Fear of COVID-19: Psychological, Not Environmental Factors Are Important
During pandemics, protective behaviors need to be motivated by effective communication. A critical factor in understanding a population’s response to such a threat is the…
University of Vienna
New Species of Ancient Shark Discovered
In a new study, an international team led by Sebastian Stumpf from the University of Vienna describes a fossil skeleton of an ancient shark, which…
Microbial Life of a Pure Martian Design
Experimental microbially assisted chemolithotrophy provides an opportunity to trace the putative bioalteration processes of the Martian crust. A study on the Noachian Martian breccia Northwest…
Playing Games With Quantum Interference to Solve a Mysterious Physics Puzzle
As Richard Feynman famously put it, “the double slit experiment is absolutely impossible to explain in any classical way and has in it the heart…
Encrypted Quantum Computing: When Ignorance Is Wanted
Quantum technologies for computers open up new concepts of preserving the privacy of input and output data of a computation. Scientists from the University of…
Surprising Study Finds Sweet Taste Can Reduce Appetite
The sweet taste of sugar, energy intake and the regulatory process of hunger and satiety. The sweet taste of sugar is very popular worldwide. In…
Native Biodiversity Collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean – Most Native Species Are Going Locally Extinct
Most native species are going locally extinct, while introduced tropical species thrive. The coastline of Israel is one of the warmest areas in the Mediterranean…
Extraordinary Diversity: Unusual Sex Chromosomes of Platypus, Emu and Duck
Three papers unveil the extraordinary diversity of animal sex chromosomes. The sex chromosomes genetically define the developmental fate of an embryo to become a male…
Finding Lost Star Siblings: Star Clusters Are Only the Tip of the Iceberg
“Clusters form big families of stars that can stay together for large parts of their lifetime. Today, we know of roughly a few thousand star…
From the Big Bang to the Present: Gravity Is Why the Universe Is So Uniform
The temporal evolution of the universe, from the Big Bang to the present, is described by Einstein’s field equations of general relativity. However, there are…
New Fundamental Limits Beyond the Standard Laws of Thermodynamics Found in Maxwell’s Demon Experiment
Researchers at the Universities Vienna and Stuttgart have investigated a version of Maxwell’s demon embodied by a delayed feedback force acting on a levitated microparticle….
Migrations Reconstructed Through Ancient DNA: Each Mediterranean Island Has Its Own Genetic Pattern
The Mediterranean Sea has been a major route for maritime migrations as well as frequent trade and invasions during prehistory, yet the genetic history of…
A Quantum of Solid – New Macroscopic Quantum States
It is well known that quantum properties of individual atoms can be controlled and manipulated by laser light. Even large clouds of hundreds of millions…
Has Physics Ever Been Deterministic? New Insights on the Relationship Between Classical and Quantum Physics
Researchers from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the University of Vienna and the University of Geneva, have proposed a new interpretation of classical physics without…
Biologists Discover That Flower Shapes Evolve to Adapt to Their Pollinators
Modularity Facilitates Rapid Adaptation of Single Floral Organs to Different Pollinators The first flowering plants originated more than 140 million years ago in the early…
The Fast Dance of Electron Spins – Spin-Flip Within Ten Femtoseconds
Chemists investigate the interactions of metal complexes and light. When a molecule is hit by light, in many cases a so-called “photoinduced” reaction is initiated….
‘An Experiment of Nature’ – Fossil Fish Gives New Insights Into Evolution After a Mass Extinction
An international research team led by Giuseppe Marramà from the Institute of Paleontology of the University of Vienna discovered a new and well-preserved fossil stingray…
Quantum Superposition Record: 2000 Atoms in Two Places at Once
The quantum superposition principle has been tested on a scale as never before in a new study by scientists at the University of Vienna in…