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Giant ridges on the surface of landslides on Mars could have formed without ice, challenging their use by some as unequivocal evidence of past ice on the red planet, finds a new UCL-led study using state-of-the-art satellite data. Detailed three-dimensional images of an extensive landslide on Mars, which spans an area more than 55 kilometres wide, have been analysed to understand how the unusually large and long ridges and furrows formed about 400 million years ago.

UCL research teams are part of a new transatlantic research alliance to develop radical new strategies and technologies to detect cancer at its earliest stage. Cancer Research UK is the lead funder of the International Alliance for Cancer Early Detection (ACED), a £55m investment bringing together UCL, Canary Center at Stanford University, the University of Cambridge, the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute, and the University of Manchester.

The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter, which carries instruments proposed, designed and built at UCL, is completing final testing in Germany before travelling to Cape Canaveral, USA, for launch in February 2020. Solar Orbiter will perform unprecedented close-up observations of the Sun, to help answer questions about why the Sun's corona is so hot and why the solar wind flows away from the Sun so rapidly, typically at 400-500 kilometres per second.

The next Ebola outbreak could be predicted using a new UCL-developed model that tracks how changes to ecosystems and human societies combine to affect the spread of the deadly infectious disease. The model could help policymakers to decide where to target vaccine deployment, or develop healthcare infrastructure, to reduce the risk of zoonotic disease outbreaks - illnesses that spread between animals and humans.

The US green economy is estimated to generate over $1.3 trillion in revenue per year, representing 16.5% of the global green economy, according to a new study by UCL. The green economy - broadly defined as an economy that is low carbon, resource efficient and socially inclusive - is a major source of jobs in the US, employing an estimated 9.5 million people.

The lowest-paid workers in the UK have three more years of retirement on average compared to their professional counterparts, but are more likely to suffer ill health after stopping work, a new UCL-led study suggests. The study, published today in The Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health , examined the length of time between stopping work and dying among people in England and Wales born before 1951.

Professor Peter Fonagy, Head of UCL Psychology & Language Sciences, writes about how wide social networks can help to shield people from mental disorder, arguing that we should celebrate this collective responsibility. The government published its first national review of children and young people's mental wellbeing on 10 October, World Mental Health Day.

The first conclusive evidence of a rare whale species - the True's beaked whale (Mesoplodon mirus) - inhabiting a region of the North East Atlantic has been confirmed by a research team involving UCL. Images taken during a wildlife photography trip in the Bay of Biscay in July 2018 have given conservationists the opportunity to study this species in exquisite new detail.

This week we catch up with Neuroscience PhD student Claudia, who shares with us her favourite musical in London, experience meeting fellow Neurology scientists in Paris and top spot in the city for finding inspiration to write. What are you studying, why are you interested in this subject and what do you plan to do in the future?  I am currently doing a PhD in Neuroscience researching Alzheimer's disease.

A period of rest following a traumatic event can reduce the subsequent development of involuntary 'memory intrusions'*, one of the hallmark symptoms in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a new UCL study has found. The study, published in Scientific Reports and funded by the European Research Council and Wellcome, suggests memory disturbances in PTSD may be ameliorated by increased 'consolidation' (a process by which memories are stored and contextualised), which could shed new light on treatment and prevention.

Professor Alan Thompson, Dean of the UCL Faculty of Brain Sciences, writes about progress made in finding treatments for multiple sclerosis. Twenty-five years ago there were no treatments for multiple sclerosis (MS) - a neurological condition that affects more than 100,000 people living in the UK. Today the picture is very different.

Early signs that a patient's lung cancer may spread and become untreatable can be picked up in samples of their blood and tumour, according to a trio of papers co-led by UCL. The three studies, published , are all part of Cancer Research UK's £14million TRACERx project, which aims to understand how lung cancer cells change over time and become resistant to treatment.

Polluting emissions from Chinese thermal power plants declined significantly between 2014 and 2017, according to research involving UCL. The reductions are important in helping to control China's national emissions which could lead to an improvement in air quality and considerable health benefits. A team of experts from the UK and China analysed emissions from coal, oil, natural gas and biomass power plants, with a focus on coal-fired power plants as the major contributors to ambient air pollution.

The social care records of looked-after children and young people need to include those children's voices, according to a collaborative research project led by UCL with the Care Leaver's Association and the charity Family Action. The MIRRA (Memory - Identity - Rights in Records - Access) project, led by Professor Elizabeth Shepherd (UCL Information Studies), collected interview and focus group data from more than 80 care leavers, social work practitioners and information professionals.

Living in a deprived neighbourhood as a child can have negative effects on long-term health and the longer people stay in poor areas, the more likely they are to become ill, according to a UCL-led study. The international study, which is the first systematic review to bring together research on neighbourhood effects on health and well-being over the life course, is published today in the European Journal of Public Health.

Dr Sarah Jackson (UCL Epidemiology & Health) co-authors an article discussing new research which examines the importance of having sex in older age. Sexual activity is an essential part of intimate relationships, though it tends to decline as people get older. But although research shows that frequency of sexual activity can decrease with age, for many older people, sex still remains an important part of their life.

A triple drug combination has been used to extend the lifespan of fruit flies by 48% in a new study led by UCL and the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing. The three drugs are all already in use as medical treatments: lithium as a mood stabiliser, trametinib as a cancer treatment and rapamycin as an immune system regulator.

Scientists at UCL have developed a method to reactivate 'tumour suppressor' genes, which are switched off by cancer cells - a finding which could lead to new targeted biotherapies for cancer. In the study, published in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology , researchers at UCL Cancer Institute and the Cancer Research UK UCL Centre aimed to identify ways to block the function of a regulatory protein called PRC2 (Polycomb repressive complex 2).

Researchers have identified 44 genes linked to age-related hearing loss, giving a much clearer understanding of how the condition develops, in a new study led by UCL and King's College London. In the study, published today in The  American Journal of Human Genetics , researchers analysed the genetic data from over 250,000 participants of the UK Biobank aged 40-69 years to see which genes were associated with people who had reported having or not having hearing problems on questionnaire.

It takes ecosystems two million years to recover after a mass extinction and for them to become functional and resilient again, according to new UCL co-led research. The study Hojung Kim and Dr Sarah Alvarez) and academics from Southampton, Frankfurt and California. The team looked at 13 million years' worth of fossil plankton records in the aftermath of near annihilation of ocean plankton, during the Cretaceous/Paleogene mass extinction, providing a remarkable glimpse into how the marine ecosystem 'reboots'.