news 2024

Research team identifies unconventional energy source for recently discovered "green" nitrifying bacteria An international research team led by the Centre for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science (CeMESS) at the University of Vienna has discovered that comammox bacteria, first identified by them in 2015, can grow using guanidine, a nitrogen-rich organic compound, as their sole energy and nitrogen source.

The nuclear pore basket is a filamentous structure attached to the nucleoplasmic side of the nuclear pore complex (NPC), crucial for regulating transport between the nucleus and cytoplasm. In a paper published in Nature Cell Biology, Edvinas Stankunas and Alwin Köhler revealed the structural basis of the basket filaments and their docking mechanism to the main body of the NPC.

How can diseases of the cardiovascular system be detected before symptoms appear? Researchers at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) have found a way to track them down at an early stage. Cardiovascular diseases are among the most common causes of death worldwide. They are often only discovered when symptoms have already appeared and the disease is already relatively advanced.

New practical guidelines provide an overview of senescence markers in rodent tissues, transgenic models, non-mammalian systems, human tissues and tumors and their use in the identification and specification of senescent (aging) cells. The guidelines provide a unified, modern and accessible set of tools to improve the understanding of cellular senescence in vivo.

ISTA researchers uncover how 'mortal filaments' self-assemble and maintain order A previously unknown mechanism of active matter self-organization essential for bacterial cell division follows the motto 'dying to align': Misaligned filaments 'die' spontaneously to form a ring structure at the center of the dividing cell.

The ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine has led to severe humanitarian crises, including widespread food shortages. According to the United Nations World Food Programme, an estimated 11 million Ukrainians - about one-third of the populationwere at risk of hunger in 2023. This crisis, exacerbated by supply chain disruptions and extreme weather events, could increase diabetes prevalence not only in Ukraine but globally, argue Peter Klimek and Stefan Thurner from the Complexity Science Hub in a commentary published in the journal "Science".

In a recent study, researchers at the Medical University of Vienna have investigated the cellular and molecular basis of idiopathic subglottic tracheal stenosis (ISGS) and identified specific cells that contribute to disease development. ISGS is a rare disease which mainly affects women and leads to a narrowing of the upper trachea due to scar formation.

Researchers at TU Graz have published a video game about the health effects of the microbiome and what impact our lifestyle has on it. Countless microorganisms live on and in the human body - including viruses, bacteria and fungi. Together, they weigh two kilograms and are essential for our health: they support our immune system, promote digestion, protect our skin to name but a few examples.

A research team led by MedUni Vienna has shown in a study that purely optical measurements of the viscosity of blood plasma may provide information about the severity and progression of COVID-19. The employed technique, Brillouin light scattering spectroscopy, can analyse the smallest amounts of plasma in less than a second, making it a promising method for monitoring severely ill patients.

How microplastic particles disperse in the ocean depends on microscopic details. Scientists at TU Wien have now succeeded in precisely characterising the motion of these particles. Microplastics are a global problem: they end up in rivers and oceans, they accumulate in living organisms and disrupt entire ecosystems.

A MedUni Vienna study has investigated gender-specific differences in the diagnosis of systolic heart failure in patients with type 2 diabetes. The results, recently published in the specialist journal "Cardiovascular Diabetology", show that the current methods are less reliable in women than in men.

Research team achieves breakthrough: chemical synthesis of high-density RNA microarrays now faster and more efficient An international research team led by the University of Vienna has succeeded in developing a new version of RNA building blocks with higher chemical reactivity and photosensitivity. This can significantly reduce the production time of RNA chips used in biotechnological and medical research.

Finding and fixing errors in programme code still takes up a lot of developers' time. A team at TU Graz has now developed a solution that tackles the biggest time wasters. Modern software applications usually consist of numerous files and several million lines of code. Due to the sheer quantity, finding and correcting faults, known as debugging, is difficult.

The reason for this might be the feeling of joint social group membership "Holiday" or "vacation", "to start" or "to begin", "my friend's cat" or "the cat of my friend" - in our language, there are different ways of expressing the same things and concepts. But can the choice of a particular variant determine whether we prefer to cooperate with certain people rather than with others? A research team led by Theresa Matzinger from the University of Vienna investigated this and showed that people are more likely to co-operate with others if they make similar linguistic choices in a conversation.

Surgical removal of the tumour is considered the basis for curing gastric cancer. However, 40 per cent of patients who have undergone surgery suffer a relapse within two years. A research team led by MedUni Vienna has now investigated a prognostic marker that can be used to identify patients with a high risk of tumour recurrence.

In the EU project OntoTrans, coordinated by TU Wien, researchers have designed an application that contributes to the development of better materials. Here, semantic technologies play a central role. There are more than 7,000 languages in the world. However, for two people to be able to communicate with each other, they must speak the same language.

Predator-prey analogy: Novel interaction between particles enabled Using two optically trapped glass nanoparticles, researchers observed a novel collective Non-Hermitian and nonlinear dynamic driven by nonreciprocal interactions. This contribution expands traditional optical levitation with tweezer arrays by incorporating the so called non-conservative interactions.

Many decisions are being made by neural networks. But are they rational and fair? Methods to ensure this are being developed at TU Wien. Many decisions that were previously made by humans will be left to machines in the future. But can we really rely on the decisions made by artificial intelligence? In sensitive areas, people would like a guarantee that the decision is actually sensible, or at least that certain serious errors have been ruled out.

One of the first major studies on abrasion emissions from rail vehicles shows that a lot of particulate matter contaminated with heavy metals is produced especially along railway lines. In addition to exhaust emissions, abrasion emissions from tyres and brakes have become increasingly important when assessing the environmental impact of traffic.

Together, the University of Innsbruck and the spin-off AQT have integrated a quantum computer into a high-performance computing (HPC) environment for the first time in Austria. This hybrid of supercomputer and quantum computer enables the solution of complex tasks in chemistry, materials science or optimization and is already being tested by users in research and industry .