science wire

Citizens living in liberal democracies are far more likely to oppose economic liberalisation policies attached to IMF (International Monetary Fund) loans, while those in autocratic states tend to welcome them and embrace their reforms, finds new UCL research.

Writing for The Conversation, Dr Irini Mavrou (UCL Ioe) details her research on why both native speakers and second language speakers can come across as rude when speaking to one another.

Dr Lucy van Dorp (UCL Genetics Institute), along with a colleague, explains in an article for The Conversation how illnesses contracted by toddlers at nursery can help strengthen their immune systems in the long term. There's no nice way to put it: small children are snotty. A research study  that tested children for multiple respiratory viruses every week for a year found that under-fives are carrying one or more viruses 50% of the time.

The key health and social indicators needed for a new global system to monitor people's health before pregnancy have been identified for the first time by researchers at University College London and the University of Southampton. As more women are becoming pregnant with health conditions that can complicate pregnancy and childbirth, such as obesity, diabetes and mental illness, pre-pregnancy health has been thrown into the spotlight.

Young children who attend nursery get sick more often than those who don't, but they will go on to have fewer illnesses during early school years, finds a new review of evidence by a group of parent-scientists involving UCL researchers. All five authors of the new Clinical Microbiology Reviews paper are parents of young children, who are also researchers or clinicians at UCL, the University of Cambridge, Cornell University and North Middlesex University Hospital.

People with limited English are significantly more likely to understand the true aim of cancer treatment when given a bilingual consent form, with understanding rising from 35% to 60%, a new study finds.

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Political preferences are shaped by the subjects pupils study at school, explains Dr Roland Kappe (UCL Political Science) in an article for The Conversation.

Increasing our level of physical fitness leads to a bigger release of brain-boosting proteins following one session of exercise, a new study led by a UCL researcher has found. The study, published in  Brain Research , took a group of inactive unfit participants through a 12-week training programme of cycling three times per week and made them fitter.

Six out of 10 older people in England view climate change as a serious risk, with only one in 17 (5.8%) dismissive of climate change concerns, according to a new study led by UCL researchers. The study, published in The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences , looked at survey responses from 6,572 people in England aged 50 and over who were asked to rate their agreement or disagreement with statements about climate change.

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Around seven in ten (68%) young adults who are part of generation Z report binge drinking in the past year, with almost a third (29%) regularly consuming six or more alcoholic drinks in one sitting, according to new UCL research. For the study, researchers from the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies analysed data from nearly 10,000 people born across the UK in 2000-02 who are taking part in the Millennium Cohort Study.

The world's longest continuously running birth cohort study, which follows thousands of participants born in the first week of March 1946 and is hosted by UCL, is celebrating its 80th birthday.

Dr Lucy Core (UCL UK Dementia Research Institute) describes in The Conversation how some patients with dementia can develop new and unexpected interests, suggesting that not all dementia symptoms are related to memory loss.

Black women in the UK are entering menopause severely under informed, under supported, and often dismissed by healthcare professionals, according to new research from the UCL EGA Institute for Women's Health. Published in the journal Post Reproductive Health , researchers say the study highlights urgent gaps in menopause education and calls for culturally competent care to address longstanding health inequalities.

More than two thirds of people in the UK are living with their parents at age 23, around three times higher than a generation of millennials when they were a similar age a decade ago.

Around one in five people in the UK and the US have the breathing disorder obstructive sleep apnoea, likely costing both economies billions in lost productivity every year, suggests a new paper led by a UCL researcher.

Highly detailed 3D scans of dense tropical rain forest plots are enabling precise estimates of tree structure, volume and stored carbon, as part of a first-of-its-kind pilot initiative, led by UCL researchers.

Writing for The Conversation, Professor Robert Hazell (UCL Political Science) outlines why the legal case against Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is so unusual and complex, and how it could take several years to reach the courtroom.

Writing for The Conversation, Dr Ria Kodosaki and Dr Amanda Heslegrave (both UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology) analyse how differences in immune function and declining oestrogen levels may help explain why women are diagnosed with dementia more than men.

Dr Maciej Pawlik (UCL Risk & Disaster Reduction) highlights East London's recent flooding in an article for The Conversation written with a colleague, where they recommend improved flood defences, greater green infrastructure and raised community awareness.

Trauma patients urgently requiring a breathing tube are more likely to survive if the tube is inserted before arriving at hospital compared to insertion afterwards, suggests a modelling study led by researchers at UCL and the Severn Major Trauma Network. The researchers found that prehospital emergency intubation of high-risk trauma patients could improve 30-day survival by 10.3%, and could save 170 lives each year in the UK.

Lung cancer patients who have never smoked make up a significant and growing share of global lung cancer cases, yet remain an understudied group, according to a new review written by UCL researchers.