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Press release issued: 3 November 2014 Heinrich events, in which large masses of icebergs rapidly broke free from ice sheets during the last ice age, are thought to have influenced global climate by interrupting ocean circulation patterns with a large influx of freshwater. However, new research from the University of Bristol suggests the variations in the height of the ice sheet that happen in these events might also influence global climate.

22 Aug 2014 New research by a team of UK and European-based astronomers is helping to solve the mystery of what caused a spectacular supernova in a galaxy 11 million light years away, seen earlier this year. The supernova, a giant explosion of a star and the closest one to the Earth in decades, was discovered earlier this year by chance at the University of London Observatory.

Scientists studying the social media activity in the immediate aftermath of Lee Rigby's murder have found that messages loaded with racial tension and hate were far less likely to spread than those infused with love. By collecting half a million tweets related to the attack via Twitter, academics from the University's Collaborative Online Social Media Observatory ( COSMOS ) were able to statistically model how the public reacted and have published their findings in the international peer-reviewed journal Social Network Analysis and Mining.

As Ireland marks the millennium of the Battle of Clontarf - portrayed as a heroic encounter between Irish and Vikings which defined the nation's identity - new research argues that our main source for what happened may be more literary history than historical fact. This was more than a literary flourish, it was a work of a superb, sophisticated and learned author Máire Ní Mhaonaigh The standard account of the Battle of Clontarf - a defining moment in Irish history which happened 1,000 years ago this week - was partly a "pseudo-history" borrowed from the tale of Troy, new research suggests.

A 20-year puzzle as to how the heart regulates contraction appears to have been solved by researchers from the University of Bristol. The findings, published in the journal Biophysics, paves the way to improving our understanding of what goes wrong when the heart fails. When the heart beats (contracts), the contractile machinery is switched on by an increase in calcium within the cell.

Our results emphasise the importance of a more general evolutionary view of cognition Fish have the ability to communicate with each other while hunting their prey in ways that were previously known only for humans, great apes, and ravens, according to new research. A study led by Alexander Vail, a Gates Cambridge Scholar at the University of Cambridge's Department of Zoology, found that groupers and coral trout perform a pointing signal to indicate the location of hidden prey to cooperative hunting partners including moray eels, octopuses and Napoleon wrasses.

A model of the spread of gossip on Twitter prior to the Higgs boson discovery announcement has been developed by University of Birmingham computer scientists, according to research published on the online repository, ArXiv. For the first time scientists have been able to analyse the dynamics of social media on a global scale before, during and after the announcement of a major scientific discovery.

Sussex showcases academic research online Months of work culminated this week with the launch of Sussex Research Online (SRO), which showcases the University's research to the external world and contains a record of all research 'outputs' by academics at Sussex. SRO contains information about peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, reports, PhD theses and other publications - providing direct online access to the full text where possible.

Archaeologists have disproved the fifty-year-old theory underpinning our understanding of how the famous stone statues were moved around Easter Island. Fieldwork led by researchers at University College London and The University of Manchester, has shown the remote Pacific island's ancient road system was primarily ceremonial and not solely built for transportation of the figures.