news 2018

Experts at the University of Nottingham have developed a new training course for healthcare professionals to help them communicate more effectively with patients living with dementia. Around one-quarter of hospital beds are occupied by people with dementia, many of whom have problems communicating and often don't understand the requests being asked of them.

University of Birmingham Chartered Physiotherapist Dr Melrose Stewart will return to our TV screens in a new series of Channel 4's 'Old People's Home for 4 Year Olds'. It follows the success of the first series of the BAFTA-nominated TV show in 2017, which brought together the very young and the very old for a six-week period to attempt to prove in a social experiment that these two generations can transform the physical, social and emotional well-being of the older volunteers for the better.

News stories about potential threats become more negative, inaccurate and hysterical when passed from person to person - new University of Warwick research finds Even drawing the public's attention to balanced, neutral facts does not calm this hysteria "The more people share information, the more negative it becomes, the further it gets from the facts, and the more resistant it becomes to correction" - Professor Thomas Hills News stories about t

Young people in foster care in Wales experience poorer sexual health outcomes, research at Cardiff University has found. Dr Louise Roberts, based in the School of Social Sciences, led on the research paper, which was a collaboration between the Centre for the Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions for Public Health Improvement (DECIPHer) and the Children's Social Care Research and Development Centre (CASCADE).

New mums' voices get lower after pregnancy, shows a University of Sussex study The pitch of new mothers' voices temporarily drops after they have had their first baby, according to a new longitudinal study by Dr Kasia Pisanski, Kavya Bhardwaj, and Prof David Reby at the University of Sussex. The researchers analysed women's voices over a 10-year period - five years before and five years after childbirth - and found that new mothers' voices get lower, and become more monotonous after pregnancy.

Grammar school pupils do not gain any advantage over children who do not attend a grammar school by age 14, according to a new study from UCL. In the first study of its kind, researchers from the UCL Institute of Education (IOE) looked at a range of social and emotional outcomes, including young people's engagement and well-being at school, their aspirations for the future, in addition to educational attainment levels, to determine the benefits of attending a grammar school.

Pupils from schools with greater ethnic diversity have more positive feelings towards pupils of different ethnicities, according to a new study of attitudes in English secondary schools from the University of Bristol and the London School of Economics and Political Science. While pupils tend to have warmer feelings for their own ethnic group, the more mixed the school, the warmer the feelings for other ethnicities, promoting social cohesion.

Microbes change their investment strategy depending on how much they have at stake Last updated on Monday 10 September 2018 Scientists investigating the fundamental question in biology as to why individuals have evolved to cooperate rather than simply exploiting the contributions of their rivals, have found that microbes vary their contribution to maximise the return of investment.

A new study by anthropologists at the University of Bristol will help campaigners to closely target their work in eradicating female genital cutting (FGC). The World Health Organisation report that an estimated three million girls are at risk every year of having their genitals cut in some way, mostly before the age of 15.

People who feel in control of their lives and who find purpose and meaning in life are less likely to have anxiety disorders even when going through the toughest times, according to a study led by the University of Cambridge.

A sense of wellbeing and a thriving community is key to a happy neighbourhood according to housing researchers, who looked at the relationship between the experience of the home and wellbeing. The study led by the Centre on Household Assets and Savings Management based at the Universities of Birmingham and Manchester and funded by VIVID homes, examined a mix of social renters compared to, shared owners and owner occupiers.

Latest research combining social and political surveys with objective cognitive testing suggests that "cognitive flexibility" contributes to formation of ideology. The study finds correlations between cognitive thinking styles and support for Brexit.

The letters speak of love, longing, worry and war. A prisoner of war and his family writing to each other to ease the pain of separation during the First World War. Now seven months of correspondence, between Professor Archibald Allan Bowman and his wife Mabel, will be published by the University of Glasgow on the centenary of the day they were first written.

Infrared sensors and a marshmallow offer researchers a new way to monitor and assess social interaction. The ability to use invisible light to determine someone's role and attitude in social settings has powerful implications for individuals and organisations that are concerned about how they communicate.

University of Birmingham researchers are investigating the health risks faced by Rwandan families cooking on traditional charcoal-fired stoves. A new study looks at health impact on mothers and their children of household air pollution associated with biomass fuel cooking - which is common in homes across the country.

Grammar schools are no better or worse than non-selective state schools in terms of attainment, but can be damaging to social mobility, according to new research by Durham University. The researchers say a policy of increasing selection within the schools system is dangerous for equality in society.

The value of foodbanks goes well beyond the food they provide, offering social contact and a safe place where users find care, dignity and respect, according to new research released today by the University of Glasgow. Conducted by the University's GoWell Programme, the research examined the scale of food bank use in 15 communities in Glasgow, each of which lie within the 15% most deprived in Scotland.

Disadvantaged children born at the start of the 21st century weighed up to 5kg more in their childhood and early teenage years than those from more privileged backgrounds, a new UCL study has found. However, in previous generations lower social class was associated with lower childhood and adolescent weight.

38/18 A higher number of men with learning disabilities are victims of forced marriage than previously thought, suggesting that better education and training is needed to recognise those at risk. This was just one of the findings of the new study - ' My Marriage, My Choice' which shows that there appears to have been a reversal in trends related to gender, with more cases of men with learning disabilities now being reported than those of women.

Research led by the University of Oxford has revealed how the complex cultural and social environment in developing countries can complicate the use of new diagnostic technologies to fight the global superbug crisis. The research, led by Dr Marco J Haenssgen at the CABDyN Complexity Centre and the Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health,  involved a new finger-prick blood test (C-reactive protein) to help nurses and doctors decide whether their patients need antibiotic treatment.