University of Fribourg You will be among approximately 10,000 students heading towards a common goal with support from over 800 professors With little to no hierarchy and much contact between the teaching staff and students “Professors and lecturers are willing to take time out of their day to support students,” says Professor Ulrich Ultes-Nitsche Dean of the Faculty of Science and Medicine “Class sizes are often smaller than in most universities allowing friendly interactions among students and faculty.” Fribourg professors push you to pursue your curiosity and think critically enables you to hone problem-solving skills which is crucial for anyone seeking to become a sharp scientist who can identify errors of reasoning and biases in a heartbeat What further sets the Faculty of Science and Medicine is its focus on effective communication skills and teamwork and faculty members in a multilingual and familial environment there is collaboration and cooperation in not just one the 16 master’s degrees available here are taught in English These programmes are your pathways to thrive in today’s and tomorrow’s job market where you will learn through fundamental classroom teachings and practical research Bioinformatics and computational biology have become increasingly important in life sciences, especially when the amount of data gathered is enormous and often difficult to process and analyse reliably. The Master of Science (MSc) in Bioinformatics covers basic and applied research ranging from conservation biology and modelling molecular networks to epidemiology “Graduates in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology have the statistical and programming knowledge to process research data and extract meaningful discoveries that could not be found without their specific skills,” says Prof the programme will hone your expertise in biology For students with a non-biology background you will learn the foundations of all things biology through hands-on experiences thus complementing your background with individually tailored courses in programming you will go through more practical training on topics such as data management Your final semester is dedicated solely to your own specialised research project which will take place in the university’s state-of-the-art laboratories The MSc in Environmental Sciences and Humanities will prepare you to analyse conflicts and propose ethical solutions to challenges related to the environment The programme is divided into six interdisciplinary modules: environmental humanities we have chosen to offer an interdisciplinary programme which trains graduates in environmental sciences on the one hand and philosophy and ethics,” says Prof “This breadth of knowledge allows graduates to have a tangible impact on climate policy by interacting with government They are further able to critically appraise proposed climate policy with an eye on climate justice and equity.” These five chosen programmes are your pathways to thrive in today’s and tomorrow’s job market The MSc in Digital Neuroscience is a new programme in which you will receive training in neuroscience complemented by theoretical understanding and practical expertise in machine learning and data analytics You will be taught by researchers at the forefront of neuroscience you will learn about the fundamentals of both digitalisation and neuroscience which includes learning Python programming and data analytics you will dive deep into specialised neuroscience applications and hands-on courses like machine learning and artificial intelligence master’s students in digital neuroscience are expected to conduct a six-month research project as part of an active research group at the University of Fribourg or within the private sector,” says Prof “If they choose to do this work within the university they are fully integrated into a research group in neuroscience computer science or even psychology.” physiological and molecular adaptions in diverse environments What makes this programme stand out is how hands-on it gets in the second semester After deciding which option to choose in the first semester you will then be integrated into a research laboratory to conduct your own research project The University of Fribourg, along with the universities of Bern and Neuchâtel, came together to bring you the Swiss Joint MSc in Computer Science you’ll be able to tailor your MSc to your chosen specialisations with a choice of theoretical and practical orientations is great for computer scientists seeking to expand their horizons and open doors to future career opportunities This master’s programme consists of two parts: coursework and a thesis related to one of the topics you have studied All of this is normally done in three semesters but part-time students are free to take longer the two forwards will no longer be with the Dragons the coming season The club aims to go into it with six imports Monika Majer / RvS.Media Asked whether maybe one of them could have stuck around "Because we are starting the season with six imports" Michael Kapla and Henrik Borgström are still expected to complete the Dragons' import squad Kevin Etter has been in talks with the club regarding a possible new contract and a possible departure of Killian Mottet is not yet a topic Rikard Franzén will join the coaching staff and there will be only six imports at the start "We have decided not to communicate any more about new arrivals until the end of the season" Some members of the current roster are yet to be accounted for Defenseman Simon Seiler is in talks regarding an extension Forward Kevin Nicolet is set to receive an offer and Kevin Etter is likely to do so as well Jakob Lilja and Linden Vey are presumably going to leave Fribourg wants to go into the next season with only six imports and Borgström and Kapla likely to join the Swedish group of Patrick Nemeth there is always going to be someone who is not happy" "Putting everyone under pressure from the beginning by designating supernumeraries is not our strategy." Behind the bench, Pavel Rosa and Yves Sarault will no longer be part of the Dragons. Instead, current Genève-Servette HC co-coach Rikard Franzén is set to join the duo of current head - and future assistant coach Lars Leuenberger and future head coach Roger Rönnberg The transport company Transports Publics Fribourgeois (TPF) is entering a partnership with IT provider INIT in order to establish automated processes to support the operations control center: INIT-made RESPONSEassist is expected to reduce the workload of operations control center personnel in managing incidents The operator has just signed a first deal for 24 Mercedes eCitaro (out of […] INIT will also support TPF in the area of electromobility: key components of the solution include range prediction for e-buses vehicle health monitoring and driver assistance.  Also INIT-made MOBILE-ITCS nextGen Intermodal Transport Control System which includes numerous new dispatching measures will be used to control and monitor the 250 buses in the city of Fribourg and the western Swiss canton (region) of the same name Thanks to RESPONSEassist system integrated into the ITCS TPF passenger information can be created automatically on the basis of predefined texts and distributed to all information channels with a single click incidents can be processed much more efficiently with the help of instructions stored in forms and operational documentation is created automatically In addition to 22 trolley buses, the TPF fleet currently includes five electric buses. In the medium term, the entire fleet will be converted to e-buses or buses powered by other renewable energies, as mentioned above. Electric bus range can be monitored in the new INIT operations control system The data is supplied by the INIT module for range prediction which provides increasingly accurate predictions based on several parameters and incorporating historical data The driver assistance system also contributes to lower energy consumption: by providing information (e.g when braking or accelerating too hard) via the on-board computer control unit it helps the driver adopt a more energy-efficient and smooth driving style which ultimately also increases passenger safety and comfort The new solution for Fribourg is rounded off by the vehicle health monitoring module: it enables the vehicle condition to be monitored with regard to impending disruptions generates status messages and helps to plan vehicle repairs “We are very pleased that we have been able to convince another customer of the performance of our solutions with TPF in the highly innovative Swiss public transport sector which is known worldwide for its service quality,” explains INIT Managing Director and Sales Manager Klaus Janke not only will all tasks relating to operations control be more reliably and conveniently managed the transition to emission-free mobility can also be successfully overcome.” The bank Lombard Odier has been operating in Fribourg for over 15 years Now,  a generational shift is underway with a seasoned professional with extensive Credit Suisse experience taking the helm Stéphane Python will become head of the Lombard Odier branch there on January 1, 2025, as announced by the Geneva-based private bank on Tuesday Python will report directly to Stéphane Pedraja who was involved in the establishment of the branch will continue to manage the Fribourg office until the end of December He will also remain involved in serving his clients Lombard Odier has been serving private clients in Fribourg since 2008 mainly local entrepreneurs and their families - as well as institutional clients The branch has doubled in size within 15 years and now employs six bankers from different generations Python was born in Fribourg and grew up in the Gibloux region he headed a team for wealthy clients at Julius Baer in German-speaking Switzerland He worked at Credit Suisse for more than 30 years in particular as Market Head for Private Clients in the Zurich region finews.com publishes on its own Web-TV-Channel interviews with well-known figures of Swiss finance. + More on this topic + More on this topic + More on this topic It took Fribourg just over a minute to open the scoring on a brilliant individual effort from Marcus Sörensen. Leading a rush into the zone, he faked a shot to freeze the defenceman, then went through players and put the puck over a sliding Sebastian Dahm On a Fribourg powerplay, Klagenfurt had a chance to tie it on a shorthanded breakaway by Matthew Fraser but Berra reacted quickly to stop him. Later on the same powerplay, Fribourg moved the puck around well but Dahm robbed Killian Mottet on a one-timer Fribourg didn’t press so hard to score Just past the game’s midpoint, the Swiss visitors went up 4-0 when Jeremi Gerber won a battle for the puck in the corner and found Walser wide-open in front of the net for his second of the game Berra’s best save of the game came almost six minutes into the third period when he threw out his left pad to deny Raphael Herberger on a one-timer from point-blank range Fribourg continued their solid defensive play keeping the chances to a minimum even though much of the play was in their end Fribourg-Gottéron capped off an unforgettable week by claiming their first title in club history with a decisive 7-2 victory over the Straubing Tigers in the 96th Spengler Cup final with Fribourg establishing their dominance in the opening moments Jacob de la Rose capitalized on a rebound to put his team ahead Jakob Lilja doubled the lead with a clinical finish Despite an early timeout by Straubing's head coach Tim Brunnhuber briefly narrowed the gap for Straubing but Nathan Marchon’s goal just over a minute later restored Fribourg’s two-goal advantage Christoph Bertschy extended the lead to 4-1 by the end of the first period effectively sealing the game before it had fully unfolded the game marked their fifth in as many days—a grueling schedule that clearly took a toll While their journey to the final had been marked by dramatic upsets including victories over tournament favorites Dynamo Pardubice and Team Canada Fribourg entered the final well-rested after two days off giving them a decisive edge in energy and execution acknowledged the impact of their opponents’ fatigue: “They had the fifth game in five days The middle period saw Fribourg further assert their dominance prompting Straubing to replace goaltender Zane McIntyre with Florian Bugl Despite a moment of hope for Straubing when Mario Zimmermann scored Fribourg quickly responded with a goal by Linden Vey Andreas Borgman capped the period with a seventh goal with Straubing holding a slight territorial advantage but unable to mount a comeback The highlight of the closing minutes was the triumphant atmosphere as Fribourg’s fans began celebrating their historic victory this Spengler Cup triumph marks not only a historic achievement but also a turning point for the club Having finished as runners-up in Switzerland’s National League multiple times the team finally lifted their first trophy appointed just nine days before the tournament reflected on the significance of the victory: “It’s a prestigious tournament Club captain Julien Sprunger echoed these sentiments: “For the club but it’s an important tournament in Swiss and international hockey This win is mentally positive for the rest of the season and the future.” Luleå wins their second title in Sweden, 29 years after the first one. Read more» The Nashville Predators and Pittsburgh Penguins will face off in Stockholm, Sweden, on November 14 and 16, 2025, as part of the NHL Global Series. These games at the renovated Avicii Arena mark the 47th and 48th NHL contests held in ... Read more» You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser to improve your experience and security 4 focus areas to become an expert in international business law Building off 250 years of academic excellence, the University of Fribourg’s Faculty of Law has no shortage of experience to help you take a major step up in your career. The same applies to the university's Institute for International Business Law the institute offers specialized Master of Laws (LLM) and Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) programs in English covering areas such as International Contracts and Arbitration these programs are distinguished by their global perspectives and the close-knit community of students and academics the cohort benefits from the rich cross-cultural exchanges that take place in its Av de Beauregard campus and the richer still classroom discussions While these courses can be attended in person they’re also available for professionals in hybrid and online formats all courses come alive thanks to the institute’s highly diverse student body With the expansion of global trade and increasing number of trade restrictions comes a greater need for experts who are thoroughly familiar with multiple legal regimes and international contract practices From drafting and negotiation to monitoring and enforcement of international contracts such specialized know-how are now essential in many corporations and firms Fribourg’s IBL meets this need with its LLM in International Contracts and Arbitration. The program provides the flexibility to combine modules that are specific to your interests in the subject With the help of reputable professors and experienced legal practitioners and presentation skills through practical exercises in graduate seminars The CAS in International Contracts and Arbitration, on the other hand including foreign sales of goods and services global construction and distribution agreements and many others that will be useful to your career Staying within the bounds of local, national, and international laws can be challenging. As regulatory requirements evolve, businesses, big and small, need robust support to monitor developments, identify risks, and implement effective compliance strategies. It’s a demanding field, but one this LLM program provides the broad and comprehensive knowledge necessary for you to excel in you’ll have a greater understanding of key areas such as taxation For professionals with existing qualifications, the CAS in Compliance program is a great opportunity to deepen expertise Whether you seek to boost your credentials or gain more knowledge you’re set to hone the critical skills needed to address compliance challenges effectively you will not only be at the cutting edge of compliance requirements but will also be making a strategic investment in your professional future You’ll gain skills to support businesses in navigating legal complexities and staying ahead of evolving regulations both of which make you an indispensable asset in any organization Taking this step will significantly improve your career prospects and open doors to more advanced roles in the field of compliance Joining the LLM in International Business Law means participating in a program developed in close consultation with the legal departments of major Swiss companies This partnership between IBL and industry partners opens many doors for legal internships and chambering opportunities The program has a diverse range of courses and practical training that aims to prepare graduates to become adept at handling the legal complexities and challenges faced by global businesses It covers business laws in the world's fastest-growing economies such as Asia The curriculum is further supplemented with real-world applications, featuring over 50 case studies that cover the complexities of commodity trading and its legal aspects. As there are legal clinics and drafting exercises as well, you’re set to sharpen your communication skills and negotiation techniques too, both of which are vital in this field. The result? You’ll be armed with the specialized expertise and practical know-how needed in commodity trading law, setting you up for successful careers in a fast-paced and constantly evolving global market. Copyright © 2024  Study International, official representative of University of Fribourg, Institute of International Business Law The beetle attacks hardwood trees and kills them. It was first found in the country in 2011 - again in Fribourg.  Around 100 trees will need to be cut down. The cantonal forest service will now search for further outbreaks nearby, using specially trained dogs.  A buffer zone will also be set up which means no green waste can be transported out of the infected zone. Volume 2 - 2021 | https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2021.668499 This article is part of the Research TopicMeeting Remotely – The Challenges of Optimal Avatar Interaction in VRView all 8 articles Avatar use on video-conference platforms has found dual purpose in recent times as a potential method for ensuring privacy and improving subjective engagement with remote meeting provided one can also ensure a minimal loss in the quality of social interaction and sense of personal presence This work focuses on interactions of this sort through real-time motion captured 3D personalized virtual avatars in a 2D video-conferencing context Our experiments were designed with the intention of exploring previously defined perceptual illusions that occur with avatar-use in Virtual and Augmented Reality settings outside of the immersive technological domains where they are normally measured The research described here was aimed at empirically evaluating three separate dimensions of human-avatar interaction with experimental conditions that were designed to measure changes to subjective perceptions of self-face ownership and self-concept with the unique design of the studies outlined below among the first to measure social presence in a video-call between two human-driven avatars The third emphasis was on the experiential content involved in avatar use as there were measurements for emotion induction fatigue and behavior change included in the data collection The results describe some evidence for face and body ownership while participants also reported high levels of social presence with the other avatar indicating that avatar cameras could be a favorable alternative to non-camera feeds in video conferencing There were also some useful insights gained regarding emotion elicitation in non-video vs Virtual collaboration methods have drawn widespread attention in the current era of remote working. As it stands, Immersive VR technologies have not generally been a popular choice for educational or business purposes. Remote collaboration has instead been more widely conducted through video-conferencing media, which have proven to be useful for conducting research and gathering qualitative data (Archibald et al., 2019) Although interactions on such platforms can be considered taxing on human attention processes (Kuzminykh and Rintel, 2020) their accessibility and ease of use have seen them preferred to Social VR by the majority of industries The use of personalized avatars in conjunction with these modes of virtual interaction has not been broadly explored or defined thus far This research presents a novel approach to examining human-avatar perception in video-conferencing contexts Applying modern high fidelity face-tracking avatar technologies to these situations evokes many of the same issues as their use in immersive VEs There are unanswered questions around their impact on the self-identification mechanisms that are associated with personalized avatar use potential influences on perceptions of other individuals and on communicative social processes in general have described the effects of behavioral realism on valence induction and encourage future work to use more realistic avatar representations to further explore this domain previous works on enfacement and avatars in 2D dyadic video-conferencing contexts did not seem to involve personalized avatars but generic ones and would not explore their use in the context of dyadic conversation in which participants would see their avatar as well as the conversation partner’s avatar the study of enfacement toward a personalized self-avatar social presence and the impact of valence on such aspects remained therefore unexplored in the context of dyadic video-conferencing The phenomena outlined here informed the development of our research goals The aim of this work was to address three key factors in the domain of human-avatar connections: avatar embodiment and self perception and the experiential perception of avatar-avatar interaction 1) Can senses of ownership be experienced with embodied self-avatars in video-conferences 2) Do avatar-avatar conversations produce senses of social presence 3) How will cartoon avatar use impact emotional content of conversation 4) Can cartoon avatars induce perceived behavior and self-concept change in a video-call context The novel experimental designs posited below were developed to explore these questions It was intended to develop evidence for the legitimacy of these research questions and inform iterations on our hypotheses using personalized avatars for dyadic conversation The exploratory method provided us with some preliminary data and design notes to inform the construction and focuses of the second experiment which had additional emphases on personalization as well as subjective perceptions of self-avatar and other-avatar interactions Both experiments used video-conferencing to evaluate the qualitative aspects of avatar-avatar conversation under varying conditions of emotional valence The novelty of these designs can be described by the experimenter-as-avatar factors as each dyadic conversation was conducted in an interview style format via zoom video-conference It is expected that there will be a proliferation of work in the fields of video-conferencing and social VR Given the unique challenges posed by the last year such methods for remote collaboration threaten to replace many in-person meetings that were previously considered essential Avatars can provide a functional alternative to a “camera off” option in these situations The questions asked by the present research revolve around the non-veridical self-identification with embodied avatars the perception of presence from other human-driven avatars in social conversation and the experiential aspects of avatar use in video-conferencing Perceptual research, which comprises the focus of the work outlined here, can benefit from the use of such a platform, particularly because the experience of remote presence (Minsky, 1980) may be explored in the context of computer-mediated social exchanges, with the virtual environmental factors reduced to a simple dyadic conversational format (Shahid et al., 2018) Video-conferencing platforms have been used for purposes similar to ours to measure perception of self-representational avatars, which yields a neural reaction that originally processes the animated face as an object other than a face, before assimilating it into face and self-face recognition over time (Gonzalez-Franco et al., 2016) Studies using realistic virtual avatars to represent individuals in both immersive and screen-mediated virtual spaces have benefited from advancements in face tracking technology. The use of real-time facial mapping has been shown to induce SoE with avatars under the control of individuals (Kokkinara and McDonnell, 2015) This effect can be directly related to the realistic detail of avatar faces, given that a reduction in facial detail and real-time responsiveness has an antithetical effect on subjective reports of these psychological dimensions of avatar control (Kokkinara and McDonnell, 2015). The ownership dimension of SoE in particular has been demonstrated to benefit from improved realism in avatar interactions (Gorisse et al., 2019) Driving avatars in social VEs can induce perceptual effects of comparable significance. SoE in virtual characters has been influencial in studies of social presence (Mennecke et al., 2010), the perception of a “real” other in a virtual environment (Biocca et al., 2001; C.S.; Oh et al., 2018) Animations which seek to mimic facial movement, in conjunction with lip-syncing motions, have been shown to be sufficient for induction of a self-identification process between an individual and an avatar. Studies have verified such effects, even when a face is not directly mimicking those of the user (González-Franco et al., 2020) which can be used in virtual environments where head mounted displays prevent accurate facial mapping The effect of enfacement, perceiving an avatar’s face to be one’s own, can be shown even if the animations are pre-generated. However, measures for self-identifying with an avatar do scale up once lip-syncing is enabled and facial motion is mapped to the user. In carrying out this experimental work, we sought correlations between this assimilation and the notion of enfacement (Gonzalez-Franco et al., 2020) This notion, by extension, allowed us to measure SoE, given the similarities in the processing mechanisms for both concepts (Tajadura-Jiménez et al., 2012) and the fact that both terms are employed to measure the pliability of self-identity (Porciello et al., 2018), with an emphasis on enfacement in particular proving empirically fruitful in dyadic interactions such as those measured in our study (Minio-Paluello et al., 2020) Cartoon avatars depicted in a positive light through the enhancement or exaggeration of a user’s smile have been shown to improve subjective measures of social presence in an avatar interaction setting (Bailenson et al., 2016) This manufactured positivity is also mirrored in the conversational dynamics between avatars as objective measures have shown it is more likely to influence conversations toward more upbeat and lively interactions even if the subjects are unaware of the subtle changes in the expressions of an avatar It follows that the exaggerated positive appearance of the avatars could potentially affect the behavior of participants in this experiment although without participants being able to see both themselves and each other Personalized avatars have not been examined in 2D video-conferencing scenarios as included in the work outline below the cited experimental studies on SoE and the role of valence in dyadic conversation have also been consolidated here in a way which helped us to measure their mutual influences This range of screen-based and immersive VR studies give scope for an avatar-based experimental design using video conferencing software The experimental designs outlined below imbue characteristics of these studies to focus on a combination of the same measured factors one experimenter interviewed individual participants who were embodied in self-representational avatars It was designed to test our hypotheses around whether participants could experience senses of ownership and social presence and how mood induction and self-concept varied between conditions Fourteen participants were recruited to take part in this experiment They were provided with information and consent forms prior to the experiment The participants were recruited using university mailing lists and there was a reasonably representative spread of seven males six females and one non-binary participant Ethical approval was provided by the university in advance of this recruitment and all participants signed a consent form prior to the experiment They were each entered into a draw for a €50 voucher for their efforts Pilot Experiment: Video call between participant (left) and experimenter (right) both embodied in virtual avatars and viewed side-by-side on-screen The experimenter embodied the same generic avatar for each experiment with a view to consistency within conditions One of the limitations inflicted on this study by the COVID era was the necessity for participants to use their own personal computers webcams and internet connections to complete the experiment tasks since our participants would have been experiencing multiple Zoom calls a day it was more appropriate to try and measure these effects from the place where they usually conducted the same activity So there was also a positive influence on the integrity of the study conducted Pilot Experiment: Some examples of the customized avatars created by the participants Prior to the experiment, the participants personally designed their avatars to represent themselves. There were a variety of detailed parameters to change in the character design, with functions for shaping face parts and shading tones which the participants adjusted to closely represent themselves (see Supplementary Video S1) Each participant was individually trained on operating the avatar software It helped to gauge how effectively the face-tracking software was able to integrate into the individual operating systems that the participants were using There was no way to control for this extraneous factor given the circumstances but a sufficient standard of interaction quality was attained for all subjects prior to the main experimental task phase The metrics used have been derived from a body of similar research using methods adapted from established evaluations of social presence enfacement and embodiment in avatar interaction settings Participants were individually welcomed into a pre-arrange Zoom conference call and asked to engage in a video-conversation using a personalized avatar in their likeness for the entire experiment The conversations took place in two separate blocks following two separate Mood Induction Procedures (MIPs) (Gerrards-Hesse et al., 1994), the use of which has been commonplace in avatar-interaction experiments in immersive VR (Baños et al., 2004) deploying this technique meant using stimuli in the form of positive and negative newsreel clips with appropriately valenced audio backing in each of the two videos Following the two videos and two conversations, the participants were asked to report on a subjective questionnaire on the topics outlined below (see Table 1). The responses included a commentary section which we analyzed separately to the rest of the questionnaire data. The structure of this experiment was adapted from previous efforts to standardize data gathering methods in emotional elicitation experiments (Kossaifi et al., 2019) The experiment was conducted with participants and the same male experimenter for all fourteen recorded versions Pilot experiment: Questions arranged by group and variable name Each question could be answered on a scale from 1–“Not at all” to 7–“Extremely” We were constrained somewhat in our valence examination given that we chose to distribute only one questionnaire at the end of the experiment instead of one after each valence stimulus We decided that the data we sought to derive from the questionnaire could be confounded in the second instance they might be more cognizant of that information for the second video and questionnaire The main Experiment (Section 4) was designed to account for such demand characteristics Another measurement constraint impacted attempts to control for animation and face-tracking accuracy In order to ensure a fair comparison across the board this quality was post-rated following each experiment recording Subjective scores for an objective quality such as face-tracking accuracy was considered to be a potential confound so a post-experiment analysis rated the quality as either high or low The subjective questionnaire we used to obtain data from this experiment was constructed using a body of literature in the area of human-avatar interaction. The questions we used which sought to elucidate subjective senses of enfacement (see Table 1) are adapted from previous research which attempted to standardize the categories of information-seeking queries that should be included in these kinds of experiments We also used the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count to analyze data from an open-ended comment section at the end of the questionnaire The question items for Proteus measurements were composed based on the self-perception theory (Yee and Bailenson, 2007a) which underpins the occurrence of transformed self-representation, and work which has linked avatar appearances to properties of extroversion (Koda and Oguri, 2019) there has been an extensive effort to standardize the acquisition of information from subjective questioning on the topic The intended purpose was to extract implicit and explicit cues that consolidated evidence for the effects that the questionnaire data would provide. While we were interested to see if our embodiment and social presence questions could potentially be reflected in this data, the LIWC is considered a valid indicator for the content of emotional expression (Kahn et al., 2007) and we hoped that it would shed light on the effect of the valence conditions on avatar interactions We anticipated that participants using personalized avatars for dyadic video conversations would feel ownership of their embodied self-avatar (Ha) report social presence with an other-avatar (Hb) find it easier to discuss positive content than negative content during the experiments (Hc) and experience some alteration of perceived self-concept (Hd) Each item from the subjective questionnaires was first analyzed separately in order to seek which variables seemed to have more effect for participants Since most of the participant questionnaire data was collected via a 7-Point Likert-Scale an analysis for these results was conducted using a t-test of means against the constant of 4 This numeric value represented the mid-point of the scale and given the range of “Extremely” to “Not at all” there was appropriate scope on either end of the scale to capture nuanced responses against the constant We also conducted a Spearman’s Rank Order Correlation test to compare the results of some of the questions The comment data collected at the end of the experiment was processed using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count in order to provide evidence for the effects that we sought to explicate in conjunction with the variance analysis The data from the LIWC was taken at face value although we used a repeated measures Analysis Of Variance (ANOVA) to analyze the linguistic affect data In order to explore the impact of internet quality on our dependent variables we also conducted a one-way ANOVA with between–subject factor Quality (low high) for the dependent variable (subjective responses) The participants also did not interact with each other and as such we felt that the independence assumption was appropriately preserved despite the relatively small population tested the normality assumption was tested using Shapiro-Wilk test the Kruskal-Wallis test was used instead of the ANOVA As the yellow bars in Figure 3 depict the impact of positive valence seems more prevalent in the results than the effect of negative valence Positive Expression scores were high (significantly higher than 4: M=5.43, SD=1.28) showing that participants found it easy to express their emotion after the positive video FIGURE 3. Pilot Experiment: Results for questions Emotional Valence, Enfacement, Proteus Effect and Social Presence. X-Axis labels are the variable names from Table 1 Star indicates statistical significance < 0.05 against the reference value “4” Negative Expression scores were low (significantly lower than 4: M=3.07, SD=1.35) showing that participants did not find it particularly difficult to express their emotion after the negative video While the scores of Positive Affect were not significantly above 4: M=4.21, SD=1.76) the scores for the equivalent negative question provide even lower indications of negative affect (M=3.07, SD=1.28) which we considered to be evidence for an effect of non-negativity when combined with data from the LIWC (see Section 3.5.6) Face Ownership and Self Identification ratings were relatively low, suggesting that participants did not experience senses of enfacement and embodiment toward the avatar (see Figure 3 the highest means in the data gathered on enfacement come from the Motor Control (M=4.64, SD=1.65) and Lack of Motor Control (M=4.36, SD=1.82) measures showing that overall participants had the feeling that their movements influenced the movements of their avatar This is as well consistent with agency ratings that remained relatively low While these results depict that participants did not feel a sense of embodiment or enfacement toward the avatar disembodiment scores were nonetheless very low showing that participants did not find it difficult to talk while using the avatar suggested that even though participants did not feel as though they were in the same room as the experimenter they did have a relatively high score for item 5 (M=4.35, SD=1.95) implying that they felt the video-conference resembled a face to face meeting in terms of attractiveness ratings (F(1,12)=5.36, p<0.04) where participants felt more attractive as their avatar when the quality was high than when it was low This result is consistent with other work in the field, particularly a study by Kokkinara et al. (Kokkinara and McDonnell, 2015) which found that lower quality facial tracking reduced the perceived appeal of the avatar in their reduced animation realism condition It is also consistent with our finding that face animation quality did not impact agency or ownership under these conditions although our study did not deliberately manipulate this factor Kruskal-Wallis test highlighted another main effect of quality on the Valence Impact variable where participants found it more awkward using the avatar after the negative video when the facial tracking was poor (χ2 = 5.12, p < 0.03) there was no other observable effect on the results despite some obvious differences in quality across participants In particular, we predicted that the agency aspect of embodiment might have been impeded by poor function. However, this lack of effect may be explained by typical interaction quality with video calls, which often contains varying levels of latency quality without avatars. Also interesting to note is that animation quality had no effect on Ownership in the enfacement study by Kokkinara et al. (Kokkinara and McDonnell, 2015) The LIWC allowed us to compare the questionnaire data with language use in the open ended comment format with a word count of 1,606 across the fourteen participants Implications for our ownership scores can be supplemented by the LIWC analysis This measured an average of 2.74 “body” related words between subjects open ended comment sections making up around 2% of the total word-count Having not included bodies or the topic of embodiment in priming the participants these results can be indicative of a low level of SoE being achieved across the board although significantly distant from a fully immersive embodied experience A useful observation can also be derived from the LIWC results on social presence A total of 7% of the total word count were identified as “social” in content; relating to others via the self This is a significantly larger proportion of the word count than the embodiment scores and this difference is reflected in the questionnaire data as well These results revealed numerous implications for Hypotheses Ha-d Ratings for self-face recognition, ownership and agency were not high (Ha) in our Pilot, at least at the level we had predicted based on other studies on ownership and enfacement (Kokkinara and McDonnell, 2015; Porciello et al., 2018). The most interesting results, for Motor Control and Lack of Motor Control measures (See Table 1) seemed to suggest a limited range of motion felt by participants despite the fact that they felt that their own movements were depicted by the avatar An explanation for this result could be derived from the fact that the avatar’s movements did not represent the full range of human motion The participants saw their own movements represented by the avatar’s movement but felt as if their avatar could not fully represent all of their implicit motor representations The Quality analysis also revealed no difference in these ratings for low or high quality which indicated that the avatar use in this context was not sufficient to achieve levels of embodiment or enfacement the use of the avatars was not measured to detract from the social presence you would expect in a regular face-to-face meeting We conducted a non–parametric Spearman’s Rank Test to examine correlations between the results on enhanced feelings of attractiveness as a way of measuring self-concept change (Hd) and by extension a means to identify evidence for the Proteus Effect There were no findings in the Spearman’s results to indicate evidence for self-concept change previous studies that attempt to quantify this effect in computer-mediated dyadic avatar interaction have also failed to demonstrate this effect and so our evidence seems indicative of an upper boundary or a necessary condition that is missed in between immersive VR and dyadic remote conversation This experiment was designed to test our developed hypotheses around the effects of dyadic conversation with personalized avatars under different conditions of valence and video-feed content two conditions were defined for the purpose of this experiment Positive and negative emotion elicitation procedures were conducted for conditions of avatar-avatar conversation and avatar-voice conversation where the experimenter did not engage using an avatar This addition was made to use Avatar-Voice conversations as a benchmark to measure the impact of another avatar in Avatar-Avatar conversations and whether the difference could cause variation in our measurements The order was evenly split between experiments with half of participants experiencing non-avatar condition before the avatar-avatar condition The display of the participant’s on-screen self-representation remained consistently sized throughout all conversations There were a number of other changes between this format and the Pilot Our data collection methods had greater depth as the participants were asked to fill out four separate questionnaires The question items were modified for application in the altered conditions and there was no comment section included in the collection Our hypotheses were similarly modified to reflect the results above Twenty participants were recruited separately via college mailing lists and international online distribution channels and were given information sheets prior to the experiment One of the participants was a returning volunteer involved in the pilot study This was considered permissible given the differences in the study design on terms of structure as well as the long period of time separating experiments and the recruitment restraints imposed by multiple national lockdowns one Female) tested this group of participants The participants were split evenly on gender between experimenters as there were 10 Male and 10 Female volunteers with a mean age of 25.6 years The participants for this experiment used a different avatar application to those in the Pilot Experiment. The developers of the previous avatar application chose to close their Hypermeet venture, and so we took the opportunity to use similar software Figure 4, with the added capability of a self-representational avatar generated from a photo, which saved requiring the participants to construct their own from scratch4 Main Experiment: Some examples of the customized avatars created by the participants using the photo avatar creator tool The software was slightly more significant in terms of system load so only participants with higher quality machines webcams and internet connections could take part This coincidentally improved the experimental conditions and removed our need for grouping participants on the factor of quality The experimenters used self-representational cartoon avatars as the generic ones provided were qualitatively different in general appearance to the self-representational characters generated by a photograph We wanted to avoid character-based confounds each participant was asked to pick from one of four neutral office backgrounds in the avatar application One of the participants used a blank background as technical difficulties prevented full background loading the avatar itself was fully functional for this instance Prior to the experiment, participants were also asked to configure several settings on Loomie software, such as activating Video Mode (allowing avatars to follow head movements of participants), activating Eye Tracking, importantly allowing the avatars to simulate elements of direct gaze (de Hamilton, 2016) and setting “Gesture Strength” at minimum as the Loomie avatars would otherwise perform hand gestures on their own The participants were welcomed individually into a conference call over Zoom with an experimenter The experiment started with a training phase in which participants were asked to explore the full movement parameters of their avatar head and present two emotional expressions that can be displayed on the face participants were trained on the expressive use of the avatar; they were directed to make a happy face and a sad face using particular instructions (e.g pull your outer lips down to make a frown) This helped in ensuring that the use of avatar for conversation would be conducive to emotion elicitation procedures each participant engaged in two emotion induction tasks for two separate conditions The emotion induction task used a modified MCI technique This process involves music exposition and participant ideation of thoughts relating to the intended emotional measures The task requirements also provided the opportunity for a more structured conversation post-stimulus and less room for subjective interpretation than video clips The experimenter asked questions after each elicitation task to assess the effect of valence and engage the participant in using the avatar conversationally the faces of the respective avatars were displayed side-by-side in gallery view on the video call The individual stimuli duration was the same in this experiment as in the Pilot Experiment (90 s) and the total time spent in conversation with the avatar was 8 min in both experiments only it was split into four segments for this version as opposed to two conversation segments in the Pilot due to the addition of two conditions in this experiment Each emotion induction task was followed directly by a subjective questionnaire that participants had to fill in A within-subject design was adopted for the experiment considering two independent variables: Partner Representation with two levels: Avatar (with experimenters represented by a personalized avatar) and Voice (with experimenters’ representation hidden and therefore only their voice provided to the participants) and Emotion with two levels Positive and Negative corresponding respectively to the positive or negative emotion supposed to be induced by the pieces of music Note that the participant always used an avatar representation regardless of the experimenter representation when the avatar of the experimenter would be hidden the size-on-screen of the participants’ avatar would remain the same The Voice condition was chosen as a means to compare the Avatar conversation to a more recognizable form of tele-communication The aim was to see whether the participant engaged more or less with their own avatar depending on the condition and also to assess whether emotional content was more salient in the presence of an avatar conversational partner on the screen It was also predicted that there would be observable changes in participant feelings of Ownership as a result of increased self-avatar focus on screen There were two mood induction and conversation tasks for either Partner Representation condition making for a total of four tasks comprising of 90 s stimulus exposure and 120 s conversation periods for a total of 8 min of avatar social interaction These tasks were consistently performed in the same order with the positive valence preceding the negative stimulus for each condition the Partner Representation conditions were counterbalanced to eliminate any potential statistical biases that could arise from a strict task order hierarchy the musical pieces used for positive and negative valence were used at different task times and each video condition Subjective data was gathered from a questionnaire at the end of each emotion induction task. Many of the question items represented in Table 1 were used for this second experiment’s questionnaire This was done as an extra data gathering measure so that we could investigate whether individual personality traits could have any observable impact on the effect scores Main experiment: Questions for the main experiment by variable name Each question could be answered on a scale from 1–“Strongly Disagree” to 5–“Strongly Agree” Question with * were only asked in the Avatar condition Our Likert-scale data was reduced from seven point to five point, to accommodate the larger volume of Likert data but also to ease cognitive load on participants, given they were being asked to report much more data than the previous experiments. The more defined path of the five point Strongly Disagree-Strongly Agree scale was chosen to standardize our data collection scores, given it is the same structure as the accepted TIPI assessment method (Gosling et al., 2003) and this method was also considered to be less taxing for participants to consider than the seven point Not at all-Extremely scale used in the Pilot we were first interested in investigating participants sense of enfacement toward an avatar in the context of dyadic video-conferences and we expected participants to experience such senses toward their avatar while conversing with another person Because the scores of enfacement were relatively low for the avatar in the Pilot, we hypothesized that removing the avatar representation of the conversation partner (factor Partner Representation) would encourage participants in engaging more with their avatar and therefore increase their sense of enfacement toward it. Because Proteus Effect is commonly associated with the sense of embodiment (Heide et al., 2013; Ratan et al., 2020) we also expected Proteus scores to be impacted by the representation of the conversation partner Furthermore, we aimed at exploring the impact of positive and negative valence (factor Emotion) on participants senses of Social Presence, and other qualia related to these concepts. Work in this area has revealed that positive valence can be associated with higher levels of reported social presence (Bailenson et al., 2016) We hypothesized that participants sense of Social Presence would be higher after the positive mood induction compared to the negative mood induction and that having the partner representation removed would decrease this subjective feeling Valence question was introduced to ensure that the mood induction was effective and we therefore hypothesized that when describing positive or negative events participants would respectively feel happy or sad our hypotheses for the experiment were the following: • (H1) Participants will experience sense of enfacement toward their avatar during the dyadic video-conference • (H2) Participants’ sense of enfacement will be higher in the Voice condition than in the Avatar condition • (H3) Proteus scores will be higher in the Voice condition than in the Avatar condition • (H4) Social Presence scores will be higher in the Positive condition than in the Negative condition • (H5) Social Presence scores will be lower in the Voice condition than in the Avatar condition • (H6) Valence scores will show evidence of mood induction efficiency • (H7) Positive mood induction will be more fully achieved with avatar representation of the partner compared to negative mood considering the within-group factor Partner Representation (2 levels: Avatar and Voice) and Emotion (2 levels: Negative The normality assumption was tested using Shapiro-Wilk test and when not verified an Aligned Rank Transformation (ART) was applied on the data Tukey’s post-hoc tests (α=0.05) were conducted to check significance for pairwise comparisons Pearson’s r (r) was used for parametric data and Spearman’s r (rs) was used for non-parametric data post-hoc tests were corrected using Bonferroni correction To ease readibility, all significant main effects and interactions, as well as their effect sizes, are reported in Table 3 instead of directly inside the text Main experiment: Summary of main effects on subjective scores Enfacement toward the avatar was assessed through items related to face-ownership and face-agency. Variables labeled Ownership 1–3 (Table 2) focus on face-ownership. There was no main effect observed within participants, showing that Ownership toward the avatar did not seem to be impacted either by the emotion induced or the representation of the conversation partner (see Figure 5) Main Experiment: Boxplots of all the dependent variables depending on factor Emotion for Avatar condition (A) and Voice condition (B) A main effect of Partner Representation was found on agency question Agency1 (see Table 3. Post-hoc tests highlighted that Agency1 scores were higher in Avatar condition compared to Voice condition, independently of the emotion induced (p=0.04) (see Figure 6) Main Experiment: Summary of significant effects of Emotion and Partner Representation on Agency 1 (A) This means that participants tended to feel more that the movements of their avatar’s face were caused by their movements when they would have the possibility to see the partner’s avatar compared to when they would not it seems like the presence of the other’s avatar has a positive influence on the agency of participants toward their avatar which is the opposite of our (H2) assumption that enfacement would be stronger when not seeing the other’s avatar Agency1 being the only item influenced by Partner Representation Global Ownership and Agency scores were as well computed by combining scores of all the respective items While the two-way ANOVA did not highlight any effect on those their mean scores (Ownership: M=3.42,SD=0.55 Agency: M=3.16,SD=0.63) can be considered as relatively high this evidence neither supports nor nullifies (H1) Results on responses to item Proteus one and Proteus two in Table 3 showed an absence of main effect of our main conditions for improved self-concept alteration Global Proteus1 (M=3.7,SD=0.89) and Proteus two (M=3.24, SD=1.16) scores independently were relatively high similar to the Enfacement scores and therefore coherent Social Presence was assessed through several items as “interactive presence”, “shared presence”, and “social presence” items, as presented in Table 2 A main effect of Partner Representation was found on the variable SocialPresence1 (see Table 4), confirmed by post-hoc tests (p<0.001) showing that participants felt more that the conversation was like a face to face meeting when they could see the avatar of the conversation partner, which was expected and goes in the direction of validating (H5) (see Figure 6) Main experiment: Spearman correlations between personality scores and questionnaire items Interestingly, the scores of Shared Presence1 and Shared Presence2 were also influenced by the Partner Representation factor, but an interaction effect was found showing an impact of Emotion on these results (see Table 3). For Shared Presence1, post-hoc tests showed that the influence of Partner Representation was only present when factor Emotion was Negative(p < 0.01) (see Figure 6) Negative valence therefore seems to influence how the representation of the partner will influence shared presence participants felt more that they were in the same room as the other when the other had an avatar compared to when the other had only the voice For Shared Presence2, post-hoc tests also showed that the influence of Partner Representation was only present when factor Emotion was Negative(p < 0.01), highlighting that participants found the emotions of the partner clearer with Avatar representation compared to Voice representation only when exchanging on negative content but not for positive valence (see Figure 6) the representation of the partner did not seem to have an impact on the recognition of the other’s emotion This finding might be explained by the other post-hoc result revealing an influence of Emotion when only considering the Voice condition (p < 0.05) When participants would not see the avatar of the partner they would find the other person’s emotions clearer when discussing positive content than when discussing negative content This might explain why Partner Representation had only an impact in the negative condition since in that case participants were finding it more difficult to recognize the partner’s emotions Valence scores for all conditions included were relatively high (M=3.76, SD=0.83) showing that the mood induction was effective and validating H6 In addition, a main affect of Emotion was found on Valence scores (see Table 3) and confirmed by post-hoc tests (p = 0.01) which showed that independently of Partner Representation, participants felt more happy when talking about positive events than sad when talking about negative events (see Figure 6) This is consistent with the hypothesis that positive emotion induction was more naturally achieved with cartoon avatars Fatigue scores were assessed in order to evaluate the impact of our different conditions on participants fatigue, which is a common aspect when using video-conferences platforms (Yee and Bailenson, 2007a) While our analysis did not shown any effect of our conditions on participants fatigue, it seems like participants overall did not experience strong fatigue after the experiment (M=1.47, SD=0.83), however, they also did not report being particularly more alert after doing it (M=3.18, SD=1.45). Fatigue scores depending on Emotion are represented in boxplots for both Avatar and Voice conditions in Figure 5 It has been discussed in previous work that personality traits could influence users’s sense of presence (Wallach et al., 2010) and sense of embodiment toward an avatar (McCreery et al., 2012; Dewez et al., 2019) in virtual reality For this reason, we were interested in looking for possible correlations between the personality scores obtained with the TIPI questionnaire and subjective scores from the experiment. Table 4 outlines the observed results from the Spearman’s test conducted showing correlations of different strength depending on the variables The most striking significance recorded came from participants who scored highly on Agreeableness There was a positive correlation observed between Agreeableness ratings and Ownership 1 (rs = 0.30, p < 0.01) and Ownership 2 (rs = 0.26, p < 0.05) questions Agency 1 ratings were also positively correlated with Agreeableness scores (rs = 0.34, p < 0.01) a similar positive correlation was found between Agreeableness and two social presence items Social Presence 1 (rs = 0.22, p < 0.05) and Shared Presence 1 (rs = 0.25, p < 0.05) There was also a positive correlation between Extraversion and item Ownership 3 (rs = 0.26, p < 0.05) showing that people that tend to be social and active are more likely to have a decreased sense of Ownership (Ownership 3 being a control question: “It seemed as if I might have more than one face”) results also showed that people with such personality traits had more chance to feel more alert after the task (rs = 0.23, p < 0.05) but also more fatigued (rs = 0.25, p < 0.05) which seems contradictory and suggest the potential interference of another factor yet not identified Conscientiousness scores were also significantly correlated with several Enfacement items such as Ownership 3 (rs = −0.35, p < 0.05) Agency 2 (rs = −0.37, p < 0.01) and Agency 3 (rs = −0.22, p < 0.05) the results suggest that people that tend to be organized and reliable are more likely to experience a strong sense of enfacement toward the avatar They are nevertheless less likely to feel more friendly than usual during the experiment as shown by the negative correlation with Proteus 2 (rs = −0.32, p < 0.01) Openness scores were negatively correlated with Agency 3 (rs = −0.29, p < 0.05) showing that participants who tend to be curious and creative were more likely to not feel as if the movements of the virtual face were influencing their own In order to explore the impact of gender on our result two other independent variables were defined: Gender (whether participant was male or female) and Gender Match (whether the gender of the participant and experimenter were the same or different) A mixed three way ANOVA was performed twice with Emotion and Avatar as within factors and either Gender (Male or Female) or Gender match (Same Gender or Different Gender) as a between factor Main Experiment: Boxplots showing the influence of being of the same gender as the experimenter on Social Presence 1 (A) and the influence of participants’ gender on Valence (B) Compiled results emphasized complex consequences for our outlined Hypotheses H1-7. There were relatively high scores for our agency measures, which indicated participants felt more in control of their avatar during this experiment than in the Pilot. There was a measured interaction between PartnerRepresentation and Agency1, Table 2 and is a direct contradiction to our second hypothesis (H2) There were no other effects for enfacement between conditions but scores were also not reported as consistently low (H1) there was evidence from our Spearman’s Correlation that participants who scored highly on Agreeableness tended to return higher results for face-ownership and agency This is important for future work in this area which might investigate further the interaction between individual personality traits and the reports of SoE Social presence was reported strongly in our results suggesting that avatar-use can attain some of the social characteristics of in-person video-conferencing The analysis revealed a measurable effect of social presence in the avatar use While we confirmed that social presence was higher with avatar-avatar conversations (H5) we were surprised at observed results implicating negative valence interacting with the measured presence It appeared that Partner Representation was an influential factor in negative conditions This may be explained by volunteers reports of clearer emotion recognition for positive conditions We had to confirm the null hypothesis from our observations on Proteus effect measures (H3) The results did not display evidence for self-concept or behavior change on our measurements despite global Proteus results showing a consistently average scoring There was an interesting relationship observed between TIPI and Proteus measurements with high Conscientiousness scores negatively correlated with friendliness ratings post avatar condition the results for positive inductions were reported stronger than the negative ones This is some confirmation of our hypothesis around mood induction (H6) Evidence also suggested that the cartoon avatars were more conducive to conditions of positive valence (H7) which reinvigorates the need to further investigate that effect Furthermore, while there is not to our knowledge previous research exploring the impact of gender match between two individuals on virtual social presence, there seem to be an impact of gender matching in the process of learning in virtual platforms (Makransky et al., 2019) suggesting that further work exploring the impact of gender matching in social virtual contexts would be valuable for the community The experimental evidence described above shows a variation in observations on measured items. In general, it has been explicated that avatar-interaction studies for screen-based applications can provide actionable data around the quality of avatar experiences (Heide et al., 2013) Observations from presence measurements seem to be the biggest contribution of the current research Social presence results for both the Pilot and Main Experiment determinants implicate human use of an avatar can provide elements of the percepts underlying senses of presence The use of personalized avatars for remote collaboration has not been shown to detract from social presence in the main experiment, when we compared their use to non-video call conditions. The results shown here are consistent with previous work on presence and avatar personalization (Waltemate et al., 2018) in cases where negative emotional content was induced avatars were an improvement on voice condition Emotion recognition in the Voice condition was comparably difficult for negative valence scenarios it was more difficult for participants to recognize negative emotions rather than positive ones There was no decrease in presence measurements on the basis of emotional valence, compared to Avatar conditions. Affected avatar studies such as ours have seen similar associations between positive affect and presence (Bailenson et al., 2016) which has important implications for future development of avatar software for video-conferencing requirements Recording behavioral measures of social presence through analysis of animation data and movement data correlations could be a useful point of future convergence for this kind of work While scores for face or body ownership observed in the Pilot were not particularly high our re-formulated experiment saw a significant increase on measurements for agency Tracking quality did not have an impact on agency in the Pilot The avatar condition in the main experimental design elicited higher scores for an Agency 1 as participants felt more control over the movements of their avatar as viewing one’s own self avatar in a dyadic interaction with a voice agent could be implicated as having a potentially negative influence on feelings of agency compared to avatar-avatar conversations However, given that the participants could see both themselves and the other avatar (Avatar condition) or else their empty gallery (Voice condition) for the conversations that were measured, it is also likely that the view of mirror representation of the self-avatar was more strongly attended for Voice conditions. This mirror effect has been proposed to increase focus on animation details and hence decrease agency (Fribourg et al., 2018) The self-similarity of the virtual avatars for both experiences was not sufficient for producing high levels of enfacement, even though similarity and self-identity are considered key components to the experience of enfacement (Tajadura-Jiménez et al., 2012) Furthermore, differences emerged for enfacement results between the Pilot and Main Experiment. Previous work has suggested enfacement measurements are not influenced by animation realism, which makes the absence of observed impact from our Quality measure in the Pilot experiment consistent with previous findings (Kokkinara and McDonnell, 2015) While there was some self-concept changes observed on friendliness for the Pilot Proteus effects were not measured strongly in either the Pilot or the Main Experiment The results of the second study produced unconvincing measures of Proteus It is interesting that enfacement measurements also yielded comparably underwhelming reports The coextensive absence of effects in both ownership and self-concept results adds empirical credence to the notion that they must necessarily co-arise as an example of mood induction efficacy that proposes to augment contemporary methods for remote valence induction Previous research on the influence of personality traits in immersive environments (McCreery et al., 2012) motivated our inclusion of the TIPI measurements for the second iteration of these experiments. It proved to be informative. Our results on the correlation between Agreeableness and Agency, Ownership and Presence scores suggest some interaction occurred here, while Extraversion was correlated with Ownership Item 3, Table 2 These results are promising, particularly because Agreeableness and Extraversion have been implicated in previous work on character realism in immersive settings (Zibrek et al., 2018), while Extraversion has also been correlated with immersive tendencies in such environments (Weibel et al., 2010). Ownership has also previously been linked to the trait for Openness in a larger study (Dewez et al., 2019) Our results in tandem with the work outlined here indicate that the role of personality traits in virtual experiences can be a focus for researchers interested in quantifying subjective differences in effect quality for immersive experiences The period of time in which this research was conducted allowed us to employ the methods described above as there has been an pervasive necessity for use of home-based video-conferencing systems there are constraints imposed by the COVID era on this study We could not consolidate our subjective reports with physiological evidence and the volatility of the avatar application industry also forced shifts in our emphases throughout Any claims made around the results of this study must have such caveats in mind This work aimed to investigate whether the types of perceptual illusions that are normally measured with human-avatar interaction studies in Immersive VR settings could be observed in a video-conferencing avatar experiment The conditions we used for testing these effects are a novel method for approaching them There are constraints on the conclusions we can draw from the data, given the sample size and potential for confounds inherent in the design of non-laboratory experiments and the compounding pandemic factor. Both experiments used cartoon avatars, but the main experiment used more realistic personalized digital characters. This may have introduced elements of realism-induced eeriness in participants, also known as the Uncanny Valley effect (Nagayama, 2007) although there is no evidence for this in the negative valence results such studies could also investigate real-time facial rigs with a greater depth of expressive features as the software in this study involves the standard 51 expressions (i.e Apple’s ARKit face tracking which is the current standard for real-time) Other future work to be considered as implications of this study would be a more natural conversational structure between participants who are known or anonymous to each other This work could shed a new light on interactional processes in video-calls The evidence from our results on presence suggests that avatars can be effective for remote collaboration suggesting that the conversational aspect with the experimenter did not appear over taxing and is likely to be a good choice in video-conference scenarios which is also promising for the use of such avatars in this context Nevertheless, we believe further research should focus on comparing avatar conditions with regular video feed conditions and interactions with levels of fatigue. Subsequent research should also seek to consolidate our results with investigations into visual effects on valence outcomes. Work from Wisessing et al. (Wisessing et al., 2020) has suggested that positive and negative affect conditions can be enhanced by bright and dark key-light illumination respectively Lighting conditions studied in conjunction with manipulated avatar appearance could expand on these results and could have wide-reaching implications for any research or clinical setting that would benefit from mood enhancement such as video conferences or clinical treatments Previous work in computer based avatar interactions (Heide et al., 2013), as well as work evaluating the difficulties of computer based remote meeting (Yee and Bailenson, 2007a; Kuzminykh and Rintel, 2020) consolidated with the results of the research described by our study can point toward an expansion of video-conferencing tools to include avatar platforms which substitute appropriately in terms of virtual telepresence Direct research on this topic will help elucidate the range of remote collaboration methods that can be considered functional for contemporary professional practices social applications such as Snapchat are very popular in the young generations allowing to alter self-representation with filters going from subtle modifications to full replacement of the user by what could be called an avatar Such application can be used as well in the context of video-conferences motivating further studies to explore the impact of self-representation and alteration in the context of dyadic video-calls These investigations shed light on the qualitative details of avatar-interaction Questions motivating this study centered around the variation in subjective qualia that are used to measure ownership presence and self-concept change in given valence conditions for avatar-mediated virtual experiences The systematic inquiry of these proposed avenues provided valuable insight into perceptual and emotional aspects of such experiences Results highlighted subjective reports of social presence to be higher in avatar conversation compared to non-video conditions while some dimensions of SoE were also observed and were measured to interact with personality measures of participants There is also evidence for a role of avatars in scenarios of both positive affect There is also evidence that avatar conditions were better for negative affect conditions than voice conditions This evidence contrives to further scientific endeavor in this domain This work underlines character personalization development as a future avenue of inquiry for avatar-avatar conversation research there is sufficient justification outlined here for further investigations into the interplay between personal characteristics and the emergence of subjectively non-veridical perceptions in virtual or screen-mediated environments that involve digital characters with varying levels of realistic detail The datasets presented in this article are not readily available because it contains information related to the potential identification of participants. To protect this information, requests to access the datasets should be directed to corresponding author, DH, aGlnZ2luZDNAdGNkLmll The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Research Ethics Committee (REC) Trinity College Dublin The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study RB and RM designed and planned these experiments RB and DH recruited participants and ran the experiments This work was funded by the Science Foundation Ireland (grant number 18/CRT/6224) and Trinity College Dublin’s RADICal Project (grant number 19/FFP/6409) The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frvir.2021.668499/full#supplementary-material 1https://www.hyprsense.com/hyprface 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The use distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited in accordance with accepted academic practice distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms *Correspondence: Darragh Higgins, aGlnZ2luZDNAdGNkLmll Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher 94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or goodLearn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish While the defenseman has recovered from a concussion teammate Andreas Borgman will likely miss tonight's game due to illness Injured in a collision with fellow Dragon Sandro Schmid, Maximilian Streule is ready to return to HC Fribourg-Gottéron's lineup is presumably not going to be able to suit up tonight due to illness as reported by the "Freiburger Nachrichten" According to "La Liberté", Killian Mottet's injury will keep him out of HC Fribourg-Gottéron's lineup for a while dieBildmanufaktur.ch The 34-year-old forward is dealing with an upper-body injury and is not expected to return before the international break Mottet is not the only one missing tonight's game against the SCL Tigers Mauro Dufner will also not be in the lineup he will be out for the remainder of the season He will undergo shoulder surgery. Dufner had problems with his shoulder since the start of the season, but it has gotten worse. "Mauro was in so much pain, he couldn't sleep for 2-3 nights after every game. We tried different therapies, but it didn't really work," Gerd Zenhäusern, team manager of the Dragons, said ahead of tonight's game against the SCL Tigers The reflective material blends the building into its environment minimizing the visual impact of new materials all images by Matthieu Croizier courtesy of BARAKI architecture and engineering Merya responds to the client’s desire to renovate outdated sanitary facilities and improve their functionality. Swiss studio BARAKI replaced the internal circulation with direct access from the covered entrance square to individual WC cubicles to make maintenance easier and ensure safety and user comfort Though the client sought practical upgrades enabling the design team to integrate the design with the existing structure in a creative way Inside, the cubicles feature a clean, modern aesthetic with stainless steel walls and automated features, contrasting with the abstract exterior. At the front, urban furniture, designed in collaboration with Elie Fazel and Valentin Sieber of multidisciplinary design office Work Matter The metal and stainless steel furniture is integrated into prefabricated concrete blocks BARAKI Architecture and Engineering transforms the public toilets at the Gruyère rest area in Fribourg the stucture was originally built in the late 1980s the original complex reinterpreted vernacular materials featuring a masonry base of reinforced concrete with an exterior facing of local river pebbles a laminated timber frame supports the two-sloped roof designed in collaboration with the multidisciplinary design office Work Matter Merya offers views of the Lac de Gruyère lake and the Fribourg Pre-Alps a triangular volume with an offset forms a covered square at the entrance metal and stainless steel furniture is integrated into prefabricated concrete blocks designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here. 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