news 2014

By combining climate and glacier models, scientists headed by Ben Marzeion from the University of Innsbruck have found unambiguous evidence for anthropogenic glacier mass loss in recent decades. In a paper published in Science, the researchers report that about one quarter of the global glacier mass loss during the period of 1851 to 2010 is attributable to anthropogenic causes.

Developmental processes in all living organisms are controlled by genes. At the same time there is a continuous metabolism taking place. Wolfram Weckwerth, head of the Department of Ecogenomics and Systems Biology at University of Vienna, and his team have analyzed this interaction between metabolism and developmental processes in flowering plants (angiosperms).

Several universities have come together to construct Austria's most powerful mainframe computer. Phase VSC-3 (Vienna Scientific Cluster 3) offers not only impressive computing power, but also serious energy efficiency. Austria's scientific community has a new super computer. Comprising more than 32,000 individual processor cores, the VSC-3 cluster is now being put into operation in the Science Center at Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien).

The calorie free sweetener erythritol is widely used in Asia; it is also gaining popularity in Europe and America.

Sea anemone shows a genomic landscape surprisingly similar to human genome, but also displays regulatory mechanisms similar to plants The team led by evolutionary and developmental biologist Ulrich Technau at the University of Vienna discovered that sea anemones display a genomic landscape with a complexity of regulatory elements similar to that of fruit flies or other animal model systems.

As an international team of researchers including Benjamin Marzeion from the Universitiy of Innsbruck reports, climate change and sea-level rise may cause trillions in damage to world's coasts. Coastal regions have to adapt to sea-level rise soon. Prompt action is needed most in Asia and Africa. Coastal regions may face massive increases in damages from storm surge flooding over the course of the 21st century.