science wire

Sir Paul Nurse, Director of the Francis Crick Institute, unveiled the organisation's strategy today at a ceremony attended by senior government ministers and heads of the institute's founding partners, including UCL's President & Provost Professor Malcolm Grant. The announcement coincided with the topping out ceremony for the institute, a key milestone in the construction process which sees the building reach its highest point.

The first degree in the UK to focus on inter-American and Latin/North American global relations has been launched by the UCL Institute of the Americas.

The former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England has highlighted the current power of central banks five years on from the financial crisis.

A statutory change in pensions will soon impact staff at UCL. The scheme is known as Auto Enrolment (AE).

UCL Occupational Health would like to remind UCL staff that 10 June is the beginning of Men's Health Week.

An avatar system that enables people with schizophrenia to control the voice of their hallucinations is being developed by researchers at UCL with support from the Wellcome Trust. The computer-based system could provide quick and effective therapy that is far more successful than current pharmaceutical treatments, helping to reduce the frequency and severity of episodes of schizophrenia.

Millions of people in London and the south east will see improvements to their healthcare following the decision by NHS England to designate UCLPartners as an Academic Health Science Network (AHSN).

Women's groups can dramatically reduce the number of maternal and newborn deaths in some of the world's poorest communities, according to a new meta-analysis published in The Lancet .

Men experience a higher burden of disease and lower life expectancy than women, but policies focusing on the health needs of men are notably absent from the strategies of global health organisations, according to a Viewpoint article in this week's Lancet .

The presence of Scandinavian-style female jewellery in Britain has overturned the idea that the Viking conquest of England was an all-male affair, suggesting that in fact large numbers of women travelled over from the Scandinavian homelands.

People with job stress and an unhealthy lifestyle are at higher risk of coronary artery disease than people who have job stress but lead healthy lifestyles, according to work published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) by researchers from UCL's Department of Epidemiology and Public Health.

The most powerful cluster of research intensive universities in the UK are joining forces to form a new consortium to become one of the world's leading hubs for science and engineering research.

Early-warning sensor systems that can test and track serious infectious diseases - such as major flu epidemics, MRSA and HIV - using mobile phones and the internet are being developed by a major new Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (IRC) led by UCL.

University College London (UCL) and the London Borough of Newham (LBN) have today announced that whilst UCL remains committed to Stratford as the location for its new university quarter, it has not been possible for the two parties to reach an agreement regarding the Carpenters Estate.

UCL's University Challenge team were narrowly beaten by the University of Manchester in the final of the popular BBC2 quiz show this week.

Europe's Herschel Space Observatory has exhausted its supply of liquid helium coolant, after almost four years of scientific observations. As none of the instruments can work without helium-cooling, Herschel's operational life is now over. The spacecraft itself will soon be placed in a parking orbit around the Sun, but the analysis and evaluation of the data will continue for years to come.

With the UCL Festival of the Arts running from 7 - 17 May, UCL News spoke to Professor Jonathan Wolff (UCL Philosophy), Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Humanities, about the festival, and the importance of celebrating the arts at the time when many courses at other institutions are under threat.

22 new research projects have been awarded funding of up to £5,000 through the 2013 UCL Grand Challenges Small Grants Scheme.

UCL's University Challenge team have reached the final of the popular BBC2 quiz show, after producing a consistent winning streak this series.

Patterns in Google searches for financial terms could have been used as early warning signs of stock market movements, according to a new study published in Scientific Reports . Researchers from UCL Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, Warwick Business School and the Department of Physics at Boston University highlight the insights large data sets can give into collective decision making.

Up to 10 per cent of the population are affected by specific learning disabilities (SLDs), such as dyslexia, dyscalculia and autism, translating to 2 or 3 pupils in every classroom according to a new study.

A team including Dr Mat Page (UCL Space and Climate Physics) has discovered an extremely distant galaxy making stars more than 2000 times faster than our own Milky Way. Seen at a time when the Universe was less than a billion years old, its mere existence challenges our theories of galaxy evolution.