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The charity Arthritis Research UK today launches the world's first research centre dedicated to understanding how and why arthritis affects teenagers. Researchers at the £2.5 million Centre, which is a collaboration between UCL, University College Hospital and Great Ormond Street Hospital, aim to understand why rheumatic diseases such as juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) or juvenile systemic lupus erythematosus (JSLE) can be more severe in teenagers and why specific types of arthritis are more likely to occur in this age group.

New drugs derived from components of a specific diet used by children with severe, drug-resistant epilepsy could offer a new treatment, according to research published today in the journal Neuropharmacology. Scientists from UCL and Royal Holloway have identified specific fatty acids that have potent antiepileptic effects, which could help control seizures in children and adults.

The first in-depth investigation of whether youthful happiness leads to greater wealth in later life reveals that, even allowing for other influences, happy adolescents are likely to earn more money as adults. Jan-Emmanuel De Neve (UCL Political Science) and Andrew Oswald (University of Warwick) analysed data from 15,000 adolescents and young adults in the USA, finding that those who report higher 'positive affect', which is a technical measure of happiness, or higher 'life satisfaction' grow up to earn significantly higher levels of income later in life.

Scientists have discovered a rare genetic mutation that increases the risk of Alzheimer's disease. The international team, led by researchers at the UCL Institute of Neurology, studied data from more than 25,000 people and found a link between a rare variant of the TREM2 gene - which is known to play a role in the immune system - and a higher risk of Alzheimer's.

A new study in the journal Neuron reveals how the brain stores information about who's who in the social pecking order. The work, which was led by UCL and supported by the Wellcome Trust, shows that we use a different part of our brain to learn about social hierarchies than we do to learn ordinary information.

A new model developed by UCL researchers to predict the persistence of stuttering could be used to screen all children at school age, according to new research in the Journal of Fluency Disorders . Stuttering - also known as stammering - is thought to affect one in twenty children under the age of five, with onset generally occurring around the age of three years old.

Better ways to tackle birth defects will be championed at the official launch of the Newlife Birth Defects Research Centre (BDRC) on Thursday 25 October 2012. The centrepiece of the BDRC, based at the UCL Institute of Child Health (ICH), is a newly built £6.5 million laboratory and office space dedicated to researching the causes of birth defects, advancing their diagnosis and treatment and preventing such conditions in the future.

Researchers from UCL have found that lonely people have less grey matter in a part of the brain associated with decoding eye gaze and other social cues. Published in the journal of Current Biology, the study also suggests that through training people might be able to improve their social perception and become less lonely.

A major three-year trial led by researchers at UCL, in partnership with the Health Protection Agency, has shown that giving one-to-one feedback to healthcare workers makes them twice as likely to clean their hands or use soap. The Feedback Intervention Trial (FIT) is the first such trial to be done in a large number of hospitals anywhere in the world.

A European team of scientists have built the first atlas of white-matter microstructure in the human brain. The project's final results have the potential to change the face of neuroscience and medicine over the coming decade. The project investigators met today in Paris, after 3 years of research, to announce the conclusion of the project and present a report of their findings.

Results from a major phase III Cancer Research UK-funded trial show that elderly patients with advanced non small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who developed a rash within 28 days of receiving the targeted drug erlotinib (Tarceva) survived on average 6.2 months, compared to 4.1 months for patients who were given a placebo.

A study by UCL researchers at University College Hospital's intensive care unit has suggested that psychological interventions could reduce the mental health problems experienced by many patients. The research, published in Critical Care Journal , found that more than 50 per cent of patients in the study discharged from intensive care went on to suffer adverse psychological problems.

Children at risk for eating disorders on average have a higher IQ and better working memory but are less able to control automatic thoughts, according to researchers at the UCL Institute of Child Health. The study, published in the journal Psychological Medicine , looked at what characteristics might make some children more likely to develop an eating disorder later in life.

In a UCL-led study, published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, an international consortium of over 180 scientists report the identification of 21 new gene variants associated with cholesterol predictors of heart disease and metabolic disorders. The findings expand the list of potential targets for drugs and other treatments for lipid-related cardiovascular disease, a leading global cause of death and disability.

Heightened activity between the emotional and auditory parts of the brain explains why the sound of chalk on a blackboard, or a knife on a bottle, is so unpleasant. In a study published today in the Journal of Neuroscience UCL and Newcastle University scientists reveal the interaction between the region of the brain that processes sound, the auditory cortex, and the amygdala, which is active in the processing of negative emotions when we hear unpleasant sounds.

The total number of papers, reports and PhD dissertations downloaded from UCL Discovery , the university's Open Access repository, surpassed 2,000,000 during September 2012. UCL Discovery, the UK repository with the largest number of records, contains nearly 14,274 records with access to full text; the 2,000,000th to be downloaded was by Professor Richard Blundell (UCL Economics): Labor Supply Models: Unobserved heterogeneity, nonparticipation and dynamics.

Children in smaller families are only slightly more likely to survive childhood in high mortality environments, according to a new study of mothers and children in sub-Saharan Africa seeking to understand why women, even in the highest fertility populations in world, rarely give birth to more than eight children.

Mexiletine, a decades-old drug previously used to treat abnormal heart rhythms, has been used to alleviate the symptoms of patients with nondystrophic myotonias (NDMs), rare diseases that affect the skeletal muscle and cause functionally limiting stiffness and pain. The preliminary research, published today in The Journal of the American Medical Association , shows that taking mexiletine can improve patient-reported stiffness.

The mystery surrounding how an electrically charged solar wind can be unleashed from around the Sun's equator - an area where strong magnetic fields should strap it to the surface - has been solved by an international team of researchers. Using data from the Hinode telescope, researchers have been studying the 'slow' solar wind, which comes from the aptly named 'equatorial belt' of the Sun where the magnetic field is strapped to the surface of our local star.

Trying to keep an image we've just seen in memory can leave us blind to things we are 'looking' at, according to the results of a study by researchers at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. It's been known for some time that when our brains are focused on a task, we can fail to see other things that are in plain sight.