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People who abstain from alcohol or consume more than 14 units a week during middle age are at increased risk of developing dementia, finds a study co-led by UCL. As people live longer, the number living with dementia is expected to triple by 2050. So understanding the impact of alcohol consumption on ageing outcomes is important.

People buried at Stonehenge 5,000 years ago likely lived in west Wales where Stonehenge's smaller standing stones - bluestones - originated from, according to a new study involving UCL, University of Oxford, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle de Paris, France. The study, published in Nature Scientific Reports , suggests that a number of people buried at the Wessex site had moved with and likely transported the bluestones, which were sourced from the Preseli Mountains in west Wales and used in the early construction of Stonehenge.

Differences in social status and political belief increase paranoid interpretations of other people's actions, finds a new UCL experimental study. Paranoia is the tendency to assume other people are trying to harm you when their actual motivations are unclear, and this tendency is increased when interacting with someone of a higher social status or opposing political beliefs, according to the study published today in Royal Society Open Science .

UK doctors think Britain's exit from the European Union will be very bad for the NHS, reveal the results of a study from UCL, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Queen Mary University of London. The study, published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health ,  anonymously surveyed UK doctors asking questions about their political beliefs and voting patterns.

The decline in working-class MPs and rise of career politicians shifted the Labour Party towards a more right wing policy stance on welfare, according to a new study by UCL. The research, published in Comparative Political Studies , examined the policy preferences of working-class and career politicians within the Labour Party both pre and during Tony Blair's leadership of the Labour Party.

Parents consider that spending money on learning resources such as books, educational games and private tuition for their children is more productive if the child attends a higher quality school, according to new research led by UCL. The study, which recently came out as a Human Capital and Economic Opportunity ( HCEO) Working Paper, was funded by the Nuffield Foundation.

A new dinosaur called Lingwulong shenqi or 'amazing dragon from Lingwu' has been discovered by an Anglo-Chinese team involving UCL. The announcement, published today , reports the surprising discovery of the new dinosaur which roamed the Ningxia Autonomous Region, northwest China, approximately 174 million years ago.

Thinner retinas in the human eye are a clear sign a person is at significant and increased risk of future mental decline, a UCL-led study has concluded. Researchers say this breakthrough study, suggests regular eye tests could help identify those likely to get dementia at a much earlier stage, which means suitable treatments could be prescribed at a more effective time to slow or stop the onset of dementia at early stages of the disease.

Men on effective HIV treatment, where the virus is reduced to undetectable levels are sexually non-infectious, finds an eight-year study led by UCL and the University of Copenhagen. The preliminary findings of the PARTNER2 study will be presented at the 2018 AIDS conference in Amsterdam tomorrow. The study, which is the largest to look at the risk of HIV transmission when one partner is positive and on effective anti-retroviral treatment (ART) finds that having an undetectable viral load is as protective for gay men as it is for heterosexual couples.

A derivative of turmeric could be used in eye drops to treat the early stages of glaucoma, finds a new study led by UCL and Imperial College London researchers. In the new Scientific Reports paper, the researchers report a new method to deliver curcumin, extracted from the yellow spice turmeric, directly to the back of the eye using eye drops, overcoming the challenge of curcumin's poor solubility.

The rate at which our planet is warming has been found to be a critical factor in explaining the decline of bird and mammal species, reveals new research by UCL and ZSL (Zoological Society of London). For the study, published today in Global Change Biology , 987 populations of 481 species across the globe were studied to investigate how the rate of climate change and land-use change (from natural to human-dominated landscapes) interact to affect the rate of decline on mammals and birds, as well as whether species located in protected areas and body size had an influence.

An independent inquiry led by Nuffield Council on Bioethics, involving UCL, has concluded that editing the DNA of a human embryo, sperm, or egg to influence the characteristics of a future person ('heritable genome editing') could be "morally permissible". The technique of genome editing could be used to alter the DNA of a human embryo, before it is transferred to the womb.

80% of young women were found to have a mental health disorder and 55% had two or more mental health disorders four to five months after sexual assault, according to a study led by UCL and The Havens, London's specialist sexual assault referral  centres (SARCs) hosted by King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

Groundwater pumped from the depths of the coastal Bengal Basin supporting more than 80 million people is largely secure from contamination, according to new research by UCL and the British Geological Survey. The study shows that groundwater pumped from depths below 150m in the coastal regions of the Bengal Basin is thousands of years old, and generally secure from contamination by salinity and arsenic found in shallow groundwater.

More than half (58%) of employees in Britain can identify changes at work which would make them more productive, a research team drawn from UCL Institute of Education (IOE), Cardiff University and Nuffield College, Oxford has found. These findings are published today in the Skills and Employment Survey (2017).

A modified form of botulinum toxin gives long-lasting pain relief in mice without adverse effects and, in time, could replace opioid drugs as a safe and effective way of treating chronic pain, according to research by UCL, the University of Sheffield and the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto.

75 per cent of Londoners feel that adverts should reflect the diversity of the city's population, yet fewer than one in four thinks adverts are culturally diverse, according to new research from the UCL Institute of Education. The research, which was commissioned by the London Mayor and the Greater London Authority, highlights the pressure that women and girls feel to achieve a specific beauty standard.

A fatal neurodegenerative condition known as Gaucher disease can be prevented in mice following fetal gene therapy, finds a new study led by UCL, the KK Women's and Children's Hospital and National University Health System in Singapore. The study, published today , highlights the potential of fetal gene therapy to prevent and cure neonatal lethal neurodegenerative diseases in humans in utero.

The charred remains of a flatbread baked by hunter-gatherers over 14,000 years ago has been discovered in north-eastern Jordan by a team of researchers from UCL, University of Copenhagen and University of Cambridge. It is the oldest direct evidence of bread found to date, predating the advent of agriculture by at least 4,000 years.

The muscles of people in intensive care are less able to use fats for energy, contributing to extensive loss of muscle mass, finds a new study co-led by UCL, King's College London and Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. Intensive care patients can lose 20% of their muscle mass in just 10 days, which can contribute to long-term disability.