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A partnership involving UCL has been awarded £14M to accelerate access to simple self-tests in African countries. Self-testing for HIV using rapid diagnostic kits is becoming increasingly widely used, allowing high-risk people to test their own HIV status in private. Self-testing is now recommended in the USA and Europe, was recently introduced in Kenya, and is being evaluated for introduction in several other African countries.

Excessive alcohol consumption costs NI £900m per year Minimum Unit Price for alcohol would save 63 lives per year Policy would reduce hospital admissions by more than 2,400 The Northern Ireland Executive has today (3 December 2014) announced it will proceed with an Alcohol Minimum Unit Pricing policy, which could reduce drink-related hospital admissions by more than 2,400 a year, according to researchers from the University of Sheffield.

A report, published today by the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research (SCCJR), highlights a correlation between the occurrence of certain football matches and increased reports of domestic abuse. The report, which was commissioned by the Scottish Government and carried out by academics at the University of Glasgow and Glasgow Caledonian University, found an increase in recorded domestic violence incidents on the day that football matches were played.

Researchers have measured the value of mounted police units in the UK. They have found that the high visibility of the police horses and riders on neighbourhood patrols boosts levels of public confidence in the police. In trials, the researchers from the University of Oxford and RAND Europe observed that mounted police units generated around six times more public interest than foot patrols over the same period although most of these interactions were brief (the number of longer conversations was similar for both mounted police and foot patrols).

11% of men in Britain report ever paying for sex and 3.6% report paying for sex in the past five years, finds a UCL-led study funded by the Wellcome Trust and Medical Research Council. The study of 6,108 men, published in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections, found that single men aged 25-34, in managerial or professional occupations and those who reported high numbers of sexual partners, were the most likely to say that they had paid for sex.

Oxford University research to predict the geographic spread of Ebola virus in West Africa has been funded by the UK government and the Wellcome Trust. The Department for International Development (DFID) and the Wellcome Trust are releasing £1.34m from a joint fund to support five projects, run by leading British and international researchers, which will improve evidence and understanding of the Ebola outbreak.

UCLA Center for East-West Medicine research shows how Eastern and Western medicine can blend to find solutions to this common problem Enrique Rivero About 19 percent of North Americans suffer from constipation, with the digestive condition being more common among women, non-whites, people older than 60, those who are not physically active and the poor.

Stanford research reaffirms that right-to-carry gun laws are connected with an increase in violent crime. This debunks - with the latest empirical evidence - earlier claims that more guns actually lead to less crime. New Stanford research confirms that right-to-carry gun laws are linked to an increase in violent crime.

Airport security study shows fraudsters more likely to be caught through conversation than body language A conversation-based screening method is 20 times more effective at catching airline passengers with false cover stories than the traditional method of examining body language for suspicious signs, according to new University of Sussex research.

A new book bursting with London maps and infographics, published last week, is the result of a year of intense work by Dr James Cheshire (UCL Geography) and designer Oliver Uberti. 'London: the Information Capital' seeks to paint a contemporary portrait of the city through its abundance of open data and highlights a range of UCL research from departments including the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) and UCL Security and Crime Science.

Political correctness - loathed by some as censorship awash in leftist philosophy - actually boosts the creativity of mixed-sex work teams, according to new research. If you think Americans are pushed to speak the language of close-minded social idealists at the expense of free speech, new research led by a Cornell ILR School professor might make you cringe.

Smokers were generally negative in their reaction towards e-cigarettes, possibly due to the widely documented uncertainties about safety and effectiveness Researchers at the University of Liverpool have shown that more than half of smokers using the Stop Smoking Service on Merseyside have tried electronic cigarettes, despite many reporting uncertainly about thier safety and effectiveness.

New study shows that - even after controlling for subject, degree class, alma mater and occupation - graduates who attended private schools earn on average 6% more than those who attended state schools. If higher education is to be a route to social mobility then the link between family background and adult outcomes must be broken Anna Vignoles New research shows that graduates who went to private schools earn substantially more than those who went to state schools.

Geologists are letting the air out of a nagging mystery about the development of animal life on Earth. Scientists have long speculated as to why animal species didn't flourish sooner, once sufficient oxygen covered the Earth's surface. Animals began to prosper at the end of the Proterozoic period, about 800 million years ago - but what about the billion-year stretch before that, when most researchers think there also was plenty of oxygen? Well, it seems the air wasn't so great then, after all.

UCL welcomes the news that two major academic publishers are to reduce the costs of their subscriptions against payments they receive to publish open-access articles from 2015. Research Councils UK and other funders require open access publication of research findings funded by them. However, this has left UCL - a long-term advocate of open access - and other research-intensives universities paying publishers twice: once in the form of article-processing charges in order to have papers published and again in the form of subscriptions in order to be able to read them.

The Mentor Mother program trains women to provide health information and conduct home visits to pregnant women and to help the mothers raise healthier children. The incidence of HIV infection in South Africa tops that of any nation in the world, with some 6 million of the country's nearly 50 million residents infected.

UCLA study shows that community-based interventions are effective and might help lower rates of HIV infection Mark Wheeler The Mentor Mother program trains women to provide health information and conduct home visits to pregnant women and to help the mothers raise healthier children. The incidence of HIV infection in South Africa tops that of any nation in the world, with some 6 million of the country's nearly 50 million residents infected.

Current risk-assessment tools failed to predict the majority of women who later experienced major fractures Enrique Rivero To reduce the risk of bone fractures and the complications arising from them, the United States Preventive Services Task force (USPSTF) recommends that all women age 65 and older be tested and treated for low bone mineral density.

The expansion of Medicaid to millions of uninsured people should not have the catastrophic impact some predicted for state budgets because the increases in hospital and emergency room usage are only temporary, according to a new study by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. "We found that the surge doesn't last long once people get coverage," said Nigel Lo, a research analyst at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the study's lead author.

10 October 2014 The ideal cost per dose for a new meningitis vaccine ranges from £3 up to a possible £22 only if several vaccine favourable factors all coincide, according to research which has analysed how to maximise the reduction in cases while making a new vaccination programme cost-effective.