When people fall ill from bacterial infection, the first priority is to treat the disease. But where do these pathogens come from and how do they thrive in the environment before the infection occurs? An international team led by Matthias Horn from the Centre for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science at the University of Vienna has tackled this question using an important bacterial pathogen that causes lung disease.
A novel material that consists of a single sheet of carbon atoms could lead to new designs for optical quantum computers. Physicists from the University of Vienna and the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona have shown that tailored graphene structures enable single photons to interact with each other. The proposed new architecture for quantum computer is published in the recent issue of npj Quantum Information.
The discoveries of thousands of planets orbiting stars outside our solar system has made questions about the potential for life to form on these planets fundamentally important in modern science. Fundamentally important for the habitability of a planet is whether or not it can hold onto an atmosphere, which requires that the atmosphere is not completely lost early in the lifetime of the planet.
Birds-of-paradise are a group of songbird species, and are known for their magnificent male plumage and bewildering sexual display. Now, an international collaborative work involving Dept. of Molecular Evolution and Development of University of Vienna, Zhejiang University of China, and Swedish Museum of Natural History analyzed all together 11 songbird species genomes, including those of five bird-of-paradise species, and reconstructed the evolutionary history of their sex chromosomes.
Physicists develop new methodWhen a particle is completely isolated from its environment, the laws of quantum physics start to play a crucial role. One important requirement to see quantum effects is to remove all thermal energy from the particle motion, i.e. to cool it as close as possible to absolute zero temperature. Researchers at the University of Vienna, the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are now one step closer to reaching this goal by demonstrating a new method for cooling levitated nanoparticles.
Chemists in Vienna find a method to replace hydrogen with fluorine in organic moleculesThe development and improvement of pharmaceuticals plays the central role in the ongoing battle against human disease. Organic synthesis is the field that enables these developments as it offers the toolbox to diversify chemical structures.
Flexible tool use is closely associated to higher mental processes such as the ability to plan actions. Now a group of cognitive biologists and comparative psychologists from the University of Vienna, the University of St Andrews and the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna that included Isabelle Laumer and Josep Call, has studied tool related decision-making in a non-human primate species – the orangutan.
Quantum computers are more powerful than classical computers since they work with coherent "quantum bits"; instead of ordinary zeroes and ones. But what if the laws of nature were different from what we think today – could there be even more efficient "science fiction computers"Researchers from the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Vienna have now shown that this is not possible – as long as those machines satisfy the same construction principles as ordinary circuits and their quantum counterparts.
Researchers at the University of Vienna study the relevance of quantum reference frames for the symmetries of the worldAccording to one of the most fundamental principles in physics, an observer on a moving train uses the same laws to describe a ball on the platform as an observer standing on the platform – physical laws are independent on the choice of a reference frame.
New Zealand and other islands have experienced invasions of rats, Europe has seen the arrival of the spinycheek crayfish, spreading a deadly disease called crayfish plague: invasive species can put native animal and plant species on the brink of extinction. They often go undetected for a long time, or their damaging impacts are not immediately clear.
In speech and music, words and notes depend on each other. Humans are highly sensitive to such dependencies, but the evolutionary origins of this capacity are poorly understood. Cognitive biologists at the University of Vienna conducted playback experiments with common marmoset monkeys and found that sensitivity to dependencies might have been present in the shared ancestor of marmosets and humans.
Conventional lithium ion batteries, such as those widely used in smartphones and notebooks, have reached performance limits. Materials chemist Freddy Kleitz from the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Vienna and international scientists have developed a new nanostructured anode material for lithium ion batteries, which extends the capacity and cycle life of the batteries.
The ammonia oxidizing archaea, or Thaumarchaeota, are amongst the most abundant marine microorganisms. Yet, we are still discovering which factors allow them to thrive in the ocean: A new publication reveals that marine Thaumarchaeota have a broader metabolism than previously thought.
Cognitive biologists and comparative psychologists from the University of Vienna, the University of St Andrews and the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna around Isabelle Laumer and Alice Auersperg studied hook tool making for the first time in a non-human primate species – the orangutan. To the researchers' surprise the apes spontaneously manufactured hook tools out of straight wire within the very first trial and in a second task unbent curved wire to make a straight tool.
Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is, along with DNA and protein, one of the three primary biological macromolecules and was probably the first to arise in early life forms. In the “RNA world” hypothesis, RNA is able to support life on its own because it can both store information and catalyze biochemical reactions.
For future technologies such as quantum computers and quantum encryption, the experimental mastery of complex quantum systems is inevitable. Scientists from the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences have succeeded in making another leap.
How to create nanocages, i.e., robust and stable objects with regular voids and tunable properties? Short segments of DNA molecules are perfect candidates for the controllable design of novel complex structures. Physicists from the University of Vienna, the Technical University of Vienna, the Foschungszentrum Jülich in Germany and Cornell University in the U.
The astrophysicists Mattia Galiazzo and Rudolf Dvorak from the University of Vienna, in collaboration with Elizabeth A. Silber (Brown University, USA) investigated the long-term path development of Centaurs (solar system minor bodies which originally have orbits between Jupiter and Neptune). These researchers have estimated the number of close encounters and impacts with the terrestrial planets after the so-called Late Heavy Bombardment (about 3.8 billion years ago) as well as the possible sizes of craters that can occur after a collision with the Earth (and the other terrestrial planets). The publication was recently published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The effects of island remoteness from the mainland on the number of species found on islands differs strongly for non-native compared to native species. Numbers of native species on islands decrease with greater remoteness, while numbers of non-native species increase. This surprising finding has been uncovered by an international research team led by Dietmar Moser, Bernd Lenzner and Franz Essl from the Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research of the University of Vienna.
Many natural products and drugs feature a so-called dicarbonyl motif – in certain cases however their preparation poses a challenge to organic chemists. In their most recent work, Nuno Maulide and his coworkers from the University of Vienna present a new route for these molecules. They use oxidized sulfur compounds even though sulfur is not included in the final product. The results are now published in the prestigious journal "Science".
All matter is composed of atoms, which are too small to see without powerful modern instruments including electron microscopes. The same electrons that form images of atomic structures can also be used to move atoms in materials. This technique of single-atom manipulation, pioneered by University of Vienna researchers, is now able to achieve nearly perfect control over the movement of individual silicon impurity atoms within the lattice of graphene, the two-dimensional sheet of carbon.
What stops a species adapting to an ever-wider range of conditions, continuously expanding its geographic range? The biomathematician Jitka Polechová, an Elise Richter Fellow at the University of Vienna, has published a paper in PLoS Biology which explains the formation of species’ range margins. The theory shows that just two compound parameters, important for both ecology and evolution of species, are fundamental to the stability of their range: the environmental heterogeneity and the size of the local population.
When are primary school children willing to share valuable resources with others and when are they not? A team of researchers from the University of Vienna lead by cognitive biologist Lisa Horn investigated this question in a controlled behavioural experiment. The motivation to share seems to be influenced by group dynamical and physiological factors, whereas friendship between the children seems to be largely irrelevant. The results of their study have been published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Magnetic sensors play a key role in a variety of applications, such as speed and position sensing in the automotive industry or in biomedical applications. Within the framework of the Christian Doppler Laboratory "Advanced Magnetic Sensing and Materials" headed by Dieter Süss novel magnetic sensors have been realized that surpass conventional technologies in performance and accuracy in a cooperation between the University of Vienna, the Danube University Krems and Infineon AG. The researchers present the new development in the latest issue of the journal "Nature Electronics".
Hematopoietic Stem Cells (HSCs) give rise to blood and immune cells of the body, and are therefore essential for our survival. They are in a dormant state, but whenever new blood needs to be formed, such as after blood loss or chemotherapy, they are rapidly activated to compensate for the loss. After completing their mission, they need to go back to their dormant state. The group of Manuela Baccarini at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories, a joint venture of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna, has now shown how intracellular signalling can safeguard this delicate balance between activation and dormancy. Their results are published in the prominent journal Cell Stem Cell.
sDuring embryonic development genetic cascades control gene activity and cell differentiation. In a new publication of the journal PNAS, the team of Ulrich Technau of the Department of Molecular Evolution and Development at the University of Vienna reported that besides the genetic program, also mechanical cues can contribute to the regulation of gene expression during development.
It has been suggested that sexually objectified women or men are visually processed in the same fashion of an object. Far from being unanimously accepted, this claim has been criticized by a lack of scientific rigor. A team led by Giorgia Silani, in collaboration with Helmut Leder, of the University of Vienna, and scientists of the University of Trieste and SISSA have explored the conditions under which this phenomenon persists. The results of the study were recently published in the renowned scientific journal "PlosOne".
Researchers at the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences develop a new theoretical framework to describe how causal structures in quantum mechanics transform. They analyse under which conditions quantum mechanics allows the causal structure of the world to become "fuzzy". In this case, a fixed order of events is not possible.
More than 70 percent of the global King penguin population, currently forming colonies in Crozet, Kerguelen and Marion sub-Antarctic islands, may be nothing more than a memory in a matter of decades, as global warming will soon force the birds to move south, or disappear. This is the conclusion of a study published in the current issue of the prestigious journal Nature Climate Change and performed by an international team of researchers from France, Monaco, Italy, Norway, South Africa, Austria and US.
Quantum entanglement is a key feature of a quantum computer. Yet, how can we verify that a quantum computer indeed incorporates a large-scale entanglement? Using conventional methods is hard since they require a large number of repeated measurements. Aleksandra Dimić from the University of Belgrade and Borivoje Dakić from the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Vienna have developed a novel method where in many cases even a single experimental run suffices to prove the presence of entanglement. Their surprising results will be published in the online open access journal npj Quantum Information of the Nature Publishing group.
Materials with controllable quantum mechanical properties are of great importance for the electronics and quantum computers of the future. However, finding or designing realistic materials that actually have these effects is a big challenge. Now, an international theory and computational team led by Cesare Franchini from the University of Vienna, find that multiple quantum interactions can coexist in a single real material and show how an electric field can be used to control them. The results of this research are now published in Nature Communications.
Sexualized representations, especially the emphasis of secondary sexual characteristics, can change the way we perceive an individual. An international team of researchers led by Giorgia Silani from the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Vienna has shown that empathic feelings and brain responses are reduced when we observe the emotions of sexualized women. The results of the study were recently published in the renown scientific journal "Cortex".
What is the difference between linear chains and rings composed of the same material? The molecular building blocks are identical, but from a mathematical point of view the two structures have distinct topologies, namely ring and linear chain. This difference is readily recognizable on a macroscopic scale, as for example a golden ring and a gold bar, but represents a tricky task on the microscopic scale. The physicists Lisa Weiss and Christos Likos of the University of Vienna and Arash Nikoubashman of the Johannes-Gutenberg University of Mainz investigated strategies to separate nano- and microparticles of distinct topology. Their results are published in the high-impact journal ACS Macro Letters.
An international team from the Universities of Vienna, Duisburg-Essen and Tel Aviv have created a nanomechanical hand to show the time of an electronic clock, by spinning a tiny cylinder using light. A silicon nanorod, less than a thousandth of a millimetre long, can be trapped in thin air using focussed laser beams, and spun to follow the ticking of a clock, losing only one-millionth of a second over four days.
Multidrug resistance of microbes poses a serious global threat to human health. Such resistant strains of Klebsiella pneumoniae significantly reduce therapeutic options for the treatment of Klebsiella-induced, potentially fatal pneumonia or sepsis. Pavel Kovarik and his team at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories (MFPL), a joint venture of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna, together with colleagues at Queen’s University Belfast now report new insights into how immune cells communicate at the site of infection and join forces in the fight against Klebsiella infections. Their results, published in the journal PLOS Pathogens, might be used for the development of alternatives to ineffective anti-microbial drugs.
The Goffin's cockatoo is not a specialised tool user in the wild but has shown the capacity to invent and use different types of tools in captivity. Now cognitive biologists from the University of Vienna and the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna tested these parrots in a tool use task, requiring the birds to move objects in relation to a surface. The animals had to choose the correct "key" to insert into a "keyhole" in a box, aligning its shape to the shape of a surface cutout inside the box during insertion. The parrots were not only able to select the correct key but also required fewer placement attempts to align simple shapes than primates in a similar study.
Transitions occurring in nanoscale systems, such as a chemical reaction or the folding of a protein, are strongly affected by friction and thermal noise. Almost 80 years ago, the Dutch physicist Hendrik Kramers predicted that such transitions occur most frequently at intermediate friction, an effect known as Kramers turnover. Now, reporting in Nature Nanotechnology, a team of scientists from the ETH Zurich, ICFO in Barcelona and the University of Vienna have measured this effect for a laser-trapped particle, directly confirming Kramers’ prediction in an experiment for the first time.
Women who live with their own mother or their mother in law in the same household have, on average, fewer children than women who only live with their spouse. Martin Fieder and colleagues, evolutionary anthropologists from the University of Vienna, report this on the basis of intercultural data of 2.5 million women worldwide. Until now, evolutionary biologists have assumed the opposite. The study appears in the renowned scientific journal "Royal Society Open Science".
Induction heating can completely change the energy budget of an exoplanet and even melt its interior. In a study published by Nature Astronomy an international team led by the Space Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences with participation of the University of Vienna explains how magma oceans can form under the surface of exoplanets as a result of induction heating.
Scientists around Tetyana Milojevic from the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Vienna are in search of unique biosignatures, which are left on synthetic extraterrestrial minerals by microbial activity. The biochemist and astrobiologist investigates these signatures at her own miniaturized "Mars farm" where she can observe interactions between the archaeon Metallosphaera sedula and Mars-like rocks. These microbes are capable of oxidizing and integrating metals into their metabolism. The original research was currently published in the journal "Frontiers in Microbiology".
Women born by Caesarean section due to a fetopelvic disproportion (FDP) are more than twice as likely to develop FDP when giving birth than women born naturally. This is the conclusion of a study by a team of evolutionary biologists at the University of Vienna headed by Philipp Mitteroecker. Using a mathematical model, the team was able to explain the paradoxical phenomenon that natural selection did not lead to the reduction in the rates of obstructed labour. Empirical data also support that the regular use of C-sections has already triggered an evolutionary increase of FPD rates.
Even though science is becoming increasingly competitive, scientists are still very willing to share their work with colleagues. This is especially true for male scientists among each other and less so for females among each other or between the sexes. These patterns of sharing among scientists were discovered by a team of Austrian, Dutch and German researchers led by Jorg Massen of the Department of Cognitive Biology at the University of Vienna, and the results of their study have been published in the scientific journal "Scientific Reports".
Researchers at the Universities of Vienna and Göttingen have succeeded in developing a method for predicting molecular infrared spectra based on artificial intelligence. These chemical "fingerprints" could only be simulated by common prediction techniques for small molecules in high quality. With the help of the new technology, which is based on neuronal networks similar to the human brain and is therefore capable of learning, the team led by Philipp Marquetand from the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Vienna was able to carry out simulations that were previously not possible. The potential of this new strategy has now been published in the current issue of the journal "Chemical Science".
An international consortium under the lead of the non-profit organization "International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics" (ICRISAT) and participation of a research team around the system biologist Wolfram Weckwerth has published the genome sequence of Pearl millet, a drought resistant crop plant most important in aride regions in Africa and Asia. This so-called C4 plant is especially important to small and medium farmers who grow the plant without larger irrigation. Pearl millet delivers a good harvest index under drought and heat conditions when rice, maize or wheat already have no grains anymore.
How did the gut, the skin and musculature evolve? This question concerns scientists for more than a century. Through the investigation of the embryonic development of sea anemones, a very old animal lineage, researchers from the University of Vienna have now come to conclusions which challenge the 150 year-old hypothesis of the homology (common evolutionary origin) of the germ layers that form all later organs and tissues.
The bending of a hook into wire to fish for the handle of a basket by the crow Betty 15 years ago stunned the scientific world. However, the finding was recently relegated as similar behavioural routines were discovered in the natural repertoire of the same species, suggesting the possibility that Betty’s tool manufacture was less intelligent than previously believed. Now cognitive biologists from the University of Vienna and the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna studied tool making in an Indonesian cockatoo. Other than the New Caledonian crows Goffin cockatoos are not using tools in the wild. To the researchers' surprise the birds manufactured hook tools out of straight wire (and in a second task unbent curved wire to make a straight tool) without ever having seen or used a hook tool before.
Quantum physics teaches us that unobserved particles may propagate through space like waves. This is philosophically intriguing and of technological relevance: a research team at the University of Vienna has demonstrated that combining experimental quantum interferometry with quantum chemistry allows deriving information about optical and electronic properties of biomolecules, here exemplified with a set of vitamins. These results have been published in the journal "Angewandte Chemie International Edition".
Behavior experiments are useful tools to study brain function. Standard experiments to investigate behavior in popular lab animals such as fish, flies or mice however only incompletely mimic natural conditions. The understanding of behavior and brain function is thus limited. Virtual Reality (VR) helps in generating a more natural experimental environment but requires immobilization of the animal, disrupting sensorimotor experience and causing altered neuronal and behavioral responses. Researchers at the University of Freiburg, and the Max F. Perutz Laboratories (MFPL), a joint venture of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna, in collaboration with groups at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) and the MPI for Ornithology in Konstanz, have now developed a VR system for freely moving animals – FreemoVR – to overcome most of these limitations. Their findings are now published in Nature Methods.
Researchers from ETH Zurich and the University of Vienna have discovered a type of bacteria that uses tiny daggers to prevent itself from being eaten by amoebae. The scientists also resolved the three-dimensional structure of the mechanism that allows the micro-daggers to be shot quickly.
In quantum mechanics particles can behave as waves and take many paths through an experiment, even when a classical marble could only take one of them at any time. However, it requires only combinations of pairs of paths, rather than three or more, to determine the probability for a particle to arrive somewhere. This principle is a consequence of Born’s rule, a cornerstone of quantum physics and any measured violation of it might hint at new physics. Now, researchers at the Universities of Vienna and Tel Aviv have addressed this question for the first time explicitly using the wave interference of large molecules behind various combinations of single, double, and triple slits. The analysis – published in the Journal ‘Science Advances’ – confirms the formalism of established quantum physics for massive particles.
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