The relocation of most of the OeAW institutes in Vienna to the new Postsparkasse (PSK) research site was successfully completed in 2023. Together with departments of the University of Applied Arts, the Johannes Kepler University Linz, the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft, and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), the PSK now forms a new art and science hub in the heart of the federal capital. Reason enough to celebrate this milestone. The Presiding Committee of the OeAW invited the institutes to a kick-off event in the PSK’s historic Kassenhalle. One of the highlights of the evening was a performance by the Academy’s choir, which was newly founded in 2023. OeAW President Heinz Faßmann, Vice President Ulrike Diebold, and Division President Christiane Wendehorst congratulated on the successful opening concert.
Dear reader,
The peas on the cover of our annual report are a symbol of one of the most important scientific debates we have had this year: the relaxation of the regulations imposed by the EU on the use of new genetic engineering methods. The debate on genetic engineering in Austria has been ideological and filled with fear for decades, although there is no evidence of any negative effects of new genomic methods. The issue of science skepticism is closely linked to this. I am very pleased that the research community has spoken up this time, for example with an open letter from the leading scientific institutions. The OeAW played a leading role in this. At a time when fact-based arguments are becoming less and less important in public discourse, and when, instead, emotions are used to grab attention, it is important that science works against this.
The OeAW has also provided facts in numerous other fields of research: Alexander Bogner from the Institute of Technology Assessment conducted a social science analysis of the COVID-19 period and published a highly regarded study. Our space research in Graz is successfully participating in the JUICE mission and will investigate whether there is life on Jupiter’s moons. At our life sciences institute IMBA, heart organoids have been cultivated that are more similar to the human heart than ever before. Antisemitism research was established at the Institute of Culture Studies. Historian Gerald Lamprecht now heads the research focus following the untimely death of Heidemarie Uhl. Our archaeologists used tooth enamel analysis to reveal that the highest-ranking people in early societies included women, a remarkable contribution to gender research. The Institute for Medieval Research also deciphered old finds using new technology: one of the oldest Bible manuscripts in ancient Syriac translation was made visible using UV light.
In 2023, the OeAW was also able to strengthen its cooperation with other European academies. Together with the German Leopoldina, which was a guest at our Joint Academy Day in February, we developed the Vienna Theses – guiding principles for science-based policy advice. In November, the European Academies’ Science Advisory Council (EASAC) was at the Academy for a joint event on the topic of “Transformation of energy systems”. The EASAC office has been based at the OeAW since 2024. This further strengthens our role in political consulting.
Good news, especially for the employees affected: Our largest infrastructure project is nearing completion. In 2023, the renovation of the Otto Wagner Postsparkasse and the relocation of the institutes was almost completed. A research mile has been created in the first district from Ignaz Seipel-Platz and Sonnenfelsgasse via the Collegium in Bäckerstraße to the PSK. Most of the Viennese institutes are now located in close proximity to each other on this Campus Academy and can therefore benefit from each other.
There were plenty of reasons to celebrate again this year: two Nobel Prizes went to our members Anne L’Huillier and Ferenc Krausz, glacier researcher Andrea Fischer was named Scientist of the Year, and the Innsbruck quantum physicist Francesca Ferlaino received the Grete Rehor National Award.
The FWF also awarded the first five highly endowed Clusters of Excellence in 2023 – with great success for the OeAW: Claudia Rapp, Director of the Institute for Medieval Research, heads the “EurAsian Transformations” Cluster. With the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information Innsbruck and the CeMM, the Academy is involved in a total of three clusters. OeAW Vice President Ulrike Diebold is participating in a fourth.
Finally, a look into the future: science and research must continue to intensify the fight for their position, their voice and, not least, their funding. The enemies of open society and therefore of science are gaining popularity worldwide. They provide quick and simple answers, while researchers spend longer looking for more complex explanations. It will be more important than ever for us as researchers to present our achievements, not only in the sense of showcasing groundbreaking results, but also with contributions to current issues and discourses. In this context, I would like to thank our patron Alexander Van der Bellen and Federal Minister Martin Polaschek for their shared commitment to science and research.
Heinz Fassmann
President of the Austrian Academy of Sciences
Vienna, May 2024
With gene editing, plants could be adapted faster and better to changing conditions in times of climate change. What does it take to exploit these and other opportunities offered by green genetic engineering for sustainable agriculture?
In the beginning was the pea. For years, the Augustinian monk and pioneer of plant research Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) crossed huge numbers of peas with various traits in the monastery garden in Brno, in what is now the Czech Republic. In 1866, he derived the rules of inheritance that are still valid today from his pioneering experiments. In doing so, he laid the foundations for a new science that would revolutionize our understanding of the biological basis of life: modern molecular genetics.
150 years later, the discovery of the CRISPR/Cas gene scissors has set a revolution in motion – for basic research as well as for applications in medicine and agriculture. In 2012, Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier had the idea of using a principle discovered in bacteria in 1987 as a molecular biology tool. Gene scissors make possible what was previously unimaginable: the targeted and precise modification of individual, species-specific DNA sequences in the genome. And this makes breeding much simpler, faster, and cheaper than with traditional mutagenesis using chemicals or radiation.
CRISPR stands for “Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats”. It works as follows: the Cas protein is guided to the desired location in the genome with the help of a guide RNA and cuts the DNA strand there. The cell’s own repair mechanisms then repair the cut. This often leads to changes in the DNA sequence, i.e., mutations in the genetic material, which subsequently influence the characteristics of the organism. This happens entirely without the use of foreign genes, i.e., the modifications could also have been caused by a natural mutation.
Targeted gene editing can be used to make crops with higher yields, better quality, or more resistance to pests and environmental stress, explains Hermann Bürstmayr from the Institute of Plant Breeding at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. Successful examples include mildew-resistant wheat in which the gene required for the fungus to dock was removed using CRISPR. Other examples include soybeans with a healthier fatty acid composition and apples with increased resistance to fire blight disease.
The list of successful applications could be extended indefinitely: “Researchers in Nairobi recently succeeded in developing weed-resistant millet in Kenya,” Brüstmayr reports. For him, the new genetic engineering methods are therefore also a contribution to more sustainable agriculture in times of climate crisis. “The question is always what the technology is used for – to maximize the profits of large companies or to make agriculture more ecological.”
The greatest risk is to forego the sensible use of CRISPR in plant breeding in Europe.
Ortrun Mittelsten Scheid
Molecular biologist Ortrun Mittelsten Scheid from the Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology of the OeAW takes a similar view. “Gene editing using gene scissors can help to adapt our crops to changing conditions and make them more resistant to heat, drought, or salty soils,” she says. Mittelsten Scheid is convinced that green genetic engineering offers many opportunities to make agriculture more sustainable, versatile, and resource-efficient. What’s more, its targeted use could significantly expand the range of crops and increase biodiversity on cultivated land. If only we would allow it, she adds.
Following a high-profile ruling by the European Court of Justice in 2018, applications of CRISPR in plants were declared to be genetic engineering and subjected to strict regulations. This is despite the fact that the new genomic techniques are based on principles that plant breeders in Europe have been using for a long time without any special safety requirements.
“This legislation cements the power of the really big players in the field,” Mittelsten Scheid says. This is because the complex and cost-intensive approval procedures give large companies a competitive advantage over small plant breeding companies. Seed companies only go through these procedures for products from which they hope to make global profits. However, according to the OeAW researcher, appropriate regulation, as in conventional mutagenesis breeding, would also offer small seed companies the opportunity to adapt varieties to regional conditions using CRISPR.
“Emotionally charged and not very factual” is how OeAW President Heinz Faßmann summarizes the public debate on green genetic engineering in Austria. For decades, it has been characterized more by ideology than evidence, Faßmann says. This could now change at a political level. According to the plans presented by the EU Commission in 2023, the use of new methods such as CRISPR/Cas in agriculture will be exempt from the strict rules for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in future. In February 2024, the European Parliament set an important course and spoke out in favor of liberalizing new genetic engineering methods in plant breeding.
This is an important signal for researchers. “The greatest risk of the technology is to forego the sensible use of CRISPR in plant breeding in Europe. This is underestimated in all the debates,” Mittelsten Scheid is convinced. Together with Austrian scientific institutions that conduct research in the field of genetic engineering, the OeAW and numerous other scientific institutions therefore appealed to common sense in an open letter: green genetic engineering should be evaluated without prejudice, with an open mind, and on the basis of scientific evidence, according to the scientists from all over Austria. An ideologically driven debate plays into the hands of anti-science sentiment.
Green genetic engineering was an important topic for the OeAW 2023. Why the great commitment to this in particular?
Heinz Fassmann: The debate on genetic engineering in Austria has been ideological, fear-based, and largely free of scientific evidence for decades. It gained new momentum because genetic engineering evolved with the development of CRISPR. The EU Commission therefore proposed adapting the rules for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to the current state of research. Most Austrian political parties and environmental NGOs spoke out loudly against this. Everything should ideally remain as it is. It was time for the research community to speak up and say: “Wait a minute, your statements are not tenable.”
Which statements specifically?
Fassmann: Attempts are being made to persuade people that genetic engineering is or could be harmful. The argument is based on fears, but not on empirical evidence. Our plant researchers, on the other hand, say – based on such empirical evidence – that there are no indications of negative effects on humans and the environment.
So why are people claiming that?
Fassmann: Fears generate emotions, and emotions activate the electorate and readership and increase their willingness to donate to those institutions that are fighting against the perceived threat. It’s about political influence and money and perhaps also about an industry that advertises “GMO-free” and makes a living from it. We try to counter emotionality with rationality. Our plant researchers have given many interviews and held numerous informative discussions. Some of this has been accepted, but the struggle between rationality and emotionality is always difficult.
What other means can science use in addition to its expertise?
Fassmann: The OeAW initiated an open letter that was signed by the leading scientific institutions. It was widely reported, which was a great success. We held a “Science Update” at the Vienna BioCenter, where OeAW plant biologist Ortrun Mittelsten Scheid and Hermann Bürstmayr from BOKU Vienna answered questions from journalists. Both were out and about in the country throughout the year, raising awareness. Their efforts cannot be overestimated. The OeAW took part in a Europe-wide social media campaign with the topic “Give Genes a Chance”. It is important that the voice of science with its more complex explanations is heard in the debate alongside the professional campaigns of NGOs. People should know all the positions before they form their own opinions.
At EU level, the situation is different to that in Austria.The EU Parliament voted to relax genetic engineering regulations without the votes of Austrian MEPs – with one exception.What does that mean now?
Fassmann: This is fundamentally good news, because Europe has to move away from its often observed science-skeptical and technology-averse position. Otherwise, I do not see how we can overcome the major challenges – from climate change and an ageing population to the restructuring of industrial production methods. The positive outcome of the vote is perhaps a small step in the right direction, not least to avoid being overtaken by China, the USA and other countries that offer this research greater development opportunities. If we limit ourselves, we make ourselves even more dependent on them.
Will we then have to import genetically modified products and buy them at high prices or allow ourselves to be put under political pressure?
Fassmann: Imports are already a reality anyway because, paradoxically, they are permitted in animal feed, for example. 160 different products made from genetically modified organisms, such as soy, maize, or rapeseed, are already approved. In terms of strategic self-sufficiency, it is better if we produce these products ourselves and also breed plants that are better adapted to the changed environmental conditions. This will not happen overnight, but it will hopefully be possible to research and test this legally. In any case, the door is open for a science-based legal basis that does justice to modern breeding methods.
The “soft power” of the Byzantine Empire, climate change in the Middle Ages, and the manuscripts of the Middle and Far East are just three of the topics that the Cluster of Excellence “EurAsian Transformations” deals with. A glimpse into the workshop.
The impressive St. Catherine’s Monastery is located on the Sinai Peninsula in front of rugged rock faces and in a barren landscape. For centuries, pilgrims from all over the world have flocked to this place, where Moses received the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament. A rich collection of over 4,000 manuscripts in more than 10 different languages bears witness to the different cultures, religions, and countries of origin of the guests.
“St. Catherine’s Monastery is a central location where several languages are present at the same time,” says Claudia Rapp, Byzantinist and Director of the Institute for Medieval Research of the OeAW. “The monastery was always Greek Orthodox, Latin was temporarily predominant during the Crusader period, Arabic was the local language from the 7th century, and Georgians came to the area around Mount Sinai in the 10th century – often via Jerusalem.”
Rapp has been researching at St. Catherine’s Monastery for a long time. Since spring 2023, together with Birgit Kellner (Director of the Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia), she has also been leading one of the largest scientific research alliances of the coming years: the FWF Cluster of Excellence “EurAsian Transformations” with a total volume of more than 15 million euros. 43 scientists from the OeAW, the University of Vienna, the University of Innsbruck, and the CEU are working together with international partners on historical, economic, and cultural transformation processes in the “mega-region” of Eurasia. More than 50 individual projects are planned. The manuscripts of St. Catherine’s Monastery are essential for researching the “soft power” of the Byzantine Empire, which enabled it to extend its influence far beyond its political borders.
“The cluster is a dream come true,” Rapp says. “Working on such a broad basis with so many top-class scientists from different institutions is unique.” The research network makes it possible to bring in-depth structure to previously superficial considerations: “We will divide Eurasia into small regions to see how they relate to each other.” At first glance, the projects have little to do with each other. Manuscripts from the Middle and Far East are just as much a topic as climate change in the Middle Ages or the political appropriation of historical heroes such as Skanderbeg in Albania or Genghis Khan in Putin’s Russia. The cluster also focuses on border regions: “Things get interesting wherever empires collide,” Rapp says. “Border regions are not just sites of conflict, but also of exchange and encounters. These are interactions that do not exist in the centers of power.”
Working with so many top-class scientists from different institutions is unique.
Claudia Rapp
Finding the connections, the common thread, is the aim of the research network. “Our subtitle is ‘Challenges of Diversity’,” Rapp says. “Our questions are: How do we deal with this diversity? Do we see commonalities, do we postulate commonalities? And how do you relate cultural and historical phenomena to each other?” The first identified interfaces will be presented at a major annual conference in fall 2024.
Passing on skills and research methods is at least as important to the Cluster as the research itself. “It is a major concern of ours to pass on the handling of original sources to a young generation of up-and-coming researchers. This includes digitization strategies as well as skills in languages that are no longer living,” Rapp says. “We will offer structured and comprehensive training to promote skills in dealing with written cultural heritage.”
The cluster is set to run for five years, with the option to extend it for a further five years. Enough time, therefore, to train a new generation of researchers in codicology, ancient Greek, and the use of Transkribus.
Alexander Bogner, sociologist and senior scientist at the OeAW, led the process of reviewing the COVID-19 period. Together with other researchers, he wrote the study “After Corona. Reflections for future crises”, which takes a social science perspective on the pandemic. The study was published by the OeAW Press at the end of 2023 and is also available online.
You conducted a very extensive study in a comparatively short time. What motivated you to do this?
Alexander Bogner: As a researcher, you can only welcome it when a government initiates a scientific project in order to be better prepared for the next crisis. I found it quite impressive that the government is facing up to this process, because it had to assume that the review would be critical and that there would be no adulation. It’s great that so many people are interested in science and the social sciences as a result. The OeAW is an important advisor to politics and society. This has hopefully been proven once again with this study.
Was it surprising to you that a social scientist was commissioned to do this?It could have been a lawyer or a doctor.
Bogner: Yes, that is something special, particularly on this scale. Virology naturally took center stage during the crisis. In my view, the reflective potential of the social sciences was not fully exploited, although they were even represented on the central pandemic advisory committee. However, their role was limited to providing data and figures within a predetermined problem definition. I wanted to show the potential of the social sciences in the face of the next crisis. The study was a good opportunity to do so.
The report is 176 pages long and there are a number of findings.What were the most important points for you?
Bogner: An important topic of the study was science skepticism during the pandemic. We asked: Why do normal citizens develop into die-hard science skeptics? What surprised me was that this is not primarily because they reject the world view or the methods of science. In fact, the skepticism is based on the assumption that science is not independent, i.e., that it is remotely controlled by politics or industry. A second important finding: the central driver of the polarization that we experienced, for example, in the discussion about mandatory vaccination, was the enforcement of a harsh moral tone in public discourse. A broad, open-ended debate in which the pros and cons were weighed up was missing. A lot of trust was lost. We should therefore warn against moralizing, also with regard to the climate crisis.
As a society, we need to agree on how scientific knowledge can be better integrated into the political process.
Alexander Bogner
How can science better demonstrate its independence from politics?
Bogner: As a society, we need to agree on how scientific knowledge can be better integrated into the political process. It is desirable for both sides to work together. But we need clearer ideas on how this cooperation should work. We need to think about how the interface between science and politics should be structured so that science remains credible in its role as a policy advisor. We need more research in this area. In any case, scientists should be aware of their role, their responsibilities, and their limits when they join an advisory body. They should not allow themselves to be instrumentalized, but neither should they slip into the role of politics, as we have already described in the “Vienna Theses” (see info box). We need training for scientific policy advice just as much as for communication with the media.
What will happen with your study now?
Bogner: I hope and I already perceive that the study offers inspiration for further discussions. More has already happened at the political level than I would have expected. In a cabinet paper, various conclusions were drawn from the study and different measures were decided upon, for example strengthening crisis communication, making healthcare professions more attractive, and improving the use of healthcare data and its access for research.
In your opinion, is this the end of the process?
Bogner: It would be a big mistake to close the books now. Our study has a social science focus. Other disciplinary perspectives are missing, for example legal, economic, and historical perspectives. Politicians would certainly be well advised to remain open to lessons from the pandemic – even beyond the review process.
Alexander Bogner
Alexander Bogner studied sociology at the Universities of Salzburg, Marburg and Frankfurt am Main. From 2017 to 2019, he was Professor of Sociology at the University of Innsbruck. Bogner works as a Senior Scientist at the Institute of Technology Assessment of the OeAW and is President of the Austrian Sociological Association.
“Science should act as an honest broker” and “Science should inform, not legitimize” are two of the nine “Vienna theses on science-based advice to politics and society” that the President of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Gerald Haug, and the OeAW President Heinz Faßmann presented for discussion at the Joint Academy Day in Vienna in February. The role of science in its function as an advisor to politics and society was closely scrutinized in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Vienna Theses, written from the OeAW side by Alexander Bogner (ITA) and Matthias Karmasin (CMC), aim to provide a guideline for the relationship between science, politics, and the public. They explain the role of science in advising policy-makers and society as one that does not generally make a recommendation (without an alternative), but rather transparently presents different options for action on the basis of scientific evidence.
This also makes it clear that science-based advice should not relieve political representatives of the burden of decision-making. This competence remains exclusively with politicians. The aim of science-based advice is certainly to present the relevant expert opinion. However, consensus is not an end in itself. Any possible dissent should be well-founded and transparent.
Whether Alps or Andes – mountain regions are major victims of global warming. Several OeAW research projects are looking into climate change in mountain regions and providing important findings to better assess the effects. Mountain researchers at the OeAW have made significant contributions to understanding glacier retreat for many years, including glaciologist Andrea Fischer, who was named as the Austrian Scientist of the Year 2023.
A white Christmas in the cities or massive glaciers could soon be a thing of the past. Since the 19th century, temperatures in the mountains have risen by a full two degrees – around twice as much as the global average. Thousands of weather stations in the Alps show that snow is falling later and melting earlier. Climate change has far-reaching effects in the mountains: the melting of glaciers, the thawing of permafrost, avalanches, increased slope movements, rockfalls and rockslides as well as changes in biodiversity.
63% of the Austrian population agrees that more measures are needed to combat these and other alarming consequences of climate change. This was the result of a survey on the topic of climate conducted by the OeAW in 2023 as part of its annual Science Barometer.
However, the willingness to get involved in climate protection is so-so. The vast majority of the population also does not believe that the fight against climate change can still be successful. Nevertheless, the involvement of scientists in the issue of climate change is viewed positively – especially when their findings serve as the basis for political decisions.
If it gets too warm and the permafrost in the rock glacier thaws, all that will remain are piles of rubble.
Lea Hartl
Such important research findings include those on glacier retreat. There are around 4,000 glaciers across the Alps. Since 1900, they have lost half of their total volume – and this loss will continue. The so-called rock glaciers are also at risk due to the higher temperatures. Together with researchers from the Universities of Innsbruck, Heidelberg and Zurich, Lea Hartl from the Institute for Interdisciplinary Mountain Research of the OeAW is investigating the rock glacier in the Outer Hochebenkar in Ötztal.
“Rock glaciers are permafrost phenomena, mixtures of stone blocks, debris, and ice that creep steadily towards the valley. When a rock glacier no longer flows evenly, but instead becomes much faster in some areas, with cracks forming, this is known as destabilization. The material then behaves in a similar way to a landslide.” Due to the warmer conditions, the rock glacier is becoming unstable in its lower section. “In recent years, the flow velocity has increased significantly, and the increased occurrence of crevasses and cracks on the surface shows that the flow behavior is also changing. Climate change certainly plays a role here,” Hartl says.
Her prognosis is alarming: “If it gets too warm and the permafrost in the rock glacier thaws, all that will remain are piles of rubble,” the glaciologist says. Currently, the lower part of the rock glacier under investigation is moving at a rate of up to 30 meters per year towards a nearby road that supplies a mountain hut. Rockfalls are also occurring more frequently.
To investigate how the material behaves when it becomes unstable, the team uses modern tools such as GPS, drones, and high-resolution aerial photography. This allows the movements of individual blocks and the development of cracks and crevasses in the bedload to be recorded. However, little research has been done into the behavior of the interior and the flow dynamics. The aim is therefore to gain an even better understanding of the movement of rock glaciers and thus be able to assess potential dangers more easily.
It is not only glaciers that are changing rapidly – plants are also affected by global warming, and not just in the Alps, but in mountain ranges all over the world. In the South American Andes, the longest mountain range on earth, plant species are spreading into higher mountain regions, while more and more native mountain plants are being displaced, including by species introduced from Europe. This is the result of a long-term program, the “Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments” (GLORIA), coordinated by the OeAW and the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) Vienna. The program used data on plant communities collected in 720 long-term observation plots on 45 mountain summits in the high Andes between 2011 and 2019.
Harald Pauli, alpine ecologist at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Mountain Research of the OeAW, explains the scale of this change: “On average, every two and a half years, one plant species is added to the monitoring areas, and in some areas even more. That is a very short period of time for cold mountain habitats.” Pauli and his team have already observed this worrying development in various European mountain ranges. “Mountain plants are living sensors. They are indicators that can provide information about the state of ecosystems and can be used to evaluate future prognoses.”
Preserving the diversity of different, locally distributed species that occupy a wide range of ecological niches is essential, especially in times of climate change. Why? Intact ecosystems are responsible for around 30% of CO2 sequestration.
How would you describe the current state of Austria’s glaciers?
Andrea Fischer: In one word: precarious. In four words: the end is nigh. The more than 900 Austrian glaciers listed in the last inventory have already become very thin in the last 20 years. The last two years have brought further extreme ice losses, which no longer – as in previous years – lead mainly to a retreat at the glacier tongue, but to large-scale disintegration of the ice bodies right up to the summit regions. The appearance of the glaciers has also changed significantly: from July/August, large areas are free of snow and most of the light-colored firn has melted away, making the glaciers very dark. In 2023, individual glaciers melted completely, but this has yet to be quantified.
How important is the long-term observation of glaciers in research?
Fischer: Glacier research is a discipline that requires work over generations, but then delivers very strong and easily comprehensible statements on climate changes and their local effects. We want to measure changes that are not tangible within the life of a researcher. To this end, the measurement methods and knowledge are passed on from generation to generation and supplemented with new methods. A good example of this is the systematic glacier length measurements that have been carried out in Austria since 1891. The method is simple, has been used in the same way for generations and results in long and meaningful time series, from which it is clear that the glacier retreat is currently more severe than at any time since measurements began. We use ice cores to extend the observation period once again, in the Alps up to the mid-Holocene warm period, at the end of which Ötzi the Iceman lived. Back then it was about as warm as it is today, but for different reasons. Today’s man-made climate change has the potential to catapult us out of the regime of the last 1.5 million years, in which ice ages and interglacial periods alternated – with as yet unforeseeable consequences for ecosystems and therefore also for humans.
What long-term trends have you been able to identify in your research as a result?
Fischer: The mass balance data is compared with data from other mountain ranges around the world in the World Glacier Monitoring Service network. This comparison shows that glacier retreat in the Eastern Alps is more advanced than in other regions. The comparison with the ice cores shows that the last 6,000 years were on average much more favorable for glaciers than today and that melting periods such as we are experiencing now only occurred briefly, if at all. Otherwise, the ice of our glaciers could not have reached 6,000 years old. From this data we also learn that the temperature range in which we are currently operating is not entirely new for the Alps. However, anything beyond that is a situation that we have not experienced for over a million years.
The glaciologist from the Institute for Interdisciplinary Mountain Research celebrated a major success in 2023. The Austrian Club of Education and Science Journalists named her Scientist of the Year.
What do intestinal parasites of prehistoric miners reveal about their diet? What does a dung heap tell us about farming in the Stone Age? And where are the oldest plague deaths in Austria to be found? Bioarcheology has the answers.
When we talk about the plague, we think of the Middle Ages. And until now, finds from this period were also considered to be the oldest plague deaths in Austria. However, the pathogen was actually circulating much earlier, and now a research team led by Katharina Rebay-Salisbury from the Austrian Archaeological Institute of the OeAW has identified plague deaths from the Early Bronze Age (around 2000 BC) in the course of investigations of a burial ground in Drasenhofen in Lower Austria, making them around 4,000 years old and therefore the oldest victims of the plague in Austria. This was made possible by so-called bioarcheology.
Bioarcheology is a relatively new field of archaeological research. It includes the study of biological material found from humans, such as the plague victims, as well as animals and plants from archaeological contexts.
With the help of bioarcheology, statements can be made about important aspects of almost all areas of life in past cultures. This includes nutrition, the question of what resources were available and how they were used, social organization, climate, and migration. Particularly important findings are those about diseases that existed in earlier eras and in some cases still afflict mankind today.
But back to the plague victims. In the course of the research, it was discovered that the two identified plague victims were men and died at the ages of 23 to 30 and 22 to 27. They were buried not far from each other in a grave field with 22 graves arranged in rows, next to which a highway runs today.
“Their graves are in a peripheral location, so the people may have been aware that they died of a contagious disease,” says archaeologist Rebay-Salisbury. The researchers were also surprised by another finding: despite the spatial and temporal proximity, the genetic analyses of the two bodies revealed two different strains of plague bacteria. It is therefore not a case of one infection that was passed on within the Bronze Age group, but of two independent infection events. Further results of the investigations show that the plague at that time – unlike in the Middle Ages – “may not have been transmitted via fleas, as the early plague bacteria lacked important genetic characteristics for this. It could therefore have been transmitted via other routes, such as via droplets or the consumption of infected meat,” Rebay-Salisbury says.
Insights into dietary habits in the Bronze Age were also provided by another study conducted by OeAW researchers together with the Medical University of Vienna and the Natural History Museum (NHM) Vienna. Over 3,000-year-old human faeces from miners in Hallstatt was examined. The world’s first gene sequences of human roundworms from the Bronze Age, as well as the first gene sequences of prehistoric parasites in Austria, were found.
This was also possible thanks to new methods of bioarcheology, explains Kerstin Kowarik from the Austrian Archaeological Institute of the OeAW. “Until recently, prehistoric faeces was primarily analyzed microscopically. With the emergence of new biomolecular analysis methods such as DNA and protein analysis, the horizon of knowledge has expanded enormously.”
In this specific case, the analysis of 35 human faeces samples from the prehistoric salt mines in Hallstatt revealed a high infestation with roundworms and whipworms. The scientists were surprised by the fact that no other parasites could be detected apart from these two species. This is unusual for this period and therefore allows conclusions to be drawn about cooking and eating habits. This is because the parasite species that are ingested through the consumption of insufficiently heated meat and fish, such as pork tapeworm, beef tapeworm, or fish tapeworm, were completely absent from the samples examined.
Another form of remains also revealed something about diseases, diets, and living conditions in the Stone Age. A team led by archaeobotanist Thorsten Jakobitsch, also from the Austrian Archaeological Institute of the OeAW, analyzed the droppings of livestock living at the time, which were well preserved in the absence of oxygen in the vicinity of the Stone Age pile dwelling settlements by Lake Mondsee.
“In principle, this is a 5,500-year-old dung heap,” Jakobitsch sums up. “We analyzed the samples in the laboratory and were able to determine that goats, sheep, and cows were kept and what was on their menu.” The precise analysis of the plants eaten by the animals also provides details about the lifestyle of the pile dwellers around 3,500 BC.
“We can see that the animals were only kept in the settlements in winter, and we were able to identify winter food such as dried elm leaves and grain. In addition, for the first time we found solid evidence for the assumption that grass plants were also processed into hay at that time. We can say this because we found plants in the hay remains that would have been poisonous to the animals if they had been eaten fresh,” Jakobitsch says.
Other bioarcheological finds show that the forest was already being used back then, and in a planned and organized manner. Jakobitsch: “People back then were extremely resourceful and were aware of many ecological relationships and used them to their advantage.” Astonishing that modern science can read all this from parasites, plague deaths, and dung heaps.
For decades, the early version of W. H. Auden’s poem “Epithalamium” was invisible. It had been preserved as colorless imprints of a typewriter on the poet’s sheets of paper. OeAW literary scholars Sandra Mayer and Timo Frühwirth used state-of-the-art technology to make the text legible again for the first time.
W.H. Auden died in 1973 in his hotel in Vienna after a poetry reading. Instead of in Great Britain, he was buried in Kirchstetten in Lower Austria. The British-American poet had spent the summer months there during the last 15 years of his life. It was also where he met the journalist and author Stella Musulin. The two had a long-standing friendship and correspondence, which is now shedding new light on Auden research.
The so-called “Auden Musulin Papers” are being made digitally available and examined more closely as part of a project funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). The focus is on Auden’s work in Austria, which has so far received little attention in international Auden research. Stella Musulin’s estate, including personal letters, notes, literary manuscripts, and photographs, contains lost treasures that shed light on Auden’s writing practice and his connections to the Austrian cultural landscape.
The OeAW literary scholars Sandra Mayer and Timo Frühwirth from the Austrian Center for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage were particularly taken with a carbon copy from Auden’s typewriter. It contains previously illegible texts by the poet in the form of colorless impressions. To make them visible again, the researchers used a visualization method called “photometric stereo”. This comes from the field of cultural heritage research and has been used, among other things, to visualize reliefs on the backs of Etruscan mirrors.
“However, this technology had never been applied to literary archive papers from the 20th century,” says Frühwirth. “In a series of individual images, the sheet was illuminated from a different angle each time – with raking light, a method that is also used in forensics to make surface structures visible. Our collaboration partner Simon Brenner from the Computer Vision Lab at the Vienna University of Technology used this to mathematically create a 3D surface model.”
The researchers were thus able to visualize a previously unknown, early version of Auden’s poem “Epithalamium”. The poet wrote it in 1965 for the wedding of his niece Rita. “From diary entries, we conclude that this is the first version he typed on a typewriter. He had initially written his notes in pencil. This allows us to analyze in literary terms how Auden worked poetically,” Mayer says. As a representative of the so-called “typewriter age”, Auden mainly used the typewriter for his work. He often used sheets of paper several times or inserted them into the typewriter as carbon copies.
For Timo Frühwirth, the successful visualization of Auden’s lost text means that the sheet of paper is being rethought in literary studies: “We can reconceptualize the sheet, not as a 2D object, but as a 3D object that contains information in its surface structure that is relevant for science.” The visualization method is also being used in other cases and may soon make other invisible texts legible.
Research into antisemitism has become established at the OeAW. In a guest commentary, Gerald Lamprecht, a historian from Graz, describes new forms of antisemitism that have become increasingly noticeable following the Hamas attack on Israel.
Guest contribution from Gerald Lamprecht
© Shutterstock
With the establishment of the research area of antisemitism research at the OeAW, the academic study of antisemitism has been institutionally anchored within the Austrian research landscape for the first time. The focus is on antisemitism in Austria since 1945. On the one hand, this focus arises from the fact that, until now, research has primarily dealt with the antisemitism of the 19th century and the interwar period. On the other hand, it is also a matter of analyzing the historical dimension of current manifestations of antisemitism.
Also in Austria, Jews feel increasingly threatened.
Gerald Lamprecht
This is a concern that has become increasingly relevant, not least because post-war antisemitism has become more diverse in terms of its forms and themes as well as its perpetrators. In addition to the modern political antisemitism of the 19th century, so-called secondary antisemitism in the context of dealing with the Nazi past dominated political and media discourse for many years. In addition, with the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, the Middle East conflict increasingly became the subject of antisemitic agitation, which has grown in virulence not least due to the social transformations of recent decades. This “new” antisemitism has taken on dramatic proportions since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. In addition to an arson attack on the ceremonial hall of the Jewish section of Vienna’s Central Cemetery, numerous demonstrations openly chanted for the annihilation of the state of Israel and thus the expulsion and murder of Jews. All of this has led to Jews in Austria feeling increasingly threatened.
In addition to the increase in the complexity of the manifestations and the perpetrators, post-war antisemitism is also characterized by the fact that, in contrast to the pre-war period, it is not a self-designation of antisemites. Although antisemitism was and is frowned upon in public and political discourse, this does not mean that it has disappeared. Rather, it is always denied by antisemites, which means that debates about antisemitism are often debates about the accusation of antisemitism and the associated definition of antisemitism.
The focus on antisemitism research at the OeAW deals with the complex forms and perpetrators of antisemitism in research projects and at the same time attempts to network the various researchers and institutions in the field of Austrian antisemitism research.
Scientists in the USA, Israel and China have allegedly created artificial human embryos in the laboratory. This news made the rounds in the media last year. But what are these models actually? And what is such research good for?
Guest contribution from Jürgen Knoblich and Nicolas Rivron
The most recent debate about human embryo models began in 2023 at the symposium of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR), the world’s largest scientific organization for stem cell research. In her presentation, one scientist mentioned that her research group had developed an embryo model from human pluripotent stem cells. She then gave an exclusive interview to the British newspaper The Guardian.
This led to an article with questionable claims, followed by many others. At this point, the research had not yet gone through the scientific process of peer review and no data was available. Three other research groups released their previously unpublished data via the pre-print platform BioRxiv. The first laboratory followed suit, so that the results can now be compared.
This was a very unusual way of communicating science. It seems questionable to us whether scientists should make claims in the media if the research results are not yet publicly available and therefore not independently verifiable.
But what exactly are embryo models? Over the last ten years, many embryo models have been developed in laboratories, consisting of balls of human stem cells. These balls are smaller than the diameter of a hair and can – under certain conditions – begin to organize themselves in a way that reflects early embryonic development (such as the first week of pregnancy). However, these models are far from resembling embryos and are not considered as such either legally or scientifically, as the ISSCR quickly reminded us on its website. But embryo models are becoming increasingly useful for studying in the laboratory how embryonic cells organize themselves and which genes and molecules are involved.
Some media reports use the terms “synthetic embryos” or “artificial embryos”. In agreement with the ISSCR, we consider these to be inappropriate and misleading. Embryo models are not created from synthetic or artificial elements, but from stem cells. Furthermore, the terms “synthetic” or “artificial embryos” give the impression that these are embryos that are potentially used for reproduction. This is by no means the case. We therefore use the term embryo model.
Science and ethics must go hand in hand.
Jürgen Knoblich and Nicolas Rivron
But why is this research necessary at all? “Embryo models” fill an important gap in our understanding of how we develop as humans. Embryos from in vitro fertilization (IVF) can be donated in many countries (not currently in Austria) by parents who have completed their family planning. Research can be carried out on these donated IVF embryos in highly specialized laboratories after approval and under the supervision of ethics committees in order to understand how embryos function. However, this research must be stopped on day 14 of embryo development. In addition, embryos from IVF are scarce. Embryo models, on the other hand, can be created easily and without the use of an embryo – they are therefore an ethical alternative to real embryos.
A research group led by Nicolas Rivron at IMBA – Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the OeAW –also contributed to the development of embryo models. This involved modeling how an embryo implants in the uterus on the eighth day after fertilization. One of the aims is to find out how IVF procedures can be improved. This could prevent early miscarriages. Embryo models also help to better understand the origin of genetic diseases and the health of babies.
This research is monitored at several levels, from the European Research Council to the ISSCR, and in Austria, any proposed work is reviewed in advance by the OeAW’s Commission for Scientific Ethics. Scientists were among the first to impose strict ethical rules on their own work. In 2021, together with scientists, ethicists, and philosophers around the world, we updated the ISSCR ethics guidelines. These guidelines prohibit the transfer of human embryo models into a uterus, whether from animals or humans.
We strongly believe that ethics and science must go hand in hand at all levels – from the correct reporting by scientists and journalists to the way scientists, ethicists, and regulators ensure that the right research path is taken – for the benefit of all: science, society and the improvement of women’s and babies’ health.
Attosecond physics involves experiments with ultrashort laser pulses. The two OeAW members Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2023 for their pioneering achievements in this groundbreaking field of research.
© Nobel Prize Outreach / Nanaka Adachi
They are the fastest particles that occur in nature outside the atomic nucleus: electrons. When electrons orbit the nucleus of an atom, this takes place on a time scale of attoseconds. An attosecond is a billionth of a billionth of a second or a thousandth of a femtosecond. In numbers: 0.000000000000000001 seconds.
Measuring and researching these tiny and incredibly fast particles is part of attosecond physics. For their scientific breakthroughs in this fascinating field of research, the Austro-Hungarian physicist Ferenc Krausz and the French physicist Anne L’Huillier, both members of the OeAW, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2023 together with their colleague Pierre Agostini.
One attosecond is unimaginably short. The Nobel Prize Committee described it like this: An attosecond is to a heartbeat as a heartbeat is to the age of the universe. The award-winning researchers succeeded in generating flashes of light that are as short as the universe is old. These ultra-short flashes of light are used to “photograph” the movements of electrons in order to gain deeper insights into the dynamic processes of matter.
Attosecond physics uses ultrashort laser pulses for experiments. To understand the significance of this pioneering achievement, imagine filming a housefly in slow motion. Similar to a cell phone camera that takes 200 pictures per second, these laser pulses can capture movements in a time span of one attosecond. This opens up the possibility of resolving the dynamics of electrons within atoms and molecules.
Quote: “Our work provided the idea for using ultrashort laser pulses to examine blood and detect diseases.”
Ferenc Krausz
If you were to use an attosecond camera to film a fly for one second and play back the recording at 25 frames per second, it would take almost 1.3 billion years to watch the entire video. These incredibly short laser pulses make it possible to capture equally incredibly fast processes in detail and extend moments to what seems like an eternity. Even a lifetime of viewing an attosecond video would not reveal any movement unless you could zoom in to the level of individual electrons, which are so fast that they can jump from one atom to another in a few hundred attoseconds.
In her experiments, Anne L’Huillier and her colleagues Krausz and Agostoni have pushed the boundaries of the temporal resolution of electron movements and made the dance of electrons in atoms and molecules visible.
The path to this groundbreaking discovery began in 1987: French physicist Anne L’Huillier from Lund University in Sweden laid the foundation stone at the time by finding an approach that made laser pulses shorter than a femtosecond (i.e., a quadrillionth of a second) plausible in the first place: By bombarding a noble gas with an infrared laser, she succeeded in generating ultrashort laser pulses. It then took until 2001 before the first attosecond laser pulses could be produced in the laboratory.
In an interview in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit, Ferenc Krausz talks about Anne L’Huillier’s pioneering work: “The theory was already there. And lasers have improved over time. In the 1990s, we were then able to build these ultra-fast lasers at the University of Vienna, which only contain one oscillation period. What was still missing, however, was a measurement technique to detect these attosecond flashes. That’s why the research was nothing more than speculation for years.”
The breakthrough came in 2001, when Krausz, who is now a researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany, conducted the first attosecond experiments at the Vienna University of Technology. L’Huillier’s compatriot Pierre Agostini from Ohio State University made a decisive contribution to the further development of the technology and correspondingly sensitive measurement techniques.
Although the current record is 80 attoseconds, it is clear that the race for the shortest pulse is far from over. The research groups of Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier continue to push the boundaries of physics. The potential applications of these ultrashort laser pulses are manifold, from ultrafast, laser-controlled electronic circuits to precise analysis of chemical processes and innovative diagnostic procedures in medicine.
Krausz explains in the interview what attosecond lasers can achieve in medicine: “Our work on attosecond lasers ultimately provided the idea that it is also possible to examine blood using ultrashort laser pulses and thus possibly detect diseases at a very early stage.” The future therefore promises further exciting developments in the field of attosecond physics.
How one deals with digital technologies depends heavily on the respective region or culture. The research project “Academies for Global Innovation and Digital Ethics” (AGIDE), which the OeAW conducted with 10 partner academies from around the world, spent a year and a half examining these differences.
© Shutterstock
What is the AGIDE research project about?
Christiane Wendehorst: Digital technologies are changing how we live, how our societies and economies function and how power relations will be distributed globally in the future. All over the world, we see the need to accompany these developments ethically and steer them in a direction that promises a “good digital future”. This is why many principles of digital ethics have been formulated in recent years, including at regional and international levels. It is striking that all of these catalogs of ethical principles sound very similar and start at the level of “fairness”, “accountability”, or “transparency”. This seems to contradict the fact that actual attitudes towards digital technologies vary greatly around the world. We wanted to get to the bottom of this apparent contradiction and better understand where the differences lie and where they come from.
If there are such regional differences, is there a need for overarching principles?
Wendehorst: Digital technologies are transnational by nature and do not respect national borders. After all, incredible data streams are transmitted across all continents within fractions of a second. This is why we need transnational ethical guidelines for dealing with these digital technologies and why the efforts of the OECD and UNESCO, for example, are so important. However, AGIDE does not want to replicate the work of these international organizations, but rather focus on the differences and their causes. Only if we know and better understand the differences is a genuine international consensus possible.
So, the aim of AGIDE was to work out these differences? How did you go about this?
Wendehorst: Yes, our research focused on the differences. To get a clearer picture, we conducted more than 75 qualitative interviews with experts from all over the world. Further insights were gained at three international workshops. We analyzed the results of the interviews and workshops, identified characteristic differences, and systematized the approaches.
What was the topic of the three workshops?
Wendehorst: Two of these workshops were dedicated to the question of regional or cultural divergences. The participants were asked to answer the same questions from their own regional or cultural context. These were questions about the vision of a good digital future, the views of the general population in a region or cultural area, and annoying cultural stereotypes. In a third workshop, we worked with imaginaries and jointly reflected on utopian and dystopian images of the future. The results were then analyzed by the international AGIDE working group.
What insights were gained in this way?
Wendehorst: The results were very revealing and also surprising. We started with the working hypothesis that the differences we perceive in terms of digital ethics in different regions of the world are based on the fact that values – such as freedom, dignity, and privacy – are given different weight. However, the data we were able to collect did not provide any basis for this, as we found no significant deviation in the weighting of values. On the contrary, the AGIDE project showed that there is a remarkable convergence of certain fundamental values and their weighting across the different regions and cultures of the world.
Were you able to identify other characteristic differences?
Wendehorst: Yes, the AGIDE project showed that there are certainly major differences on a completely different level, namely the level of narratives. By narratives, we mean small “stories” that are told over and over again and shared by a larger community and that are usually structured according to a certain pattern. There is often a main character, the protagonist, a conflict with an antagonist, and finally a kind of “resolution” to the conflict.
Digital technologies do not respect national borders. That’s why we need transnational ethical guidelines for dealing with these technologies.
Christiane Wendehorst
How great is the influence of these narratives?
Wendehorst: Narratives play a key role in how the ethical use of digital technologies is negotiated, what is socially classified as “good” or “bad”. When narratives become dominant in a particular social setting because they are shared by a larger group and/or promoted by influential protagonists, they can become powerful drivers of collective behavior and influence how core values are operationalized. Some narratives seem to be very deeply rooted.
Can you give us an example of this?
Wendehorst: An illustrative example is the European Union, where a narrative, which we have called the “GDPR narrative” in reference to the General Data Protection Regulation, is proving to be extremely resistant to change. This could lead to a situation where we are no longer able to establish other, equally plausible narratives – such as the narrative of European digital sovereignty in relation to the USA or China. This then has an impact on political options.
What does this “GDPR narrative” look like in concrete terms?
Wendehorst: The protagonist here is clearly the individual, who is at the center. This individual is primarily seen as threatened, as a potential victim of technology and the digital industry (“big tech”). The greatest fear is a loss of autonomy. And the preferred solution to the conflict is clearly regulation, which aims to restore the individual’s autonomy. This narrative is very characteristic of the EU and influences European policy and legislation.
And what is the situation outside Europe?
Wendehorst: In other parts of the world, we see completely different prevailing narratives. For example, a narrative that we have called the “coloniality narrative” and which we have increasingly observed in contributions from the so-called Global South. Here, the protagonist is the community that is marginalized and exploited by other states or regions of the world, which ultimately leads to “digital colonialism”. This narrative sees the solution in the development of genuinely proprietary digital technologies with the aim of collective digital sovereignty. Overall, we have identified five main narrative patterns, although these appear in different variations and are also partly fluid. However, if you go one level deeper and take a closer look at a region or a country, for example, a far greater diversity emerges. At the same time, a wealth of further research questions arise. How did the narratives come about? What caused the differences? Why are some flexible and fluid, while others are rigid and entrenched? How can narratives be changed? The AGIDE project has come to an end, but the research continues.
Smart prostheses, regenerative body parts, brain-computer interfaces: the OeAW symposium “Convergence? Interfaces of the Digital and the Living” shed light on how technology is changing us.
Just a few years ago, they belonged to the genre of science fiction: Cyborgs, i.e., hybrids of human and machine. This has since changed: “Today, there are already brain-controlled prostheses that are surgically connected to the nervous system,” says Christoph Bock from CeMM – Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the OeAW.
The evolution of technology – from smartphones and fitness trackers to implantable chips – has long since turned us into cyborgs. And this development will continue, Bock is convinced. Life and technology will be even more closely interwoven in the future. “The major advances at the interface between biotechnology and digitalization bring with them enormous opportunities – but of course also risks that we need to understand and minimize,” the OeAW researcher says.
In October 2023, top-class international speakers discussed where the journey could take us at a conference initiated by Bock entitled “Convergence?”, which was organized by the OeAW in cooperation with the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF).
The major advances at the interface between biotechnology and digitalization bring with them enormous opportunities – but of course also risks.
Christoph Bock
“Technology is evolving us,” says Amber Case, one of the international speakers at the symposium. She is a cyborg anthropologist from the USA and researches how humans and technology interact and co-evolve. She is convinced that the “convergence of technologies” will lead to unprecedentedly fast learning and communication. But also that new technologies do not always improve our lives.
“We live in an era of control and top-down technology development. But I’m not afraid that the pendulum won’t swing back in the other direction sooner or later. That’s how ecosystems work, and that’s also how technology works.” Case is convinced: “Technology must constantly change in order to adapt to the circumstances. So, the next big thing is being developed somewhere right now, and not necessarily in Silicon Valley.”
Whether controlled from above or developed from the bottom up, one thing is clear: the use of technologies with a more or less direct interface to the human body and mind has an impact on both. British prosthesis designer Dani Clode from Cambridge University, who was also a guest at the OeAW in Vienna, is fascinated by the question of how the brain and body could adapt to an additional thumb, or more precisely the third thumb.
The third thumb sits just below the little finger and can move in much the same way as the natural thumb opposite it by means of two motors. The system is controlled by pressure sensors located under the toes. Once attached, it can be used as a prosthesis on a patient’s hand, for example, but can also be used as an extension for a healthy hand. Together with her colleague Tamar Makin, Dani Clode has discovered that after just five days of moderate training with the third thumb, the perception of the fingers in the brains of the test subjects begins to shift a little.
Robotics in particular has benefited from the current rapid developments in the field of artificial intelligence. Humanoid robots are more lifelike than ever before, can react to facial expressions and gestures, remember things, and can already hold meaningful conversations. At the symposium, computer scientist Astrid Weiss, a member of the Young Academy of the OeAW, explained the possible areas of application for embodied artificial intelligence.
For her, one thing is certain: the support of robots in everyday life can bring numerous social and economic benefits. But it also harbors risks for our privacy. Weiss: “The privacy paradox states that everyone wants absolute privacy, but they quickly forget this if they get more convenience in exchange.” Some vacuum robots not only collect dust, but also lots of data by creating precise maps of private homes.
Weiss gives another example: “There are already chatbots that analyze the social media of deceased people and then imitate them after their death. If such bots are also realistically embodied, this takes on a whole new dimension, especially if the artificial intelligence behind them has also learned from the real grandpa.” Cyborgs, which were once science fiction and are now real, raise a number of new ethical and philosophical questions – to which answers are urgently needed.
The 150th anniversary of the discovery of Franz Josef Land was the occasion for the polar exhibition “Land, Land, Land at Last” in the library on campus. Around 3,000 visitors learned about newly discovered travel diaries, old maps of the polar region, and a famous message in a bottle.
The story is well known in Austria: At the end of the 19th century, the polar region was one of the few areas on earth still largely unexplored. A courageous crew of 24 men therefore set sail in 1872 under the Austro-Hungarian command of the two officers and researchers Carl Weyprecht and Julius Payer, aiming to gather new insights into the Arctic Ocean. However, the ship, the “Admiral Tegetthoff”, was trapped in pack ice after just a few weeks at sea and drifted uncontrollably northward on an ice floe for months. In August 1873, the crew finally sighted a previously unknown group of islands. “Land, land, land at last,” was the relieved cry of joy. The deserted archipelago was named “Franz Josef Land” after Emperor Franz Joseph I.
To mark the 150th anniversary, the Academy of Sciences dedicated an exhibition to this voyage of discovery in the library on campus. On display were travel diaries, old maps, and the now famous message in a bottle that Weyprecht wrote on Franz Josef Land in 1874, when the “Tegetthoff” was still stranded, supplies were running low, and the crew’s morale had dropped dramatically. The message was not found until 104 years later. According to Weyprecht’s instructions, the finder was to deliver it to the Ministry of the Navy. As this no longer existed due to the lack of a navy, the message in a bottle found its way to the OeAW, where it is still kept today.
The polar exhibition at the OeAW sparked great interest: Around 3,000 visitors learned about the expedition and its consequences – both positive and negative: while the polar expedition itself yielded few scientific insights, the follow-up research conducted during the International Polar Year of 1882/83 was groundbreaking: Scientists from diverse, sometimes hostile countries, collaborated at the Arctic Circle, united different scientific disciplines, and collected the first-ever mass data on the flora and fauna on land and in water. Austria was responsible for researching the island of Jan Mayen. However, the increased attention for the polar region also led to the oppression of the indigenous population and, to this day, to the exploitation of resources.
On the occasion of the exhibition at the OeAW, artifacts from the expeditions that had previously been hidden in private collections were brought to light. A descendant of Count Jozef Palffy provided a travel diary, which the OeAW was able to exhibit for the first time. Palffy took part in a research trip as part of the Polar Year and describes his arduous journey to the island of Jan Mayen in the diary.
Another diary only appeared after a report in the “Standard” about the OeAW exhibition. A great-great-great-grandson of expedition participant Johann Haller posted diary entries and excerpts from letters from his ancestor, who was one of 24 men on board the “Tegetthoff”, in the online forum under the article. The editor contacted him and analyzed the documents. They provide an insight into everyday life on the ship, how the emperor’s birthday was celebrated with champagne even in the pack ice and how the expedition members were celebrated as heroes with a gun salute at Vienna’s Nordbahnhof station on their return.
To fly into space one day – that is Carmen Possnig’s big dream. The reserve astronaut was the star guest at the Christmas Talk at the OeAW and told us what Antarctica has to do with space.
She has often gazed at the starry sky. “When I look at the moon, there is a feeling of longing,” says Carmen Possnig. “Even as a child, I dreamed of becoming an astronaut.” This dream is now close to reality. In 2022, Carinthian-born Possnig was selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) together with 16 international colleagues as a reserve astronaut. She prevailed in a selection process with over 22,500 applications. At the second OeAW Christmas Talk in Vienna in December 2023, Possnig gave insights into the stages in her life that have brought her closer to space.
“Asking the big questions and making people think” – that is the task of Christmas lectures and also the idea behind the Christmas Talk, explained Heinz Faßmann, President of the OeAW, in front of a packed Festive Hall. “Mission accomplished”, astronauts would probably say, because the audience’s questions to Carmen Possnig continued even after the event, during a get-together where attendees had the opportunity to engage in further discussion with the evening’s star guest.
When I look at the moon, there is a feeling of longing.
Carmen Possnig
What is it like to live for 13 months with a dozen previously unknown people in a tin hut in perpetual ice and months of darkness? For Carmen Possnig, the South Pole came before space. Speaking to krone.tv journalist Katia Wagner on the stage of the Festive Hall, she talked about the “Antarctic stare” that all expedition participants succumbed to – a gaze into the vast expanse of ice that lasted for minutes or even hours. “I still had that later back in Austria. I stared in front of me on the tram and missed my stop,” Possnig laughs.
The stay in Antarctica, which Possnig completed in 2017, was for research purposes: How does the human body change under conditions that are not so dissimilar to outer space? For Possnig, this was important preparation for a space mission, where not only absolute health and fitness are a must, but also resilience and the ability to deal with difficult situations.
The doctor, who was a big science fiction fan as a child, hopes that the phone call and thus her call to space will come soon. This would not only make her childhood dream come true; she would also be the first Austrian woman in space.
Data that was previously inaccessible is now available to science. Researchers can use these registers to answer entirely new questions.
What are the economic consequences of divorce for different population and age groups? What impact does the gender quota for supervisory boards have on gender inequality in the Austrian labor market, or what risk factors can predict suicide among older people in Austria?
Answers to all these and other questions will be provided as part of the new OeAW funding program Data:Research:Austria, with the help of so-called microdata. These are anonymized data relating to individuals. This includes, for example, information on education, health, migration, labor market, and tax data or information on demographic and socio-economic surveys.
Until recently, however, access to such administrative data from statistical registers was not possible in Austria – unlike in many other European countries. After years of effort by scientific institutions, the legal requirements for research with administrative data from Statistics Austria were put in place under Heinz Faßmann in his former function as Federal Minister of Education, Science and Research. The current OeAW President says of the success: “After many years of debate, we have succeeded in amending the Federal Statistics Act and the Research Organization Act. Researchers now have regulated and controlled access to statistical and register data.”
This access is controlled by Statistics Austria, which has nearly 200 years of experience in professional data handling and for which data protection is the top priority. Even complex analyses cannot be used to draw conclusions about individuals.
The Austrian Micro Data Center (AMDC), which was founded on July 1, 2022, is a protected, virtual data room in which the administrative data for register research is now collected. “To be able to research the new data source, you have to be accredited as a research institution with Statistics Austria. Dozens of institutions, including of course the OeAW, are now accredited,” explains Sibylle Wentker, Director of International Relations, Fellowships & Awards, Research Funding at the OeAW. However, the AMDC still lacks data from the health ministry, which is regrettable, as the systematic analysis of medical and health policy issues is urgently needed in view of the growing costs of the healthcare system. Research is currently making do with other registers in this area.
Faßmann is convinced of the benefits for research. “Until now, scientists have had to make do with surveys for many analyses. When did immigrants first settle in Austria, what was their subsequent career path, what is the social status of the second generation? If this information is collected retrospectively via a representative survey, high costs are incurred and the data is highly prone to errors. The use of anonymized microdata therefore represents a great opportunity for the empirical social and economic sciences and will bring them forward in international comparison.”
As a supporter of register-based microdata research from the very beginning, the OeAW has developed the Data:Research:Austria funding program with funds from “Fonds Zukunft Österreich”. The program provides financial support for research projects in the field of register/microdata research. In three calls for proposals (2023, 2024, 2025), a total of 9 million euros will be awarded competitively and throughout Austria. The first round of projects has been completed. Following a successful competitive call, the first nine projects have been selected and will start in 2024.
In addition to the examples mentioned above, the project will e.g., investigate whether longer parental leave is associated with a loss of skills relevant to the labor market. The project thus closes an important research gap in terms of explaining the gender pay gap. Another project deals with the increasingly important integration of older workers into the labor market. And a project is being funded that deals, among other things, with the effectiveness of branded drugs compared to generics in chronic diseases and for which registers outside of the ministry are being used.
Further projects will be selected over the next two years. Faßmann: “We cannot yet say what will be researched thanks to these new possibilities. Typical of basic research: we don’t know today what we will know tomorrow.”
Once a year, the OeAW welcomes new members to its ranks. In 2023, the proportion of women was over 50 percent.
In the 2023 elections, 16 female and 15 male researchers from a wide range of disciplines in the humanities, social and cultural sciences as well as mathematics, natural and technical sciences were awarded membership of the OeAW for their outstanding scientific achievements.
In the Division of Humanities and the Social Sciences, the OeAW welcomes archaeologist Sabine Ladstätter as a full member. The President of the Christian Doppler Research Association Martin Gerzabek, mathematician Barbara Kaltenbacher, and astrophysicist João Alves have been elected as full members of the Division of Mathematics and the Natural Sciences.
In addition to the four full members, the learned society elected 15 corresponding members and 12 members of the Young Academy.
New members are elected once a year. For admission it is important that the individuals meet the highest requirements in terms of personality, scientific work, and reputation in the professional world and that they come from a variety of disciplines.
Division of Humanities and the Social Sciences:
- Sabine Ladstätter (Austrian Archaeological Institute of the OeAW), classical archaeology
Division of Mathematics and the Natural Sciences:
- João Alves (University of Vienna), astrophysics
- Martin Gerzabek (University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna), ecotoxicology and isotope application
- Barbara Kaltenbacher (University of Klagenfurt), applied mathematics
Division of Humanities and the Social Sciences:
- Eva Kernbauer (University of Applied Arts Vienna), art history
- Paolo Sartori (Institute of Iranian Studies of the OeAW), Central Asian history, Iranian studies
- Andrea Weber (Central European University, Vienna), labor economics
Division of Humanities and the Social Sciences:
- Natalia Gagarina (Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics, DE), linguistics
- Julian Johnson (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK), musicology
- Mandana E. Limbert (University of New York, USA), cultural and social anthropology
- Teresa Rodríguez De Las Heras Ballell (Charles III University of Madrid, ES), law, commercial law, corporate law
- Demetra Sfendoni-Mentzou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, GR), philosophy of science
- Cristian Vasile (University of Bucharest, RO), contemporary history
Division of Mathematics and the Natural Sciences:
- Achim Brauer (GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, DE), paleolimnology, environmental and climate history
- Anthony A. Hyman (Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, DE), biology
- Ataç İmamoğlu (Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, CH), quantum electronics, semiconductor physics
- James Glenn Krueger (Rockefeller University, USA), dermatology
- Andrea Rentmeister (University of Münster, DE), biological chemistry, chemical biology
- Bilge Yildiz (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA), material science and engineering
- Jürgen Braunstein (Vienna University of Economics and Business), comparative & international political economy
- Yasin Dagdas (Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology of the OeAW), plant biology, cell biology
- Marie Louise Herzfeld-Schild (University of Music and Performing Arts), musicology, music history
- Nina Klimburg-Witjes (University of Vienna), science & technology studies, international relations
- Aleksandar Matkovic (University of Leoben), solid state physics
- Sarah Melzer (Medical University of Vienna), neuroscience
- Marcus Ossiander (Graz University of Technology), laser physics
- Hannes Pichler (University of Innsbruck, Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of OeAW), quantum physics
- Alexandra S. Rodler (Austrian Archaeological Institute of the OeAW), geochemistry, archaeometry
- Oleg Simakov (University of Vienna), genomics and evolution
- Michaela Wiesinger (Institute for Medieval Research of the OeAW), German philology
- Anouk Willemsen (University of Vienna), biotechnology
Katherine Calvin, Chief Scientist at NASA, gave a lecture in 2023 at the invitation of the Commission for Earth Sciences at the Austrian Academy of Sciences provided insights into current climate research.
A researcher at the Stefan Meyer Institute for Subatomic Physics of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
With its scholarship programs, the Austrian Academy of Sciences opens up career opportunities in science for young researchers.
The Austrian Academic Scholarship Foundation supports prospective students from all over Austria.
