Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW)

With the advent of personalised medicine, gains in cancer survival over the long term could be improved by running smaller, faster trials with less stringent evidence criteria, a researcher told the 2011 European Multidisciplinary Cancer Congress. The introduction of targeted treatments means the traditional large-scale clinical trial is not always the most effective way of

The ability of some animals, including chameleons, octopus, and squid, to change their skin colour for camouflage, temperature control, or communication is well known. While science has been able to replicate these abilities with artificial skin, the colour changes are often only visible to the naked eye when the material is put under huge mechanical

Many fungi have antibacterial properties. Researchers at Oregon State University have discovered that one gene in a common fungus acts as a master regulator, and deleting it has opened access to a wealth of new compounds that have never before been studied – with the potential to identify new antibiotics. The finding was announced today

By Peter Boone and Simon Johnson According to Friedrich von Hayek, the development of welfare socialism after World War II undermined freedom and would lead western democracies inexorably to some form of state-run serfdom. Hayek had the sign and the destination right but was entirely wrong about the mechanism.  Unregulated finance, the ideology of unfettered

BRCK’s device keeps people connected no matter where they are on Earth. And in a reversal of globalization, it’s made in America, for the rest of the world. Flip over most any Apple product, and you’ll find the company’s famous tagline: “Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China.” It’s no doubt a point of

“MixFab:A mixed-reality environment for personal fabrication” creates a way for non-specialists to make their own 3D models and print them out. The research is to be given the Best Paper award at the world-leading ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, which takes place in Toronto in April 2014. The authors are Christian

Real Steel or Dumb Metal?   Right from the start let’s agree that the argument of humans or robots is getting close to being a dead heat in some areas. With advances in artificial intelligence and complex software, many robots are close to performing some duties better than their human counterparts. For example, NASA and

Robot-assisted surgery has a number of advantages over traditional surgery – it’s steadier, more precise, less invasive, plus the surgeon doesn’t even have to be in the same room (or continent) as the patient. One of its drawbacks, however, is the fact that surgeons can’t feel any of the resistance put up by the patients’

A special structure for storing energy known as a supercapacitor has been constructed in a plant for the first time. The plant, a rose, can be charged and discharged hundreds of times. This breakthrough is the result of research at the Laboratory of Organic Electronics at Linköping University. In November 2015, the research group presented