Vienna University of Technology

About: Vienna University of Technology is a education organization based out in Vienna, Austria. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Laser & Context (language use). The organization has 16723 authors who have published 49341 publications receiving 1302168 citations.

Fungal chitinases: diversity, mechanistic properties and biotechnological potential

Abstract: Chitin derivatives, chitosan and substituted chito-oligosaccharides have a wide spectrum of applications ranging from medicine to cosmetics and dietary supplements. With advancing knowledge about the substrate-binding properties of chitinases, enzyme-based production of these biotechnologically relevant sugars from biological resources is becoming increasingly interesting. Fungi have high numbers of glycoside hydrolase family 18 chitinases with different substrate-binding site architectures. As presented in this review, the large diversity of fungal chitinases is an interesting starting point for protein engineering. In this review, recent data about the architecture of the substrate-binding clefts of fungal chitinases, in connection with their hydrolytic and transglycolytic abilities, and the development of chitinase inhibitors are summarized. Furthermore, the biological functions of chitinases, chitin and chitosan utilization by fungi, and the effects of these aspects on biotechnological applications, including protein overexpression and autolysis during industrial processes, are discussed in this review.

A review of defect structure and chemistry in ceria and its solid solutions

Abstract: Ceria and its solid solutions play a vital role in several industrial processes and devices. These include solar energy-to-fuel conversion, solid oxide fuel and electrolyzer cells, memristors, chemical looping combustion, automotive 3-way catalysts, catalytic surface coatings, supercapacitors and recently, electrostrictive devices. An attractive feature of ceria is the possibility of tuning defect-chemistry to increase the effectiveness of the materials in application areas. Years of study have revealed many features of the long-range, macroscopic characteristics of ceria and its derivatives. In this review we focus on an area of ceria defect chemistry which has received comparatively little attention - defect-induced local distortions and short-range associates. These features are non-periodic in nature and hence not readily detected by conventional X-ray powder diffraction. We compile the relevant literature data obtained by thermodynamic analysis, Raman spectroscopy, and X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) spectroscopy. Each of these techniques provides insight into material behavior without reliance on long-range periodic symmetry. From thermodynamic analyses, association of defects is inferred. From XAFS, an element-specific probe, local structure around selected atomic species is obtained, whereas from Raman spectroscopy, local symmetry breaking and vibrational changes in bonding patterns is detected. We note that, for undoped ceria and its solid solutions, the relationship between short range order and cation-oxygen-vacancy coordination remains a subject of active debate. Beyond collating the sometimes contradictory data in the literature, we strengthen this review by reporting new spectroscopy results and analysis. We contribute to this debate by introducing additional data and analysis, with the expectation that increasing our fundamental understanding of this relationship will lead to an ability to predict and tailor the defect-chemistry of ceria-based materials for practical applications.

Equilibria in heterogeneous nonmonotonic multi-context systems

Abstract: We propose a general framework for multi-context reasoning which allows us to combine arbitrary monotonic and nonmonotonic logics. Nonmonotonic bridge rules are used to specify the information flow among contexts. We investigate several notions of equilibrium representing acceptable belief states for our multi-context systems. The approach generalizes the heterogeneous monotonic multi-context systems developed by F. Giunchiglia and colleagues as well as the homogeneous nonmonotonic multi-context systems of Brewka, Serafini and Roelofsen.

Analysis of Power Consumption in Future High-Capacity Network Nodes

Abstract: Power consumption and the footprint of future network elements are expected to become the main limiting factors for scaling the current architectures and approaches to capacities of hundreds of terabits or even petabits per second. Since the underlying demand for network capacity can be satisfied only by contemporaneously increasing transmission bit rate, processing speed, and switching capacity, it unavoidably will lead to increased power consumption of network nodes. On the one hand, using optical switching fabrics could relax the limitations to some extent, but large optical buffers occupy larger areas and dissipate more power than electronic ones. On the other hand, electronic technology has made fast progress during the past decade regarding reduced feature size and decreased power consumption. It is expected that this trend will continue in the future. This paper addresses power consumption issues in future high-capacity switching and routing elements and examines different architectures based on both pure packet-switched and pure circuit-switched designs by assuming either all-electronic or all-optical implementation, which can be seen as upper and lower bounds regarding power consumption. The total power consumption of a realistic and appropriate technology for future high-performance core network nodes would probably lie somewhere between those two extreme cases. Our results show that implementation in optics is generally more power efficient; especially circuit-switched architectures have a low power consumption. When taking into account possible future developments of Si CMOS technology, even very large electronic packet routers having capacities of more than hundreds of terabits per second seem to be feasible. Because circuit switching is more power efficient and easier to implement in optics than pure packet switching, the scalability limitation due to increased power consumption could be considerably relaxed when a kind of dynamic optical circuit switching is used within the core network together with an efficient flow aggregation at edge nodes.

Aspergillus niger citric acid accumulation: do we understand this well working black box?

Abstract: This Mini-Review summarizes the current knowledge on the biochemical and physiological events leading to massive citric acid accumulation by Aspergillus niger under industrially comparable conditions, thereby particularly emphasizing the roles of glycolytic flux and its control, excretion of citric acid from the mitochondria and the cytosol, and the critical fermentation variables The potential of novel techniques for metabolic analysis and genomic approaches in understanding this fermentation is also discussed