news 2021

Cells in the developing embryo can sense the stiffness of other cells around them, which is key to them moving together to form the face and skull, finds a new study by UCL researchers. In the study of frog embryos researchers found that embryonic cells can navigate away from soft regions of the embryo and toward harder regions.

A research team led by scientists from Cardiff University has provided the first ever 3D visualisation of an ammonite - a marine mollusc group that became extinct with the dinosaurs around 66 million years ago. The new images have allowed the team to analyse the muscles and organs of an ammonite for the very first time, throwing new light on how the cephalopod mollusc was able to swim through the oceans and defend itself from predators.

Retreating glaciers in the Pacific mountains of western North America could produce around 6,150 kilometers of new Pacific salmon habitat by the year 2100, according to a new study. Scientists have 'peeled back the ice' from 46,000 glaciers between southern British Columbia and south-central Alaska to look at how much potential salmon habitat would be created when underlying bedrock is exposed and new streams flow over the landscape.

A study of tuberculosis patients in six Jakarta hospitals has revealed up to 13 per cent of them had fungal lung infection - or aspergillosis - at the end of their treatment. The findings could, warn the research team from Universitas Indonesia and The University of Manchester , have implications globally, wherever TB is found.

Most of the methane gas emitted from Amazon wetlands regions is vented into the atmosphere via tree root systems - with significant emissions occurring even when the ground is not flooded, say researchers at the University of Birmingham. In a study published in the Royal Society journal, Philosophical Transactions A , the researchers have found evidence that far more methane is emitted by trees growing on floodplains in the Amazon basin than by soil or surface water and this occurs in both wet and dry conditions.

People choose whether to seek or avoid information about their health, finances and personal traits based on how they think it will make them feel, how useful it is, and if it relates to things they think about often, finds a new study by UCL researchers.

An international team involving researchers at UCL has discovered a new planet, GJ 367 b, whose surface temperature may reach 1,500 degrees Centigrade - hot enough to melt all rock and metal - and which takes only eight hours to orbit its star. In a new study, published in the Science journal, the researchers show that the planet, which is 31 light years from Earth, is one of the lightest among the nearly 5,000 exoplanets (planets outside our own solar system) that are known today, with half the mass of Earth.

Six COVID-19 vaccines are safe and boost immunity for people who have had two doses of Pfizer/BioNTech or Oxford/AstraZeneca, show results from a UK-wide trial carried out in collaboration with the University of Birmingham. The latest results from the world-first study COV-BOOST are published in The Lancet and have been key in shaping the UK booster programme, providing vital evidence for global vaccination efforts.

By trapping light into tiny crevices of gold, researchers have coaxed molecules to convert invisible infrared into visible light, creating new low-cost detectors for sensing. It's like listening to slow-rippling earthquake waves by colliding them with a violin string to get a high whistle that's easy to hear, and without breaking the violin Jeremy Baumberg Detecting light beyond the visible red range of our eyes is hard to do, because infrared light carries so little energy compared to ambient heat at room temperature.

UCL has published its first report setting out how the university is addressing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Developed by the UCL Sustainable Development Goals Initiative (SDGI), the report showcases a selection of the hundreds of ways UCL's staff and student communities are supporting the SDGs across their research, teaching and extra-curricular activities, as well as how the university operates.

GlaxoSmithKline plc and the University of Oxford today announced a major five-year collaboration to establish the Oxford-GSK Institute of Molecular and Computational Medicine. The new Institute, which will be based at the University of Oxford, aims to improve the success and speed of research and development of new medicines, building on insights from human genetics and using advanced technologies such as functional genomics and machine learning.

Is it risky to sing in a choir? What are the risks of eating in a small restaurant? How much difference does it make to open windows or clean surfaces? New interactive tool helps people make decisions on COVID-19.

Vaccines are effective in decreasing hospitalization and deaths from COVID-19 infection but the emergence of viral variants of concern may diminish their efficacy, according to a new study. The study - published today in PLOS Pathogens, by Emma Thomson, Brian Willett, and colleagues at the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research - suggests that COVID-19 Delta variant may be more successful at evading the protective response of vaccines.

An international team of scientists believe they may have found a molecular mechanism behind the extremely rare blood clots linked to adenovirus COVID-19 vaccines. Scientists from Cardiff University and Arizona State University worked with AstraZeneca to investigate vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT), also known as thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), a life-threatening condition seen in a very small number of people after receiving the Oxford-AstraZeneca or Johnson & Johnson vaccines.

Is it risky to sing in a choir? What are the risks of eating in a small restaurant? How much difference does it make to open windows or clean surfaces? New interactive tool helps people make decisions on COVID-19.

For the first time, mathematicians have partnered with artificial intelligence to suggest and prove new mathematical theorems. The work was done in a collaboration between the University of Oxford, the University of Sydney in Australia and DeepMind, Google's artificial intelligence sister company. While computers have long been used to generate data for mathematicians, the task of identifying interesting patterns has relied mainly on the intuition of the mathematicians themselves.

A new study sheds light on the way salty water acts in deep-sea aquifers, paving the way for further research into carbon storage deep beneath the seabed. Pools of salty water (brine) trapped beneath the seabed offer an unparalleled opportunity to sequester carbon and keep it trapped for millennia. Yet research in this area remains rudimentary, as little is known about the way sodium chloride (salt) behaves when it-s combined with carbon dioxide several kilometres beneath the surface of the earth, where conditions of heat and pressure are extreme.

Research into the logic behind AI shows that algorithms think in reliable and scientific ways that could help us learn undiscovered laws of physics, say PhD candidate Kai Hou Yip and Dr Quentin Changeat (both UCL Physics & Astronomy). Do you know what the Earth's atmosphere is made of? You'd probably remember it's oxygen, and maybe nitrogen.

Scientists at the University of Cambridge have developed a new approach for observing mechanochemical reactions - where simple ingredients are ground up to make new chemical compounds and materials that can be used in anything from the pharmaceutical to the metallurgical, cement and mineral industries.

Scientists at UCL have discovered that some patients with a common type of childhood cancer do not respond to treatment because of a rare and previously unrecognised type of cancer cell, which has the unique capacity to "lie dormant" during chemotherapy and resist its effects. The breakthrough study in mice, uncovers for the first time the specific biological features that explain why a small number of leukaemic cells are able survive the crucial first 28 days of chemotherapy for B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (BCP-ALL).