science wire

A pair of neurons have been found in the brain of male nematode worms that allow them to remember and seek sex even at the expense of food. These neurons, which are male-specific, are required for sex-based differences in learning, suggesting that sex differences in cognitive abilities can be genetically hardwired.

UK supermarkets Iceland, Asda, Morrisons and Waitrose have today pledged funds from the new levy on single-use carrier bags to support the construction of a new world class dementia research centre at UCL.

Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore (UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience) has today been announced as the recipient of the 2015 Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize for her research on understanding emotional and social brain development during adolescence.

A pioneering trial of a new treatment derived from stem cells for people with 'wet' age-related macular degeneration (AMD) has commenced at Moorfields Eye Hospital following a successful operation on a patient.

Working with a highly reputable corporate leader helps managers get promoted to senior positions in the short term, but such a career boost is balanced in the longer-term as competitive job markets, including professional sports, punish those managers who initially benefited.

Greenland natives - the Inuit - have mutations in genes that control how the body uses fat which provides the clearest evidence to date that human populations are adapted to particular diets according to new UCL research. The genetic differences allow the Inuit to physically adapt to survive Arctic conditions and live healthily on a traditional diet which is rich in omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids from marine mammal fat.

Kicking off on 20 September, a conservation project in Norfolk is highlighting the vital role of ponds in the English countryside as part of a "seven ponds in seven days" restoration challenge.

For the first time, a new study led by Public Health England (PHE) and authored by a number of UCL researchers, ranks the diseases and risk factors that cause death and disability in England compared

Have you ever touched someone else and wondered why his or her skin felt so incredibly soft? Well, now researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on September 10 present evidence that this experience may often be an illusion. In a series of studies led by Aikaterini Fotopoulou of UCL, participants consistently rated the skin of another person as being softer than their own, whether or not it really was softer.

Patients admitted to hospital at the weekend are more likely to be sicker and have a higher risk of death, compared with those admitted during the week, finds an analysis published in The BMJ this week.

UCL has clarified issues raised by media coverage this week of payments of housing support allowance to staff at UCL Qatar.

UCL's Bloomsbury Theatre is currently closed for planned building works which have impacted on known asbestos.

A new and more dangerous phase of impacts on the world's remaining tropical forests is emerging, threatening to simplify the world's most diverse ecosystem including mass species loss, according to new UCL-led research published today in Science.

Working 55 hours or more per week is linked to a 33% greater risk of stroke and a more modest (13%) increased risk of developing coronary heart disease compared with working a standard 35 to 40 hour week, according to the largest study in this field so far, led by UCL and published in The Lancet . Professor Mika Kivimäki (UCL Epidemiology & Public Health) and colleagues did a systematic review and meta-analysis of published studies and unpublished individual-level data examining the effects of longer working hours on cardiovascular disease up to August 20, 2014.

UCL has risen to 18th place in the new Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), published this week by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, making it one of only three UK universities in the top 20.

The build-up and subsequent release of warm, stagnant water from the deep Arctic Ocean and Nordic Seas played a role in ending the last Ice Age within the Arctic region, according to new research led by a UCL scientist. The study examined how the circulation of the ocean north of Iceland - the combined Arctic Ocean and Nordic Seas, called the Arctic Mediterranean - changed since the end of the last Ice Age (~20,000-30,000 years ago).

UCL has become one of the first universities in the UK to be formally awarded for its efforts to understand, and take steps to address, racialised inequalities in the academy.

Using cutting-edge technology, the world's rarest skeleton - a South African extinct zebra called a quagga - has regained its missing hind limb.

The volume of Arctic sea ice increased by a third after the summer of 2013 as the unusually cool air temperatures prevented the ice from melting, according to UCL and University of Leeds scientists. This suggests that the ice pack in the Northern hemisphere is more sensitive to changes in summer melting than it is to winter cooling, a finding which will help researchers to predict future changes in its volume.

The Government has committed to investing £4 million in a new facility at UCL to help policymakers develop ways of evening out the UK's regional economic divides.

Dr Celia Caulcott has been appointed the next Vice-Provost (Enterprise) at UCL, with effect from 1 October 2015.

A major study to assess whether mindfulness training for teenagers can improve their mental health launches today, involving researchers from UCL alongside staff and students at the UCL Academy.

A potential new approach to treat systemic amyloidosis, invented at UCL and being developed by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), marks the start of a successful and innovative academic-industry collaboration. The first in human clinical trial of a novel investigational drug intervention for patients with systemic amyloidosis has established proof of mechanism.

UCL is the best performing university in the first year of the EU funding scheme Horizon 2020, securing a total of €73.2 million over 55 projects, according to an analysis by Research Professional .

More than a third of overweight or obese teenagers don't see themselves as being too heavy and think their weight is about right, according to a UCL study published today in the International Journal of Obesity . The study used data from around 5,000 13-15-year-olds who were asked about their weight and if they thought they were too heavy, about right or too light.

 An ambitious policy package is essential for the UK to transform its energy system to achieve the deep reductions in carbon emissions required to avoid dangerous climate change, according to research led by UCL scientists.

Healthy people given the serotonin-enhancing antidepressant citalopram were willing to pay almost twice as much to prevent harm to themselves or others than those given placebo drugs in a moral decision-making experiment at UCL. In contrast, the dopamine-boosting Parkinson's drug levodopa made healthy people more selfish, eliminating an altruistic tendency to prefer harming themselves over others.

Researchers at UCL have mapped the people of Scotland in unprecedented detail. The project, 'DataShine Scotland', commissioned by National Records of Scotland and the Scottish Government, uses data from Scotland's Census 2011 to show over 1,000 social characteristics for over 46,000 Scottish areas.

When remembering something from our past, we often vividly re-experience the whole episode in which it occurred. New UCL research funded by the Medical Research Council and Wellcome Trust has now revealed how this might happen in the brain. The study the representation of the entire event can be reactivated in the brain, including incidental information such as where they were and what they did.

When rats rest, their brains simulate journeys to a desired future such as a tasty treat, finds new UCL research funded by the Wellcome Trust and Royal Society. The researchers monitored brain activity in rats, first as the animals viewed food in a location they could not reach, then as they rested in a separate chamber, and finally as they were allowed to walk to the food.

A single gene called Angiopoietin-1 ( Ang-1 ) drives brain size and intelligence in fish according to a new study by researchers at UCL, Stockholm University and University of Helsinki. Fish with larger brains and higher intelligence had higher expression of Ang-1 , and when expression levels of Ang-1 were experimentally reduced, brains shrunk.

The threat to human health from climate change is so great that it could undermine the last fifty years of gains in development and global health, according to a major new UCL-led Commission, published in The Lancet.

Researchers at the Medical Research Council's Prion Unit at UCL have identified a naturally occurring variant of the human prion protein that produces resistance to prion diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). Prions are infectious agents that cause invariably fatal brain diseases such as CJD in humans, scrapie in sheep and BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy or 'mad cow disease') in cattle.

A space mission called SMILE (Solar Wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer) which is jointly led by UCL and the Chinese National Space Science Center has received the go-ahead for an initial study phase this summer by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

UCL is pleased to announce the launch of UCL Press, the University's in house publishing arm. UCL Press will be the first fully Open Access university press in the UK with all books, journals and monographs freely available online, creating a diverse and accessible global knowledge resource.

Women with advanced ovarian cancer have fewer side effects and tend to have a better quality of life if given chemotherapy before surgery, according to a Cancer Research UK funded study published in The Lancet . The CHORUS trial, conducted at the Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Unit (MRC CTU) at UCL, challenged the international standard for treating advanced ovarian cancer.

UCL is pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Mark Emberton to the position of Dean, UCL Faculty of UCL Medical Sciences, replacing Professor David Lomas from 1 August 2015.