news 2023

Autistic adults have poorer access to appropriate mental healthcare, despite being more likely to experience anxiety or depression than the general population, finds a new study by UCL researchers. It is estimated that up to 27% of autistic people experience anxiety and 23% develop depression, compared to 5.9% and 3.3% in the wider population.

Researchers hoping to rebrand a marine pest as a nutritious food have developed the world's first system of farming shipworms, which they have renamed 'Naked Clams'. Naked Clams taste like oysters, they're highly nutritious and they can be produced with a really low impact on the environment. Dr David Willer These long, white saltwater clams are the world's fastest-growing bivalve and can reach 30cm long in just six months.

A fresh approach to urban agriculture could help Glasgow's 'food deserts' flourish into sources of healthy, affordable produce to help reduce inequality, new research suggests. A fresh approach to urban agriculture could help Glasgow's 'food deserts' flourish into sources of healthy, affordable produce to help reduce inequality, new research suggests.

A new study has identified the molecular defects underlying a complex developmental brain condition in children. The team, led by UCL and including Imperial College London researchers, investigated the role of a specific regulatory protein in the brain known as acyl-CoA-binding domain-containing protein 6, or ACBD6.

Heat transferring from the surface to the deep ocean in the North Atlantic helped reduce climate swings during the last 1,000 years, according to a newly published paper led by researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and UCL. The paper, published in Science , presents records from North Atlantic sediments that allowed the researchers to investigate temperature changes in the surface and deep ocean throughout the last 1,200 years.

To mark World Antimicrobial Awareness Week , researchers supported by the Oxford Martin Programme on Antimicrobial Resistance Testing at the University of Oxford have reported advances towards a novel and rapid antimicrobial susceptibility test that can return results within as little as 30 minutes - significantly faster than current gold-standard approaches.

A new AI tool from Kheiron Medical Technologies and Imperial College London can detect up to 13% more breast cancers than humans in breast screenings. The prospective evidence, published in Nature Medicine , found that the tool, called Mia, could significantly increase the early detection of breast cancers in a European healthcare setting by up to 13%.

Cambridge scientists have grown small blood vessel-like models in the lab and used them to show how damage to the scaffolding that supports these vessels can cause them to leak, leading to conditions such as vascular dementia and stroke.

A newly-developed heart failure device and medication combination is safe and effective to use, and will allow patients to receive treatment from the comfort of their own home A newly-developed heart failure device and medication combination is safe and effective to use, and will allow patients to receive treatment from the comfort of their own home.

A hunger hormone produced in the gut can directly impact a decision-making part of the brain in order to drive an animal's behaviour, finds a new study by UCL researchers. The study in mice, published in Neuron , is the first to show how hunger hormones can directly impact activity of the brain's hippocampus when an animal is considering food.

An oral antibiotic taken once daily for six months can substantially reduce the risk of developing multidrug-resistant (MDR) tuberculosis (TB) in both children and adults, according to two landmark clinical trials involving UCL researchers. The results were announced at the Union World Conference on Lung Health in Paris.

Becoming an unpaid carer for family and friends negatively affects the mental health of people of all ages and genders, finds a new study by researchers at UCL and St George's, University of London. The research, published in The Lancet Public Health , used data from more than 17,000 people in the UK Household Longitudinal Study between 2009 and 2020 to investigate mental and physical health changes around the transition to becoming a caregiver for the first time in adults aged 16 and older.

Delayed action on climate change is costing lives and livelihoods, with people exposed to dangerously high temperatures and predictions of a 4.7-fold increase in heat related deaths by mid-century, finds the latest Lancet Countdown report led by UCL researchers. The 2023 Report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change delivers a concerning health stocktake, with new global projections revealing the grave and mounting threat to human health as a result of climate inaction.

New research into children convicted of terrorism offences in England and Wales has revealed a sharp rise in -homegrown- teenage terrorist activity, with extreme-right ideology fuelling the majority of cases. Authors, University of Southampton Criminology Lecturer, Dr Gina Vale, and ISD (Institute for Strategic Dialogue) analyst Hannah Rose analysed data spanning the last eight years to map trends in minors' ideological affiliations in this report, published by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) at King's College London.

A new study by the University of Southampton has been launched to assess the relationship between measures aimed at enhancing ship energy efficiency and underwater radiated noise emissions. The report was commissioned by the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) to highlight the synergy between the two as ships move through the water.

Published on Wednesday 15 November 2023 Last updated on Wednesday 15 November 2023 Focus groups that feed views, experiences and opinions into politics, business and research might yield more open interaction and discussion within groups by moving moderators to a separate room, shows new research. The study developed and tested a novel 'remotely-moderated' focus group method where questions are posed on a screen, and moved along by a moderator watching the group from a different room.

How did the molecular building blocks for life end up on Earth? One long-standing theory is that they could have been delivered by comets. Now, researchers from the University of Cambridge have shown how comets could deposit similar building blocks to other planets in the galaxy. It's possible that the molecules that led to life on Earth came from comets, so the same could be true for planets elsewhere in the galaxy Richard Anslow In order to deliver organic material, comets need to be travelling relatively slowly - at speeds below 15 kilometres per second.

A new machine learning tool from Imperial could help researchers track animal behaviour and pave the way for more AI use in the biological sciences. Biologists often study large numbers of animals to collect data on collective and individual behaviour. New machine learning tools promise to help scientists process the huge amount of data this work generates more quickly while lessening workload.

Luminous fast blue optical transients are characterized by their intense blue light and are amongst the brightest known optical phenomena in the universe. They evolve rapidly, reaching peak brightness and fading again in a matter of days, unlike supernovae which take weeks or months. Image credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M.

Alongside colleagues from four other universities, Dr Eva Krumhuber (UCL Psychology & Language Sciences) writes in The Conversation that images of white faces generated by the StyleGAN2 algorithm look more "human" than actual people's faces. Does ChatGPT ever give you the eerie sense you're interacting with another human being?  Artificial intelligence (AI) has reached an astounding level of realism, to the point that some tools can even fool people into thinking they are interacting with another human.