An interdisciplinary research team led by the Department of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine and the Comprehensive Cancer Center of MedUni Vienna and Vienna General Hospital has investigated the potential of liquid biopsies from blood and cerebrospinal fluid for the diagnosis and monitoring of brain tumors in children and adolescents.

What happens to the human body during prolonged bed rest or weightlessness? The European Space Agency (ESA) is conducting so-called "bed rest studies" to investigate whether and what changes occur when the body is at rest for an extended period of time. These bed rest studies are carried out at various locations throughout Europe and offer researchers from a wide range of disciplines the opportunity to investigate these unusual circumstances in healthy test subjects.

New insights into our linguistic roots via ancient DNA analysis Where lies the origin of the Indo-European language family? Ron Pinhasi and his team in the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Vienna contribute a new piece to this puzzle in collaboration with David Reich's ancient DNA laboratory at Harvard University.

Quantum machine models how "false vacuum" decays into "dancing" cosmic bubbles Our Universe might be trapped in a metastable state, called a false vacuum, awaiting a cosmic transition to a more stable true vacuum. Physicists from the University of Leeds, Forschungszentrum Jülich, and the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) have modeled this transition, demonstrating how bubbles of true vacuum form and interact.

Painted lady butterflies are world travelers. The ones we encounter in Europe fly from Africa to Sweden, ultimately returning to areas north and south of the Sahara. But what determines whether some butterflies travel long distances while others travel short distances? A group of scientists, including from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), shows that the different migration strategies are shaped by environmental conditions rather than being encoded in the butterfly's DNA.

An international team of researchers, led by physicists from the University of Vienna, has achieved a breakthrough in data processing by employing an "inverse-design" approach. This method allows algorithms to configure a system based on desired functions, bypassing manual design and complex simulations.

Breakthrough in materials research: an alloy of several metals has been developed that shows practically no thermal expansion over an extremely large temperature interval. Most metals expand when their temperature rises. The Eiffel Tower, for example, is around 10 to 15 centimetres taller in summer than in winter due to its thermal expansion.

A research team from the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna is breaking new ground in precision medicine: it has developed an innovative method for analyzing metabolic profiles from finger sweat. The results of a pilot study just published in the renowned EPMA Journal show that this non-invasive method can be used in breast cancer patients to obtain information about the course of the disease, the effects of therapy and individual lifestyle habits.

Even positive effects do not compensate for the complex dangers of climate change doi.org/10.3390/biology14020142 Sharks and rays have populated the world's oceans for around 450 million years, but more than a third of the species living today are severely threatened by overfishing and the loss of their habitat.

Is there a contradiction between quantum theory and thermodynamics? On the surface, yes - but at TU Wien, researchers have now shown how the two fit together perfectly. It is one of the most important laws of nature that we know: The famous second law of thermodynamics says that the world gets more and more disordered, when random chance is at play.

Basal cell carcinomas, the most common form of skin cancer, occur in chronically sun-exposed areas such as the face. Locally advanced tumours in particular can be difficult to treat surgically. A research team from MedUni Vienna and University Hospital Vienna has now investigated the effectiveness of a new type of therapy and achieved promising results: The active substance TVEC led to a reduction in the size of the basal cell carcinoma in all study participants, which not only improved surgical removal, but also led to a complete regression of the tumour in some of the patients.

Nerve stimulation can help with various diseases. However, this only works well if the body's own rhythms are taken into account, says a study by TU Wien (Vienna). It doesn't always have to be medication. Some health problems, from chronic pain and inflammation to neurological diseases, can also be treated by nerve stimulation, for example with the help of electrodes that are attached to the ear and activate the vagus nerve.

A research collaboration between the University of Cambridge and semiconductor physicists at the JKU has achieved a breakthrough in the field of quantum networks. This allows quantum information to be cached for longer - an essential prerequisite for the development of quantum networks for quantum communication and quantum computers.

Various methods are used to correct errors in quantum computers. Not all'operations can be implemented equally well with different correction codes. Therefore, a research team from the University of Innsbruck, together with a team from RWTH Aachen and Forschungszentrum Jülich, has developed a method and implemented it experimentally for the first time, with which a quantum computer can switch back and forth between two correction codes and thus perform all computing operations protected against errors.

In a paper recently published in the leading journal "The Lancet Digital Health", a scientific team led by Stanisa Raspopovic from MedUni Vienna looks at the progress and challenges in the research and development of brain implants. New achievements in the field of this technology are seen as a source of hope for many patients with neurological disorders and have been making headlines recently.

A research team at the Medical University of Vienna led by Maria Sibilia has investigated a new combination therapy against cancer. This therapy employs systemic administration of the tissue hormone interferon-I combined with local application of Imiquimod. This combination showed promising results in topically accessible tumors like melanoma and breast cancer models: The therapy led to the death of tumor cells at the treated sites and simultaneously activated the adaptive immune system to fight even distant metastases.

Researchers at MedUni Vienna have joined forces with the Viennese start-up TAmiRNA to develop a test that aims to improve the safety of liver surgery. The invention by Alice Assinger and Patrick Starlinger is based on the precise analysis of circulating microRNAs and is now ready for the market. Postoperative liver failure remains the most common cause of death after liver resection.

Researchers at CeMM and the Medical University of Vienna have developed an innovative microscopy-based approach that could predict the best approved drug to treat individual rheumatoid arthritis patients using samples of their blood. Published in the Lancet group journal EBioMedicine the study demonstrates the feasibility of precision medicine to significantly enhance treatments for rheumatoid arthritis and likely other autoimmune diseases.

A kind of 'umbilical cord' between different quantum states can be found in some materials. Researchers at TU Wien have now shown that this 'umbilical cord' is generic to many materials. It is a basic principle of quantum theory: sometimes certain physical quantities can only assume very specific values; all the values in between are simply not permitted by physics.

How will the future of our soils - and thus also water availability - be shaped by the effects of impending climate change? An international study led by Jesse Radolinski and Michael Bahn from the Department of Ecology at the University of Innsbruck shows how drought, warming and increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations are changing existing hydrological processes in soils and challenging the resilience of ecosystems.