Swedish universities going down
Swedish universities are going down in the Times Higher Education's ranking of the best universities in the world. Only the Karolinska Institute has received a better result this year than last. The survey is based on responses from 60,000 academics and what they believe is the best university in the world. Last year, Sweden had three universities among the top one hundred, this year the universities in Lund and Uppsala have fallen and can no longer be found among the top 100. Uppsala University is the one that’s gone down most since 2012. ”A university’s reputation is something that’s hard to change in the long term, it is rather a recognition in the long term, and therefore it’s only natural that famous universities end up in the top of the list,” says Leif Eriksson, investigator at the planning department at Uppsala University. While many Swedish universities have lost out in the ranking, the Karolinska Institute has climbed higher. The principal at the Karolinska Institute, Anders Hamsten, believes there’s an advantage to not being a university offering a broad variety of disciplines but one which focuses on research. ”But we usually end up higher in the surveys that are aimed at quality, so we have a clear image as an international university,” he says. In total five Swedish universities ended up among the top 200, among them Stockholm University came out on top. The highest ranked university in the world, just as it was last year, is Harvard University in the U.S., followed by MIT, also in the U.S., and then Cambridge University in England. Swedish Minister for Education, Jan Björkman, chose not to comment. For more information: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/

Henke and Tina help sick children
Football legend Henrik ”Henke” Larsson and his cooking counterpart Tina ”Mat-Tina” Nordström will facilitate hospitalization for children staying at Helsingborg Hospital. Now there is a Henke room with wallpaper showing his career, and Mat-Tina has created a bistro that children and their parents may use.

Sweden: Women can get new wombs
A team of researchers and doctors at Göteborg University is trying to get seven women pregnant. It may not seem revolutionary, but for the fact that until just recently these women either had a malformed womb or none at all. After more than a decade of research, the team at Göteborg University was given the green light to proceed with womb transplants in ten Swedish women. Now they are trying to make seven of them pregnant. "If (this works), it means there’s a treatment available for women who previously didn’t have one. Abroad, surrogate mothers have been used, but that’s not allowed in Sweden and most parts of the world,” says Mats Brännström, professor of obstetrics and gynecology, and chief physician at Sahlgrenska University Hospital. The endeavor is made by taking the seven women’s embryos, which were removed before the transplantation, and putting them back into the new wombs. ”In recent weeks we’ve done it in four of the women. We will do it in the remaining three during the months of March and April, but not until a healthy baby is born can we know that it is successful,” says Brännström. For many of the women, the womb they have in their body now is the one they themselves grew. "Medically, that may only be an advantage.” And Brännström believe this means that genetically born men also could become pregnant: ”Yes, I believe that. This has been discussed, among other things, at medical sex changes.” But he adds that there are risks involved with the surgery and the side effects in the drugs you have to take to make sure your body doesn’t reject the new womb. There may also be long term effects. ”Through research we now know that there are no risks for the child,” Brännström concludes.