news

Dr Jasmina Panovska-Griffiths (UCL Epidemiology & Health) comments on UK lockdown procedures, the possibility of a second wave and when the lockdown might ease. The world is watching closely following the lifting of the public lockdown in the city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus pandemic started.

A research team involving UCL has discovered an earlier origin to the human language pathway in the brain, pushing back its evolutionary origin by at least 20 million years. Previously, a precursor of the language pathway was thought by many scientists to have emerged more recently, about 5 million years ago, with a common ancestor of both apes and humans.

Some worms are genetically predisposed to die before reaching old age, which appears to benefit the colony by reducing food demand, finds a new UCL-led study. The modelling study, published in Aging Cell , provides the first evidence of programmed, adaptive death in an animal that has evolved due to the benefits to the community.

Dr Jasmina Panovska-Griffiths (UCL Epidemiology & Health) explains how a recent study which suggests 78% of people with Covid-19 are asymptomatic could affect future models and responses to the virus. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread, with 1.4 million cases and almost 75,000 deaths reported worldwide as of April 7.

A warming global climate could cause sudden, potentially catastrophic losses of biodiversity in regions across the globe throughout the 21st century, finds a new UCL-led study. The findings and suggests that the first waves could already be happening. The study's lead author, Dr Alex Pigot (UCL Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research): "We found that climate change risks to biodiversity don't increase gradually.

A new Bluetooth contact tracing system for detecting Covid-19 proximity, has been developed by a team of scientists and data privacy experts, including from UCL. The DP-3T tracing system, which is presented openly for public scrutiny in a new White Paper , works at scale and has been developed to the highest privacy standards, ready to deploy into an app.

People are no better than chance at identifying when someone else is recounting a false or real memory of a crime, according to a new UCL study. The findings, published in Frontiers in Psychology , build on a previous study that was the first to successfully implant false memories of committing a crime - involving either assault or assault with a weapon that resulted in police contact.

Some dietary compounds such as resveratrol, which is commonly found in red wine, can mimic oestrogen to activate anti-ageing proteins called sirtuins, finds a new UCL study. Some dietary compounds such as resveratrol, which is commonly found in red wine, can mimic oestrogen to activate anti-ageing proteins called sirtuins, finds a new UCL study.

School closures do not appear to have a significant effect on the spread of infections during coronavirus outbreaks such as COVID-19 but will be crucial to how we restart society after lockdown, according to a new study led by UCL. The systematic review, published today in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health,  is the first study to look at the evidence and emerging data on the benefit of school closures and other school social distancing interventions in outbreaks such as SARS, MERS and COVID-19.

Patients with severe COVID-19 are being recruited to test the drug remdesivir as part of a new trial which is being led by the MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL. The trial is the first academic study of the drug as a treatment for coronavirus to take place in the UK The Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment Trial (ACTT-EU/UK) trial, which is taking place in about 75 hospitals globally, recruited its first UK patient this week.

A new blood test that can detect more than 50 types of cancer with high accuracy has been developed by an international team of researchers co-led by UCL. It is expected that the study , published in Annals of Oncology , will play a key role in early detection of cancer, which can often be critical to successful treatment.

The conductivity of living organs, such as the heart, could be imaged non-invasively using quantum technology developed by UCL researchers, which has the potential to revolutionise the diagnosis and treatment of atrial fibrillation. Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a heart condition that causes an irregular and abnormally fast heart rate, potentially leading to blood clots, stroke, heart failure and other heart-related complications.

Using historical data, a UCL research team has found that levels of infection from three common coronaviruses appear to have followed a seasonal pattern in England, with peaks occurring during winter and broadly at the same time as influenza. The researchers found that only small amounts of coronavirus were transmitted in the summer.

The gap between children with the highest and lowest socio-emotional skills has increased over the past three decades, and the socio-economic status of mothers is a significant contributing factor, according to a new UCL study. The study, published in the Journal of Public Economics , compares the socio-emotional skills of two cohorts of children born in England 30 years apart, and shows for the first time that inequality in these early skills has increased.

Researchers at UCL have developed a new way to make blood stem cells present in the umbilical cord 'more transplantable', a finding in mice which could improve the treatment of a wide range of blood diseases in children and adults. Blood stem cells, also known as haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), generate every type of cell in the blood (red cells, white cells and platelets), and are responsible for maintaining blood production throughout life.

Dr Adam Cooper (UCL STEaPP) argues that the current response to Covid-19 coronavirus would be improved if the expertise of engineers was better utilised. The coronavirus outbreak has shone a bright light on the use of experts and scientific advice. In the UK the prime minister, Boris Johnson, is flanked by his chief scientist and chief medical officer when giving updates about his response to the outbreak - emphasising that it is driven by scientific advice.

Dr Erman Sozudogru (UCL Science & Technology Studies) discusses how the choice between different methods of controlling the Covid-19 outbreak is one of differing values, rather than just pure science. The outbreak of COVID-19 resulted in a range of emergency responses and policy strategies across the globe.

To thrive in urban environments, birds need to either have large brains, or breed many times over their life, according to a new study involving UCL. The study, published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution , suggests that birds have two alternative strategies for coping with the difficulties of humanity's increasingly chaotic cities.

A new method to accurately record brain activity at scale has been developed by researchers at UCL, the Crick, and Stanford University. The technique could lead to new medical devices to help amputees, people with paralysis or people with neurological conditions such as motor neurone disease. The research in mice, published in Science Advances , developed an accurate and scalable method to record brain activity across large areas, including on the surface and in deeper regions simultaneously.

Injecting the right dose of sulphur dioxide into Earth's upper atmosphere to thicken the layer of light reflecting aerosol particles artificially could reduce the effects of climate change overall, according to UCL and Harvard researchers. Stratospheric aerosol geoengineering is the idea that adding a layer of aerosol particles to the upper atmosphere can reduce climate changes caused by greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.