Keyword: News

The anemonefish is more familiarly known as the clownfish, as its bright colouration reminds of the face painting of a clown. The fish is familiar to the public at least on account of the animated film Finding Nemo with a clownfish as the main character. The striking and unique colouration consists of white stripes on an orange background, but its biological function has remained a mystery thus far. Now, a study by the researchers of the University of Turku and the University of Western Australia has revealed new information on the colouration of the clownfish.

Finnish universities were successful in ShanghaiRanking’s Global Ranking of Academic Subjects. In the University of Turku, the highest achievers were the Institute of Dentistry and the Department of Nursing Science.

Organised in Turku in August–September, the broad and multisectoral programme of the extensive Europe Forum Turku focusing on the EU has been finished. Hundreds of top influencers from Finland and elsewhere in the EU will attend the event. The Centre for Parliamentary Studies of the University of Turku will invest in the Forum by publishing a discussion paper focusing on the most important themes of Finland’s EU politics before the event.

For the first time, astrophysicists have localised the source of a cosmic neutrino originated outside of the Milky Way. With high probability, the neutrino comes from a blazar, an active black hole at the centre of a distant galaxy in the Orion constellation. The scientists reached this interesting finding by combining a neutrino signal from IceCube with measurements from the Fermi-LAT and MAGIC telescopes as well as other instruments. This multi-messenger observation could also provide a clue to an unsolved mystery: the origin of cosmic rays.

Researchers from the University of Turku, Finland have discovered a new wasp species in the Amazon which has an exceptionally large stinger that surprised even the scientists. The new insect, which is found in the extremely diverse transitional zone between the Andes and the Amazonian lowland rainforest, uses its stinger both for laying eggs and injecting venom.

The Baltic Sea is home to some of the world’s largest dead zones, areas of oxygen-starved waters where most marine animals can’t survive. But while parts of this sea have long suffered from low oxygen levels, a new study by a team in Finland and Germany shows that oxygen loss in coastal areas over the past century is unprecedented in the last 1,500 years. The research was published in the European Geosciences Union journal Biogeosciences.

Finnish researchers have gained new information on brain activity during general anaesthesia by recording changes in the electrical activity of the brain. They discovered that changes in electroencephalogram correlated with the loss of consciousness itself and also by the non-specific effects of the drugs. Nearly all participants recalled dreaming during unresponsiveness and, somewhat surprisingly, words presented during anaesthesia were still processed in the brain even though the participants were unable to recall them later.

The new Gambian Minister of Education Badara A. Joof and Professor and Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of the Gambia Pierre Gomez visited the University of Turku and the Helsinki office of Finland University on 18–20 June. The visit was a part of the Gambian delegation’s broader tour to the Nordic countries and their education.

Mr Sakari Alhopuro, (Finnish honorary title of) lääkintöneuvos, has donated €1.5 million to the University of Turku for establishing three professorships. One of the professorships is focused on subarctic ecology, another one on the Archipelago Sea research, and the third on biodiversity.