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The way we secure digital transactions could soon change.

From the Statue of Liberty in New York to the Tower of London or the Sydney Opera House - sea-level rise not only affects settlement areas for large parts of the world population but also numerous sites of the UNESCO World Heritage.

Austrian researchers have found that jetlag has severe effects on red blood cells, possibly explaining the high incidence of heart disease seen in shift workers.

Information in the Internet is ephemeral; links often don't work after several years. Computer scientists from Innsbruck are now working on a solution to that problem for linked data.

A team of quantum physicists in Innsbruck led by Christian Roos and Cornelius Hempel have realised an extremely sensitive method for the spectroscopy of atomic and molecular atoms. This technique can be used to closely study a number of particles. The scientists have published their findings Photonics.

Signaling cascades communicate and integrate extracellular signaling cues spatially and temporally via formation of defined protein-protein interactions. Scientists from the Institute of Biochemistry in Innsbruck discovered a unique mechanism which is based on binary protein-protein interactions and which explains cross talk between critically regulated signaling cascades.

Massive economic losses are suffered by farmers and the seed trade alike due to poor seed quality.

Each year massive economic losses are suffered by farmers and the seed trade alike due to poor seed quality.

Over 60 scientific projects were carried out within the framework of the first Youth Olympic Winter Games, which took place in January 2012. They were coordinated in a special "Laboratory" at the Department for Sport Science of the University of Innsbruck. The Innsbruck scientists have recently published the most important results in the renowned British Journal of Sports Medicine.

The visual cortex in the human brain interprets visual input. A computer scientist from the University of Innsbruck has managed to simulate the workings of the visual cortex with high accuracy in a computational model. Photo: Die Verarbeitung optischer Signale im visuellen Cortex hat ein Innsbrucker Wissenschaftler als Modell nachgebaut.

Anthropogenic climate change leads to melting glaciers and rising sea level. Between 1902 and 2009, melting glaciers contributed 11 cm to sea level rise.

Cars that consciously interact with their environment and help to prevent accidents and traffic jams have been envisioned since a long time.

Up until now there was nothing to indicate the existence of bras with clearly visible cups before the 19th century. Textiles found in a castle in Eastern Tyrol now prove that there already was clothing similar to modern bras in the 15th century - a discovery made by Beatrix Nutz, an archeologist from the University of Innsbruck.

Spain will win the UEFA European Football Championship with a probability of 25.8 per cent, defeating Germany in the final.

In quantum physics physical processes in condensed matter and other many-body systems can often be described with quasiparticles. In Innsbruck, for the first time Rudolf Grimm's team of physicists has succeeded in experimentally realizing a new quasiparticle - a repulsive polaron - in an ultracold quantum gas.

While several building blocks for a quantum computer have already been successfully tested in the laboratory, a network requires one additonal component: a reliable interface between computers and information channels. In the current issue of the journal Nature, physicists at the University of Innsbruck report the construction of an efficient and tunable interface for quantum networks.

For ten years ESA's Envisat satellite observed the rapid retreat of one of Antarctica's ice shelves due to climate warming. Helmut Rott, Professor at the Institute of Meteorology and Geophysics, follows this development since the start of the mission. One of the satellite's first observations following its launch on 1 March 2002 was the break-up of a main section of the Larsen B ice shelf in Antarctica - when 3200 sq km of ice disintegrated within a few days due to mechanical instabilities of the ice masses triggered by climate warming.

Innsbruck scientists tested a new chemical modification of RNA molecules successfully for the first time. The results of the close cooperation of two research groups of the Centre for Molecular Biosciences (CMBI) have been published in the journal ACS Chemical Biology and one of their photos has been used as the cover picture of the current issue.

A new study shows that land-cover changes, in particular deforestation, in the vicinity of glaciers do not have an impact on glacier loss. However, the study, in which Innsbruck climate researcher were directly involved, also shows that deforestation decreases precipitation in mid elevation zones, which affects the quality of life of the population living in the surrounding areas.

Interventions to promote women have continuously been criticized as ineffective and inhibiting performance.

Extracellular cues are recognized by G-protein-coupled receptors which transmit the signal via trimeric G proteins to their cellular effectors. Dr. Eduard Stefan from the Institute of Biochemistry showed in cooperation with international research teams a novel and conserved mechanism how cells adapt to environmental changes.

The project "Young Uni" at the University of Innsbruck was launched in September 2001 - the first of its kind in German speaking countries.

Theoretical physicists have formulated a new concept to engineer exotic, so-called topological states of matter in quantum mechanical many-body systems. They linked concepts of quantum optics and condensed matter physics and show a direction to build a quantum computer which is immune against perturbations.

The physicists of the University of Innsbruck and the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) in Innsbruck have come considerably closer to their goal to investigate complex phenomena in a model system: They have realized a digital, and therefore, universal quantum simulator in their laboratory, which can, in principle, simulate any physical system efficiently.

Remote lakes are subject to the deposition of atmospheric pollutants, mineral dust, and organic matter. In a recent study published in Nature , an international group of limnologists including Prof. Ruben Sommaruga from the Institute of Ecology at the University of Innsbruck have uncovered the effect of dust on the pool of dissolved organic matter of remote alpine lakes.

A team of geologists of the University of Innsbruck the University of Leeds (UK) discovered the oldest radiometrically dated dripstones currently known from the European Alps.

Chemists from Innsbruck and New York managed to monitor single-molecule switching in action. In an article in "Nature Chemical Biology" they report their findings: The secret of bacterial riboswitches lies in their dynamics. These findings are also relevant in antibiotics research. Photo: Ronald Micura and Andrea Haller from the Institute for Organic Chemistry and the Center for Molecular Biosciences (CMBI) of the University of Innsbruck.

In one of his songs Bob Dylan asks "How many years can a mountain exist before it is washed to the sea?", and thus poses an intriguing geological question for which an accurate answer is not easily provided.

The quake in Japan released one million times more energy than the strongest earthquakes known from the Inn valley. Medieval earthquakes have caused remarkable damage in the Inn valley though. A research group at the Institute for Geology and Palaeontology under supervision of Prof. Rainer Brandner investigates geological reasons, in cooperation with the Seismological Survey of Austria.

Scientists have reached a milestone in the exploration of quantum gas mixtures. The group led by Rudolf Grimm has succeeded in producing controlled strong interactions between two fermionic elements. This model system not only promises to provide new insights into solid-state physics but also shows intriguing analogies to the primordial substance right after the Big Bang.

Experimental physicists have put a lot of effort in isolating sensitive measurements from the disruptive influences of the environment. In an international first, Innsbruck quantum physicists have realized a toolbox of elementary building blocks for an open-system quantum simulator, where a controlled coupling to an environment is used in a beneficial way.

The Austrian research group led by physicist Rainer Blatt suggests a fundamentally novel architecture for quantum computation. They have experimentally demonstrated quantum antennae, which enable the exchange of quantum information between two separate memory cells located on a computer chip. This offers new opportunities to build practical quantum computers.

Annual-resolved European summer climate has, for the first time ever, been reconstructed over the past 2,500 years. Tree rings reveal possible links between past climate variability and changes in human history. Climate change coincided with periods of socioeconomic, cultural and political turmoil associated with the Barbarian Migrations, the Black Death and Thirty Years' War.

A team of chemists headed by Thomas Loerting from the University of Innsbruck and Hinrich Grothe from the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) have prepared and isolated gas-phase carbonic acid and have succeeded in characterizing the gas-phase molecules by using infrared spectroscopy.

To find the causes for cancer, biochemists and developmental biologists at the University of Innsbruck retraced the function of an important human cancer gene 600 million years back in time. For the first time, they have identified the oncogene myc in a fresh water polyp and they have shown that this oncogene has similar biochemical functions in ancestral metazoan and in humans.

Ball lightnings are circular light phenomena occurring during thunderstorms and there are a large class of reports by eyewitnesses having experienced such events. Now physicists at the University of Innsbruck have calculated that the magnetic field of long lightning strokes may produce the image of luminous shapes, also known as phosphenes, in the brain.