news

Using biomedical modelling, researchers at TU Wien have developed a completely new type of wheelchair. Specially designed handles make the drive more efficient and ergonomic. Anyone who thinks that a wheelchair is a simple piece of equipment with no room for improvement is sorely mistaken. The research team for biomechanics and rehabilitation engineering at TU Wien (Vienna) has now developed a completely new drive system.

When bodies of water become polluted, it is important to find the cause as quickly and as economically as possible. To this end, TU Wien has now developed a new, DNA-based rapid testing procedure. Water contamination is one of the world's major health risks. In order to swiftly resolve the problem in the event of faecal contamination, it is vital that the cause is identified as quickly as possible: is it contamination from agriculture?

New findings are changing the way we think about superconductivity. Experiments at TU Wien (Vienna) underline the special role of immobile charge carriers, acting as a 'glue', which makes superconductivity possible. Every standard cable, every wire, every electronic device has some electric resistance.

S-PPV polymers are suitable for use in a wide range of applications, from solar cells through to medicine but, until recently, they were almost impossible to produce. Now, a new synthetic method has been patented. Organic polymers can nowadays be found in solar cells, sensors, LEDs and in many other technical applications.

[ Florian Aigner "Topological materials" are very interesting for technology, but difficult to study. TU Wien (Vienna) and the University of Science and Technology in China are presenting new approaches. Electrons are not just little spheres, bouncing through a material like a rubber ball. The laws of quantum physics tell us that electrons behave like waves.

[ Florian Aigner At the TU Wien (Vienna), neural networks have been developed which make it much easier to create photorealistic pictures of a wide variety of materials. If computer-generated images are to look realistic, different materials have to be presented differently: The metallic sheen of a coin looks quite different from the dull gloss of a wooden plate or the slightly transparent skin of a grape.

[ Florian Aigner "Frequency combs" are optimally suited for chemical sensors. A revolutionary technology developed at TU Wien (Vienna) now produces these laser frequencies in a much easier and more robust way. Most lasers have only one color. All the photons it emits have exactly the same wavelength.

Joint successes in the past increase the chances of winning. This has now been statistically proven in a variety of different team sports. What makes a team successful? This is not only a crucial question for football coaches, it plays a role in almost all areas of life, from corporate management to politics.

Advances in cellular microscopy: at TU Wien (Vienna), flies were made transparent, so that individual nerve cells, marked with fluorescent molecules, can be examined directly in the animal. The nervous system of an animal can be studied by cutting it up into thin layers - however this inevitably leads to the destruction of the cellular structures in the tissue.

Biochips have been developed at TU Wien (Vienna), on which tissue can be produced and examined. This allows supplying the tissue with different substances in a very controlled way. Cultivating human cells in the Petri dish is not a big challenge today. Producing artificial tissue, however, permeated by fine blood vessels, is a much more difficult task.

When quantum particles swirl about, they still obey universal laws. Different quantum systems can show the same behaviour - this has been demonstrated by two different experiments at TU Wien and Heidelberg University. Some things are so complicated that it is completely impossible to precisely calculate them.

Telecommunications is becoming ever more important for vehicles. At TU Wien, a new antenna concept has now been developed for cars. Driving without communication technology has now become almost unthinkable. It seems quite normal to us that navigation systems regularly update their maps and shows us the way using satellite data, or that we can make phone calls while driving.

Ethanol can make an important contribution to climate protection: at TU Wien, a diesel engine has been developed that can run on over 70% bioethanol. TU Wien has developed an engine that uses two different types of fuel simultaneously: it uses both bioethanol and diesel, which is used for ignition. A special duel-fuel combustion process has been developed for this purpose, which now enables the use of a large proportion of bioethanol in diesel engines.

A new conjecture causes excitement in the string theory community. Timm Wrase of the Vienna University of Technology has now published much-discussed results on recent new developments. In string theory, a paradigm shift could be imminent. In June, a team of string theorists from Harvard and Caltech published a conjecture which sounded revolutionary: String theory is said to be fundamentally incompatible with our current understanding of "dark energy" - but only with "dark energy" can we explain the accelerated expansion of our current universe.

Plants start growing earlier in the spring but, contrary to popular belief, this results in less CO2 absorption. Climate change influences plant growth, with springtime growth beginning earlier each year. Up to now, it was thought that this phenomenon was slowing climate change, as scientists believed this process led to more carbon being absorbed from the atmosphere for photosynthesis and more biomass production.

A new, extremely promising microscopy technique called "Nanomechanical scanning absorption microscopy" has been developed at TU Wien, in which sound is measured instead of light. Individual molecules cannot be photographed - if you wish to visualise objects that are smaller than the wavelength of light, you'll need a few special tricks up your sleeve.

In an industrial collaboration project, TU Wien has developed a medication that can alleviate or even completely eliminate the symptoms of celiac disease. It should be available as early as 2021. Celiac disease is a fairly common disease, affecting one to two percent of the European population. It is expressed as a hypersensitivity to gluten, a protein found in cereals such as wheat, barley or rye.

With the help of sophisticated experiments and calculations by the Vienna University of Technology, it has now become possible to measure the duration of the famous photoelectric effect. It was one of the crucial experiments in quantum physics: when light falls on certain materials, electrons are released from the surface.

String art is a technique for the creation of visual artwork where images emerge from a set of strings that are spanned between pins. Now, at TU Wien (Vienna) this work can be delegated to a robot - an example of a complex task that digital fabrication can solve. The basic idea of string art is simple: hooks distributed on a frame are connected by strings back and forth until they fuse to a perceptible image.

Under certain conditions, an atom can cause other atoms to emit a flash of light. At TU Wien (Vienna), this quantum effect has now been measured. The effect has been predicted theoretically decades ago - but it is very hard to provide experimental evidence for it: "Superradiance" is the phenomenon of one atom giving off energy in the form of light and causing a large number of other atoms in its immediate vicinity to emit energy as well at the same time.