science wire

NHS England's announcement that children and young people with leukaemia will receive a 'revolutionary' treatment has been welcomed by the UCL Cancer Institute, which has helped develop the therapy.

Two UCL Institute of Ophthalmology researchers, Professors Robin Ali and James Bainbridge, are among six international winners of the largest prize in vision research, the 2018 António Champalimaud Vision Award, worth €1 million. The winners are being recognised for developing a successful gene therapy treatment for a genetic retinal disorder, a form of Leber Congenital Amaurosis, which causes childhood blindness.

UCL scientists are taking part in what could be the largest-scale Arctic research expedition ever planned when the German research ship, RV Polarstern , is deliberately lodged into sea ice to drift past the North Pole. Professor Julienne Stroeve who is leading this project and Dr Michel Tsamados (both UCL Earth Sciences) will join five other UK researchers on the 120m-long ice-breaker as it moves with the current in the ice across the central Arctic Ocean from September 2019 to September 2020.

The pressures that come with being a self-employed courier or taxi driver may significantly increase the risk of being involved in a collision, a new report by UCL finds. The majority of those surveyed - 63 per cent - are not provided with safety training on managing risks on the road. Sixty-five per cent said that they are not given any safety equipment such as a high visibility vest and over 70 per cent resort to providing their own.

Books published by UCL Press and authored by UCL academics are the most-read open access ebooks on JSTOR, an online library which provides access to more than 12 million academic articles and books.

UCL has joined a small handful of international higher education institutions which have been rated as global 'stars', according to new analysis of the World University Rankings by Times Higher Education (THE).

The Global Disability Innovation (GDI) Hub has been awarded £10m from the Department for International Development (DfiD) to widen access to assistive technology for disabled people.

An independent review into the regulatory framework for legal services in the UK is to be led by Professor Stephen Mayson (UCL Laws).

Professor Jennifer Thomas, Dr Helen Czerski and Professor Hiranya Peiris have been awarded medals and prizes by the Institute of Physics (IOP) for their outstanding, sustained and distinguished contributions to physics.

The referendum process in the UK requires wholesale reform according to a report by the Independent Commission on Referendums, established by the UCL Constitution Unit.

People from smaller cities are more likely to migrate than people from larger cities, according to a new study by UCL academics.

Three UCL spin-out companies focused on delivering advanced therapeutics to treat a range of diseases received a substantial amount of investment following two initial public offerings worth £177 million ($235 million) combined and one Series B funding round of £88 million in June.

To celebrate 70 years of the National Health Service, researchers and clinicians from across UCL have spoken about what the NHS means to them and how their work impacts the nation's health.

Sound and object motion can be used to change perceptions about body size, according to a new study by an international team involving UCL researchers.

As the NHS celebrates its 70th anniversary, UCL researchers are helping to assess how new technologies including genomics, artificial intelligence and bionanotechnology, will shape the future of healthcare in the UK for decades to come.

European Commissioner Carlos Moedas has announced an ambitious €100bn research and innovation programme for the next EU budgets - with the work of UCL Professor Mariana Mazzucato and her  "mission-oriented" framework a core part of the programme.

The central collection of the papers of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), the English philosopher and intellectual inspiration behind UCL, have now been completely digitised.

UCL Press, the UK's first fully Open Access University Press, has announced that one million copies of its books have been downloaded around the world.

Teenagers are far more likely to spend their time on social media and gaming after school than they are to be doing homework, according to a new UCL-led study.

A new review, co-authored by Professor Robert West (UCL Behavioural Science and Health), has compiled the most up-to-date source of information on the burden of death and disease caused by alcohol, tobacco and illicit drug use.