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The rapid spread of the coronavirus is generating anxiety, stress and pressure. How does this affect people? Some studies claim that stress and pressure make people greedy. Other studies, in contrast, predict solidarity and benevolence. UvA scientists have also researched how people are affected by stress, and their conclusion is an optimistic one.

Recent economic news has certainly been gloomy. Studies confirm that negative economic news causes us to think more negative thoughts and can lead to a loss of confidence in the political system. Surprisingly, these effects are the same regardless of our age, work and education level. The content and tone of news items and relevant economic context are key: we are most susceptible to negative news before the start of an actual crisis.

An international team of astronomers, including Alex de Koter of the University of Amsterdam, has used ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) to capture the unprecedented dimming of red supergiant Betelgeuse. The stunning new images of the star's surface show not only the fading of the famous red supergiant in Orion's belt, but also how its apparent shape is changing.

Small changes in the environmental conditions of biological communities that have only minor immediate effects, may, after a substantial delay, cause dramatic shifts in these communities by triggering evolutionary processes. This is the main conclusion of research from theoretical ecologists Catalina Chaparro-Pedraza and André de Roos at the University of Amsterdam.

Ulrika Klomp investigates several grammatical phenomena in Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT), as part of the descriptive grammar that she is writing. Her article on the manual and non-manual markers that are used in conditional clauses was recently published. Conditional clauses express a condition, and the consequence of it is expressed in the main clause.

Over the past years, physicists have developed techniques to create extremely cold atoms and ions. These ultra-cold particles have many uses; for example, they can be used as building blocks for quantum computers and highly precise clocks. Ideally, for such applications, one would also have mixtures of very cold atoms and ions at one's disposal, but so far it had only been possible to cool down the separate types of particles to the required temperatures.

Computational biologists from the University of Amsterdam have succeeded in making a computer model of one of the most essential steps in the embryonic development of Cnidaria. They modeled the process of gastrulation, during which two types of tissue arise: the tissue that will later form the internal organs, and the tissue that will form the skin and senses.

When salty water evaporates, the salt can crystallize and creep over a long distance. This effect, which can cause serious problems in for example outdoor electronics, was investigated in detail by a team of UvA-researchers led by Noushine Shahidzadeh. Their results were published in Science Advances in December.

Telescopes of the European VLBI Network have observed a Fast Radio Burst originating from a spiral galaxy similar to our own. This Fast Radio Burst (FRB) is the closest that has ever been localised and has been identified in an environment radically different to that of previous bursts. The international team, that includes astronomers of the University of Amsterdam, published their findings in Nature.