science wire

The European Commission needs to make some key innovations in its science funding programme if Europe is to enjoy the full benefits of the €70 billion to be spent on science research as part of the H

Dr Katharine Giles was tragically killed in a cycling accident on Monday 8 April. Here, her colleagues in UCL Earth Sciences pay tribute.

For the first time, teams that care for children needing heart surgery have been able to review their short-term success rate better across all the different operations they perform. Graphic data charts, devised by analysts at UCL, now allow child heart surgeons to spot and investigate trends in survival and act promptly on any concerns.

Researchers at the UCL Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging (CABI) have embarked on a rather unique Easter egg hunt and have been scanning chicken eggs for a new Channel 4 programme called Easter Eggs Live.

The evolution of anthropoid primates, including monkeys, apes and humans, over the past 40 million years was largely driven by brain reorganization, and not brain size, according to new research from UCL. The study, which is published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B , found that around three quarters of differences between the brains of species of monkeys and apes are due to internal reorganization that is independent of size, dispelling the idea that variation in size is the primary factor characterising anthropoid primate brain evolution.

Joanna Brunker, a PhD student in the UCL Department of Medical Physics and Bioengineering, struck Gold at a competition in the House of Commons, for the excellence of her Biology research, walking away with a £3,000 prize yesterday.

UCL and the University of Oxford have come together to form CASMI - the Centre for the Advancement of Sustainable Medical Innovation.

In high income countries brain cooling is standard treatment for neonatal encephalopathy - unexpected, devastating brain injury due to low oxygen and blood in the baby's brain at birth.

UCL guidelines on open access and a publications guide are available to UCL researchers. The  RCUK Policy on Open Access  introduces, with effect from 1 April 2013, new open access requirements for research papers funded by the Research Councils.

A new mobile app developed by UCL scientists at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging will enable the team to carry out on an unprecedented scale experiments that previously could only be conducted on small groups of volunteers in the lab. The Great Brain Experiment will look at memory, impulsivity, what makes us happy, and how well the mind's eye can see, enabling the researchers to explore questions that are normally impossible to ask.

This week the Institute of Making opens at UCL giving a permanent home to the Materials Library, a collection of the most unusual materials in the world, and the MakeSpace, the ultimate making workshop.

Innovative engineering projects announced today, including a new Centre for Nature Inspired Engineering at UCL, will bring leading engineers and scientists together to address some of the major engineering challenges facing the world.

An art exhibition opening this week at UCL brings together six works by artists from Iraq and Britain to explore different experiences of the Iraq war on the 10th anniversary of the invasion.

A new project between the Slade School of Fine Art and UCL Centre for Digital Humanities is exploring and mapping hidden gems from the Slade Archive.

Researchers at UCL have made a breakthrough in the way that drugs could be delivered to the brain.

Three creative engineering projects led by researchers at UCL have been awarded £2.8 million by the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC).

Synthace, a UCL spin-out, has been awarded funding from the Technology Strategy Board for a collaborative project with UCL and the University of Manchester.

UCL has reflected on the European research agenda relating to healthy ageing and independent living.

UCL has played a leading role in new guidance developed by JISC for planning and developing digital resources.

Historians from UCL have produced the first freely accessible database of Britons involved in slave-ownership.

UCL researchers have recently commenced an academic-industrial collaboration - EpiFemCare - to develop new methods for screening, diagnosing and personalising treatment of breast and ovarian cancers. The EpiFemCare project will develop blood tests that will enable new and improved means of cancer detection, as well as the evaluation of response to cancer treatment.

Healthy young people (aged 5-16 years) are wanted to take part in a UCL research project: Neuroimaging investigations of language to aid paediatric neurosurgical decision-making .

In the future police will be able to predict the spread of riots, and how they impact on cities, thanks to a new computer model.

Some of the biggest challenges to the improvement of cancer care for children and young people are set out in a series of studies published in today's Lancet Oncology.

People with disabilities are at a greater risk of being the victims of violence and of suffering mental ill health when victimised, according to research published today in the open access journal PLOS ONE . The research, led by Hind Khalifeh (UCL Brain Sciences) with colleagues from UCL and King's College London, is the first to assess the extent to which people with disabilities experience different kinds of violence and the associated health and economic costs.

The UCL European Institute has funding available for projects that lead to or support collaborative research-based projects on Europe or the European Union.

UCL is inviting staff to take part in an international study on the role of 'civic universities' and colleagues are invited to participate in a survey to gather data for a case study covering UCL's civic engagement.

Do you ever stop and just listen to your environment at UCL? We are looking for people to record the sounds of UCL in labs, corridors, study spaces, accommodation and rehearsal rooms, inside and outside.