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Scientists have been awarded £1.6m to investigate how we can ensure that our soil is resilient to environmental change. The earth's soil is being put under increasing pressure and there is an urgent need to ensure that soils found across different landscapes continue to deliver vital resources for humans.

Helping the unemployed over 50s back into work is the focus of a new study by researchers at the University of Glasgow. In the UK the number of people on long term health related benefits has steadily increased over the last 40 years to 2.6 million despite work becoming much safer and less physically demanding.

The proportion of people dying in hospices in England has nearly doubled since 1993, but the gap in hospice deaths between people living in the least and most deprived areas appears to be growing, find a new study by the Cicely Saunders Institute at King's College London.

A new study published in The Lancet suggests that taxes on goods and services could potentially increase infant mortality in developing countries because they make it harder for poor families to afford food and basic health care. The researchers from Oxford University, Stanford University, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine examined different healthcare funding systems used by low-income and middle-income countries.

Unique collaboration sees cutting edge research used to prove murder cases Futuristic 3D scanning technology at WMG , University of Warwick is helping West Midlands Police to convict killers thanks to a pioneering new partnership which is providing juries with microscopic evidence previously beyond the reach of forensic testing.

A team of scientists have for the first time identified the potential root cause of asthma and an existing drug that offers a new treatment. Published in Science Translational Medicine , Cardiff University researchers, working in collaboration with scientists at King's College London and the Mayo Clinic (USA), describe the previously unproven role of the calcium sensing receptor (CaSR) in causing asthma, a disease which affects 300 million people worldwide.

The main drugs used to treat alcoholic hepatitis are not effective at increasing patients' survival, a major study has found. In a trial of over 1,000 patients, prednisolone and pentoxifylline, treatments recommended in international guidelines, did not achieve a statistically significant reduction in mortality after 28 days, 90 days or a year.

Dementia care for south Asian people could be improved after researchers from The University of Manchester adapted a commonly used tool for judging perceptions of the disease. Dementia care for south Asian people could be improved after researchers from The University of Manchester adapted a commonly used tool for judging perceptions of the disease.

Welsh data shows pre-schoolers and those from disadvantaged backgrounds most at risk Children living with type 1 diabetes are nearly five times more likely to be admitted to hospital than non-diabetic children, a new study has found. The number of children being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes is increasing 3-4% every year and more so in school-aged children.

The mass expansion of food banks across the United Kingdom is associated with cuts in spending on local services, welfare benefits and higher unemployment rates, a study has found. The findings by researchers from Oxford University, Liverpool University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine are published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

A Lancaster University academic has been singled out in an international science journal for his far-reaching impact work on ship hatch designs. The weekly journal, Nature , has selected just 12 impact case studies for publication following the recent Research Excellence Framework (REF), a rigorous assessment of research work undertaken by British universities.

In an initial assessment of the nature, scale and beneficiaries of the impact of UK universities' research, investigators at King's College London say the benefits are multi-impactful and have been felt globally, across all nations, in findings published today. The Policy Institute at King's, in collaboration with the Department of Digital Humanities, used a mixture of text mining techniques and qualitative analysis to interrogate 6, 679 non-redacted 'impact case studies' submitted to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014.

The most extensive land-based study of the Amazon to date reveals it is losing its capacity to absorb carbon from the atmosphere. From a peak of two billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year in the 1990s, the net uptake by the forest has halved and is now for the first time being overtaken by fossil fuel emissions in Latin America.

Using plain packaging for just one day can change smokers' attitudes towards their cigarette packs, according to the first randomised controlled trial into the effects of short-term exposure to plain cigarette packaging on smoking attitudes and behaviour. These results come two days after politicians in the UK voted to introduce plain cigarette packaging, a measure which will be introduced in May 2016.

Our standard way of measuring brain activity could be giving us a misleading picture of how our brains age, argues Dr Kamen Tsvetanov from the Department of Psychology. We're an ageing society, with more and more people living into old age, so it's crucial that we understand how age affects how the brain functions Kamen Tsvetanov How 'old' is your brain? Put another way, how 'aged' is your brain? The standard, scientific answer, suggests that the older you get, the greater the changes in the activity of your neurons.

Supported by £1.86m of EPSRC funding Leading research Universities are set to collaborate on a project to improve the support mobility patients receive after leaving clinics. Adaptive, Assistive Rehabilitative Technology: Beyond the Clinic (AART-BC) will develop a platform to monitor the use of assistive technology (AT) and compliance with rehabilitation programmes (RP) and support the patient outside of the clinic.

Media reports naming the best and worst NHS trusts for maternity care did not lead to more women going to the top hospitals, a study has found. The NHS Constitution states that providing information to support patient choice is a major priority for driving improvement in services. The new study casts doubt on this principle, finding that widely publicised patient survey results listing the 10 best and worst performing NHS trusts in England in 2008 did not lead to more women attending the high-ranked hospitals or fewer attending low-ranked hospitals.

In this letter, published in the Law Society Gazette, QMUL's Jonathan Griffiths challenges "undue pessimism" about the UK's imminent legislation on plain packaging. Richard Taylor is unduly pessimistic about the UK's imminent legislation on standardised packaging for tobacco products. He suggests that the government will be taking a 'massive gamble', because the tobacco industry will challenge the uncompensated regulation of their 'brands' as a violation of the property right protected under the European Union's Charter of Fundamental Rights (article 17).

Plain tobacco packaging may reduce the likelihood of smokers seeking to obtain cigarettes by almost 10 per cent compared to branded packs, according to research from the Universities of Bristol and Exeter. The findings come amidst debate over whether a law introducing plain cigarette packaging in England and Wales could come into force in 2016.

New research by the University of Oxford shows that children classified as EAL (English as an Additional Language) usually catch up with their peers in their school attainment by the time they are 16. The report's authors, Professor Steve Strand and Professor Victoria Murphy of the University's Department of Education, found that at the age of five only 44% of EAL pupils have achieved a good level of development compared to 54% of other pupils.