science wire

Professor Linda Partridge (UCL Genetics, Evolution & Environment) has been named a Woman of Outstanding Achievement 2009 for discovery, innovation and  entrepreneurship by the UK Resource Centre for Women (UKRC) in Science, Engineering and Technology.

Barack Obama yesterday overturned the ban on US federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research.

The second instalment of the 'Today's Neuroscience, Tomorrow's History' podcast series, compiled by the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, is now available for download.

UCL has signed up as an institutional member of the Climate & Health Council (CHC), the aim of which is to mobilise health professionals across the world to take action to limit climate change, a serious threat to human health.

Teams of health scientists from UCL and three partner hospital trusts across London are joining forces to develop research and groundbreaking treatments for patients with a range of debilitating conditions, drawing on a total of £1 million funding.

The third issue of Medsin UCL's global health magazine 'Perspectives' is now available. This issue focuses on neglected diseases, with articles on the failure to eradicate polio and neglected tropical diseases.

The UCL Institute for Global Health invites UCL researchers whose work focuses, on or relates to, all aspects of infectious diseases to a town meeting on 25 February 2009.

The underlying sense of being in control of our own actions is challenged by new research from the UCL Institute of Neurology and the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neurosocience, which demonstrates that

What is 'life', where did it first emerge on our planet - and are we alone in the universe' UCL astrobiology researcher Lewis Dartnell will be grappling with these and other questions in his Royal Institution lecture on 24 February.

A new psychodynamic approach to bullying in schools has been successfully trialled by UCL and US researchers.

Benjamin Judkewitz (UCL Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research) has won the second annual Young UCL Investigator Award in Neuroimaging Techniques.

Half of family carers of people with dementia report some abusive behaviour towards the person they are caring for and one third report 'significant' levels of abuse, according to research led by Claudia Cooper (UCL Mental Health Sciences)  published today in the 'British Medical Journal' .

A team of researchers from UCL's Institute of Child Health (ICH) and Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology have identified a correlation between natural ability to use language well and social communication competence according to gender. In an article published in the current issue of the 'Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry', Professor David Skuse and William Mandy, lead authors of the study, show that above-average verbal IQ seems to confer protection against social communication impairments in girls but not in boys.

This year's third UCL Institute for Global Health (IGH) Symposium, held on 21 January 2009, was a five-person panel and audience discussion of 'The Crisis in Global Finance and Trade: What are the implications for health??

The fossil of a lizard-like New Zealand reptile dating back 18 million years has been  identified by a team of scientists led by Marc Jones (UCL Cell and Developmental Biology), triggering fresh arguments over whether the continent was fully submerged some 25 million years ago. Today, the endangered New Zealand tuatara (Sphenodon) is a lizard-like reptile that is the only survivor of a group that was globally widespread at the time of the dinosaurs.

Language in humans has evolved culturally rather than genetically, according to a study by Professor Nick Chater (UCL Cognitive, Perceptual and Brain Sciences) and US colleagues published today in the 'Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences' (PNAS). By modelling the ways in which genes for language might have evolved alongside language itself, the study showed that genetic adaptation to language would be highly unlikely, as cultural conventions change much more rapidly than genes.

A team of UCL scientists has identified the mechanism which causes left-right asymmetry present in the brains of most animals, first evident at the time of early development.

A team of scientists from the UCL and Birkbeck Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology (ISMB) have identified the structure of a key component of the bacteria behind such diseases as whooping cough, peptic stomach ulcers and Legionnaires? disease.

The pain-relieving effects of nitrous oxide ' laughing gas - may be enhanced by suggestion or hypnosis, according to research published by UCL in 'Psychopharmacology'. The study's findings - that people are more suggestible under the gas ' mean that dental patients may benefit from being coached to relax while undergoing sedation.

The first baby tested preconceptionally for a genetic form of breast cancer (BRCA1) has been born. The mother and her little girl are doing very well.

An expedition led by UCL doctors has recorded the lowest ever levels of oxygen in humans.The world-first measurements of blood oxygen levels in climbers near the top of Mount Everest, publishe