news 2017

The past 12 months have provided many eye-grabbing headlines from the Imperial community from world-leading research to incredible inventions. Before 2018 is upon us with its own wave of news, we take a quick look back at the most popular articles on our award-winning news site (ranked by the number of page views).

Bacteria not only develop resistance to antibiotics, they also can pick it up from their rivals. In a recent publication in "Cell Reports", Researchers from the Biozentrum of the University of Basel have demonstrated that some bacteria inject a toxic cocktail into their competitors causing cell lysis and death.

What unites the needs of Ebola workers, people with multiple sclerosis and athletes comes down to one thing - cold hands. A device that cools the hands is finding widespread use from the playing field to the clinic. A cooling device that has been improving strength and endurance in mostly male athletes for 15 years is finding new uses in helping people with multiple sclerosis live normal lives, preventing overheating in Ebola workers and cooling working dogs.

Coral reefs that can survive global warming, an expedition around Antarctica, a booster for genetic research, a personnal virtual heart, a National Center for Data Science. Some of the EPFL's research and milestones that marked the year 2017.

An inability to focus the brain on tasks may partially explain why paralysis commonly occurs in people following a stroke, according to a news study. Patients who have suffered a stroke - where the blood flow to the brain is interrupted by a clot or bleed - often experience a degree of paralysis on one side of the body, termed hemiplegia, affecting the strength and dexterity in their limbs.

When you enter a room, your brain is bombarded with sensory information. If the room is a place you know well, most of this information is already stored in long-term memory. However, if the room is unfamiliar to you, your brain creates a new memory of it almost immediately. MIT neuroscientists have now discovered how this occurs.

Some surprise research headlines need a second look, but quirky studies can often reveal serious science. From a geological Brexit to jellyfish computers, some research announcements are more than a little bit quirky. However, look beyond the headline and you'll find fascinating research with powerful real world applications.

Robotic prosthetics, AI guessing your brain age and much, much more. It's been quite a year for research, so here's just a few of the top stories. At times this year it may have seemed like science took a back seat, with politics bullying its way to the forefront and Brexit shoehorned into every headline to contend with.

A new marker that could be used to diagnose fatal breast cancer up to one year ahead of current methods has been identified in a study led by UCL. The study, published in Genome Medicine today, found that changes detected in a part of DNA which the researches named EFC#93 could suggest early signs of deadly breast cancer.

Chemotherapy for one type of leukaemia could be improved by giving patients a drug currently used to treat an unrelated condition, new research shows. Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is an aggressive cancer that stops healthy blood cell production. Chemotherapy is the standard treatment, but improvements are needed as the five-year survival rate in patients older than 60 is only 5-15 per cent.

ANN ARBOR-An international research team has assembled the first complete list of all known vascular plant species in the Americas. The searchable database contains nearly 125,000 species representing one-third of all known vascular plants worldwide. Vascular plants are land plants with specialized internal-transport and vertical-support tissues.

A new test that measures RNA or protein molecules in human cells can accurately identify viral infection as a cause of respiratory symptoms, according to a Yale study published Dec. 21 in The Journal of Infectious Diseases. Performed with a simple nasal swab, the test could prove to be a quicker, cheaper way to diagnose respiratory viral illnesses than current methods, the researchers said.

Around 80 to 85 percent of our calorie needs is covered through seeds, either directly as food or indirectly through use as feed.

The world's oldest algae fossils are a billion years old, according to a new analysis by earth scientists at McGill University. Based on this finding, the researchers also estimate that the basis for photosynthesis in today's plants was set in place 1.25 billion years ago. The study, published in the journal Geology , could resolve a long-standing mystery over the age of the fossilized algae, Bangiomorpha pubescens , which were first discovered in rocks in Arctic Canada in 1990.

Scientists have identified the genetic mutations that cause sickle cells in deer, according to new research Ecology & Evolution. The scientists from Imperial College London say although their research is in its early stages, it shows promise that certain species of deer might potentially be a surprising model in which to study the effects of sickling in humans such as resistance to malaria.

For adults 60 and older, moderate daily walks improve attention and mental skills, UCLA study finds Leigh Hopper Walking more than 4,000 steps a day can improve attention and mental skills in adults 60 and older, according to UCLA research published December 12 in a preprint edition of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

Study into catastrophic population decline for flying insects is UK's most discussed scientific paper of 2017 A research project involving the University of Sussex detailing the catastrophic loss of insect populations on nature reserves has been named the most discussed journal article in the UK in 2017.

Researchers at the UCLouvain have made a major new discovery in the research on bacteria. Jean-François Collet, professor at UCL's de Duve Institute, and his team have shown that when you change the structure of a bacterium, you decrease its ability to detect environmental stress and to activate stress responses against antibiotics.

Introduction: Effects of warming over 50 years were even reduced compared to changes in the first decade. How stable are ecosystems under climate change? This question gets ever increasing scientific attention. And while they are not as visible as plant and animal communities, soil microbial communities are quintessential to look at in this context.

New research has drawn a link between changes in the brain's anatomy and biomarkers that are known to appear at the earliest stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD), findings that could one day provide a sensitive but non-invasive test for AD before cognitive symptoms appear. Scientists have known for some time that one of the first signs of AD is buildup of amyloid-Beta and tau proteins in the brain.