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Nearby star-forming region yields clues to the formation of our solar systemA region of active star formation in the constellation Ophiuchus gives astronomers new insights into the conditions in which our solar system was born, showing how it may have become enriched with short-lived radioactive elements. Such enrichments played an essential role in the early evolution of planets because these elements were the main heat source for planetary embryos.

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Researchers at the University of Vienna’s Faculty of Physics in collaboration with colleagues from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the USA have uncovered a non-destructive mechanism to manipulate donor impurities within silicon using focused electron irradiation.

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Three dimensional (3D) nano-network promise a new era in modern solid state physics with numerous applications in photonics, bio-medicine, and spintronics. The realization of 3D magnetic nano-architectures could enable ultra-fast and low-energy data storage devices. Due to competing magnetic interactions in these systems magnetic charges or magnetic monopoles can emerge, which can be utilized as mobile, binary information carriers.

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Innovation arises through the transfer of research results into practiceValuable research results threaten to gather dust in university libraries if they are not put into practice. While transdisciplinary research seems to become increasingly important in sciences, funding programs and media, there are still many misunderstandings to be clarified.

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Three-dimensional (3D) configurations of atoms dictate all materials properties. Quantitative predictions of accurate equilibrium structures, 3D coordinates of all atoms, from a chemical graph, a representation of the structural formula, is a challenging and computationally expensive task which is at the beginning of practically every computational chemistry workflow.

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What constitutes good relationship quality in times of crisisRelationships are crucial for our health and well-being. But which factors help to sustain a satisfying relationship, and can we predict which relationships make it through a crisis? An international team led by Stephanie Eder of the University of Vienna set out to investigate these questions during a time when ‘hard lockdowns’ were introduced throughout Europe.

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The quantum movements of a small glass sphere could be controlled for the first time in Vienna by combining microscopy with control engineering, setting the course for future quantum technologies.A football is not a quantum particle. There are crucial differences between the things we know from everyday life and tiny quantum objects.

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This pandemic year has seen us confined to our homes and restricted from travelling the world. Not so for some microscopic bacteria in the ocean: Throughout the globe, they partner up with clams from the family Lucinidae, which live unseen in the sand beneath the shimmering blue waters of coastal habitats. This partnership is the clams' passport to their extensive global reach.

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Ancient sediments from caves have already proven to preserve DNA for thousands of years. The amount of recovered sequences from environmental sediments, however, is generally low, which difficults the analyses to be performed with these sequences. A study led by Ron Pinhasi and Pere Gelabert of the University of Vienna and published in Current Biology successfully retrieved three mammalian environmental genomes from a single soil sample of 25,000 years bp obtained from the cave of Satsurblia in the Caucasus (Georgia).

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Soils are one of the most diverse habitats on the planet. There are more than thousand microbial species per gram that significantly influence numerous environmental processes. However, the majority of these organisms are believed to be in a state of ‘dormancy’ due to environmental stress, such as nutrient-poor conditions. An international team of scientists led by Dagmar Woebken and Stephanie A. Eichorst from the University of Vienna investigated how acidobacteria, which are widespread in soils, can survive under adverse conditions. Two recent studies published in "The ISME Journal" and "mSystems" describe these survival strategies.

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Body axes are molecular coordinate systems along which regulatory genes are activated. These genes then activate the development of anatomical structures in correct locations in the embryo. Thus, the body ensures that we do not develop arms on our heads or ears on our backs. In many organisms, the main body axis is regulated by the β-catenin signaling pathway. In a new article in Nature Communications, a research group led by Grigory Genikhovich at the University of Vienna has found that the way the main body axis of sea anemones is patterned by different intensities of β-catenin signaling is similar to that of sea urchins and vertebrates. This suggests that this axial patterning mechanism already existed about 650 million years ago.

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Communication is crucial for elephants that live in complex multi-tiered social systems. Apart from their iconic trumpets uttered through the trunk, Asian elephants also produce species-specific squeaks by buzzing their lips. This demonstrates once again the elephant’s flexibility in sound production.

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Properties of materials are often defined by imperfections in their atomic structure, especially when the material itself is just one atom thick, such as graphene. Researchers at the University of Vienna have now developed a method for controlled creation of such imperfections into graphene at length scales approaching the macroscopic world. These results, confirmed by atomically resolved microscope images and published in the journal Nano Letters, serve as an essential starting point both for tailoring graphene for applications and for the development of new materials.

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The phenomenon of quantum nonlocality defies our everyday intuition. It shows the strong correlations between several quantum particles some of which change their state instantaneously when the others are measured, regardless of the distance between them. While this phenomenon has been confirmed for slow moving particles, it has been debated whether nonlocality is preserved when particles move very fast at velocities close to the speed of light, and even more so when those velocities are quantum mechanically indefinite.

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While best known as the code for genetic information, DNA is also a nutrient for specialised microbes. An international team of researchers led by Kenneth Wasmund and Alexander Loy from the University of Vienna has discovered several bacteria in sediment samples from the Atlantic Ocean that use DNA as a food source.

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Bacteriophages are still a relatively unknown component of the human microbiome. However, they can play a powerful role in the life cycles of bacteria. Biochemist Thomas Böttcher from the University of Vienna and PhD student Magdalena Jancheva were able to show for the first time how Pseudomonas bacteria use a self-produced signal molecule to selectively manipulate phages in a competing bacterial strain to defeat their enemy. This targeted control of phages provides entirely new biotechnological and therapeutic approaches, e.g. for phage therapies. The results produced in the context of an ERC grant have been published in the "Journal of the American Chemical Society".

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Meiosis is a specialized cell division process required to generate gametes, the reproductive cells of an organism. During meiosis, paternal and maternal chromosomes duplicate, pair, and exchange parts of their DNA in a process called meiotic recombination. In order to mediate this exchange of genetic material, cells introduce double strand breaks (DSBs) into their chromosomal DNA. Scientists from the lab of Franz Klein from the Department of Chromosome Biology at the Max Perutz Labs, a joint venture of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna, have now discovered that cells sometimes liberate DNA fragments at sites of paired, or double, DSBs. Whilst this presents an obvious risk of germline mutations as a consequence of erroneous repair or of integration of fragments from elsewhere at break sites, it may also be a source of evolutionary diversity. The study is published as a research article in Nature.

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While DNA is often idealised as the molecule of life, it is also a highly sophisticated polymer that can be used for next-generation materials. Beyond the fact that it can store information, further fascinating aspects of DNA are its geometric and topological properties, such as knotting and super-coiling. Indeed, very much like a twisted telephone cord, DNA is often found coiled up inside bacteria and other cells and even knotted in viruses.

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In an international cooperation with partners from industry and research, physicists from the University of Vienna, together with Thorlabs, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the University of Kansas, have now succeeded for the first time in demonstrating high-performance laser mirrors in the sensing-relevant mid-infrared wavelength range that absorb less than ten out of a million photons.

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Magnonic devices have the potential to revolutionize the electronics industry. Qi Wang, Andrii Chumak from University of Vienna and Philipp Pirro from TU Kaiserslautern have largely accelerated the design of more versatile magnonic devices via a feedback-based computational algorithm. Their "inverse-design" of magnonic devices has now been published in Nature Communications.

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In a new study, an international team led by Sebastian Stumpf from the University of Vienna describes a fossil skeleton of an ancient shark, which is assigned to a new, previously unknown genus and species. This rare fossil find comes from the Kimmeridge Clay Formation in England, a series of sedimentary rocks that was formed in a shallow, tropical-subtropical sea during the Upper Jurassic, about 150 million years ago. The fossil shark skeleton was found more than 20 years ago on the southern coast of England and is now held in the Etches Collection. Additional fossil shark specimens from it will be investigated in the years to come.

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Every year, an estimated four percent of the world's vegetated land surface burns, leaving more than 250 megatons of carbonized plants behind. For the first time, a study by the University of Vienna has now recorded elevated concentrations of environmentally persistent free radicals (EPFR) in these charcoals - in some cases even up to five years after the fire.

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The pelvis is the part of the human skeleton with the largest differences between females and males. The female birth canal is on average more spacious and exhibits shape features that enable birth of a large baby with a big brain. In forensics, these pelvic differences are used for sex identification of human skeletons. Thus far it was unclear when these pelvic differences first appeared in human evolution. Barbara Fischer from the University of Vienna and her coauthors have published a study in Nature Ecology & Evolution presenting new insights into the evolutionary origin of pelvic sex differences.

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With a total length of up to 5.5m, the tiger shark is one of the largest predatory sharks known today. This shark is a cosmopolitan species occurring in all oceans worldwide. It is characterized by a striped pattern on its back, which is well marked in juveniles but usually fades in adults. An international team of researchers led by Julia Türtscher from the University of Vienna examined the fossil record of these apex predators and found out that modern tiger sharks are older than previously thought and that several tiger shark species existed in past compared to the single species living today.

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To minimize negative impacts of agriculture on biodiversity and related ecosystem services, "biodiversity-friendly" management is needed. Why scientific results are rarely translated into agricultural practice could be explained by their different perceptions of agricultural biodiversity, according to the results of a recent survey of European scientists and farmers.

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During pandemics, protective behaviors need to be motivated by effective communication. A critical factor in understanding a population’s response to such a threat is the fear it elicits, since fear both contributes to motivating protective responses, but can also lead to panic-driven behaviors. Furthermore, lockdown measures affect well-being, making it important to identify protective factors that help to maintain high perceived levels of health during restrictions.

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Artificial intelligence is part of our modern life by enabling machines to learn useful processes such as speech recognition and digital personal assistants. A crucial question for practical applications is how fast such intelligent machines can learn. An experiment at the University of Vienna has answered this question, showing that quantum technology enables a speed-up in the learning process.

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An international team of scientists with Fridgeir Grímsson from the University of Vienna has found a previously unknown fossil fly species in old lake sediments of the Messel Pit, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Germany. In the stomach of the fossil insect, pollen from various plants could be detected, which allows rare insights into the feeding behavior, the ecology and the role of the fly as a pollinator.

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Researchers at the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences, led by Markus Aspelmeyer have succeeded in measuring the gravitational field of a gold sphere, just 2 mm in diameter, using a highly sensitive pendulum - and thus the smallest gravitational force. The experiment opens up new possibilities for testing the laws of gravity on previously unattained small scales. The results are published in the journal Nature.

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BOLD-100/KP1339 is a ruthenium-based anticancer agent that has been decisively co-developed at the University of Vienna and which has shown promising results in clinical trials in cancer patients. However, the mode of action of this metal compound has not yet been fully elucidated. Researchers from the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna have now been able to demonstrate that BOLD-100 binds to ribosomal proteins in tumour cells. The study now published with a cover in "Angewandte Chemie" can support a more targeted application of BOLD-100 as tumour-inhibiting active agent.

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Women and the Global South are strikingly underrepresented Most publications in leading scientific journals are by male authors from English-speaking countries. This changes only slowly, according to a recent study on diversity in top authorship, concludes Bea Maas from the University of Vienna. Her new study examines the (non-existent) diversity in top authorship in science.

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Experimental microbially assisted chemolithotrophy provides an opportunity to trace the putative bioalteration processes of the Martian crust. A study on the Noachian Martian breccia Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034 composed of ancient (ca. 4.5 Gyr old) crustal materials from Mars, led by ERC grantee Tetyana Milojevic from the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Vienna, now delivered a unique prototype of microbial life experimentally designed on a real Martian material. As the researchers show in the current issue of "Nature Communications Earth and Environment", this life of a pure Martian design is a rich source of Martian-relevant biosignatures.

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Quantum technologies for computers open up new concepts of preserving the privacy of input and output data of a computation. Scientists from the University of Vienna, the Singapore University of Technology and Design and the Polytechnic University of Milan have shown that optical quantum systems are not only particularly suitable for some quantum computations, but can also effectively encrypt the associated input and output data.

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Noise limits the performance of modern quantum technologies. However, particles traveling in a superposition of paths can bypass noise in communication. A collaboration between the Universities of Hong-Kong, Grenoble and Vienna, as well as the Austrian Academy of Sciences, under the lead of Philip Walther, reveals novel techniques to reduce noise in quantum communication.

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Animal venoms as natural resource for new drugs. Currently, there are more than 80 peptide drugs on the global market and about twice as many in clinical development. Due to their beneficial properties, these biomolecules play already an important role in the treatment of diseases such as diabetes, cancer, hormone disorders, HIV infection, and multiple sclerosis.

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In humans, differences in personalities have been evident since the ancient times. Personality in animals has long been ignored, but recently this question has received increasing research interest as it has been realized that personality has evolutionary and ecological significance. An international team of behavioral biologists from Austria, Brazil and the Netherlands, with Vedrana Šlipogor from the University of Vienna as leading author of the study, designed a set of tasks to assess personality of common marmosets.

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In a new study, an international research team led by Sebastian Stumpf from the University of Vienna describes an exceptionally well-preserved skeleton of the ancient shark Asteracanthus. This extremely rare fossil find comes from the famous Solnhofen limestones in Bavaria, which was formed in a tropical-subtropical lagoon landscape during the Late Jurassic, about 150 million years ago.

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Changes in daylength are a well-established annual timing cue for animal behavior and physiology. An international collaboration of scientists led by Kristin Tessmar-Raible at the Max Perutz Labs, a joint venture of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna, now shows that, in addition to daylength, marine bristle worms sense seasonal intensity changes of UVA/deep violet light to adjust the levels of important neurohormones and their behavior.

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Three papers unveil the extraordinary diversity of animal sex chromosomesThe sex chromosomes genetically define the developmental fate of an embryo to become a male or a female individual, and usually appear as one pair of morphologically different chromosomes between sexes. For example, women have one pair of XX chromosomes, while men have one pair of XY chromosomes.

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An international team led by Paolo G. Albano from the Department of Palaeontology at the University of Vienna quantified a dramatic biodiversity collapse of up to 95 per cent of native species in the Eastern Mediterranean. The study is published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

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High-resolution mass spectrometry promotes new methods for analysis. Humans are exposed to various environmental or dietary molecules that can attenuate or even increase the effect of therapeutic drugs. Studies on the industrial chemical bisphenol A and the phytoestrogen genistein, for example, have shown drug-exposome interactions.

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The sweet taste of sugar, energy intake and the regulatory process of hunger and satietyTo date, very little is known about how sweetness perception contributes to satiety. This study, conducted by an Austrian-German team led by chemists Veronika Somoza and Barbara Lieder, provides new insights into the relationship between the sweet taste of sugar, energy intake and the regulatory process of hunger and satiety.