news 2018

Doctors and nurses often prescribe antibiotics for children with cough and respiratory infection to avoid return visits, symptoms getting worse or hospitalisation. In a study published in the British Journal of General Practice today [Tuesday 11 September], researchers from the Universities of Bristol, Southampton, Oxford and Kings College London found little evidence that antibiotics reduce the risk of children with cough ending up in hospital, suggesting that this is an area in which unnecessary antibiotic prescribing could be reduced.

A system made of just a handful of particles acts just like larger systems, allowing scientists to study quantum behaviour more easily. Most substances physicists study are made up of huge numbers of particles - so large that there is essentially no difference between the behavioural properties of a drop or a swimming pool's worth of pure water.

A new examination of the role of children's genomes in their education progress reveals their impact on both school league tables and how teacher performance is assessed. A team led by University of Bristol researchers used data from 6,518 participants of the Children of the 90s longitudinal study alongside the UK National Pupil Database of exam results.

Cardiff University's Wales Governance Centre has presented new findings on drugs, alcohol and homelessness to the House of Commons' Welsh Affairs Committee. The Committee held an evidence session at the National Assembly in Cardiff as part of its inquiry into prison provision in Wales. The Wales Governance Centre's Dr Robert Jones was questioned by MPs on the new data and on his previous Imprisonment in Wales Factfile.

The brains of professional beatboxers and guitarists respond to music differently when compared to each other and non-musicians, finds a new UCL-led study. The study, published in Cerebral Cortex and funded by Wellcome, sheds light on how learning and making music can affect mental processes. The researchers found that the area of the brain that controls mouth movements was particularly active when beatboxers listened to a previously unheard beatboxing track, while the 'hand area' of the guitarists' brains showed heightened activity when they listened to guitar playing.

One in seven operations in UK hospitals are cancelled on the day of surgery, a new study led by the UCL Surgical Outcomes Research Centre and the Royal College of Anaesthetists. Published in the  British Journal of Anaesthesia , the study looked at 26,171 inpatient operations scheduled to take place between 21 and 27 March 2017, in 245 NHS hospitals across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Spending more time in quality early years' education between ages two to four can have a positive impact on the cognitive development and social and emotional wellbeing of children - regardless of their social background, new research suggests. Children in this age bracket who spent more time with childminders, were also found to have fewer emotional difficulties, such as fears and worries.

Researchers at the University of Bristol have shown that resident artificial cells abandon their protocell hosts by displaying antagonistic behaviour on receiving a chemical signal. The work opens new perspectives to develop synthetic soft materials endowed with life-like properties. Living cells cooperate and compete with each other to maximise their survival and optimise their collective behaviour.

Showing prejudice towards others does not require a high level of cognitive ability and could easily be exhibited by artificially intelligent machines, new research has suggested. Computer science and psychology experts from Cardiff University and MIT have shown that groups of autonomous machines could demonstrate prejudice by simply identifying, copying and learning this behaviour from one another.

A senior lecturer from the University of Sussex has contributed to a book of brainteasers from BBC Radio 4's Today Programme, which published yesterday. The Today Programme Puzzle Book contains over 280 cryptic, linguistic and numerical brainteasers created by top mathematicians and logicians from around the country, including Dr Nicos Georgiou, Senior Lecturer in Mathematics at Sussex.

Children living in greener urban neighbourhoods may have better spatial working memory, according to new research by UCL Institute of Education (IOE). Spatial working memory is a measure of how effective people are at orientation and recording information about their environment. It enables us to navigate through a city or remember the position of objects and is strongly inter-related with attentional control.

The University of Bristol is pioneering the monitoring of volcanic activity by developing a cutting-edge measurement system that can withstand the harsh conditions around the heart of an active volcano. Such extreme, hazardous and unpredictable environments present a very difficult challenge to reliably record volcanic behaviour for analytical models.

A new collaboration between Imperial, UCL, and global pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Company will seek to transform medicines manufacturing. Lilly has committed £5 million to fund research into the more efficient manufacture of medicines - which could ultimately result in better and cheaper treatments for patients.

New research has mapped and analysed the incidence of primate electrocutions in Diani, Kenya to identify hotspot areas that should be prioritised to reduce the risk of electric shock. The study could also inform conservation strategies in other parts of the world where primate electrocutions are common.

Across the globe smartphones and mobile apps have become an integral part of everyday life, but what determines the apps you use?   A new study involving UCL reveals that the country you live in rather than your demographic data is actually the biggest indicator of the types of apps you download and use.

Research from the Oxford Internet Institute has found that the proportion of 'junk news' shared on social media during the ongoing Swedish election campaign is higher than any other European country studied - and second only to the US in recent major elections. With Sweden going to the polls on 9 September, the study shows that Swedish social media users have shared two links to professional news content for every one link to junk news, with junk sources accounting for 22% of all URLs shared with political hashtags.

A new study by scientists at the University of Bristol has shown that ancient global warming was associated with intense rainfall events that had a profound impact on the land and coastal seas. The Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which occurred about 56 Million years ago, is of great interest to climate scientists because it represents a relatively rapid global warming event, with some similarities to the human-induced warming of today.

Leading academics have for the first time, measured Great Britain's hourly local demand for natural gas, providing insights into the gas consumption that helps keep the country warm 1 . Research published today by the UK Energy Research Centre 2 sheds new light on the scale and variability of local gas demand, highlighting the particular challenge of providing energy for heating and hot water throughout the winter.

A new study by researchers at Cardiff University and the University of Oxford shows that a 1-week course of oral steroid tablets does not result in large benefits for most 2-8 year old children who have had glue ear with hearing loss for at least 3 months. Glue ear, otherwise known as otitis media with effusion, is the most common cause of hearing loss in children and one of the most common reasons for children to have surgery (insertion of grommets).

The plastic trays used at airport security checkpoints have been found to harbour the highest levels of viruses at airports, in a new scientific investigation by pandemic experts. The study was carried out by a team of experts from the University of Nottingham and the Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare who swabbed a variety of surfaces at Helsinki-Vantaa airport in Finland during the winter of 2016.