Research News

The Grey Plover, also known as the Black-bellied Plover due to its striking black face and belly in breeding plumage, is an unmistakable winter visitor to the coasts of Sri Lanka. One such Grey Plover is Vayu, tagged by the Central Asian Flyway-Sri Lanka Waterbird Tracking Project conducted by FOGSL-UoC in collaboration with the Research […]

Scientists at the University of Colombo in collaboration with partners from the NUS Medicine (Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine), A*STAR's Bioinformatics Institute, and Tohoku University, are making significant strides in finding better ways to treat anxiety, depression, and related problems. They are exploring new approaches to make medications more effective and with fewer side [...]

Silent Spring, spurring the interest of conservationists, industrialists and the general public, was one of the most influential books in recent history. Here, Rachel Carson, signaled the devastating impacts of chemical pesticides on birds, apparent through drastic population declines. Ill-effects of pollution continue to take a heavy toll on integral biotic components in the most [...]

Part 03: The Himalayan Crossing of Brown-headed Gulls (Chroicocephalus brunnicephalus) – 2022 It is with great excitement that we announce the second Himalayan crossing of a tagged bird of our CAF migration tracking project in Sri Lanka. After witnessing the trans-Himalayan crossing of our first tagged Brown-headed Gull (Hima Kumari) last year, we have just [...]

On March 21, 2022 the International Astronomical Union (IAU) officially named an asteroid to honour the University of Colombo. The University of Colombo alumnus, Dr Nalin Samarasinha, and fellow astronomer, Dr Tod Lauer, discovered this asteroid in 2000 from the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, USA. Recently, after its orbit was well established, the […]

“We explored the unseen nutritional world of Sri Lankan rice varieties with a positive impact of cultivation seasonal variation” Every person needs to get a nutritional and healthy diet for their growth and development. But, in present nutritional properties or dietary requirements is being decreased from the main diet due to various anthropogenic activities. Rice […]

With the progress gained by humans in their civilization, many important landmark achievements were made and all these contributed for humans to become the dominant species on this earth. However, with the beginning of industrial revolution which was one of the turning points of human history, some adverse impacts of development also came into existence [...]

Invention selected by WIPO EIE programme - to be mentored by University of Oxford Our skin is the largest organ in the body. It harbors a wide range of “stem cell niches” which help maintain skin stability. Stem cells are the raw material that make and maintain the human body, with their inherent ability to [...]

"We are trapped between kidney diseases and day-to-day income" A common yet despairing phrase among individuals, particularly in North Central Sri Lanka. Some of them might not know that the water they drink is contaminated with inorganic species such as heavy metals and fluoride, which is considered hazardous in many parts of the world. Chronic [...]

How related are we to each other? Can we predict the kinship between two individuals no matter how distant and complex the relationship is? Are Sri Lankans truly one big family? How related are we to other nationalities? These intriguing questions that have piqued the interest of many Sri Lankans have finally being addressed, in [...]

ENGLISH සිංහල தமிழ் New Scientific Finding by the Scientists of the University of Colombo; Sri Lankan Bats and Bat-Coronaviruses "Corona" has been a word that tormented a whole world for more than a year since the end of 2019. What is this Corona? It created a global level pandemic by infecting more than 180 million [...]

Development of the first transgenic Animal in Sri Lanka Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, University of Colombo in collaboration with the Molecular Medicine Unit, Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya The dengue virus causes epidemics in more than 100 tropical and sub-tropical countries, where over 2.5 billion people (over 40% of the world's population) [...]