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Topics: Science, technology

  • Early fossil fish from China shows where our jaws came from

    Where did our jaws come from? The question is more complicated than it seems, because not all jaws are the same. In a new article, published in Science, palaeontologists from China and Sweden trace our jaws back to the extinct placoderms, armoured prehistoric fish that lived over 400 million years ago.

  • Giving patients a voice in drug development

    The patient perspective is important in all medical research, and particularly in drug development. This month, a public private research initiative called PREFER, is launched to assess when and how patient preferences on benefits and risks should be incorporated in decisions on medicinal products

  • Bolstering agriculturally dependent communities against climate catastrophes may prevent future violent clashes

    Severe drought is associated with a higher incidence of armed conflict among agriculture-dependent populations in the least developed states. Strengthening the political status and economic well-being of these marginalised groups, can reduce the risk of conflict. This is a key finding of a study by researchers at Uppsala University and the Peace Research Institute Oslo, published in PNAS.

  • Chameleonic properties make large molecules into possible drugs

    In a paper published today in Nature Chemical Biology, a team of researchers from Uppsala University, the Broad Institute of MIT, Harvard, and AstraZeneca are presenting new insights into how larger-than-average molecules can be developed into pharmaceutical drugs

  • Ancient fish illuminates one of the mysteries of childhood

    Remember dropping your milk teeth? In your hand was only the enamel-covered crown: the entire root of the tooth had somehow disappeared. In a paper published in Nature, a team of researchers from Uppsala University and the ESRF apply synchrotron x-ray tomography to a tiny jawbone of a 424 million year old fossil fish in order to illuminate the origin of this strange system of tooth replacement.

  • Childhood obesity on the agenda as experts gather in Uppsala

    At Uppsala Health Summit on childhood obesity, which starts today on World Obesity Day, experts from health organisations, the academic community, the business sector and non-governmental organisations meet to discuss how we can work together to combat the ongoing obesity epidemic.

  • Magma movements foretell future eruptions

    Geologists at Uppsala University have traced magma movement beneath Mt. Cameroon volcano, which will help monitoring for future volcanic eruptions. The results are published in Scientific Reports.

  • Roundworms even more useful than researchers previously thought

    The one millimetre long roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans has been used as a model organism in scientific research, and has therefore been extensively examined. A research group at Uppsala University has now demonstrated that the worm is an even more complete model system than previously thought, which could enable more detailed research into areas such as early embryonic development.

  • "The Nobel Prize in Economics” and society

    In 1968, the scientific status of economics was strengthened by the creation of the “Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences”. In a new book, Uppsala researcher Gabriel Söderberg and Avner Offer at Oxford University draw the conclusion that the Economics Prize indirectly has also contributed to undermining the scientific status of economics.

  • The psychology behind climate change denial

    In a new thesis in psychology, Kirsti Jylhä at Uppsala University has studied the psychology behind climate change denial. The results show that individuals who accept hierarchical power structures tend to a larger extent deny the problem. The papers in the thesis are published in the scientific journal Personality and Individual Differences.

  • Eat, escape, love: the price of looking sexy

    In the animal kingdom colourful traits can be both a blessing and a curse. A new study from a group of researchers at Uppsala University has studied the conspicuous wing coloration of two species of damselflies. Their results imply that males, but not females, pay a high cost when using colour to communicate with other damselflies, both in terms of predation risk and visibility to prey.

  • Artificial intelligence reveals mechanism behind brain tumour

    Researchers at Uppsala University have used computer modelling to study how brain tumours arise. The study, which is published today in the journal EBioMedicine, illustrated how researchers in the future will be able to use large-scale data to find new disease mechanisms and identify new treatment targets.

  • The memory of a heart attack is stored in our genes

    Both heredity and environmental factors influence our risk of cardiovascular disease. A new study, by researches at Uppsala University, shows now that the memory of a heart attack can be stored in our genes through epigenetic changes. The results have been published in the journal Human Molecular Genetics.

  • Donation for New Sociology Prize

    Uppsala University has received its first donation for sociology to be used for the Hans L. Zetterberg Prize “to be awarded yearly to a younger researcher, Swedish or foreign, who, with his/her scientific work in sociology, preferably through fruitful combination of theory and practice, has moved the research front forward.”

  • Uppsala Health Summit 11-12 October: Pre-conference report

    A report has been released for the upcoming Uppsala Health Summit on ending childhood obesity, outlining the challenges, including the effectiveness of the much debated sugar-tax, how to target interventions for immigrants and the role of industry. The report is produced to prepare the 200 delegates for discussions on concrete solutions.

  • Life history of the 360 million-year-old Acanthostega rewrites the tetrapod move on land

    This week in Nature, an international team of researchers shows that fossils of the 360 million-year-old tetrapod Acanthostega, one of the iconic transitional forms between fishes and land animals, are not grown-ups but all juveniles. This conclusion sheds new light on the life cycle of Acanthostega and the so-called conquest of land by tetrapods.

  • Flycatcher genome sheds light on causes of mutations

    A research team at Uppsala University has determined the complete genetic code of 11 members of a flycatcher pedigree. Doing this, they have for the first time been able to estimate the rate of new mutations in birds. When they combined the new results with mutation rate estimates from other organisms, a clear pattern emerged: The more common a species is, the lower its mutation rate.

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