news 2015

Computer simulations have allowed scientists to work out how a puzzling 555-million-year-old organism with no known modern relatives fed, revealing that some of the first large, complex organisms on Earth formed ecosystems that were much more complex than previously thought. The international team of researchers from Canada, the UK and the USA, including Dr Imran Rahman from the University of Bristol, studied fossils of an extinct organism called Tribrachidium , which lived in the oceans some 555 million years ago.

A new study by researchers from Imperial College London suggests statins could help fight hard-to-treat cancers. The research, published today , reveals that tumours rely heavily on cholesterol for growth. Cholesterol-lowering statins - which are currently prescribed to around 30 million people worldwide, can block this supply - causing it to 'starve' and die.

New research indicates that cockroaches use a combination of fast and slow twitch muscle fibres to give their mandibles a "force boost" that allows them to chew through tough materials.

Scientists have used computer simulations to reconstruct feeding in the common ancestor shared between humans and starfish, which lived over half a billion years ago. The international team of researchers from the UK and Spain, led by Dr Imran Rahman from the University of Bristol, tested competing theories for feeding in a 510-million-year-old fossil using computational fluid dynamics, an engineering tool.

Helper cells in the brain, which support nerve function, change their behaviour with the progression of Motor Neuron Disease (MND), a new study has found. Researchers at the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN) discovered the star-shaped cells, called astrocytes, progressively lose the ability to support motor neurons as MND progresses leading to the death of the specialised nerve cells that control our movements.

Offshore wind farms which are to be built in waters around the UK could pose a greater threat to protected populations of gannets than previously thought, research led by the University of Leeds says. It was previously thought that gannets, which breed in the UK between April and September each year, generally flew well below the minimum height of 22 metres above sea level swept by the blades of offshore wind turbines.

Offshore wind farms which are to be built in waters around the UK could pose a greater threat to protected populations of gannets than previously thought, research led by the University of Leeds says. It was previously thought that gannets, which breed in the UK between April and September each year, generally flew well below the minimum height of 22 metres above sea level swept by the blades of offshore wind turbines.

Researchers from around the UK, led by a team at the University of Sheffield's Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN), have found new evidence to support early nutrition management in motor neuron disease (MND). The first UK wide study into tube feeding in MND (ProGas) has found that MND patients benefited most from enteral feeding when they had lost less than 10 per cent of their body weight before the intervention.

Researchers from the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN) have shed light on how mutations in a high risk gene specifically affect motor neurons. Scientists at the flagship motor neuron disease research centre, based at the University of Sheffield, investigated how specialised nerve cells that control voluntary movements die - something which is key to understanding motor neuron disease (MND).

New research into how tendons age has found that the material between tendon fibre bundles stiffens as it gets older and that this is responsible for older people being more susceptible to tendon injuries. Researchers from QMUL, University of East Anglia, University College London and University of Liverpool, repeatedly stretched samples of horse tendons, which are very similar to human ones, to test their elasticity and ability to recover.

Renewable energy technologies, future cities and novel in-car parameter estimators are just some innovative research from the University of Bristol's Faculty of Engineering that will be showcased to industry later this month. The Faculty of Engineering Research Showcase is held every two years and enables the faculty to strengthen and develop existing partnerships with industry and to start new collaborations.

New research into the phenomenon of design fixation - allowing prior experience to blind us to new possibilities - may help in the development of new tools and strategies that help to stimulate the creative process without inadvertently limiting it. Fixation can stop the creative process cold: severely limiting the way in which we see a problem and the variety of solutions we explore Nathan Crilly It's a common occurrence: when faced with a problem which is similar to one which has been faced before, most people will default to what worked in the past.

A new £1.4 million research project led by the University of Bristol will use engineering and science in the design of radically new approaches and solutions to vision-based technology. Researchers from the University's Bristol Vision Institute (BVI) have been awarded an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Platform Grant for their project ' Vision for the future '.

New research into the way in which we learn new skills finds that a single skill can be learned faster if its follow-through motion is consistent, but multiple skills can be learned simultaneously if the follow-through motion is varied.