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Her plans to study the effects of social isolation on adolescents have become particularly pertinent this year. Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is a cognitive neuroscientist who has spoken out about the importance of supporting and empowering young people, not suppressing and blaming them, during the pandemic.

Researchers at Cardiff University, Queen Mary University of London, and University of Exeter have revealed the significant impact of austerity on rural areas. The findings, published in the Journal of Rural Studies , provide the most comprehensive account to date of how changes in spending power and service spending have affected rural communities in England and Wales.

Thousands of police detentions and voluntary interviews of vulnerable people may have been carried out without an 'appropriate adult' (AA) present, a report has found. There to Help 3 was co-authored Dr Roxanna Dehaghani of Cardiff University and Chris Bath, chief executive of the National Appropriate Adult Network (NAAN).

A pioneering study into people's experience of bereavement during the COVID-19 pandemic has been launched by researchers from the universities of Cardiff and Bristol. The study is calling for participants, particularly those from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds following the disproportionate effect COVID-19 has had on ethnic minority groups.

Asking people simple questions about their social situation in addition to medical measures will give a more accurate picture of who might have a heart attack in the future, finds a study led by UCL researchers. The study, published this week in the European Heart Journal , shows for the first time, that factors such as educational qualifications, employment, marital status, mental health, BMI and physical activity could be crucial in identifying who is most at risk of heart disease.

People in cities are just as likely to help a stranger on the street as those in towns and villages, finds a study by UCL researchers. Helping behaviour was higher in more affluent areas, as social deprivation predicted lower levels of helping, according to the results of the UK-based study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B .

Children are more likely to introduce violent themes into their pretend play, such as imaginary fighting or killing, if they are with playmates whom peers consider bad-tempered, new research suggests. For some children, this could actually be a way of developing their social and emotional skills Zhen Rao Academics from the University of Cambridge believe that the tendency for children to introduce aggressive themes in these situations - which seems to happen whether or not they are personally easy to anger - may be because they are 'rehearsing' strategies to cope with hot-headed friends.

Small, close-knit communities are at high risk for rapid, intense COVID outbreaks especially if they haven't yet experienced outbreaks of COVID-19, shows a new study by the University of Oxford and Northeastern University, Boston. The paper, published today , shows that whether COVID outbreaks come to a fast, dramatic peak or whether they are long and drawn-out is more closely related to city layout and social structures than city size and density.

Our brain responds differently if we talk to a person of a different socioeconomic background from our own compared to when we speak to someone whose background is similar, according to a new imaging study by UCL and Yale researchers. In the study, published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience , 39 pairs of participants had a conversation with each other while wearing headsets that tracked brain activity.

Decades after German reunification, women who grew up in East Germany are still quicker to return to work after the birth of a child than mothers who grew up in West Germany, according to new UCL and Queen Mary University of London research. The research, published as Discussion Paper with the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM), also shows that women from East Germany still work longer hours even after many years' exposure to West German culture, while West German migrants adjust their post-birth employment behaviour nearly entirely to that of their East German colleagues.

Ilan Kelman (UCL Institute for Risk & Disaster Reduction) joins experts in examining 33 studies of how rising sea levels will affect migration patterns, 'trapped populations' and call for policymakers to institute measures to protect residents living in high-risk areas. An article in 2011 shocked many by suggesting that up to 187 million people could be forced to leave their homes as a result of two metres of sea level rise by 2100.

As the UK's second largest city, Birmingham has a higher proportion of children subject to child protection plans than the UK as a whole, with 35% of children living in poverty. The closure of schools as a result of COVID-19 lockdown measures may have harmed children as child abuse was not reported, a new study examining the numbers of child protection referrals made in the first few months of 2020 has found.

Digital technology can present both opportunities and harms to young people and their mental health. A new research project is asking for young adults to take part in a UK-wide online survey to identify the importance of adolescents' digital technology use to consultations about mental health.

Homicides near schools negatively impact on the educational attainment of children, a new study in the Journal of Labor Economics reports. During this unique study, researchers from the University of Birmingham and University of Surrey investigated if exposure to homicides had an impact on the educational outcomes of children in schools close by.

Ensuring pupils and staff stay safe when they return to school this autumn is a major challenge because there is very little scientific evidence on the incidence and transmission of COVID-19 within schools. A ground-breaking research project will test whether 5,000 staff and pupils have active or past COVID-19 infection, develop systems to help schools prevent and cope with an outbreak and assess strategies to support the mental wellbeing of the school community now and moving forward.

Many people misunderstand the relationship between religion, scripture and violence, a new book argues. Some people worry that scriptures such as the Qur'an and the Bible fan the flames of violence in the world today, while others insist that they are inherently peaceful. According to an international team of researchers, the reality may be more complicated than either set of people think.

Teenage girls are just as likely to suffer with endometriosis as adult women, a finding which UCL and University of Birmingham researchers say is surprising and could help doctors provide better treatments for younger patients. Endometriosis is a debilitating condition, caused by excessive growth of the womb's tissue lining, which presents with pain in the lower abdomen, typically around the time of a period.

Using radiocarbon dating and CT scanning to study ancient bones, researchers have uncovered for the first time a Bronze Age tradition of retaining and curating human remains as relics over several generations. While the findings, led by the University of Bristol and published in the journal Antiquity , may seem eerie or even gruesome by today's convention, they indicate a tangible way of honouring and remembering known individuals between close communities and generations some 4,500 years ago.

Children aged three to fiveyears-old involved in a nursery-based cooking skills the Big Chef Little Chef (BCLC) programme were found to be less fussy and more willing to try green vegetables at the end of the study. The results of this quasi-experimental study evaluated by the University of Glasgow and published in the journal Nutrients - found that that there was a significant increase in willingness to try green vegetables, indicating the potential success of programmes such as Big Chef Little Chef (BCLC) to have positive effects on preschool children's diet and eating behaviours.

People who suffer one or more forms of maltreatment in childhood have a higher chance of multimorbidity in later life. New research, led by scientists at the University of Glasgow, used UK Biobank data from more than 157,000 participants to examine the link between the four forms of childhood maltreatment - physical, sexual, emotional and neglect - and the presence of multiple health conditions, known as multimorbidity, later in adult life.