news 2017

Simon Stellmer has been awarded a prestigious ERC Starting Grant. He will now use ultracold mercury atoms to investigate fundamental symmetries in nature. Why is there matter in the universe at all? To date there has been no conclusive answer to this question. Our understanding of the Big Bang is based on the assumption that equal amounts of antimatter and matter were created.

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.

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.

By Birgit Baustädter At the beginning of April, the COMET competence centre Pro²Future was established and shared between Linz and Graz. It will conduct research on products and production systems of the future. The key question is: what comes after Industry 4. Eight TU Graz-institutes of the In the future, machines should be able to recognise when humans and other machines are moving about in the room and adapt their work accordingly.

Physicists demonstrate how heating up a quantum system can be used as a universal probe for exotic states of matter In physical sciences, certain quantities appear as integer multiples of fundamental and indivisible elements. This quantization of physical quantities, which is at the heart of our description of Nature, made its way through the centuries, as evidenced by the antique concept of the atom.

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. Bacteria have to watch out for amoeba.

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.

By Ulrike Keller From laptops to generators: plastics are an integral part of every electronic and electrical device. In the research project "PolyTherm" experts from chemistry, materials science, plastics and high-voltage engineering pool their expertise. They're developing and testing novel polymers to facilitate the manufacture of more powerful and compact high-tech products in the future.

Flowering plants with at least 300,000 species are by far the most diverse group of plants on Earth. They include almost all the species used by people for food, medicine, and many other purposes. However, flowering plants arose only about 140 million years ago, quite late in the evolution of plants, toward the end of the age of the dinosaurs, but since then have diversified spectacularly.

The peculiar characteristics demonstrated by 'quantum critical points' at absolute zero remain one of the great unsolved mysteries of science. Normally, there needs to be a change in temperature in order to see a phase transition: a liquid gets cold, it freezes; a metal heats up, it loses its magnetic properties.

Magnetic quantum objects in superconductors, so-called "fluxons", are particularly suitable for the storage and processing of data bits. Computer circuits based on fluxons could be operated with significantly higher speed and, at the same time, produce much less heat dissipation. Physicists around Wolfgang Lang at the University of Vienna and their colleagues at the Johannes-Kepler-University Linz have now succeeded in producing a "quantum egg-box" with a novel and simple method.

By Ulrike Keller Nikolaus Schwaiger co-developed the BioCRACK process. High-grade and eco-friendly diesel fuel is produced from biomass such as wooden waste, straw and reeds. The findings are impressive. "In comparison with fossil fuels, the fuel generated in the bioCRACK plant saves 85 per cent of greenhouse gases," explains chemical engineer Nikolaus Schwaiger.

Wherever you look, you are almost guaranteed to find tiny plastic particles. However, a study conducted by TU Wien has revealed that, in many cases, what is thought to be plastic found in samples of seawater may actually be natural fibres from lab coats. Plastic is constantly finding its way into the ocean - it comes from ships, unsecured landfill sites and the sewage system.

Scientists at TU Wien and Würzburg University are changing our idea of the earth's magnetic field: iron alone cannot explain the concept of the geodynamo. The crucial ingredient is nickel. It only takes a simple compass to demonstrate that the earth has a magnetic field - but it is quite difficult to explain how exactly it is created.

By Birgit Baustädter Cooperative, autonomous driving on the motorway is the main topic of a joint project between TU Graz and the "Virtual Vehicle" competence centre. Embedded in the Campus Inffeldgasse, researchers are collaborating on developing control algorithms which calculate the right path and the right speed for selfdriving vehicles.

Market disruptions and innovation strongly impact its stakeholders on a shortto mid-term perspective. In the particular case of the smartphone market, where new products are released in very short cycles, it becomes imperative to forecast and identify heavy shifts in market demand as soon as possible.

By Andreas Wimmer In order to meet ambitious environmental goals, research around the world must rise to the challenge of developing innovative and sustainable solutions in the areas of mobility, transportation and power generation. The question often arises in connection with electric mobility whether there will be any need to conduct research on internal combustion engines in the future.

By Martina Geier The pharma industry is in search of sustainable and cost-effective manufacturing processes for drugs. In the "CHEM21" project, project teams from TU Graz and acib developed genetic tools to provide tailored microorganisms for quick and straight forward drug production approaches. Classical drug production processes often require up to 100 kg of raw materials to manufacture 1 kg of the active ingredient of a drug.

Researchers from TU Graz and the University of Graz present the new method of 3D-plasmon tomography in Nature Communications. Light as a carrier of information is indispensable to modern communication technology. The controlled manipulation of light quanta, so-called photons, form the basis for wireless transmission or data transfer in optical glass fibres.

Without fossil fuels, there can be no blast furnace process - but hydrogen could play a more important role in the future. An environmentally friendly process is being developed at TU Wien by which biomass can be used to produce a hydrogen-rich gas that can then be employed in various ways in the iron and steel industry.