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In response to an incorrect and unauthorised email that was sent to some staff in one department regarding UCL's policy on monitoring of Tier 4 students, a UCL spokesperson said: "Fines for non-compliance with Tier 4 monitoring is not UCL policy. The communication was issued in error by a member of staff and has been retracted with an apology.

Women are at no increased risk of womb cancer or invasive breast cancer after receiving assisted reproductive therapies, a large UCL-led cohort study of 250,000 British women has found. Researchers found a small increased risk of non-invasive breast and ovarian tumours, but the study concluded the results may not be due to the treatment itself and further investigation is required.

Our African ancestors were diverse in form and culture, and scattered across the entire continent, finds a team led by UCL, the University of Oxford and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. These findings challenge the idea that humans, or Homo sapiens , stemmed from a single, large ancestral population in one region of Africa which randomly exchanged genes and technologies like stone tools.

A targeted 'risk-based' breast screening programme could do 'more good than harm', reduce overdiagnosis, and be run at an affordable cost to the NHS, a UCL-led study found. The economic evaluation and simulation modelling study concluded that a screening initiative, which did not include low risk women, would improve the quality of life gained following screening, reduce overdiagnosis* and save resources, while maintaining the benefits of screening.

Using high energy ultrasound beams to destroy prostate cancer tumours may be as effective as surgery or radiotherapy, but with fewer side effects, a report co-led by UCL has found. The research, carried out across six UK hospitals, tracked the registration data of 625 men with prostate cancer who received a type of treatment called high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU).

Two-thirds of head teachers believe that inequalities between schools are becoming wider as a result of current government policy, according to a new 'state of the nation' report by the UCL Institute of Education (IOE). The four-year study, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, evaluated the government's 'self-improving school-led system' (SISS), which has become an overarching narrative for education policy since 2010, making schools more autonomous and accountable for their own improvement.

Five modifiable risk factors present in a person's 50s that could indicate whether or not they will be fit and healthy into retirement and beyond have been uncovered by UCL scientists. While the aim of the study, published in  Lancet Public Health , was to look at modifiable behaviour and medical risk factors, the team also uncovered major differences in frailty depending on wealth, gender, marital status and ethnicity.

Understanding which genes are responsible for early onset Alzheimer's disease in people with Down syndrome is a step closer, following a new international study led by UCL and the Francis Crick Institute. The findings, published in the journal Brain , could pave the way for future medicines to prevent the disease in these individuals, and provide insights into the mechanisms that cause dementia in the general population.

Pockets of urban forest can contain as much carbon as tropical rainforests, according to new research led by UCL. Protecting and planting urban forests is central to building liveable and sustainable cities in a future where global populations are set to become increasingly urbanised. This research sheds new light on the value of urban trees for their potential to store carbon and mitigate climate change.

Significantly high levels of oral disease found among GB's elite athletes is leading to poorer on-field performance, research by UCL's Eastman Dental Institute has concluded. In the largest ever study of its kind, more than 350 sportsmen and women from nine GB Olympic teams, including swimming and rowing, along with Team Sky, England Rugby and Reading FC, underwent an oral health screening.

Listening to audiobooks elicits a more intense physiological and emotional reaction than watching films or television, according to a new UCL study. Commissioned by Audible, UCL research psychologists tested scenes from well-known stories across crime, sci-fi, fantasy, action and classical genres on 102 participants aged 18 to 55 to gauge the physiological impact of auditory versus visual storytelling mediums.

Bones of an entirely new but already extinct genus of gibbons have been discovered in China, revealing the magnitude of human-caused extinction of primates, according to a study by UCL and ZSL (Zoological Society of London). The discovery was made by scientists while studying the contents of a burial chamber in Shaanxi Province, central China and The ancient tomb dates from around 2,300 years ago and possibly belonged to Lady Xia - grandmother to China's first emperor, Qin Shihuang, the leader who ordered the building of the Great Wall of China and the Terracotta Warriors.

Climate change will have a rapidly increasing effect on the structure of global ecological communities over the next few decades, with amphibians and reptiles being significantly more affected than birds and mammals, a new report by UCL finds. The pace of change is set to outstrip loss to vertebrate communities caused by land use for agriculture and settlements, which is estimated to have already caused losses of over ten per cent.

The tendency for children to eat more or less when stressed and upset is mainly influenced by the home environment and not by genes, according to a new UCL-led study. The study, published today in Pediatric Obesity , found that genetics only play a small role in young children's emotional overeating and undereating, unlike other eating behaviours in childhood such as food fussiness.

A new smart app designed to improve the reading ability of people who have suffered a stroke provides 'significant' improvements, a UCL study has found. Developed by the Aphasia Lab (UCL Institute of Neurology), iReadMore provides computer-based reading therapy using written and spoken words and pictures, and aims to improve word-reading speed and accuracy.

Just over half of all births following spontaneous onset of labour occur between 1am and 7am with a peak around 4 am, according to a new study involving UCL, City, University of London and the National Childbirth Trust (NCT).

People with type 2 diabetes are 32% more likely to develop Parkinson's disease than those without diabetes, finds a new study by UCL, University of Oxford and Queen Mary University of London researchers. The research, published today in Neurology , the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, is the largest study to date on the link between the two conditions.

50-year-olds who have blood pressure that is higher than normal but still below the threshold commonly used when deciding to treat the condition, are at increased risk of developing dementia in later life, finds a new study led by UCL and French National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Paris (INSERM) researchers.

For the first time in our planet's 4.5 billion-year history a single species, humans, is increasingly dictating its future, according to a new book by UCL scientists. The new epoch known as the Anthropocene - assessed in 2015 by Professors Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin in a report published in Nature - marks the period when human impacts on our home planet have become global and sustained.

Attending universal childcare from age three significantly improves the school readiness of children from immigrant and disadvantaged family backgrounds, a new UCL study has found. However, the research by the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM), shows the same universal childcare, only has a modest impact on the school readiness of children from advantaged backgrounds.