Most horses today are treasured for their ability to run, work, or be ridden, but have lost their wild-type camouflage: pale hair with zebra-like dark stripes and markings known as the Dun pattern. Now an international team of scientists has discovered what causes the Dun pattern and why it is lost in most horses.
The fossil group called the Ediacaran biota have been troubling researchers for a long time. In a new study, published in Biological Reviews, researchers from Sweden and Spain suggest the Ediacarans reveal previously unexplored pathways taken by animal evolution. They also propose a new way of looking at the effect the Ediacarans might have had on the evolution of other animals.
Harmful organic molecules in the indoor air can cause adverse health effects – a problem known as the “sick building syndrome”. A promising new solution is being developed at Uppsala University – window glass with a nanostructured coating based on titanium dioxide which uses sunlight to remove organic pollutants from the indoor air by passing it between the inner panes of the window.
There was no word for terrorism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but outbreaks of terrorist violence were frequent. In his new book on terrorism in history and literature, Uppsala University Professor of English Literature, Robert Appelbaum, documents the many ways terrorist violence was used, responded to, and written about in early modern Britain and France.
How can you tell if your mathematical model is good enough? In a new study, researchers from Uppsala University implemented a Turing test in the form of an online game (with over 1700 players) to assess how good their models were at reproducing collective motion of real fish schools. The results are published in Biology Letters.
Now a simple blood test can reveal your biological age—how old your body really is. The new research from Uppsala University is published in the Open Access journal Scientific Report@Nature today. ‘With this knowledge, it may be easier to motivate medical treatments or get a patient to change lifestyle and monitor the effect,’ says one of the authors, Professor Ulf Gyllensten.
Experiencing a traumatic event can cause life-long anxiety problems, called posttraumatic stress disorder. Swedish researchers from Uppsala University and Karolinska Institutet now show that people with posttraumatic stress disorder have an imbalance between two neurochemical systems in the brain, serotonin and substance P. The greater the imbalance, the more serious the symptoms patients have.
The press release "Posttraumatic stress disorder reveals an imbalance between signalling systems in the brain" is cancelled. Embargo until December 1st at 9.00 GMT
The ruff is a Eurasian shorebird that has a spectacular lekking behaviour where highly ornamented males compete for females. Now two groups report that males with alternative reproductive strategies carry a chromosomal rearrangement that has been maintained as a balanced genetic polymorphism for about 4 million years.
Many of the world’s approximately 117 million lakes act as wet chimneys releasing large amounts of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The most recent estimates show that CO2 emissions from the world’s lakes, water courses and reservoirs are equivalent to almost a quarter of all the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels.
Bilingual preschool children can use digital tablets as a special resource. They can listen to books in their language, use pedagogical applications, and communicate with children in other preschools using for example Skype - a new effort of importance to minority language speaking children in particular. This is illustrated in a new thesis from Uppsala University.
A team of Swedish scientists have used national registries encompassing more than one million Swedish children to study the association between early life contact with dogs and subsequent development of asthma. The new study found that children who grew up with dogs had about 15 percent lower risk of asthma than children without dogs.
In a world first study researchers from Uppsala University, Sweden and James Cook University in Australia and have found that prey fish captured by predators release chemical cues that acts as a ‘distress call’, dramatically boosting their chances for survival. The findings are published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Using mathematical modeling and field data, researchers at the mathematics department at Uppsala University have found the basic rules that allow ants to build efficient and low cost transport networks without discarding robustness. The study is now published in the Royal Society journal Interface.
In June, Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) reported that the number of fatalities in armed conflict has increased substantially in recent years, and that 2014 was the most violent year since the end of the Cold War. New data show that also the other two types of violence analyzed by the UCDP – conflict between non-state actors and violence targeting civilians – increased substantially in 2014.
By meticulously examining sediments in China’s Yellow River, a Swedish–Chinese research group are showing that the history of tectonic and climate evolution on Earth may need to be rewritten. Their findings are published today in the highly reputed journal Nature Communications.
By detecting cancer at an early stage, or even predicting who has an increased risk of being affected, the possibilities to treat the disease can be radically improved. In an international study led from Uppsala University the researchers have discovered that apparently healthy breast cells contain genetic aberrations that can be associated with an increased risk for non-familial breast cancer.
Electrochromic windows, so-called ‘smart windows’, share a well-known problem with rechargeable batteries – their limited lifespan. Researchers at Uppsala University have now worked out an entirely new way to rejuvenate smart windows which have started to show signs of age. The study, published in the distinguished science journal Nature Materials, may open the way to other areas of application.
Researchers from Uppsala University, Sweden, and the Broad Institute, USA, have identified both similarities and differences between a single tumour type in multiple dogs breeds; a finding they believe parallels the situation in the cancer of human patients.
After the genocide in the mid-1990s, Rwanda initiated major social and health reforms to improve the survival of all children. In his dissertation, Aimable Musafili from Uppsala University and the University of Rwanda reports an impressive decline in child mortality in Rwanda and disappearing social divides in child survival.