Press releases

It is known that a key protein in the immune system, C3, bonds with and interacts with up to 40 other proteins and receptors in the blood. But until now it has not been understood what the significance of these bonds might be. In the latest issue of the scientific journal Nature a Swedish-Dutch research team has laid bare the crystal structure of the protein, which may lead to tailor-made treatments for autoimmune diseases.

The Structural Genomics Consortium, Karolinska Institutet, VINNOVA, Knut and Alice Wallenberg’s foundation (KAW) and The Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF) today announces the establishment of a Swedish research node of the Structural Genomics Consortium.

A single airline can have thousands of planes taking off and landing all over the world every day. Since every minute is expensive and security is a top priority, somebody has to keep them in line. Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden has come up with a solution to the problem.

When the US and the EU disagree about major security policy issues, like the Iraq War, the EU countries seldom manage to pursue a united policy. On the other hand, these trans-Atlantic crises usually bring EU countries closer together in other issues of security policy. The insight grows that they need to balance the global influence of the US, and this leads to a greater political will to cooperate. This has been shown by the political scientist Maria Strömvik in a new dissertation from Lund University.

Weeding is a major problem for ecological growers since it is both expensive and time-consuming. New robot technology may have the solution. In a new dissertation, Björn Åstrand, from Halmstad University in Sweden, presents how weeds can be removed mechanically with the fully automated robot Lukas.

The Swedish Defense Research Agency (FOI) and Uppsala University have shown that a method previously used to warn about mining quakes can be used to predict where and when earthquakes are going to take place.

The molecular biologist Cathrine Persson at Umeå University has been allotted SEK 2.5 million from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research on a vaccine against malaria.

Savings and consumption decisions will be more efficient if households have the opportunity to borrow and save as they wish. This in turn would lead to more consumption, and therefore overall growth. The accuracy of this prediction is clearly borne out by developments in Sweden from 1980 to 2000, which is shown in Mårten Bjellerup’s dissertation Essays on Consumption: Aggregation, Asymmetry, and Asset Distributions.

The ”four-legged fish” Ichthyostega is not the ”missing link” between marine and land animals, but rather one of several short-lived ”experiments”. This is what scientists from Uppsala and Cambridge universities maintain in an article in the latest issue of the scientific journal Nature.

Ahead of International Polar Year 2007 a large number of new research projects related to global warming will be launched in the Arctic. Next week a team of eight Nordic scientists will be traveling to Nordaustland in northern Svalbard on a preparatory expedition.