Keyword: Faculty of Science

There will be nearly fifty open vacancies for fixed-term doctoral candidate positions at the University of Turku from 1 January 2019 onwards. The call for applications will be open 3–21 September 2018. This is already the sixth year for all the 16 doctoral programmes to open their call for applications simultaneously.

Humans have been capturing wild Asian elephants for more than 3,000 years for different purposes, and this still continues today despite the fact that the populations are declining. An international team of researchers has now analysed records of timber elephants in Myanmar to understand the effects of capture on the animals and their survival. The study shows that even years after their capture, wild-caught elephants’ mortality rate remains increased, and their average life expectancy is several years shorter compared to captive-born animals.

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.

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.

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.

The Food Chemistry and Food Development unit leads an international research project that aims to enhance global nutrient supply and nutritiousness of food. An Indian research group visited the concluding seminar of the Nutri-Concept project in Finland.