science wire

The Tarkhan Dress, a V-neck linen shirt currently on display in the UCL Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, has been confirmed as the world's oldest woven garment with radiocarbon testing dating the garment to the late fourth-millennium BC. Radiocarbon testing conducted in 2015 by the University of Oxford's radiocarbon unit, and published this week on Antiquity's Project Gallery, has established that the dress was made between 3482-3102 BC with 95% accuracy.

The cost of deploying fast fibre connections straight to homes could be dramatically reduced by new hardware designed and tested by UCL researchers.

The test used to assess four-years old in reception class when they start school does not accurately reflect children's ability at this age, according to research carried out by UCL for the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) and the National Union of Teachers (NUT).

A new record for the fastest ever data rate for digital information has been set by UCL researchers in the Optical Networks Group. They achieved a rate of 1. Tb/s as part of research on the capacity limits of optical transmission systems, designed to address the growing demand for fast data rates.

The first evidence that Saturn's upper atmosphere may, when buffeted by the solar wind, emit the same total amount of mass per second into its magnetosphere as its moon, Enceladus, has been found by UCL scientists working on the Cassini mission. Magnetospheres are regions of space that are heavily influenced by the magnetic field of a nearby planet and can contain charged particles in the form of plasma from both external and internal sources.

Researchers from UCL, the National Physical Laboratory and the Royal Free Hospital have differentiated between patients with a rare bleeding disorder and healthy volunteers using super-resolution microscopy, providing an alternative method for accurately and cost-effectively diagnosing rare platelet diseases.

People bereaved by the sudden death of a friend or family member are 65% more likely to attempt suicide if the deceased died by suicide than if they died by natural causes. This brings the absolute risk up to 1 in 10, reveals new UCL research funded by the Medical Research Council. The researchers studied 3,432 UK university staff and students aged 18-40 who had been bereaved, to examine the specific impacts associated with bereavement by suicide.

MP and shadow minister, Sir Keir Starmer, Holocaust survivor Mala Tribich MBE and Jewish Chaplain for London Universities, Rabbi Gavin Broder will attend a small commemorative ceremony at the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education today to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

"UCL Estates is actively seeking dialogue with the Cut the Rent campaign so that we can discuss the issues and set out how the finances of UCL accommodation work.

Three global pharmaceutical companies (AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson Innovation) and the technology transfer offices of three world-leading universities (Imperial College London

UCL has today announced a free four-week online course "The Many Faces of Dementia" aiming to provide valuable insights into dementia through the stories, symptoms and science behind four less common diagnoses.

UCL researchers have developed a revolutionary new type of 'smart' window which could cut window-cleaning costs in tall buildings while reducing heating bills and boosting worker productivity.

Today UCL celebrated the start of its 2016 Reading Recovery Read Aloud (Read Aloud) campaign, which is being led by the International Literacy Centre (ILC) based at the UCL Institute of Education (IOE), to raise awareness of literacy issues of school children.

UCL is today launching the UCL Technology Fund to invest £50 million in commercialising its world-leading research emerging over the next five years.

Leaders of the new UCL Environment Research Domain and the UCL eResearch Domain have been appointed, to foster interaction and collaboration across the university and with its partner organisations.

UCL and Birkbeck-led research reveals the flexible, coiled structure used by bacteria to anchor onto the lining of the urinary tract, which allows them to thrive and cause infections. Understanding this structure in atomic detail will help the development of new drugs to treat urinary tract infections (UTIs), say the scientists behind the study.

Anyone with an interest in how social media is used around the world can now sign up for Why We Post: The Anthropology of Social Media , UCL's first MOOC (massive open online course).

The diversity of mammals on Earth exploded straight after the dinosaur extinction event, according to UCL researchers. New analysis of the fossil record shows that placental mammals, the group that today includes nearly 5000 species including humans, became more varied in anatomy during the Paleocene epoch - the 10 million years immediately following the event.

Heritage scientists at UCL have developed demographic models of decay and loss to predict when a large library or archival collection might age beyond repair. Lead author, Professor Matija Strlic (UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage) explained: "Although some library materials might easily survive thousands of years some have internal clocks triggering faster decay.

Tropical groundwater may prove to be a climate-resilient source of freshwater in the tropics as intense rainfall favours the replenishment of these resources, according to a new study published in Environmental Research Letters. As climate observations show that global warming leads to fewer but more intense rainfalls, a clearer understanding of how these sources are replenished is crucial for developing strategies for groundwater usage that are better adapted to the greater variability in rainfall and river discharge brought about by climate change.

Syncona LLP and UCL Business, the wholly-owned technology transfer company of UCL, announce the creation of the biopharmaceutical company, Freeline Therapeutics, to develop and commercialise gene therapies for bleeding and other debilitating disorders. Gene therapy has the potential to provide long-term benefit to patients from a single treatment by carrying a therapeutic gene to a target cell in the body.

Excavation of two quarries in Wales by a UCL-led team of archaeologists and geologists has confirmed they are sources of Stonehenge's 'bluestones'- and shed light on how they were quarried and transported.

The UCL-made 'structural-thermal model' of the ExoMars PanCam instrument for the joint ESA-Roscosmos (Russian space agency) 2018 rover mission leaves UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL) today for Airbus UK in Stevenage.

Researchers have found out how a specific diet works to help treat patients with uncontrolled epilepsy. A team from UCL and Royal Holloway University of London revealed in preliminary tests how decanoic acid, a fatty acid found in foods assigned to ketogenic diets, acts to block seizures in patients with drug-resistant epilepsy.

There has been reaction from around UCL to the Spending Review and Autumn Statement speech given earlier today by the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, setting out the government's spending plans to 2019/20.

A UCL mathematics student has found that the falling 'curtain' of chocolate in a chocolate fountain surprisingly pulls inwards rather than going straight downwards because of surface tension. "Chocolate fountains are just cool, aren't they!" said Adam Townsend (UCL Mathematics), lead author of the paper based on his MSci project.

Athena Vision is focused on developing gene therapies for eye diseases based on research conducted at UCL.

The Medical Research Council is to fund researchers at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Eye Hospital to conduct clinical trials into the use of a humanised monoclonal antibody to treat patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

Clinicians and scientists from UCLH, UCL and the University of East Anglia (UEA) have been awarded a £2.5 million grant by the National Institute for Health Research to develop and evaluate new molecular diagnostic tests. The tests aim to identify bacteria and their antibiotic sensitivities in under four hours.

New research led by UCL for the Cities Changing Diabetes partnership shows socio-cultural factors including time pressure, commuting time and where you live play significant roles in diabetes vulnerability.

Professor John Hardy (UCL Institute of Neurology) was last night awarded the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for his pioneering research into the genetic causes of Alzheimer's disease, other forms of dementia and Parkinson's disease.

It's long been known that mood biases our judgments and perceptions, but this effect has usually been regarded as irrational or disadvantageous. A new theory published by UCL scientists in Trends in Cognitive Sciences argues that mood draws on experiences and can, in fact, help us quickly adapt to changes in our environment.

Archaeologists from the UK working in the Channel Island of Jersey have found the remains of a 14,000 year old hunter-gatherer settlement offering great views over landscapes now drowned by the English Channel. The site, called Les Varines, is located in the Jersey parish of St Saviour and has produced over 5,000 scattered stone artefacts during the past five years of excavation, but in the summer of 2015 the team unearthed denser concentrations of tools and burnt bone and, for the first time, fragments of engraved stone.

World's largest national Holocaust study finds nearly 2/3 of secondary school children do not know what antisemitism means.

We are deeply saddened to share the news that Professor Lisa Jardine CBE FRS passed away on Sunday 25 October 2015.

Images related to pleasure or winning attract attention from demanding tasks, while equally intense but negative images and those associated with losing can be fully ignored, finds a new UCL study.

Patients in London are being dosed for the first time with an experimental drug for Huntington's disease. This breakthrough could be one of the most important developments since the gene for Huntington's disease was discovered in 1993. The trial of the revolutionary new 'gene silencing' treatment is being led by scientists at UCL's Institute of Neurology.

Genes involved in schizophrenia and obesity have been highlighted in a new UCL study, which could lead to a better understanding of the DNA variants which affect risk of these conditions and aid the development of improved strategies for prevention and treatment. The research by the UCL Genetics Institute, published in Annals of Human Genetics, involved analysing over one million genetic variants in over two thousand research subjects who had either schizophrenia or severe childhood onset obesity.