news 2024

When pathogens invade the body, the immune system must react immediately to prevent or contain an infection. But how do our defence cells stay ready when no attacker is in sight? Scientists from Vienna have found a surprising explanation: They are constantly stimulated by healthy tissue. This keeps them active and ready to respond to pathogens.

As a malignant disease of the liver cells, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the main causes of cancer-related deaths. While the treatment options for this aggressive type of cancer remain limited, the incidence is increasing. A research team led by Latifa Bakiri and Erwin Wagner from MedUni Vienna's Clinical Institute for Laboratory Medicine has now described a molecular signalling pathway that plays a key role in the development of liver cancer, thereby identifying a potential new starting point for the development of therapeutic treatments.

An international collaboration of researchers, led by Philip Walther at University of Vienna, have achieved a significant breakthrough in quantum technology, with the successful demonstration of quantum interference among several single photons using a novel resource-efficient platform. The work published in the prestigious journal Science Advances represents a notable advancement in optical quantum computing that paves the way for more scalable quantum technologies.

In the COSINUS research project, an international team involving TU Wien and the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) is searching for evidence of dark matter. The large-scale experiment is now starting in Italy . How can we understand dark matter? It probably makes up around 85% of the mass in the universe, but what it is and what it consists of is still one of the biggest and most difficult questions in modern physics.

As desertification spreads worldwide, scientists discover how desert microbes endure harsh drought periods Prolonged droughts followed by sudden bursts of rainfall - how do desert soil bacteria manage to survive such harsh conditions? This long-debated question has now been answered by an ERC project led by microbiologist Dagmar Woebken from the Centre for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science (CeMESS) at the University of Vienna.

GABA A receptors play a central role in the development of epilepsy and developmental disorders, with nine out of 19 GABA A receptor genes already associated with genetic diseases. Now, as part of an international study led by Martin Krenn from MedUni Vienna's Department of Neurology, GABRA4 has been identified as a new disease gene in four cases.

Flowering plant-type leaf veins died out and re-evolved several times in the course of the Earth's history According to a research team led by palaeontologists from the University of Vienna, the net-like leaf veining typical for today's flowering plants developed much earlier than previously thought, but died out again several times.

Researchers at TU Graz were successful with three different side-channel attacks on graphics cards via the WebGPU browser interface. The attacks were fast enough to succeed during normal surfing behaviour. Modern websites place ever greater demands on the computing power of computers. For this reason, web browsers have also had access to the computing capacities of the graphics card (Graphics Processing Unit or GPU) in addition to the CPU of a computer for a number of years.

Astrophysicists were able to quantify the mass loss of stars via their stellar winds An international research team led by a researcher from the University of Vienna has for the first time directly detected stellar winds from three Sun-like stars by recording the X-ray emission from their astrospheres, and placed constraints on the mass loss rate of the stars via their stellar winds.

The laser-based technology developed at TU Graz enables the continual real-time analysis of air pollutants and their interaction with other gases and sunlight. Sunlight has a major influence on chemical processes. Its high-energy UV radiation in particular is strongly absorbed by all materials and triggers photochemical reactions of the substances present in the air.

In a study recently published in the scientific journal PNAS, a research team led by MedUni Vienna has presented results that show a new way for drug development for post-traumatic stress disorder, alongside other indications. Although around four per cent of the population suffer from this mental illness, only symptomatic therapies are currently available.

At the Department of Cardiac Surgery at University Hospital Vienna and MedUni Vienna, an innovative operation on the tricuspid valve, the inlet valve of the right ventricle, was performed for the first time in Austria, in which neither the sternum had to be opened nor the heart stopped.

Progress in biomedical imaging with PyrAt compounds Fluorescent molecules enable the visualization of tissue and cells and are therefore indispensable in medicine and pharmacy. A team led by Nuno Maulide and Leticia González from the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Vienna and Harald Sitte from MedUni Vienna has developed a series of novel fluorescent molecules.

A MedUni Vienna study team led by geneticist Markus Hengstschläger has used a stem cell model to model the earliest stages of embryonic development and to characterize the membrane that surrounds the embryo, conferring shape and stability. This membrane is responsible for the specification and organization of the embryo's cells and allows it to grow in a controlled manner.

April 5, 2024 New research shows: key molecules within nerve cells persist throughout life Most human nerve cells last a lifetime without renewal. A trait echoed within the cells' components, some enduring as long as the organism itself. New research by Martin Hetzer, molecular biologist and president of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), and colleagues discovered RNA, a typical transient molecule, in the nerve cells of mice that remain stable for their entire lives.

April 4, 2024 Pressure changes and mechanical forces trigger wound healing in plants Plants are very robust and survive harsh environments, owing in part to their remarkably efficient wound-healing capacity. For over a century, scientists aimed to understand it in more detail. A new collaborative study at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) now shows that the process is quite straightforward, revolving around pressure and forces.

Researchers have discovered how sloshing movements can be actively suppressed during the highly dynamic transportation of liquids . In highly automated industrial processes, machines, materials and goods are often moved very quickly. It is important that these movements are carried out precisely and safely.

An international research team is attracting the attention of experts in the field with computational results on the behavior of ring polymers under shear forces: Reyhaneh Farimani, University of Vienna, and her colleagues showed that for the simplest case of connected ring pairs, the type of linkage - chemically bonded vs.

The Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic Fever virus (CCHFV), first described in 1944, is also spreading rapidly in Europe due to global warming and is included in the WHO list of infectious agents with epidemic or pandemic potential as a top priority. There are currently no therapeutic or preventative measures available against the disease, which is mainly transmitted by ticks and is fatal in 40 per cent of cases.

In a recently published research paper, led by Marko Roblek from MedUni Vienna's Center for Physiology and Pharmacology, the function of a specific protein (SLC MFSD1) as a dipeptide transporter has been described for the first time. Dysregulation of MFSD1 is associated with liver disease, lymphocyte formation disorders and tumor metastasis, making these proteins highly relevant clinically.