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Ravens spontaneously solve a task that requires both coordination and cooperation - an ability that so far only a handful of species like chimpanzees and elephants have proved to master. A team of researchers led by Thomas Bugnyar of the Department of Cognitive Biology at the University of Vienna showed this for the ravens using an experimental set-up.

The ability to feel the pain of others is based on neurobiological processes which underlie pain experience in oneself. Using innovative methods, an international research team headed by psychologist Claus Lamm from the University of Vienna could show that a reduction of self-experienced pain leads to a reduction in empathy for pain in others as well.

If there is a certain pool of choices (eg. A, B and C) and we can exclude A and B, we can easily deduce that C must be the appropriate choice. The ability of animals to be able to solve this sort of logical inference has been the focus of many studies in recent comparative cognitive research. However, only few managed to establish a comparatively applicable task.

Scientists from the Vaziri lab at the Vienna Biocenter (Austria), together with colleagues at the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics at the University of Chicago, have developed a method using infrared spectroscopy and atomistic modeling that would allow to better understand the mechanism behind the extreme ion selectivity and transport properties in ion channels.

Archaea belong together with Bacteria to the first organisms that emerged on Earth. These microorganisms existed hundreds of millions of years before the more complex cell structures of Eukaryotes developed that gave rise to macroscopic life, i.e. plants and animals. An international team of researchers from Uppsala (Sweden), Bergen (Norway) and Vienna (Austria), has found a novel group of Archaea in deep ocean sediments, who are the closest direct relatives of the eukaryotic lineage.

In humans, the size of the neonatal skull is large relative to the dimensions of the birth canal in the female pelvis. This "obstetric dilemma" is the reason why childbirth is slower and more difficult in humans than in most other primates. Barbara Fischer and Philipp Mitteroecker from the Centre of Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis, University of Oslo, and the Department of Theoretical Biology, University Vienna, identified adaptations in the morphology of the human body, which were unknown so far, and which contribute to ameliorate this obstetric dilemma.

Early in our embryogenesis, the two main body axes (head-tail and back-to-belly axis) are established to provide positional cues through a coordinate system for the differentiating cells. In a new publication in the journal Cell Reports the team of developmental biologist Ulrich Technau from the University of Vienna has now found evidence for an ancient origin of the back-to-belly axis in a sea anemone.

So far any trace was missing of those modern humans (Homo sapiens) who took their way from Africa to the North, arriving in Europe around 45,000 years ago and replacing all other forms of hominins. Now a finding from the Manot-Cave in northern Israel is closing this gap in our knowledge about our own origin.

The songs of the hermit thrush, a common North American songbird, follow principles found in much human music - namely the harmonic series. Researchers from the University of Vienna, Austria, the Cornish College of the Arts, USA, and the Philipps University of Marburg, Germany, are the first to demonstrate note selection from the harmonic series in a non-human animal using rigorous analytical methods.

A group of ravens is sometimes called a conspiracy. Mythology and folklore have attributed many supernatural features to these large black birds. During the last decades, studies on the cognitive abilities of ravens have indeed revealed that they are exceptionally intelligent. Ravens live in complex social groups and they can gain power in these groups by building social bonds that function as alliances.

Meiosis is not like another: Gabriela Cabral and Peter Schlögelhofer at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories (MFPL) of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna dived into the process of meiosis in specific plant species and revealed that these plants display an inversion of the standard meiotic phases.

Stroma cells are derived from connective tissue and may critically influence tumour growth. This knowledge is not new. However, bioanalyst Christopher Gerner and an interdisciplinary team from the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna have developed a novel methodology for investigation.

The research team of Annette Rompel from the Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, University of Vienna explore the mechanisms behind the "browning reaction" during the spoilage of mushrooms. The researchers were able to demonstrate that the enzyme responsible is already formed prior to fungal spoiling.

Nitrite-oxidizing bacteria are key players in the natural nitrogen cycle on Earth and in biological wastewater treatment plants. For decades, these specialist bacteria were thought to depend on nitrite as their source of energy. An international team of scientists led by Holger Daims, a microbiologist at the University of Vienna, has now shown that nitrite-oxidizing bacteria can use hydrogen as an alternative source of energy.

Researchers from the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI), the Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology (VCQ), and the University of Vienna have developed a fundamentally new quantum imaging technique with strikingly counterintuitive features. For the first time, an image has been obtained without ever detecting the light that was used to illuminate the imaged object, while the light revealing the image never touches the imaged object.

Ion channels are involved in many physiological and pathophysiological processes throughout the human body. A young team of researchers led by pharmacologist Anna Stary-Weinzinger from the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Vienna investigated how ion flux through a voltage gated sodium ion channel works in detail.

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).

Interactions between flowering plants and their pollinators include some of the most elaborate and intriguing relationships known to science. Agnes Dellinger from the Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research of the University of Vienna and her co-authors have studied the pollination biology of a group of small trees or shrubs that occur in mountainous Central and South American rainforests.

Men born in November, December or January are more likely of being left-handed than during the rest of the year. While the genetic bases of handedness are still under debate, scientists at the Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, obtained indirect evidence of a hormonal mechanism promoting left-handedness among men.

Researchers at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories (MFPL) of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna made a breakthrough for the Platynereis model system, as they describe the first method for generating specific and inheritable mutations in the species. The method, in combination with other tools, now places this marine bristle worm in an excellent position to advance research at the frontiers of neurobiology, chronobiology, evolutionary developmental biology and marine biology.