News

This week’s results of the waste water study led by the University of Tartu show the continued spread of the coronavirus. The virus is most prevalent in Ida-Viru county and southern Estonia. Compared to earlier weeks, the virus concentration in waste water has also grown in western Estonia.

Are you interested to widen your knowledge about comparative regionalism and integration processes in Europe and Eurasia? Would you like to know more about the dimensions of comparative regionalism in the European and Eurasian context in the light of emergence, transformation, and consolidation of integration processes in the EU and in the former Soviet space?

This year, the University of Bordeaux is organising the second edition of the ENLIVE virtual intercultural exchanges, which are aimed to promote the participants’ communication skills and are open to bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral students of all the ENLIGHT partner universities.

People take all sorts of risks every day: dangerous overtaking on roads, investing, eating new and interesting foods, and so on. But the need for excitement and adventure varies from person to person. Researchers from the University of Tartu Institute of Psychology collaborated with their colleagues from the Estonian Genome Centre to study people’s risk-taking behaviour which is oriented toward feeling excitement.

EMBL and the University of Tartu have signed a memorandum of understanding to foster scientific collaboration in the life sciences.

On 29 September at 14:15, President of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities Professor Christoph Markschies will deliver the public lecture „Science policy in Germany – Can we learn from the Estonian Theologian Adolf von Harnack?” in the university assembly hall. The lecture is in English.

This week’s results of the waste water study led by the University of Tartu predict that the number of coronavirus infections will increase in the coming weeks not only in Harju County and southern Estonia, but also in Ida-Viru County. Waste water samples from western Estonia show somewhat lower virus concentrations.

According to information available to the universities, the Estonian government plans to increase teachers’ salary fund by 7.3% and the activity support for higher education by 3.2% next year. This plan aggravates the gap between the salaries of universities’ teaching staff and teachers’ salaries, as well as widens the gap between higher education and other spheres of life in Estonia. At our universities there are 633 academic staff members, whose salary is below the minimum teacher’s salary (1,412 euros); 112 of them hold a doctoral degree.

At the beginning of the academic year, the University of Tartu and Tartu University Hospital are jointly organising vaccination days near the university’s study buildings to further improve the chances of starting face-to-face studies and meeting in the lecture halls. University members who have not been vaccinated yet can get the vaccine against Covid-19 without prior booking in the following places: at the university’s main building in room 140 (the first room on the right from the main entrance)

On 18 and 19 November, the first ENLIGHT Teaching and Learning Conference takes place in Ghent, Belgium, focusing on peer learning at the university. The University of Tartu offers five students the opportunity to attend the conference free of charge. The topics of the conference “Learning from and with each other — peer learning across all levels of the university” will be challenge-based teaching, general and global skills, inclusive and green mobility and flexible learning, interaction with local stakeholders and quality assurance in education.

The struggle for existence has led to an extraordinary diversity of traits (features like height, seed size, leaf nutrient contents, or root diameter) among plants. A recent analysis of a global compilation of trait data reveals fundamental results for plant ecology: the aboveground traits of a plant do not reveal much about its fine-root traits, and the diversity of plant traits is consistently lower below- than aboveground.

Research news regularly informs you of interesting studies in various fields of research. Social Sciences Is there any hope for an enterprise inexperienced in innovation to effectively collaborate with academic researchers?

On 16 September, the UT Startup Lab’s idea development programme Starter started its new semester with an almost 5-hour idea hackathon at the University of Tartu Delta Centre. The participants shared interesting ideas and listened to inspiring speeches, and joined a team or idea they liked. At the end of the day, teams were formed to test the viability of their ideas in the Starter workshops.

Results of the most recent wave of the coronavirus prevalence study led by the University of Tartu indicate that about one per cent of the Estonian adult population is currently infected with coronavirus. At the same time, nearly 77% of adults have developed antibodies against coronavirus, either through vaccination or by recovering from the disease. Vaccinated people are almost three times less likely to get infected than those who have not been vaccinated or have not had the disease.

On 17–18 September, the University of Tartu College of Foreign Languages and Cultures hosts a conference where scholars from Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, the UK and the USA will elucidate what can be learned from philosophy and literature about how our societies have imagined responses to pandemics, in order to shed light on the COVID-19 crisis.

On 27 September at 12, the renewed memorial plaque of Stephen Báthory, Prince of Transylvania, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, born on this day in 1533, will be unveiled on the wall of the main building of the University of Tartu.

On 30 September, the Delta Trends Day 2021 “Reinventing a 400-year-old university for talent” takes place in the Delta Centre of the University of Tartu. At the free online event, visionaries and experts from many walks of life share ideas and thoughts about studies, research and leadership at the university of the future. The working language is English.

This week’s results of the waste water analysis led by the University of Tartu show an increase in coronavirus levels. Compared to previous weeks, the rise has been the most significant in Harju County. Pärnu and Lääne County have also experienced a slight increase in coronavirus levels. Hiiumaa continues to be free from the virus.

The U4Society Social Sciences, Economics and Law (SSEL) Online Conference on Social Responsibility in Challenging Times will be held on 7–8 October 2021. The conference aims to bring together researchers and PhD students from the participating U4 Society Network universities (Ghent, Göttingen, Groningen, Uppsala and Tartu) and the universities from the ENLIGHT consortium (Basque Country, Bordeaux, Comenius Bratislava, Galway, Ghent, Göttingen, Groningen, Tartu and Uppsala).

Today, food and herbs don’t come from people’s own or their grandparents’ backyards, so it is not always easy to make sure that the package contains exactly what it says it should.