University of Vienna

About: University of Vienna is a education organization based out in Vienna, Austria. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 44686 authors who have published 95840 publications receiving 2907492 citations.

Two kinds of lithotrophs missing in nature.

Abstract: Two groups of lithotrophic bacteria, the existence of which may be expected on evolutionary and thermodynamical grounds, have not yet been detected: (A) photosynthetic, anaerobic, ammonia bacteria, analogous to coloured sulphur bacteria, and (B) chemosynthetic bacteria that oxidize ammonia to nitrogen with O2 or nitrate as oxidant.

Effect of high-intensity focused ultrasound on human prostate cancer in vivo.

Abstract: Transrectal high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) was recently established as a highly effective means of inducing contact and irradiation-free intraprostatic coagulative necrosis. This technique, therefore, appears potentially useful for treating localized prostate cancer (PC). To evaluate this issue, a total of 29 human prostates with localized cancer was subjected to HIFU treatment in vivo before radical retropubic prostatectomy. HIFU therapy was performed with the use of HIFU transducers with focal lengths of 3.0 cm (n = 3), 3.5 cm (n = 19), and 4.0 cm (n = 7), and the site intensity was varied from 1260 to 2000 W/cm2. The extent of intraprostatic necrosis was determined by planimetrical analysis of whole mount prostatic sections. Transrectal HIFU consistently induced sharply delineated intraprostatic coagulative necrosis within the target area, whereas alterations of perioprostatic structures were never observed. The cross-sectional area of necrosis increased from 1.1 +/- 0.7 cm2 (SD; n = 3; 3.0-cm focal length; 1428 W/cm2) to 1.2 +/- 0.7 cm2 (n = 2; 3.5-cm focal length; 1428 W/cm2), 1.8 +/- 0.17 cm2 (n = 8; 3.5-cm focal length; 1680 W/cm2), 2.8 +/- 0.32 cm2 (n = 9; 3.5-cm focal length; 2000 W/cm2) and 3.8 +/- 0.4 cm2 (n = 7; 4.0 cm focal length; 1260 W/cm2). HIFU beam transmission and the therapeutic effect were comparable in benign and malignant prostatic tissue. Interstitial thermometry (n = 6) revealed maximum intraprostatic temperatures in the focal zone up to 98.6 degrees C. Outside the focal zone and on the rectal wall, no significant temperature rises were noted. Subsequently, HIFU was applied to unilateral histologically proven T2a/T2b PC (n = 10) in an attempt to destroy all cancer before radical retropubic prostatectomy. PC was always correctly targeted. In 7 individuals, PC was partially (mean, 53%; range, 38-77%) destroyed; in the remaining 3 cases the entire tumor was ablated. Although these histological data permit no definitive conclusion on the clinical efficacy of this approach, transrectal HIFU seems to be an attractive novel minimally invasive treatment option for localized PC.

Electroweak and QCD corrections to Higgs production via vector-boson fusion at the CERN LHC

Abstract: The radiative corrections of the strong and electroweak interactions are calculated at next-to-leading order for Higgs-boson production in the weak-boson-fusion channel at hadron colliders. Specifically, the calculation includes all weak-boson fusion and quark-antiquark annihilation diagrams to Higgs-boson production in association with two hard jets, including all corresponding interferences. The results on the QCD corrections confirm that previously made approximations of neglecting s-channel diagrams and interferences are well suited for predictions of Higgs production with dedicated vector-boson fusion cuts at the LHC. The electroweak corrections, which also include real corrections from incoming photons and leading heavy Higgs-boson effects at two-loop order, are of the same size as the QCD corrections, viz. typically at the level of 5%-10% for a Higgs-boson mass up to {approx}700 GeV. In general, both types of corrections do not simply rescale differential distributions, but induce distortions at the level of 10%. The discussed corrections have been implemented in a flexible Monte Carlo event generator.

Ergodic Properties of Invariant Measures for Piecewise Monotonic Transformations

Abstract: During the last decade a lot of research has been done on onedimensional dynamics. Different kinds of invariant measures for certain classes of piecewise monotonic transformations have been considered. In most of these cases the Perron-Frobenius-operator plays an important role. In this paper we try to unify these different examples, which are discussed in detail below. First we give a discription of the results proved in this paper.

Molecularly imprinted polymer nanoparticles in chemical sensing – Synthesis, characterisation and application

Abstract: During the last years, artificial nanostructured materials attracted increasing scientific interest due to some remarkable properties such as high surface-to-volume ratio, low cost and straightforward preparation and handling. Among others, such materials show high potential for highly selective recognition in different fields of Analytical Chemistry, such as chemical sensor design. Carrying forward the approach of molecular imprinting from bulk/thin film to nanoparticles is one possible way to actually achieve that goal. Recent years have hence seen substantial increase in the number of MIP nanoparticle publications. This review gives a detailed overview of established precipitation and microemulsion methods for synthesising molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) nanoparticles (NPs) as well as giving an outlook on improving those by “living” polymerisation techniques to achieve controlled geometry and thickness as well as post-synthesis functionalisation. Besides these techniques, novel solid-phase imprinting approaches have recently emerged that show high potential for automatically synthesising MIP NP and transferring the protocols to large-scale production at reduced costs. In terms of sensor application, MIP NPs lead to appreciable sensitivity and selectivity. Moreover, nano-composite materials can be tailored to include additional functionality such as magnetic and semi-conductive cores. Within optical sensors, implementation of quantum dots (QDs) as optosensing material with a MIP shell even allows for fluorescence detection of non-optically active analytes. Sensitivity can be substantially improved by introducing Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) and Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS), which have recently been successfully combined with MIP NPs and are promising chemical and biological sensors. Finally, MIP NPs have also proven very useful as plastic antibodies in pseudo-immunoassays.