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People who stop smoking may experience improvements in their mental health such as reductions in anxiety and depression symptoms, finds research carried out in collaboration with the University of Birmingham. Led by the University of Bath, in collaboration with the Universities of Birmingham, Oxford and New York, the Cochrane Review found that those who quit smoking are not likely to experience a worsening in their mood long-term, whether they have a mental health condition or not.

Surgery should be delayed for seven weeks after a patient tests positive for COVID-19 - as operations taking place up to six weeks after diagnosis are associated with increased risk of death, according to a new global study. Researchers discovered that patients are more than two-and-a-half times more likely to die after their operations, if the procedure takes places in the six weeks following a positive diagnosis for SARS-CoV-2.

Women with polycystic ovary syndrome are at a significantly increased risk of contracting COVID-19 than women without the condition, new research led by the University of Birmingham has revealed. Researchers are now calling for healthcare policy to specifically encourage women with PCOS to adhere to COVID-19 infection control measures while the global pandemic continues.

Joint project with Birmingham's Tyseley Energy Park and the University of Birmingham. Demonstrates the potential of cost-effective decarbonisation through more effective utilisation and coordination of current and planned generation assets. A more coordinated net zero system could supply up to 50,000 users with CO2-neutral electricity or supply Birmingham airport with green electricity, heat and cooling.

A major research project to shape regulation and policy on chemical safety without the use of animal testing has been launched with the aid of €19.3M funding from the European Commission. Led by the University of Birmingham and involving 15 European and US organisations, PrecisionTox aims to protect human health from the toxic effects of chemicals found in people's homes, food and the environment.

The Universities of Birmingham and Cambridge have launched a new research project aimed at discovering if selective P2X7 receptor blocker drugs can be repurposed to treat patients with secondary brain damage. Funded by almost £1 million from the Medical Research Council , the project will be carried out in two phases over the next three years.

Spectacular fossil plants preserved within a volcanic ash fall in China have shed light on an evolutionary race 300 million years ago, which was eventually won by the seed-bearing plants that dominate so much of the Earth today. New research into fossils found at the 'Pompeii of prehistoric plants', in Wuda, Inner Mongolia, reveals that the plants, called Noeggerathiales, were highly-evolved members of the lineage from which came seed plants.

The speed at which we produce facial expressions plays an important role in our ability to recognise emotions in others, according to new research at the University of Birmingham. A team in the University's School of Psychology carried out research which showed that people tend to produce happy and angry expressions more rapidly, while sad expressions are produced more slowly.

Researchers working on the Faraday Institution ReLiB (Recycling and Reuse of Li-ion Batteries) project have completed the installation of new battery testing and storage facilities at the University of Birmingham. The new facilities will allow battery scientists and engineers to speed up their research to develop safe, economic and environmentally sound recycling routes that recover large volumes of valuable materials contained in batteries at the end of their first life.

A new UK study sponsored and run by the University of Birmingham has launched aiming to better understand the immune response to COVID-19 vaccinations in patients with certain immunosuppressed conditions including cancer. The OCTAVE trial, which is funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC), is a collaborative research project involving the Universities of Birmingham, Glasgow, Oxford, Liverpool, Imperial College London and Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.

Smartphones could be used to scan people's eyes for early-warning signs of glaucoma - helping to prevent severe ocular diseases and blindness, a new study reveals. Some of the most common eye-related diseases are avoidable and display strong risk factors before onset, but it is much harder to pinpoint a group of people at risk from glaucoma.

Governments face a dilemma in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic - impose an early lockdown to slow the virus' spread and encourage good health practice or delay to protect jobs and learn more about how the virus behaves, a new study reveals. Early lockdown encourages people to adopt certain habits, such as hand washing and wearing masks, which they continue even when restrictions are lifted.

Campaigners used quasi-religious and mythological themes to create a 'Brexit religion' with the National Health Service (NHS) at its heart - persuading people to support Britain's withdrawal from the European Union, according to a new study. The Leave campaign's promise to 'take back control' used the NHS as the country's Holy Grail that could be rescued from malign European forces that threatened Britain's unique historical place in the world.

Prisons with more green space have lower levels of violence and self-harm, according to new research at the University of Birmingham and Utrecht University. The study is the first to attempt large-scale mapping of green space within prison environments and link it to well-being in a robust, statistically significant way.

International travellers are particularly vulnerable to virulent strains of drug-resistant bacteria - often picking up several different types during a trip through spending time in the company of other tourists, a new study reveals. The global spread of intestinal multidrug resistant gram-negative (MDR-GN) bacteria poses a serious threat to human health worldwide, with MDR clones of E.coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae threatening more antibiotic resistant infections around the world.

Evidence that a sense of our physical selves can develop even without the sense of touch has been uncovered in a new study by researchers in the UK and the United States. The research shows that if someone loses their sense of touch and 'proprioception' - their sense of body position - as an adult, they may learn compensatory skills using visual cues and conscious thought, or reasoning, to move their bodies.

Experts have devised a novel approach to selecting photos for police line-ups that helps witnesses identify culprits more reliably. In a paper published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , researchers - from the University of California San Diego and Duke University in the United States and the University of Birmingham in the U.K. show for the first time that selecting fillers who match a basic description of the suspect but whose faces are less similar, rather than more, leads to better outcomes than traditional approaches in the field.

Polling carried out in January 2021 by Portland Communications on behalf of the University of Birmingham has found that nearly four fifths (79%) of police officers in the UK believe that character and virtues is a central part of police training, in order to carry out their duties. The survey which was commissioned by the Jubilee Centre for Character and virtues also concluded that 76% of those interviewed agreed that the Covid-19 pandemic has made policing more complicated and challenging.

Children with epilepsy sleep poorly compared to healthy children, and are more likely to experience disruptions such as night terrors, sleep walking or sleep disordered breathing, according to a new study. A team at the University of Birmingham's Centre for Human Brain Health analysed 19 published studies on sleep and epilepsy in children and adolescents to try to better understand and articulate the links between them.

A way of using machine learning to more accurately identify patients with a mix of psychotic and depressive symptoms has been developed by researchers at the University of Birmingham. Patients with depression or psychosis rarely experience symptoms of purely one or the other illness. Historically, this has meant that mental health clinicians give a diagnosis of a 'primary' illness, but with secondary symptoms.