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Across the globe smartphones and mobile apps have become an integral part of everyday life, but what determines the apps you use?   A new study involving UCL reveals that the country you live in rather than your demographic data is actually the biggest indicator of the types of apps you download and use.

UCL particle physicists are celebrating that the ATLAS Collaboration at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has - at long last - observed the Higgs boson decaying into a pair of bottom (b) quarks. The elusive interaction is predicted to make up almost 60% of the Higgs boson decays. "Finding the Higgs in its favoured decay channel was one of the key missing items in our knowledge of the Higgs boson.

People with dementia in hospitals who experience pain are more likely to experience delirium as well, often without being able to communicate the pain they are in, finds a new UCL-led study. The study, published in Age and Ageing , found that many people with dementia in hospitals are experiencing pain, with over a third of dementia patients with delirium being unable to communicate how they are feeling.  "In the UK, almost half of people admitted to hospital over the age of 70 will have dementia.

Electrons have been successfully accelerated at CERN using a wave generated by protons zipping through plasma, report UCL scientists as part of the AWAKE collaboration. The achievement paves the way for an entirely new range of particle physics experiments at higher energies and lower cost.

The arteries of teenagers who drink alcohol and smoke, even very occasionally, are already beginning to stiffen by age 17, according to UCL research. Arterial stiffness indicates damage to the blood vessels, which predicts heart and blood vessel problems in later life, such as heart attacks and stroke.

Babies who show lower levels of brain activity in response to social stimuli such as peek-a-boo are more likely to be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), according to research involving UCL. Academics from Birkbeck, University of London, University of Cambridge, King's College London and UCL used neuroimaging technology (functional near infrared spectroscopy - fNIRS) to measure the brain activity of infants aged four to six months, contrasting infants who have increased familial likelihood of developing ASD with those without a family link to ASD.

Turning up the thermostat may help manage hypertension, finds a new UCL study into the link between indoor temperatures and high blood pressure. Comparing blood pressure readings of people in their own homes with temperature readings, the researchers found that lower indoor temperatures were associated with higher blood pressure, according to the new study in the Journal of Hypertension .

Unstable drinking patterns may be associated with a higher risk of heart disease and consistent moderate drinking may have a cardioprotective effect, according to research led by UCL. In this meta-analysis study, published in BMC Medicine, researchers from UCL and the University of Cambridge examined longitudinal data on 35,132 individuals.

Digital traces from credit card and mobile phone usage can be used to map urban lifestyles and understand human mobility, according to a report led by UCL, MIT and UC Berkeley. Credit Card Records (CCRs) are currently used to measure similarities in purchasing activity, but for the first time researchers have used the data along with Call Detailed Records (CDRs) to understand the daily rhythms of human mobility and communication.

Wasps might not be the nation's favourite insects but are some of the most important so UCL and University of Gloucestershire scientists are again asking for the public's help to find out more about these misunderstood creatures. "Wasps are predators, pest controllers and pollinators - they are absolutely vital for a healthy ecosystem and they deserve our respect.

An artificial intelligence (AI) system, which can recommend the correct referral decision for more than 50 eye diseases, as accurately as experts has been developed by Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, DeepMind Health and UCL. The breakthrough research, published online by Nature Medicine , describes how machine-learning technology has been successfully trained on thousands of historic de-personalised eye scans to identify features of eye disease and recommend how patients should be referred for care.

Rotavirus vaccination reduced infant diarrhoea deaths by 34% in rural Malawi, a region with high levels of child deaths, according to a major new study led by UCL, the University of Liverpool, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and partners in Malawi. The study, published in The Lancet Global Health, provides the first population-level evidence from a low-income country that rotavirus vaccination saves lives and adds considerable weight to the World Health Organisation's (WHO) recommendation for rotavirus vaccine to be included in all national immunisation programmes.

People in Nordic countries, North America, Australia, and New Zealand have the best spatial navigational abilities, according to a new study led by UCL and the University of East Anglia. Researchers assessed data from over half a million people in 57 countries who played a specially-designed mobile game, which has been developed to aid understanding into spatial navigation, a key indicator in Alzheimer's disease.

Ageing in worms mainly results from the direct action of genes and not from random wear and tear or loss of function, and the same is likely to be true in humans, according to research by UCL, Lancaster University and Queen Mary University of London scientists. The study, published in Current Biology and funded by Wellcome, shows that normal biological processes which are useful early on in life, continue to 'run-on' pointlessly in later life causing age-related diseases.

The location of road accidents is not random and they tend to be highly concentrated in urban areas, according to a new UCL study. The study, published in the open-access journal Plos One , found that nearly 50% of the serious and fatal accidents in London take place in 5% of road junctions. PhD candidate Rafael Prieto Curiel, lead researcher (UCL Mathematics), said: "Despite being a rare event, road accidents are among the top ten causes of death worldwide.

Researchers at UCL and the University of Nottingham have mapped the brain's language area in the first study of human cognition using a new generation of brain scanner that can be worn like a helmet. This marks an important step forward in the translation of their new technique from the laboratory bench to a genuinely useful tool for cognitive neuroscience and clinical application, enabling researchers to scan the brains of people while they move about.

Rates of dementia diagnosis are higher among black ethnic groups compared to white and Asian groups in the UK, a new UCL-led study has found. The study, published in Clinical Epidemiology , is the first to compare incidence of dementia diagnosis by ethnicity in any nationally representative sample. Researchers from UCL and King's College London analysed data from 2,511,681 people, including 66,083 who had a dementia diagnosis, from The Health Improvement Network primary care database between 2007 and 2015.

While Government-imposed restrictions on immigration can reduce overall migration, they can also be ineffective or even counterproductive, pushing more would-be migrants into unauthorised channels, finds new UCL-led research in collaboration with Royal Holloway and University of Birmingham. The study, published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , investigated how individuals are likely to move from one country to another based on varying levels of restriction.

Feeling stressed or anxious makes people more able to process and internalise bad news, finds a new UCL-led study. The research, published in The Journal of Neuroscience , reveals that a known tendency of people to take more notice of good news than bad news - the optimism bias - disappears when people feel threatened.

Care from peer support workers with lived experience of mental health conditions may help reduce the likelihood of readmission for people who have recently left acute mental health care, finds a new UCL-led study. The research, published today in The Lancet , found that close to 24% fewer people who received peer support were readmitted to acute care within a year, compared to people who only received a workbook.  "People discharged from community crisis services are often readmitted to acute care.