news 2015

New research has revealed that having mentally healthy friends can help someone recover from depression or even remain mentally healthy in the first place. But crucially having depressed friends does not make you more likely to become depressed yourself. In other words the results indicate that healthy mood spreads through social networks but depression does not.

New research finds that older people in the poorest parts of society are at much higher risk of sight problems than the wealthiest. Findings from a study released today by Thomas Pocklington Trust 1 and carried out at The University of Manchester, showed that older people in the poorest fifth of the population had an almost 80% higher risk of developing severe visual impairment than those from the wealthiest fifth 2 .

The study by Professor Steve Strand, commissioned for the Department for Education, draws on data for attainment and ethnicity between 1991 and 2013 Research by the Department of Education at Oxford University shows gaps in educational achievement at age 16 have decreased substantially over the last 25 years, particularly in the attainment of different ethnic groups.

The debate over the role of badgers in spreading bovine tuberculosis (bTB), and what to do about it, continues to rage in the UK. Meanwhile, others have taken matters into their own hands and attempted to deal with the perceived badger threat themselves, but a new study has found low-level persecution does not help and may actually make the situation worse.

A University of Manchester study which followed up 38,415 people admitted to hospital with self-harm has, for the first time, investigated the association between the treatment patients receive in hospital and their subsequent risk of death. Published in the Lancet Psychiatry, the study looked at adults who had self-harmed and attended five hospital emergency departments in Manchester, Oxford and Derby between 2000 and 2010.

Why the long face? Horses and humans share facial expressions Horses share some surprisingly similar facial expressions to humans and chimps, according to new University of Sussex research. Mammal communication researchers have shown that, like humans, horses use muscles underlying various facial features - including their nostrils, lips and eyes - to alter their facial expressions in a variety of social situations.

People who grew up in a working class family are more satisfied in later life than those from a higher class background according to new research from The University of Manchester. The study by Dr Bram Vanhoutte and Professor James Nazroo , published in the Journal of Population Ageing , also found that English people who climb the social ladder are more content and happy when they get older than people in the States who are similarly upwardly mobile.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. You can change your cookie settings at any time. Otherwise, we'll assume you're OK to continue. Deep space images shed light on dark matter New images of deep space are helping to shed light on dark matter, the invisible material that accounts for more than 80 per cent of all the matter in the Universe.

Researchers at the University of Liverpool's Institute of Infection and Global Health (IGH) have discovered a common cause of heart damage in patients with sepsis. Sepsis is the most common cause of death in hospitalised critically ill people and affects up to 18 million people world-wide annually. The electrical and mechanical malfunctions of the heart have been poorly understood in sepsis, with underdeveloped clinical management strategies, as a consequence.

More than 1.6 billion people are living in multidimensional poverty around the world, according to new analysis from the OPHI (Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative), a research centre at the University of Oxford. A new report on the latest figures for the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) shows multidimensional poverty in 101 developing countries, covering 5.2 billion people, or 75% of the world's population.

New film showcases the work of Manchester sociologists and their co-researchers, aged between 58 and 74-years-old. In 15 years, a quarter of the world's population living in cities will be over-60, as more and more people choose to grow old there. In a unique project where older people were trained as co-researchers to look into the 'age-friendliness' of cities, sociologists from The University of Manchester have found social inclusion to be the secret to ageing well – while age-friendly transport and housing make them feel more a part of the urban neighbourhoods they live in.

Troops of Olive baboons ( Papio anubis ) decide where to move democratically rather than simply following dominant animals, new research has found. The study, led by researchers from Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Oxford University and Princeton University, is the first to simultaneously GPS track members of a group of primates.

Children who benefit from a good memory are much better at covering up lies, researchers from the University of Sheffield have discovered. Experts found a link between verbal memory and covering up lies following a study which investigated the role of working memory in verbal deception amongst children.

Lancaster researchers have found that a cap masks the scale of violent crime against women in official statistics. Lancaster researchers estimate that violent crime is 60% higher than official figures suggest due to a cap, which means that a person can only be registered as a victim five times. This 60% increase is not evenly distributed, however.

Having a hierarchical social structure with just a few well-connected leaders enables pigeon flocks to navigate more accurately on the wing, new research shows. Hierarchical organisation also enables flocks to cope better with navigation errors made by individual birds. Researchers from Oxford University and the Zoological Society of London created 'virtual flocks' of homing pigeons to test how different social networks affect the navigation performance of these groups.

Researchers have analysed the genomes of thousands of women in the UK and the Netherlands to measure the extent to which a woman's genes play a role for when she has her first baby and how many children she will have. Significantly, they have found that some women are genetically predisposed to have children earlier than others, and conclude that they have passed down their reproductive advantage to the next generation.

Men visiting their GP with symptoms of anxiety or depression are more likely to have experienced or carried out some form of behaviour linked to domestic violence and abuse, according to a new University of Bristol study. Researchers say the findings highlight the need for GPs to ask male patients with mental health problems about domestic abuse.

A large-scale diabetes screening programme underway in India will overwhelm the health system with false positive results, according to research. The programme uses simple tests to screen the general population, and those who test positive have to undergo a second test to confirm the diagnosis. The new study, which used mathematical models to simulate the outcome of screening the whole population, estimates that between 158 million and 306 million people would be referred for confirmatory testing, but only 26-37 million of those would meet the diagnostic criteria for diabetes.

Sex equality in residential decision-making explains the unique social structure of hunter-gatherers, a new UCL study reveals. Previous research has noted the low level of relatedness in hunter-gatherer bands. This is surprising because humans depend on close kin to raise offspring, so generally exhibit a strong preference for living close to parents, siblings and grandparents.

Perspective-taking difficulties are diminished when both autistic tendencies and psychosis proneness are balanced, say Birmingham researchers Researchers at the University of Birmingham have shed new light on the relationship between autistic tendencies and psychosis proneness in neurotypical adults.