Keyword: Faculty of Science

The rotational rate of one of the most massive black holes in the universe has now been measured very accurately by the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Turku and the Finnish Centre for Astronomy with ESO together with an international team of astronomers. It is the first time that the rotational rate and mass of a supermassive black hole has been measured with a closer accuracy than one percent.

The University of Turku wants to advance the open access and utilisation of research data with the newly-published data policy.

A Finnish-Norwegian-Scottish research group has discovered a gene that is important in determining the size a salmon is when it returns from the sea to reproduce in its home river. Surprisingly, the same gene is also involved in regulating the timing of puberty in humans. The results have profound implications for the management and protection of wild salmon populations, and may also help study health issues related to puberty in humans.

The Baltic Sea has a far stronger effect on the state of the North Sea than what has been previously thought. According to a recent University of Turku study, water flowing out from the Baltic Sea affects the salinity of and the number of phytoplankton and zooplankton in the North Sea. The results also suggest that Baltic Sea waters also affect North Sea herring offspring numbers.

Researchers in Finland and the Netherlands have been able to describe how sunlight is absorbed and distributed in the photosynthetic machinery of cyanobacterial cells during light fluctuations. With this method the researchers proved, that in darkness the cells seem to “get ready” for an increase in light intensity by adopting a larger light-harvesting antenna.

University of Turku researchers developed a winning solution for predicting overall survival of patients with metastatic castrate resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC), treated with first-line anti-mitotic chemotherapy. The primary benefit of this Challenge will be to establish new quantitative benchmarks for prognostic modeling in mCRPC, with a potential impact for clinical decision making and ultimately improving the design of future clinical trials.

The University of Turku bid for organising the conference of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB), winning against Prague and Barcelona. Turku was chosen as the host of the 2019 conference in this year's conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, on 14 August. The ESEB conference will be organised in the Logomo event centre, Turku, on 19–24 August 2019.

The Finnish Science and Technology Camp brought 22 elementary and secondary school pupils from Tianjin to Turku on Wednesday, 12 August 2015. In the University's workshops, the pupils experimented how to make ice cream with the help of physics and learned about the cryogenic phenomena utilised in laboratories.

​In the workshop, the pupils used liquid nitrogen to freeze ice cream. They received directions from the scientists through an interpreter (on the right).

Breeding Cichlids defending their offspring attack fish that present a greater threat to the their territory more aggressively.

​Cichlids are also popular aquarium fish.