The University of Turku has long traditions in multidisciplinary sea and maritime research. At the moment, the University is recruiting two assistant or associate professors (tenure track) and a research director.
Researchers from the Universities of Turku and Helsinki, Finland, are the first in the world to discover which species adult dragonflies and damselflies prey upon, as modern laboratory techniques enabled the study of the insects’ diet. In the study, prey DNA was extracted from the tiny dragonfly droppings and the researchers managed to identify dozens of prey species from the samples. The results shed light on dragonflies’ position in natural food webs with an unprecedented specificity.
There are nearly fifty open vacancies for fixed-term doctoral candidate positions at the University of Turku from 1 January 2018 onwards. The call for applications is open 1–20 September and positions are open to all the 16 doctoral programmes.
Like many other cereal grain food products, beer contains several chemical compounds which can be considered as beneficial for our body. In his doctoral dissertation, MSc Juha-Matti Pihlava showed that the chemical diversity of hordatines in barley and barley malt beer is much larger than previously know. He also found that wheat and rye malt beers contain benzoxazinoids, which in other studies have been indicated to have anticarcinogenic properties.
Throughout the history of life, new groups of species have flourished at the expense of earlier ones and global biodiversity has varied dramatically over geologic time. A new study led by the University of Turku shows that completely different factors regulate the rise and fall of species.
Tree ferns still occupy the tropical moist forests in Australia, even though they shared their “golden age” with dinosaurs.
The research group of Professor Rami Vainio is developing novel particle instruments and innovative, radiation-tolerant solutions to nano-satellites such as Aalto-1. At the beginning of June, the research group of the University of Turku received an eight-year funding from the Academy of Finland as part of the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Research of Sustainable Space (FORESAIL) led by Professor Minna Palmroth (University of Helsinki).
A new study led by Michael West of Lowell Observatory and Roberto De Propris of the University of Turku reveals that the most massive galaxies in the universe have been aligned with their surroundings for at least ten billion years. This discovery shows that galaxies, like people, are influenced by their environment from a young age.
Researchers at the University of Turku have developed a synthetic material based on the natural hackmanite mineral which produces broad spectrum white light in lamps. The hackmanite created by the Inorganic Materials Chemistry research group is a low-cost material emitting luminescence closer to sunlight than that of the currently used lanthanides.
– This has been a really great day. This prestigious celebration, the many traditions and that we were conferred in the year that Finland turns 100 feels like a privilege, said Doctor of Philosophy Annika Adamsson outside the Turku Cathedral. And she was not the only one. Finland 100 celebration was mentioned dozens of times throughout the celebration.
Turku BioImaging has been granted funding from the FIRI programme of the Academy of Finland. One of the end uses of the funding will be a new 3D super-resolution microscope. The device will continue the super-resolution heritage of bioimaging in Turku: Stefan Hell began developing super-resolved fluorescence microscopy at the University of Turku and received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in 2014. The granted funding will enable the researchers at Turku BioImaging to examine incredibly accurate 3D images of live cells.