news 2018

A newly discovered role for the enzyme glutamine synthetase could have important implications for developing anti-cancer drugs according to a new UCL study. An intrinsic part of tumour growth is the sprouting of blood vessels, which supply cancerous tumours with the blood and energy that they need to survive.

A new Institute where research will look into improving healing and make a difference to patients with debilitating conditions is opening today (10 October 2018) at the University of Birmingham. The Healthcare Technologies Institute (HTI) will strive to advance new technologies and treatments that encourage better tissue healing, quicker detection of diseases, and better outcomes for patients.

Identical brain mechanisms are responsible for triggering memory in both sleep and wakefulness, new research at the University of Birmingham has shown. The study sheds new light on the processes used by the brain to 'reactivate' memories during sleep, consolidating them so they can be retrieved later.

UNESCO World Heritage sites in the Mediterranean such as Venice, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Medieval City of Rhodes are under severe threat of coastal erosion and flooding due to rising sea levels within the next 100 years, a study published in Nature magazine reports this week. The study presents a risk index that ranks the sites according to the threat they face from today until the end of the century.

16 October 2018 Children who are born premature may 'catch up' educationally despite lower test scores in their early education (key stage 1). University of Bristol researchers, looking at the school test data of 12,586 children in the Children of the 90s longitudinal study, wanted to assess if infants born prematurely struggle in school as they grow up.

Surgeons could soon eavesdrop on a patient's brain activity during surgery to remove their brain tumour, helping improve the accuracy of the operation and reduce the risk of impairing brain function. There's been huge progress in brain imaging and electrophysiology - our understanding of the electricity within our bodies - so why not use this information to improve brain surgery? Yaara Erez Patients with low-grade gliomas in their brains - a slow-spreading, but potentially life-threatening tumour - will usually receive surgery to have the tumour removed.

PA 204/18 Adopting a more local and flexible approach to sustainable development could be key to boosting the productivity of small-scale farms in Africa, a study involving researchers at the University of Nottingham has found. The research, led by the University of Liverpool and in collaboration with UK and African partners, reveal village chicken populations in Ethiopia to be genetically diverse and highly adapted to their local physical, cultural and social environments.

15 October 2018 Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, and modifying amino acids chemically allows scientists to develop new molecules that can provide the starting point for developing new medical treatments such as antibiotics. Scientists in the University of Bristol's School of Chemistry have now invented a new way to modify amino acids by attaching a ring of carbon atoms at the very centre of the amino acid molecule.

Cardiff University has opened a brand new facility with the capacity to hold up to a million biological samples for medical research. The Cardiff University Biobank , opened today by Health Secretary Vaughan Gething, will give researchers quick and easy access to biological samples to be used in research for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of a wide range of serious and life-threatening illnesses.

Women are using Mumsnet to swap advice on dealing with financial inequality and men who do not pay their fair share. The finding comes from a Goldsmiths, University of London and University of Birmingham study that analysed four months' worth of discussion threads on the Mumsnet website, with titles such as 'Is he tight or am I just a princess?' and 'Is he tight or am I expecting too much?'.

15 October 2018 A tissue-like material capable of synchronised beating when heated and cooled has been developed by a team of University of Bristol chemists. The discovery is the first chemically programmed approach to producing an artificial tissue. The findings, which could have major health applications in the future, could see chemically programmed synthetic tissue being used to support failing living tissues and to cure specific diseases.

A radical new approach combining archaeology, genetics and microscopy can reveal long-forgotten secrets of human diet, sanitation and movement from studying parasites in ancient poo. Researchers at the University of Oxford's Department of Zoology and School of Archaeology have applied genetic analysis to 700-year-old parasites found in archaeological stool samples to understand a variety of characteristics of a human population.

Children who are the youngest in their classroom are more likely to be diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) than their older classmates, finds a new global study co-authored by UCL. The research, published in the  Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry , systematically reviewed studies that examine the relationship between a child's age relative to their classmates and their chances of being diagnosed with, or medicated for, ADHD.

Researchers have identified a young star with four Jupiter and Saturn-sized planets in orbit around it, the first time that so many massive planets have been detected in such a young system. The system has also set a new record for the most extreme range of orbits yet observed: the outermost planet is more than a thousand times further from the star than the innermost one, which raises interesting questions about how such a system might have formed.

Only a small proportion of cases of dementia are thought to be inherited - the cause of the vast majority is unknown. Now. Why do some people get these diseases while others don't? We know genetics plays a part, but why do people with no family history develop the disease? Patrick Chinnery The findings suggest that for many people with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, the roots of their condition will trace back to their time as an embryo developing in the womb.

Researchers at the University of Sussex have become the first in the world to develop technology which can bend sound waves around an obstacle and levitate an object above it. SoundBender, developed by Professor Sriram Subramanian, Dr Gianluca Memoli and Dr Diego Martinez Plasencia at the University of Sussex, is an interface capable of producing dynamic self-bending beams that enable both levitation of small objects and tactile feedback around an obstacle.

Century-scale climate variability was enhanced when the Earth was warmer during the Last Interglacial period (129-116 thousand years ago) compared to the current interglacial (the last 11,700 years), according to a new UCL-led study. The findings, published today and funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Australian Research Council (ARC), reveal that the Last Interglacial period was punctuated by a series of century-scale arid events in southern Europe and cold water-mass expansions in the North Atlantic.

Well-balanced and predominantly plant-based diets can lead to improved nutrient levels, reduce premature deaths from chronic diseases by more than 20%, and lower greenhouse gas emissions, fertilizer application, and cropland and freshwater use, globally and in most regions, a new study reports. The study, published in The Lancet Planetary Health , is the first to comprehensively assess the relationship between the health and nutritional impacts of different dietary-change strategies and their environmental impacts across all major world regions.

Researchers from the Cambridge Graphene Centre, together with industrial and academic collaborators within the European Graphene Flagship project, showed that integrated graphene-based photonic devices offer a solution for the next generation of optical communications. The researchers have demonstrated how properties of graphene - a two-dimensional form of carbon - enable ultra-wide bandwidth communications and low power consumption to radically change the way data is transmitted across the optical communications systems.

Oxford scientists report exciting new insights into the structure and function of the brain using genetic information and detailed brain images from UK Biobank. The researchers took data from detailed MR images from 10,000 UK Biobank participants, which are freely available from the resource to researchers around the world, to examine thousands of different measurements of the brain.