news 2009

People with common mental disorders are at increased risk of becoming obese, according to new UCL research. Professor Mika Kivimäki of UCL Epidemiology & Public Health led research published today on the website of the British Medical Journal that shows that individuals with chronic or repeat episodes of common mental disorders, such as depression and anxiety, are particularly at risk of becoming obese.

Scientists at the University of Sheffield have made an exciting breakthrough in the control of the movement of single molecules. The findings represent a significant step forward in the field of molecular nanotechnology, which requires such control to achieve self-assembling nano-machines. This could potentially lead to the development of a method to send artificial drugs to their targets, or the creation of self-healing structures which could naturally repair tears in a surface.

High-energy heavy ion collisions, which are studied at RHIC in Brookhaven and soon at the LHC in Geneva, can be a source of light flashes of a few yoctoseconds duration (a septillionth of a second, 10-24 s, ys) - the time that light needs to traverse an atomic nucleus. This is shown in calculations of the light emission of so-called quark-gluon plasmas, which are created in such collisions for extremely short periods of time.

An archaeologist from the University of Sheffield has discovered a lost stone circle just a mile away from Britain's famous circle of standing stones at Stonehenge. The exciting new find on the west bank of the River Avon, has been dubbed "Bluestonehenge", after the colour of the 25 Welsh stones of which it was once made up.

The discovery reveals the biology of the first stage of human evolution better than anything seen to date. Los Alamos geologist is codirector of international discovery team Partial skeleton of Ardipithecus ramidus, a hominid species living about 4.4 million years ago in Ethiopia. This female stood about 1.2 meters high.

UCL scientists have extended the lifespan of mice by up to a fifth and cut the number of age-related diseases the animals suffer. The research which mimics the health benefits of reducing calorie intake and suggests that drug treatments for ageing and age-related diseases are feasible. In the 1930s scientists showed that reducing the calorie intake of laboratory rats while maintaining sufficient vitamins, minerals and other important nutrients in the animals can have health benefits.

Researchers from the University of Sheffield have created a new online atlas which displays images of the world, but not as we know it. The atlas includes over 200 maps which have been redrawn to show, at a glance, which cities are the largest, how all urban areas compare, and whether many or few people live in the countryside.

A large-scale survey to find out what it is really like living with coeliac disease will be launched by researchers at the University of Birmingham. Coeliac disease is an autoimmune disease in which the body's immune system attacks its own tissues in response to the presence of gluten, found in wheat, barley & rye.

When it comes to religion, believers and nonbelievers appear to think very differently. But at the level of the brain, is believing in God different from believing that the sun is a star or that 4 is an even number? While religious faith remains one of the most significant features of human life, little is known about its relationship to ordinary belief.

Published in the Sept. 28 edition of the Journal of Experimental Medicine , the findings could lead to new medications for genetic diseases, such as cancer and muscular dystrophy, that are sparked by missing proteins. "When DNA changes, such as nonsense mutations, occur in the middle rather than the end of a protein-producing signal, they act like a stop sign that tells the cell to prematurely interrupt protein synthesis," said Dr. Richard Gatti, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and of human genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

BERKELEY — The University of California, Berkeley, is one of six UC campuses participating in an unprecedented initiative to study and drive innovations in breast cancer prevention, screening, and treatment. The large-scale demonstration project, called the ATHENA Breast Health Network, was announced Tuesday, Sept.

PA 253/09 Scientists at The University of Nottingham have overcome one of the significant research challenges facing electrochemists. For the first time they have found a way of probing right into the heart of an electrochemical reaction. Their breakthrough will help scientists understand how catalysts work.

A team of UCL researchers say that subliminal messaging is most effective when the message being conveyed is negative. Subliminal images ' in other words, images shown so briefly that the viewer does not consciously 'see' them ' have long been the subject of controversy, particularly in the area of advertising.

SwissCube, the first Swiss satellite in history—extremely small —has been successfully launched from the Sriharikota space station in India.

Flu can trigger heart attacks and cause cardiovascular death, but the influenza vaccine may offer protection for cardiac patients, according to a review by scientists from the UCL Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology published in the October edition of The Lancet Infectious Diseases . The cardiac complications of influenza infection are well known.

PA249/09 Economists have finally proved what most of us have suspected for a long time - when it comes to apologising, talk is cheap. According to new research, firms that simply say sorry to disgruntled customers fare better than those that offer financial compensation. The ploy works even though the recipient of the apology seldom gets it from the person who made it necessary in the first place.

UCLA researchers have discovered that a combination of drugs, electrical stimulation and regular exercise can enable paralyzed rats to walk and even run while supporting their full weight on a treadmill. Published Sept. 20 in the online edition of the journal Nature Neuroscience, the findings suggest that the regeneration of severed nerve fibers is not required for paraplegic rats to learn to walk again.

BERKELEY — A new way to select and switch on one cell type in an organism using light has helped answer a long-standing question about the function of one class of enigmatic nerve cells in the spinal cord. Through targeted insertion of light-sensitive switches into these cells in awake zebrafish larvae, University of California, Berkeley, and UC San Francisco scientists have found that these mysterious cells trigger burst swimming – the periodic tail twitching typical of larvae.

PA 242/09 A skeleton, found at one of the most important, but least understood, Roman sites in Britain is puzzling experts from The University of Nottingham. Dr Will Bowden from the Department of Archaeology, who is leading excavations at the buried town of Venta Icenorum at Caistor St Edmund in Norfolk, said the burial was highly unusual: "This is an abnormal burial.

Cambridge, Mass. September 15, 2009 - Marc Melitz, an economist who specializes in international trade theory and has worked on the development of trade models that account for differences in productivity between firms, has been named professor of economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, effective July 1, 2009.