Published 1 November 2018 The Inaccessible Island rail (Photo: Peter G. Ryan) The world’s smallest flightless bird can be found on Inaccessible Island in the middle of the South Atlantic. Less than 100 years ago, researchers believed that this species of bird once wandered there on land extensions now submerged in water, and therefore named it Atlantisia. In a new study led by biologists at Lund U

https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/researchers-solve-mystery-bird-atlantis - 2025-07-07

Published 6 November 2018 Fredrik Månsson, Hans Norrgren and Joakim Esbjörnsson (Photo: Ingemar Hultquist, Lund University) A study published in The Lancet HIV shows that HIV-2 is more pathogenic than previously demonstrated. The new findings indicate that early treatment should be applied to all patients with HIV, not only to those with HIV-1. “The study is unique in that we have followed cohort

https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/long-term-study-shows-hiv-2-deadlier-previously-thought - 2025-07-07

Published 8 November 2018 Bat in flight (Photo: Anders Hedenström) For the first time, researchers have succeeded in directly measuring the aerodynamics of flying animals as they manoeuvre in the air. Previously, the upstroke of the wings was considered relatively insignificant compared to the powerful downstroke but, in a new study, biologists at Lund University in Sweden have observed that it is

https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/unique-study-shows-how-bats-manoeuvre - 2025-07-07

Published 8 November 2018 In order to avoid water conflicts and to stimulate food production in sub-Saharan Africa, large-scale land acquisition should be regulated and focus on food production. These are the conclusions of a new doctoral thesis from Lund University in Sweden. Emma Johansson’s thesis investigates how land use is affected by large-scale land acquisition, also referred to as land gr

https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/large-scale-land-acquisition-africa-affects-farmers-ability-produce-their-own-food - 2025-07-07

Published 14 November 2018 Kick-off for LU Futura in August 2018. Photo: Kennet Ruona With research at eight different faculties, Lund University has a unique opportunity to look at future problems from all possible perspectives. LU Futura, the University’s new think-tank, will take an interdisciplinary approach to important future issues.  LU Futura operates in the interface between the Universit

https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/new-lund-university-think-tank-looks-future - 2025-07-07

Published 15 November 2018 Willow warbler (Photo: Kristaps Sokolovskis) Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have studied flight routes to determine how far willow warblers migrate in the autumn. The results show that the willow warbler holds a long-distance migration record in the ten-gram weight category – with the small birds flying around 13 000 kilometres or longer to reach their destinat

https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/songbirds-set-long-distance-migration-record - 2025-07-07

Published 19 November 2018 His Excellency Sergio Mattarella, President of Italy visits Lund (Photo: Kennet Ruona) As part of a three-day state visit to Sweden, His Excellency Sergio Mattarella, President of Italy, came to Lund University where he gave a lecture to a packed auditorium. The aim of the official visit was to further promote the long-standing and excellent relations between Sweden and

https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/italian-president-sergio-mattarella-visits-lund-university - 2025-07-07

Published 22 November 2018 Jonatan Axelsson (Photo: Åsa Hansdotter) Studies have repeatedly linked maternal smoking during pregnancy with reduced sperm counts in male offspring. Now a research team at Lund University in Sweden has discovered that, independently of nicotine exposure from the mother, men whose fathers smoked at the time of pregnancy had half as many sperm as those with non-smoking f

https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/sperm-count-50-lower-sons-fathers-who-smoke - 2025-07-07

Published 29 November 2018 Dung beetle (Photo: Chris Collingridge) Lund University in Sweden has received prestigious grants of EUR 4 million from the European Research Council (ERC). The funding is allocated to two new projects in biology and environmental research respectively. One project concerns gaining insights into one of the animal world’s most sensitive biological compasses. The other wil

https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/prestigious-grants-research-biological-compasses-and-threat-pollinating-insects - 2025-07-07

Published 30 November 2018 The new molecule (Illustration: Nils Rosemann) For the first time, researchers have succeeded in creating an iron molecule that can function both as a photocatalyst to produce fuel and in solar cells to produce electricity. The results indicate that the iron molecule could replace the more expensive and rarer metals used today. Some photocatalysts and solar cells are bas

https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/brilliant-iron-molecule-could-provide-cheaper-solar-energy - 2025-07-07

Published 30 November 2018 The long-term drought experiment in the Netherlands from where the soils were sampled. A rain curtain has excluded precipitation from entering the soil during the summer for 18 years, simulating the drought. (Photo: Evy de Nijs) Researchers at Lund University in Sweden, in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Amsterdam, examined how 18 years of drought af

https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/historical-climate-important-soil-responses-future-climate-change - 2025-07-07

Published 4 December 2018 DIfferent types of fibroblasts in breast tumour tissue (Image: Chris Madsen) In certain forms of cancer, connective tissue forms around and within the tumour. One previously unproven theory is that there are several different types of connective tissue cells with different functions, which affect the development of the tumour in different ways. Now, a research team at Lun

https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/wrong-connective-tissue-cells-signal-worse-prognosis-breast-cancer-patients - 2025-07-07

Published 5 December 2018 Filipe Pereira (Photo: Kennet Ruona) Researchers have succeeded in converting human skin cells into blood stem cells in an international collaboration project. “This is a first step on the way to generating fully functional blood stem cells in a petri dish which, in the future, could be transplanted into patients with blood diseases”, says Filipe Pereira, the researcher f

https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/mechanism-turning-skin-cells-blood-stem-cells-uncovered - 2025-07-07

Published 6 December 2018 Image: Johan Lindgren The remains of an 180 million-year-old ichthyosaur (literally ‘fish-lizard’) have been analysed, and the fossil is so well-preserved that its soft-tissues retain some of their original pliability. The study, published in Nature, contributes to our understanding on how convergent evolution works, and shows that ichthyosaurs adapted to marine condition

https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/remarkably-preserved-fossil-sea-reptile-reveals-skin-still-soft - 2025-07-07

Published 7 December 2018 Fruit fly (Photo: Marcus Stensmyr) Fruit flies can be a scourge in our homes, but to date no-one has known how they became our uninvited lodgers. For decades, researchers have searched for their origins and now a Swedish-American research team has succeeded. They have also discovered that fruit flies in the wild are far more picky than their domesticated counterparts, a f

https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/how-fruit-flies-ended-our-fruit-bowls - 2025-07-07

Published 7 December 2018 A new EU project in the program area Öresund-Kattegatt-Skagerak (ÖKS) has been approved. Hanseatic League of Science (HALOS) will build a unique collaboration between Hamburg and South-West Scandinavia, bring together the four unique research facilities MAX IV, ESS, DESY and European XFEL, and create a centre for integrated, world-leading Life Science innovation and resea

https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/halos-unique-collaboration-life-science - 2025-07-07

Published 7 December 2018 For the first time, a research team at Lund University in Sweden has successfully reprogrammed mouse and human skin cells into immune cells called dendritic cells. The process is quick and effective, representing a pioneering contribution for applying direct reprogramming for inducing immunity. Importantly, the finding opens up the possibility of developing novel dendriti

https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/watch-code-reprogramming-immune-sentinels - 2025-07-07

Published 10 December 2018 Lund University (Sweden), Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich (Germany), Porto University (Portugal), Szeged University (Hungary) and Université Paris-Saclay have decided to join forces to create a pilot project of a European University, an “Alliance for Global Health,” committed to higher education in global health and well-being challenges at the heart of European v

https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/lund-and-four-other-major-research-universities-create-european-alliance-global-health - 2025-07-07

Published 12 December 2018 Adult male blue tit (Photo: Andreas Nord) Heatwaves similar to those experienced in Europe in 2018 can have a very negative impact on animals. A new study from Lund University in Sweden shows that overheated birds have smaller offspring, and that those that are born may have lower chances of survival. Researchers were already aware that animals living in very warm region

https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/more-heatwave-summers-will-affect-animals - 2025-07-07

Published 13 December 2018 Image: Creative Commons/NIAID NK cells, or natural killer cells, play an important role in the body’s defences against cancer and various infections. Now, in a joint project, researchers at Lund University in Sweden, the University of Oxford and Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm have mapped how the different steps of the maturation process of these supercells from blood

https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/immune-systems-supercell-how-it-matures - 2025-07-07