Projects

Project of the week

Implant to improve therapy of brain tumours

Despite surgery and subsequent treatment with chemotherapy and radiation, the majority of patients experience recurrence of malignant brain tumours. Research groups from Sweden and Austria have shown in cells in culture that an ion pump can deliver drugs more accurately, which gives less severe adverse effects in chemotherapy. The results have been published in Advanced Materials Technologies.

Continue reading “Implant to improve therapy of brain tumours”

Project of the week

Corona Fictions – what literature can tell us about the future

The way we tell stories about crises impacts our individual and collective actions. In a newly launched basic research project Yvonne Völkl, a literary and cultural studies scholar, explores the narrative function of the coronavirus pandemic with the support of the population. Using the example of the pandemic, she investigates how literary narrative patterns influence social interaction and what they tell us about social change.

Continue reading “Corona Fictions – what literature can tell us about the future”

Science in Motion

Interview & Opinion

Why social distancing is painful

Interview: Ingrid Ladner

For those affected, loneliness is very stressful and increases the likelihood of an earlier death. A new study on the neuronal bases of isolation proves just how much of a burden loneliness can be. Psychologist and Schrödinger Fellow Livia Tomova was able to show for the first time that social isolation triggers the same feelings in the human brain as hunger. This could explain why many people in the Covid 19 pandemic are literally starved for human contact.

Continue reading “Why social distancing is painful”

Portrait

Human beings, the unpredictable element in simulations

By Margit Schwarz-Stiglbauer

The information scientist Robert Elsässer is calculating how the Covid-19 virus spreads in the population and what effect is produced by measures to contain it. In principle he agrees with the current renewed lockdown in Vienna and Lower Austria, but thinks there is also a need for more and more frequent testing in companies, more working from home and a more consistent implementation of the quarantine rules – and not only at the regional level. The biggest unknown quantity in trying to predict developments, however, is human behaviour.

Continue reading “Human beings, the unpredictable element in simulations”

On the road

On the road

Early morning in the reeds

By Katharina Mahr

The Hortobágyi National Park in Hungary was the recent venue of Katharina Mahr’s field research into the big questions of evolution. A behavioural scientist, Mahr wants to find out how the growth and reproduction of living creatures have developed over time and what the underlying mechanisms are. She expects her research object, the bearded reedling, to provide new insights.

Continue reading “Early morning in the reeds”