Professor of Medical Biochemistry Klaus Elenius from the University of Turku has been selected for the position of the Scientific Director of BioCity Turku. The vacancy lasts five years and started on 1 January 2022. BioCity Turku is a joint organisation of the University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University, supporting and coordinating bioscience research in the Turku region.
A healthy, comprehensive diet that lowers the body’s inflammation reduces the risk of gestational diabetes mellitus, reveals a new study from the University of Turku in Finland.
According to mothers’ experiences, the daily life during the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown in the spring of 2020 blurred the boundaries between work and family responsibilities and roles. Especially in families where the division of childcare responsibilities had been unequal already before the pandemic and where only the mother switched to working from home, the mothers felt that they shouldered the main responsibility for the increased childcare duties.
The food industry produces substantial amounts of side streams rich in valuable components such as proteins and fibers. Currently, most of these side streams are used as animal feed or end up as biowaste. The PROWASTE project, led by the the University of Turku developed effective and green processes for extracting proteins and fibers from brewer’s spent grain and canola press cake, two major side streams formed from food processing in Europe.
Archaeological research often focuses on broad geographical areas, time periods, or big data. In wide generalisations, nuances and details are lost. Ulla Moilanen studied Medieval (c. 900 – 1400 AD) inhumation graves in Finland and found out that the period was more diverse than previously thought.
Eukaryotic plankton are an essential and highly diverse component of marine ecosystems. A research team from École Normale Supérieure (ENS) Paris, University of Turku and Anton Dohrn Zoological Station in Naples established their global geographic distribution using DNA data and a probabilistic model. The study highlights large variations in geographic structure between plankton groups depending on their diversity, body size, and ecology, which can be linked to variations in sensitivity to local environmental conditions.
The Finland-China Network in Food and Health is a new multidisciplinary network which aims, on their part, to answer the global challenges related to food. The purpose of the network is to develop research and cooperation with impact, including innovations and business cooperation.
Obesity risk factors of family background are associated with changes in the brain function, finds a study conducted at the Finnish Turku PET Centre. The results show that the function of neural networks regulating satiety and appetite is altered already before a person develops obesity.
We know that in the centres of the majority of galaxies lies a supermassive black hole. New observations of certain galaxies reveal that these black holes may be consuming stars at a higher rate than previously known. The energy produced by the destruction of the star can be revealed in the infrared, as heat from cosmic dust warmed by the explosion.
Maternal vitamin D deficiency during pregnancy was associated with 44% increased risk of ASD in the offspring when compared to mothers who had sufficient levels of vitamin D during pregnancy. The study was conducted in collaboration with researchers from the University of Turku, Finland, and Columbia University, New York.