news

Scientists have long questioned why the bursts of hot gas from the Sun do not cool down as fast as expected, and now a UCL-led team of researchers have used a supercomputer to find out why. The team will now compare their simulations with 'real' data from the European Space Agency's flagship Solar Orbiter mission, with the hope that it will confirm their predictions and provide a conclusive answer.

A five-year mission to create an unprecedented 3D map of the universe using the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), designed and built in part by UCL physicists, formally starts today. DESI will capture and study light from tens of millions of galaxies and other distant objects with the aim of unravelling the mysteries of "dark energy", which is believed to be driving the accelerating expansion of the universe.

A large-scale randomised trial of annual screening for ovarian cancer, led by UCL researchers, did not succeed in reducing deaths from the disease, despite one of the screening methods tested detecting cancers earlier. Results from the UK Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening (UKCTOCS) have been published in a report in the medical journal The Lancet .

A pioneering study by UCL scientists has discovered the presence of a harmful inflammatory protein in patients with symptomatic tuberculosis (TB). Researchers say, by targeting the IL-17 cytokine, a component produced naturally by the immune system in response to infection, excessive and damaging lung inflammation caused by TB may be significantly reduced to help speed up patient recovery.

A new nationally representative birth cohort study launching in England in the coming year will deliver valuable insights into child development, led by UCL researchers and commissioned and funded by the Department for Education. The Children of the 2020s Study will include babies born in April, May, and June 2021.

Mild Covid-19 infection is very unlikely to cause lasting damage to the structure or function of the heart, according to a study led by UCL researchers and funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) and Barts Charity. The researchers say the results, published in JACC Cardiovascular Imaging, should reassure the public, as they relate to the vast majority of people who had Covid-19 infections with mild or no symptoms.

Mice can sense extremely fast and subtle changes in the structure of odours and use this to guide their behaviour, according to a new study by UCL and Francis Crick Institute researchers. Odour plumes, like the steam off a hot cup of coffee, are complex and often turbulent structures, and can convey meaningful information about an animal's surroundings, like the movements of a predator or the location of food sources.

Older people who were clinically vulnerable to COVID-19 were at greater risk of deterioration in health and social well-being during the pandemic, according to a new UCL-led study. Research published today in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found that they were more likely to report worse health outcomes than those with no clinical vulnerabilities, including greater depression and anxiety and lower quality of life, even when taking into account pre-pandemic levels of health and social well-being.

The remains of a partial skeleton dating back 78,000 years have been recovered from a pit in Kenya and are believed to be the earliest evidence of human burial in Africa, according to an international team including academics from UCL. Named 'Mtoto' - meaning child in Swahili - the remains were found to be of a 2.5 to 3-year-old infant, and were discovered by a team of scientists in a shallow grave at Panga ya Saldi, a cave site in the tropical upland coast of Kenya.

Scientists at the UCL have made a 'surprising' discovery that glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer, mimics normal brain repair in white matter, which leads to the tumour becoming less malignant. In the study on mice to harness this response (feature) and treat the cancer. Using the pre-clinical mouse models, the researchers found that Pranlukast, a drug clinically approved for treating asthma in people, suppressed glioblastoma growth.

Miniature solar flares nicknamed "campfires", recently discovered near the surface of the Sun, are about 1,000 to 5,000 km tall and between 1-1.5 million degrees hot, finds a new study co-authored by UCL researchers. The study compared data from Solar Orbiter, the Sun-observing mission by ESA and NASA, with observations from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory to triangulate the height of the campfires.

A single dose of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine may boost protection against Covid-19 variants for those who have previously had the virus, according to a new study co-authored by UCL researchers. The study, published in the Science journal, is led by researchers at UCL along with Barts Health NHS Trust, Imperial College London, Queen Mary University London and in collaboration with Public Health England and Royal Free Hospital NHS Trust.

Workers in open plan offices who face the room, are next to a window and have few or no desks behind them are more productive, according to a new study by UCL researchers. Smaller open-plan offices with fewer desks in also help workers to feel more focused and productive, the researchers found. For the study, published in PLOSONE, researchers studied four floors of the London headquarters of a large international technology company, collecting a staff survey on workspace satisfaction as well as specific information on office seating positions of all participants and a marked floorplan.

Levels of air pollutants in cities in India and the UK are on the rise, according to a new study led by UCL and the University of Birmingham. Published today in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, researchers analysed satellite data to estimate trends in a range of air pollutants for 2005 to 2018.

Addressing misinformation, using more inclusive communication, and promoting vaccination through trusted networks, could play important roles in reducing the high rates of vaccine hesitancy among ethnic minority healthcare workers, finds a new study involving UCL researchers. In the study, carried out with the University of Leicester and University of Nottingham, 11,584 UK clinical and non-clinical healthcare workers were surveyed, with almost a quarter (23%, 2,704) reporting vaccine hesitancy.

Nearly one-quarter (23.6%) of children and adolescents admitted to psychiatric hospital were admitted involuntarily, finds a new review of evidence from 11 countries, led by UCL researchers, which also uncovered substantial racial disparities. The study, the first systematic analysis social and clinical factors associated with admission, was published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health journal.

Studying the violent collisions of black holes and neutron stars may soon provide a new measurement of the Universe's expansion rate, helping to resolve a long-standing dispute, suggests a new simulation study led by researchers at UCL. Our two current best ways of estimating the Universe's rate of expansion - measuring the brightness and speed of pulsating and exploding stars, and looking at fluctuations in radiation from the early Universe - give very different answers, suggesting our theory of the Universe may be wrong.

Advanced MRI techniques can detect very early changes in the brains of people with multiple sclerosis (MS), which may lead to more accurate predictions about disease progression, finds a study led by UCL researchers. The authors of the paper, published in Brain , say these previously unseen changes could have the potential to predict how disabled a person might become in the future.

People with pre-existing mental health conditions have reported challenges posed by the COVID-19 lockdowns, such as the loss of normal coping routines, barriers to accessing care, and unequal impacts of the pandemic, in a new study led by UCL researchers. The qualitative, interview-based study, published in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology , shows that the impacts of lockdown were not distributed equally, and people in ethnic minority groups reported particular challenges.

Substance use and antisocial behaviour are more likely to go hand-in-hand with poor mental health for generation Z teens compared to millennial adolescents growing up a decade earlier, finds a new UCL study. Researchers from the Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS) at the UCL Social Research Institute and the University of Liverpool analysed data collected from two cohorts, born a decade apart, when they were 14 years old.