news 2014

New research by a team of European physicists could explain why the universe did not collapse immediately after the Big Bang. Studies of the Higgs particle - discovered at CERN in 2012 and responsible for giving mass to all particles - have suggested that the production of Higgs particles during the accelerating expansion of the very early universe (inflation) should have led to instability and collapse.

Home > News > News releases > Pioneering anti-clotting medication halves stent blockage in heart attack patients o Ticagrelor halves risks of stents blocking with blood clots o Study of 18,000 patients shows cost-effective drug could prevent premature deaths o Reduces the risk of patients needing repeat operations Treating heart attack patients with ticagrelor reduces the risk of stents blocking with blood clots according to a ground breaking new study conducted by researchers from the University of Sheffield.

Oxford University research to predict the geographic spread of Ebola virus in West Africa has been funded by the UK government and the Wellcome Trust. The Department for International Development (DFID) and the Wellcome Trust are releasing £1.34m from a joint fund to support five projects, run by leading British and international researchers, which will improve evidence and understanding of the Ebola outbreak.

Scientists report a new method for establishing whether chemical compounds are safe for human use without "in vivo" testing, based on so-called "molecular initiating events" at the boundary between chemistry and biology.

Scientists have discovered mechanisms that control a new form of premature cell death in living tissue - called ferroptosis - and a mechanism to reverse it. Tests have since revealed that this mechanism prevents tissue damage in human kidney cells, acute kidney failure and in liver damage, opening up the possibility for new pharmacological treatments to a number of diseases.

Scientists have proven definitively that climate change could not have been responsible for a huge population collapse in Europe at the end of the Bronze Age. Archaeologists and environmental scientists from the University of Leeds, the University of Bradford, University College Cork and Queen’s University Belfast have shown that the changes in climate that scientists believed to coincide with the fall in population in fact occurred at least two generations later.

A Lancaster University scientist has helped discover the oldest water yet found on Earth, important for understanding life on Earth and Mars. The record-breaking discovery, made under the Timmins mine in Ontario, was featured in the journal. Dr Greg Holland, of Lancaster Environment Centre, along with scientists from Manchester University and two Canadian universities have found pockets of water that have been isolated from the outside world for more than 1.5 billion years.

Researchers working on artificial intelligence at Queen Mary have taught a computer to create magic tricks. The researchers from the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science gave a computer program the outline of how a magic jigsaw puzzle and a mind reading card trick work, as well the results of experiments into how humans understand magic tricks, and the system created completely new variants on those tricks which can be delivered by a magician.

The importance of looking after the mental health of parents during pregnancy and after childbirth, in order to promote the physical and mental wellbeing of both parents and child, is highlighted by researchers in a new series of articles in The Lancet . The articles were edited by Professor Alan Stein of Oxford University and Louise Howard of King's College London, and discuss the range of mental health disorders that can occur during pregnancy and after childbirth.

Our structure (research) Impact of our research Postgraduate research 14 Nov 2014 Scientists at The University of Manchester have identified an important new factor behind one of the major causes of blindness, which they hope could lead to new treatments. Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) is the major cause of blindness in the western world, affecting around 50 million people.

The team examined the current growth rate of the epidemic in West Africa alongside airline travel patterns Researchers at the University of Liverpool have found that screening for Ebola at airports could be an effective method for preventing the spread of the disease into the UK and US, but due to the long incubation period of the virus, screening won't detect all cases Published in the Lancet medical journal, the study used a mathematical model to test the probability of infected travellers from West Africa entering the UK and US.

Neuroscientists have discovered an unexpected benefit of getting older - a more nuanced understanding of social signals, such as the age of others. In a new study published today (Friday 14 November) in the journal Current Biology , University of Glasgow researchers show that older people have richer mental representations of the ageing process.

Researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King's College London have proposed that repetitive negative thinking (RNT), a common symptom of many psychological disorders, may increase the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. Until recently, research into Alzheimer's disease has focused on how physical factors are linked to the onset of symptoms.

Our structure (research) Impact of our research Postgraduate research 14 Nov 2014 Cancer Research UK scientists working at The University of Manchester have found more than 400 'blind spots' in DNA which could hide cancer-causing gene faults, according to research published today (14 November) in Cancer Research.

Latest research shows the females of some mammal species will have many mates to ensure unclear paternity, so that males can't resort to killing their rival's offspring for fear of killing their own. This forces males to evolve to compete through sperm quantity, leading to ever-larger testicles. Scientists find that as testis size increases, infanticide disappears.

Sussex study reveals how 'blind insight' confounds logic People can gauge the accuracy of their decisions, even if their decision-making performance itself is no better than chance, according to new University of Sussex research. In a study , people who showed chance-level decision making still reported greater confidence about decisions that turned out to be accurate and less confidence about decisions that turned out to be inaccurate.

Researchers have gained fresh insights into how 'local' body clocks control waking and sleeping. All animals, from ants to humans, have internal 'circadian' clocks that respond to changes in light and tell the body to rest and go to sleep, or wake up and become active. A master clock found in part of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) is thought to synchronise lots of 'local' clocks that regulate many aspects of our metabolism, for example in the liver.

But weather forecasting on the Red Planet is likely to be even trickier than on Earth Mars has the same three-part pattern of atmospheric conditions as Earth, finds a new study by researchers at UCL and McGill University. This includes weather, which changes day-to-day due to constant fluctuations in the atmosphere; climate, which varies over decades and a third regime called macroweather, which describes the relatively stable regime between weather and climate.

Researchers at the University of Leeds have made a new synthetic anti-cancer molecule that targets two key mechanisms in the spread of malignant tumours through the body. A study published in the journal PLOS ONE reports that the synthetic molecule JK-31 blocks the signalling of a “growth factor” chemical that promotes the creation of networks of blood vessels to feed tumours.

House of Commons (HoC) researchers are 'hot desking' alongside environmental scientists at Lancaster University' Environment Centre. The University is the first in the UK to provide permanent workspace to HoC specialists that provide evidence-based briefings to Members of Parliament, in order to share research results and expert opinions which have been described as 'gold dust'.