news 2016

Overweight people make unhealthier food choices than lean people when presented with real food, even though both make similar selections when presented with hypothetical choices, according to research led by the University of Cambridge and published today in the journal eNeuro . This is an important insight for public health campaigns as it suggests that just trying to educate people about the healthiness of food choices is not enough.

Genetic diversity helps to reduce the spread of diseases by limiting parasite evolution, according to new research from the University of Liverpool. The idea that host diversity can limit disease outbreaks is not new. For example, crop monocultures in agriculture - which lack genetic diversity - can suffer severe disease outbreaks that sweep through the entire population.

Neuroticism, a personality trait related to depression, anxiety and even heart disease, can be linked to nine new distinct gene-associations according to international research led by the University of Glasgow. Professor Daniel Smith on his latest research The study, which is published today in Molecular Psychiatry , was co-led by Professor Daniel Smith from the Institute of Health and Wellbeing and included researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh, Cardiff and Queensland, Australia.

A team of researchers at the University of Bristol is embarking on a study to investigate the link between high blood pressure and dementia thanks to a £388,000 funding boost from the charity Alzheimer's Research UK. Almost a third of men and women in the UK - around 16 million people - have high blood pressure, and the condition is known to damage blood vessels in the brain as well as the body.

Researchers from Imperial College London, working with the Beckley Foundation, have for the first time visualised the effects of LSD on the brain. In a series of experiments, scientists have gained a glimpse into how the psychedelic compound affects brain activity. The team administered LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide) to 20 healthy volunteers in a specialist research centre and used various leading-edge and complementary brain scanning techniques to visualise how LSD alters the way the brain works.

Stress is a major burden in many people's lives affecting their health and wellbeing. New research led by the University of Bristol has found that genes in the brain that play a crucial role in behavioural adaptation to stressful challenges are controlled by epigenetic mechanisms. Adaptation to stress is known to require changes in the expression of so-called immediate-early genes in the brain, particularly in the hippocampus, a brain region that plays a crucial role in learning and memory.

New simulations by researchers at the University of Warwick and UCL's Institute of Archaeology of plant evolution over the last 3000 years have revealed an unexpected limit to how far useful crops can be pushed to adapt before they suffer population collapse. The result has significant implications for how growers, breeders and scientists help agriculture and horticulture respond to quickening climate change.

Review of latest genetic evidence suggests infectious diseases are tens of thousands of years older than previously thought, and that they could jump between species of 'hominin'. Researchers says that humans migrating out of Africa would have been 'reservoirs of tropical disease' - disease that may have sped up Neanderthal extinction.

A team of scientists led by Oxford University have made a discovery that could improve our chances of developing an effective vaccine against Tuberculosis. The researchers have identified new biomarkers for Tuberculosis (TB) which have shown for the first time why immunity from the widely used Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine is so variable.

Fruit flies live 16% longer than average when given low doses of the mood stabiliser lithium, according to a UCL-led study. How lithium stabilises mood is poorly understood but when the scientists investigated how it prolongs the lives of flies, they discovered a new drug target that could slow ageing - a molecule called glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK-3).

A study by Cardiff University researchers has shed new light on the origins of the Scottish Red Deer. For many years archaeologists have found ancient red deer remains on the distant Scottish isles. Evidence from tombs and houses dating from around 5,000 years ago show that humans exploited these iconic animals for food and resources.

An artificial mimic of a key light-sensitive molecule has been made by scientists at the University of Bristol. Professor Jonathan Clayden and colleagues in Bristol's School of Chemistry , along with collaborators at the Universities of Manchester and Hull, created an artificial mimic of rhodopsin, a protein that resides in cell membranes in the retina.

The genomes of two distinct strains of the virus that causes the common lip cold sore, herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), have been identified within the same person - an achievement that could be useful to forensic scientists for tracing a person's history. The international study is by scientists from the Universities of Lancaster, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Georgia State, Emory and Princeton.

Scientists at The University of Nottingham have shown, for the first time, that a naturally occurring hormone which plays a major role in the development of the male fetus can, in the early stages of pregnancy, transfer into a 'neighbouring' fetus and potentially influence the development of female as well as male twins.

Scientists at The University of Nottingham have shown, for the first time, that a naturally occurring hormone which plays a major role in the development of the male fetus can, in the early stages of pregnancy, transfer into a 'neighbouring' fetus and potentially influence the development of female as well as male twins.

A study of a ten-million-year-old fossilised snake has shown for the first time that mineralised tissues can preserve evidence of colour, shedding new light on how ancient organisms would have looked. Previously, the only pigments known to have survived fossilisation were browns, blacks and muddy reds when melanin lasts as organic material.

A drug currently being trialled in cancer patients could also be used to treat an often incurable condition that can cause painful blood vessel overgrowths inside the skin, finds new research in mice led by UCL, Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Center in New York and the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) in Barcelona.

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have tracked how microscopic organisms called cyanobacteria make use of internal protein 'machines' to boost their ability to convert carbon dioxide into sugar during photosynthesis. With global food and energy security one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century, the new findings could help inform the design and engineering of new nano-technologies to improve crop yields and biomass production.

Genetic 'signatures' of early-stage embryos confirm that our development begins to take shape as early as the second day after conception, when we are a mere four cells in size, according to new research led by the University of Cambridge and EMBL-EBI. Although they seem to be identical, the cells of the two day-old embryo are already beginning to display subtle differences.

A new drug to treat the muscle wasting disease inclusion body myositis (IBM) reverses key symptoms in mice and is safe and well-tolerated in patients, finds a new study led by the Medical Research Council (MRC) Centre for Neuromuscular Diseases at UCL and the University of Kansas Medical Center. The study found that the new drug Arimoclomol reversed the disease's effects at the cellular level and improved muscle strength in mice.