The University of Oxford and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) announced a new global initiative during the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal on 8 December 2022. The University of Turku is one of the founding universities of the Alliance.
The first few months and years of life are crucial to the development of the human immune system. This is an important phase as the immune system can define which diseases individuals might develop later in life. INITIALISE, a joint research project of ten universities, will study which environmental factors and mechanisms modify the human immune system in early life and whether targeted interventions could have a positive impact. The project obtained nearly seven million in funding from Horizon Europe.
A Finnish study coordinated by the Centre for Population Health Research at the University of Turku shows that cumulative adverse psychosocial factors in childhood are associated with worse midlife learning and memory, and specifically child’s self-regulation and social adjustment.
Some of the brightest objects in the sky are called blazars. They consist of a supermassive black hole feeding off material swirling around it in a disk, which can create two powerful jets perpendicular to the disk on each side. A blazar is especially bright because one of its jets of high-speed particles points straight at Earth. For decades, scientists have wondered: How do particles in these jets get accelerated to such high energies?
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and anxiety were more likely in adolescents exposed to war than those living outside the war-affected region in Ukraine. The unique study conducted by the Research Centre for Child Psychiatry of the University of Turku is the largest epidemiological study using standardised measures that examined the impact of the Russia–Ukraine war 2014 on the mental health of adolescents.
The Photosynthetic Microbes team from the University of Turku received over 900 000 € to build a large algae plant for the validation of cultivation processes in the Nordic environment. The team will grow microalgae in drain water from greenhouses to clean water, recover nutrients and lower microalgae production costs.
The researchers observed the X-ray radiation from the matter around a black hole. According to the researchers the shape and orientation of the X-ray glow support the theory, that the X-rays come from the disc-shaped material flowing into the black hole which is perpendicular to previously imaged relativistic outflows of matter called jets. These findings give a better understanding about the inner workings of black holes and how they consume mass.
A new test has been developed in Turku, Finland, that helps in separating heart attack patients from those whose cardiac troponin values are elevated due to renal insufficiency. Blood sample tests for cardiac troponins are an important cornerstone in the diagnostics of heart attack, but the result may be elevated also due to other transient or chronic conditions, such as renal insufficiency, atrial fibrillation or strenuous physical exercise. The new test may help in identifying myocardial infarction (MI) faster and more specifically and thus improve the treatment of MI patients.
Transmigration programs are known to have relocated millions of people from the centers of domestic economies to the national geographical peripheries to support a more equitable resource distribution. The practice is salient to the nation-building process in many developing countries, most notably in Indonesia, dating back to the 1905 Dutch settlement programs pre-independence. The transmigration programs seek to solve the unequal national development in the country's peripheries while also unifying the nation's diverse ethnic groups.
Researchers from the University of Turku determined geometrical parameters of a neutron star floating in the Galaxy 21,000 light years away. The finding confirms old ideas that this star precesses like a whirligig.