Recent releases

A silvery fish.

Ocean warming reduced the body sizes of fishes in the "twilight zone" in past interglacial

Smaller mesopelagic fishes to be expected with climate warming

17.01.2023 | [weiter]

A hand is holding a coffee cup into which milk foam is being poured.

"Can you make me a coffee?"

Length of speech pauses signals speakers' willingness to do others a favour

16.01.2023 | [weiter]

Abb. 1: Chlamydiae, known as bacterial pathogens of humans, originally evolved in single-celled microorganisms long before gaining the ability to infect humans. The image shows soil amoeba (labeled in green) and their chlamydial symbionts (labeled in orange).

Chlamydiae expand our view on how intracellular bacteria evolve

Despite being intracellular symbionts, some chlamydiae could gain important genes through gene transfer from other bacteria.

10.01.2023 | [weiter]

A plant is stuck in a liquid-filled jar. There are also black balls floating in it.

From the road to the plate: lettuce takes up toxic additives from tyre wear

Chemicals from tyre wear could get into our vegetables via sewage sludge and waste water

02.01.2023 | [weiter]

Illustration of an Asgard archaeon. Under water, a roundish structure with several worm-like appendages. In some places the cell membrane (blue) is not drawn, so that the inside becomes visible: granular material connected with fine rods (orange). In the background, some bean-shaped structures (bacteria) and more Asgard archaea are blurred.

Shedding light on the origin of complex life forms

Researchers at the University of Vienna and ETH Zurich cultivate "missing link" microorganism

21.12.2022 | [weiter]

Fig. 1: Some adult individuals watch over the newly-hatched Europasaurus chicks which are leaving the nest to join their herd. Commissioned artwork by Davide Bonadonna.

What the inner ear of Europasaurus reveals about its life

A long-necked dinosaur from northern Germany was precocial

20.12.2022 | [weiter]

Tired woman

Long COVID: New evidence for cause of fatigue syndrome

Not excessive inflammatory reaction, but anti-inflammatory substances as triggers

15.12.2022 | [weiter]

Fig. 1: Summary of atmospheric transport from the Tropical Pacific Ocean. Solid arrows show an increase in mass transport during El Niño; dashed arrows a decrease. Blue arrows show the transport of relatively moist air to anomalously moist local conditions (marked with blue shading), while brown arrows show transport of dry air to anomalously dry local conditions (brown shading). Red circles show transport of warm air aloft that favors stable conditions. Orange shading shows transport of anomalously greater amount of heat from the Pacific Ocean to the Tropical Atlantic. Copyright: Baier et al. 2022, Geophysical Research Letters. CC BY 4.0

Transport of air masses in connection with "El Niño" decoded

Viennese meteorologists: Transport of air mass from the Pacific Ocean explains weather conditions associated with El Niño in North America, South America and Australia

06.12.2022 | [weiter]