Press releases

Russian and Swedish researchers report in Science on significant methane emissions in the Arctic from thawing seabed north of Siberia.

International team of ecosystem researchers develop new approach for managing ecological tradeoffs.

Last summer, researchers at the Department of Applied Environmental Science published an article demonstrating that thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency may explain increased mortality among birds in the Baltic Sea area. The article has now received an international prize as an exceptional article of the year.

The function and placement of graves in a burial ground reflected the social role and status a person had in society during the Middle Ages. Factors such as gender, age, and health affected this evaluation and categorization of people. This is shown in a dissertation by Kristina Jonsson that was recently submitted at Stockholm University.

A unique Greek-Swedish research cooperation between industry and academia on environment and climate in the Mediterranean was signed today in Stockholm. The Academy of Athens, Stockholm University and TEMES launch a European research collaboration that represents an important step in efforts to increase Swedish and Greek cooperation in the field of environmental protection and sustainable development. (03.12.2009)

It has been nearly five years since the tsunami hit the Indian Ocean on December 26, 2004. Together with survivors of the tsunami disaster, Johanna Mård Karlsson and research colleagues at Stockholm University have built a detailed reconstruction of the coastal impact of the tsunami in the Khao Lak area, Thailand. Besides achieving a better understanding of the event, they have been able to use the reconstruction to verify a new computer simulation of the impact of the tsunami in southeastern Thailand.

Quantum states are in general very fragile and are easily destroyed by noise. There are, however, quantum states that can withstand much stronger hits than others, so called invariant states. The physicists Magnus Rådmark and Mohamed Bourennane at Stockholm University have recently succeeded to generate a high fidelity invariant state in six entangled photons. This invariant quantum state has potential applications in quantum computers and especially for quantum communication and quantum cryptography.

Some 500 years ago there was a change in the circulation in the atmosphere over Scandinavia. This probably led to increased amounts of winter precipitation in northern Sweden for a period. This is shown in a new dissertation in physical geography at Stockholm University.

American economists Elinor Ostrom and Oliver E. Williamson will share the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Elinor Ostrom is on the board of the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University and is regularly active in research and teaching there.

In a scientific article from 2008, Nobel laureate in chemistry Paul Crutzen found that cultivating biofuels to replace fossil fuels can increase, rather than decrease, global warming. This finding, based on a calculation of how much laughing gas is released from cultivated land and winds up in the atmosphere, diverged considerably from the IPCC estimate. Crutzen’s global calculations are corroborated in a new article in Environmental Research Letters by scientists Georgia Desouni and Amélie Darracq at the Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology and the Bert Bolin Center from Climate Research, Stockholm University. The new article also explains the reason for the differences in comparison with the IPPC results.

SU Innovation at Stockholm University has signed an agreement with the British risk capital company Imprimatur Capital. Imprimatur Capital, with offices in over fifteen countries around the world, is investing in a long-term collaboration for the funding and development of the University’s business incubator and the projects that it includes.

On Friday, September 25th, eight honorary doctorates will be conferred during the University's graduation and installation ceremony in the Blue Hall at Stockholm City Hall. Among the new honorary doctors are the author and Professor Cecilia Lindqvist and Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Thomas Hammarberg. Others include professors Okko Behrend, Germany, Michael Long and Daniel Stern, United States, Paul Artaxo, Brazil, Janos Mink, Hungary and James Whelan, Australia.

New approaches are needed to help humanity deal with climate change and other global environmental threats that lie ahead in the 21st century. A group of 28 internationally renowned scientists propose that global biophysical boundaries, identified on the basis of the scientific understanding of the Earth System, can define a ‘safe planetary operating space’ that will allow humanity to continue to develop and thrive for generations to come. This new approach to sustainable development is conveyed in the coming issue of the scientific journal Nature where the scientists have made a first attempt to identify and quantify a set of nine planetary boundaries.

How are the claims of Indigenous peoples dealt with by states and corporations? Rebecca Lawrence, in her PhD dissertation in Sociology presented at Stockholm University on Friday September 11, illustrates that both states and corporations attempt to ignore Indigenous peoples’ rights (urfolksrättigheter) by claiming that responsibility for protecting those rights lies with the other party.

Allergies have become more common in the last few decades. It is still not fully clear why certain people develop allergies, but a strong risk factor is if the mother is allergic. Also, changes in life style are seen as playing a major role and several studies indicate that early exposure to bacteria and viruses may reduce the risk of allergies later in life. A dissertation in immunology at Stockholm University can now demonstrate a connection between infection by the herpesvirus, Epstein-Barr virus, in small children and protection against the production of allergy-related antibodies.

Researchers at the Stockholm Bioinformatics Center have developed bioinformatic methods for reconstructing global networks of proteins and genes that interact with each other functionally. Eight different types of large-scale genomic, proteomic, and functional genetic data have been combined in the largest reconstructions ever of networks in nine different species. The work is published in the June issue of the journal Genome Research, and the networks are available to researchers and others via a Web-based database.

Behind many new, innovative companies there often lies more than one founder. Starting a venture in a team, however, is a neglected area both in research and in practice. A new dissertation in business administration contributes to our understanding of how these "venture teams" are formed, develop and finally dissolve. At the same time, the study focuses on how the roles in the team are created and develop over time in relation to the innovation process in new start-ups.

- On fictions, gaps in the law, and the uncertainty of the securities trade.

The European Union readily brings to mind rules and regulations regarding everything from the shape of a cucumber to the generation of statistics. The EU's formal regulations consist of more than 300,000 legal documents. However, a new dissertation in business studies at Stockholm University in Sweden shows that, in practice, the regulation of the EU is much more comprehensive than that.

The new search engine Growyn donates profits to national and international environmental projects. The service, which is the first of its kind, is ad-funded and revenue is generated though conventional web searches at growyn.com – the more people search, the more money is generated for the environment.

If the overall water resources in river basins were acknowledged and managed better, future food crises could be significantly reduced, say researchers from Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University, Stockholm Environment Institute and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Fifty-five percent of children who underwent an intensive so-called one-session treatment of three hours were freed from their phobia. The treatment is carried out on a single occasion, is quick and cost-effective, with no side effects. The treatment form is also culture-neutral and does not need to be adapted to the country or the place it is to be used. This is shown by Lena Reuterskiöld at the Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, in the dissertation she recently submitted.

The Internet could be used as an early warning system for potential ecological disasters, according to researchers from Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University and the University of East Anglia.

It has previously been known that the risk of suicide increases if a family member has taken his/her life. This connection is also confirmed in a new study from Stockholm University and the University of Oxford. But the study also reveals something that was previously unknown: suicide at the workplace increases the risk of more people committing suicide. The contagious effect, which is statistically significant only in the case of men, is greater than that of suicide in the family, since more individuals are involved.

A newly published dissertation by Linda Ampel from the Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology at Stockholm University in Sweden examined how rapid climate changes during the most recent ice age affected ecosystems in an area in continental Europe.

"Sweden leads research and development of mobile services"

Negative emotional facial expressions dominate in the interplay with patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. This has been shown in previous research and has now been confirmed in a dissertation from the Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, in Sweden. The dissertation is based on video-recorded clinical interviews carried out by psychologists.

It is now two years since the Mobile Life VINN Excellence Centre in Kista was inaugurated. Then there was talk that mobile services were on the way to becoming an integral part of our daily lives. Today, we have reached that point.

Coffee shrubs, both in themselves and because they are most often cultivated in the shade of large trees, can have a positive impact on plant and animal diversity in those parts of the landscape that are deforested and dominated by agriculture. What constitutes a dilemma for consumers wishing to shop ecologically is that when coffee is grown in a forest, which is also common, the impact on diversity is negative.

Chemist and Nobel Laureate Svante Arrhenius was one of the greatest naturalists of our times. He was also one of the very first scientists to make the link between the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and global temperature levels – what we now call the greenhouse effect.

In recent years Roma and Travellers have gained increasing influence and as a consequence have been able to counter the heritage of many hundreds of years of persecution. A great deal has happened, at least within Europe, and not least in the field of social research. There is, however, still a long way to go to equality.

The invasive comb jelly Mnemiopsis leidyi, which has caused enormous ecological impacts in the Black and Caspian seas, has expanded its distribution to the European Atlantic coast and Baltic Sea. By summer 2007, it has been reported from virtually all basins of the sea, including its northern part. The Mnemiopsis invasion in the Baltic region is receiving a great attention because of the potential impact on pelagic food webs and fishery, and currently there are several on-going research projects studying invasion process and its consequences.

To highlight the International Year of Astronomy 2009 the Swedish Postal Service, Posten, released a series of postage stamps on January 29 2009, on the theme of space. The motif for the stamps is PoGOLite, an international collaborative project with researchers from Stockholm University and the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH). The instrument – which is currently being built in Stockholm and will be sent up by balloon from the space base Esrange in Kiruna – measures X-rays from space.

A gigantic brownish haze from various burning and combustion processes is blanketing India and surrounding land and oceans during the winter season. This soot-laden Brown Cloud is affecting South Asian climate as much or more than carbon dioxide and cause hundreds of thousands of premature deaths annually, yet its sources have been poorly understood. In this week's issue of Science Örjan Gustafsson and colleagues at Stockholm University and in India use a novel carbon-14 method to constrain that two-thirds of the soot particles are from biomass combustion such as in household cooking and in slash-and-burn agriculture.

Scientific expeditions play a crucial roll in pushing forward research within the areas of climate and environment. During 2008 archaeologists, geologists, meteorologists, glaciologists and zoologists from Stockholm University took part in Polar research expeditions. The researchers' films, photos and stories of everything from cloud formation and Arctic foxes to climate research in the Antarctic are on display during 2009 at one of Sweden’s foremost tourist attractions – ICEHOTEL in Jukkasjärvi.

We human beings don't always do as we have been taught, and organizations are poorly prepared for IT security attacks that target human weaknesses. Since it is difficult to change people's behavior, it doesn't help to provide training about how to behave securely. This is shown by Marcus Nohlberg in his dissertation at Stockholm University in Sweden in which he studied attacks that are called social engineering in IT contexts.

UN Security Council has a 'Responsibility to Protect' human security within states – even by military means.

December 2008 marked the opening of the Stockholm Centre for Healthcare Ethics (CHE). The Centre is a collaboration between the Karolinska Institutet (KI), The Royal College of Technology (KTH) and Stockholm University.

Certain ethnic groups contract malaria more seldom than others, even though the disease may be prevalent in the area. The Fulani people in Africa are one example of this. In a dissertation at the Wenner-Gren Institute, Stockholm University, Elisabeth Israelsson presents some important genetic differences between the Fulani and other peoples that live in the same area that may be of great importance for the development of effective protection against malaria.

An article published electronically yesterday in the scientific journal Acta Paediatrica, describes how heart rate and sleep in boys are affected by violent video games.

New scientific study from Stockholm University: Sets of small and seemingly insignificant habitat patches that are within reach for mobile species may under certain circumstances, as a group, provide an acceptable alternative to larger and contiguous habitats. This finding can make preservation of important ecological functions possible even in urban and other heavily exploited areas.

Thanks to the European project RISC-RAD , which has come to an end today, we now know more about the biological effects of low doses of ionizing radiation.

A round goby (Neogobius melanostomus) was caught in late July off the Swedish coast near Karlskrona. This is the first find of its kind in Sweden. The species, which originates from the Black Sea and probably spread to the Baltic via ballast water, has been found in the Gulf of Gdansk since 1990, in the southern Baltic. Today it is one of the most common coastal fishes there, so it was expected that it would show up in Swedish waters sooner or later, according to researcher Gustaf Almqvist of Stockholm University.

Co-operation in nature often works as an exchange of goods or services between two different parties. In an article in the recent issue of the scientific magazine Nature researchers from Stockholm University have studied how certain fish on coral reefs keep other species of fish clean. The Bluestreak cleaner wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus) helps other fish species by eating parasites from their skin. The cleaner's favourite food is, however, the nutrient-rich mucus layer that covers the client fish.

A new study by Georgia Destouni and her research group at Stockholm University (SU) shows that the waterborne nutrient and pollutant loads from land to the sea may be larger from small near-coastal areas, which are left without systematic environmental monitoring of their coastal loads, than from the large, systematically monitored main rivers.

Stockholm, October 20: Politics have played a critical role in the increase of the cod stock in the Baltic Sea, but environmental conditions are equally important. Only the synergies from these two factors have resulted in a stock increase that exceeds the sums of both factors. These are the preliminary results from an ongoing analysis at Stockholm University (Department of Systems Ecology, Baltic Nest Institute at Stockholm Resilience Centre). The study is highly relevant for the management decision on Baltic cod, which will be taken by the Council of Ministers on October 27th 2008.

The possibilities of calculating how the climate is affected by human activities such as transport, coal power and industry, have now significantly increased with today’s launch at Stockholm University of a new supercomputer. The new computer will enable researchers to increase the number of climate simulations conducted, as well as the number of future climate models that can be generated.

New, extremely detailed data from investigations of ice cores from Greenland show that the climate shifted very suddenly and changed fundamentally during quite few years when the ice age ended.

Few would deny that humans have personalities and human personality research has a long tradition in psychology. Farmers, dog-owners and others who spend time observing animals know that also non-human animals can differ strikingly in character and temperament. Yet, only in recent years it has become evident that personalities are a widespread phenomenon in the animal kingdom. Indeed, animals as diverse as spiders, mice and squids appear to have personalities. In an article in Nature, researchers from Stockholm University, The Netherlands and USA, argue that animal personalities are shaped by how much an invididual stands to lose.

World-renowned media researchers and experts will meet in Stockholm, Sweden, July 20-25 2008 for the media research congress “Media and Global Divides”. The congress addresses relations between media and contemporary global divides and it will explore the roles of the media with regards to today’s global inequalities. The Department of Journalism, Media and Communication at Stockholm University is to host the event.

Stockholm University’s Faculty of Humanities is to confer an Honorary Doctorate on musician and composer Benny Andersson. The ceremony will take place on the 26th September in Stockholm’s City Hall.

In less than three decades the round goby has become one of the most colorful features of the southern Baltic. The fish, which comes from the Black Sea, has rapidly adapted to Baltic conditions and can locally dominate coastal fish populations. This has led to competition with domestic fish species, such as the flounder, but it has also become a significant contribution to the diet of important predatory fishes, such as cod and perch. This is shown in a dissertation in systems ecology at Stockholm University.

Democracy Without Boundaries - an open conference at Aula Magna, Stockholm University, 8th May 13.00 pm - 16.00 pm.

Highly educated women with Latvian citizenship and activist role models make up the majority of Latvia’s civil society core activists today.

Experts call for deep-rooted changes to sustainable development thinking and suggest a new UN panel on Ecosystem Sustainability.

Canadian and Swedish researchers probe links between agriculture and environmental degradation.