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Wasps might not be the nation's favourite insects but are some of the most important so UCL and University of Gloucestershire scientists are again asking for the public's help to find out more about these misunderstood creatures. "Wasps are predators, pest controllers and pollinators - they are absolutely vital for a healthy ecosystem and they deserve our respect.

An artificial intelligence (AI) system, which can recommend the correct referral decision for more than 50 eye diseases, as accurately as experts has been developed by Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, DeepMind Health and UCL. The breakthrough research, published online by Nature Medicine , describes how machine-learning technology has been successfully trained on thousands of historic de-personalised eye scans to identify features of eye disease and recommend how patients should be referred for care.

Rotavirus vaccination reduced infant diarrhoea deaths by 34% in rural Malawi, a region with high levels of child deaths, according to a major new study led by UCL, the University of Liverpool, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and partners in Malawi. The study, published in The Lancet Global Health, provides the first population-level evidence from a low-income country that rotavirus vaccination saves lives and adds considerable weight to the World Health Organisation's (WHO) recommendation for rotavirus vaccine to be included in all national immunisation programmes.

People in Nordic countries, North America, Australia, and New Zealand have the best spatial navigational abilities, according to a new study led by UCL and the University of East Anglia. Researchers assessed data from over half a million people in 57 countries who played a specially-designed mobile game, which has been developed to aid understanding into spatial navigation, a key indicator in Alzheimer's disease.

Ageing in worms mainly results from the direct action of genes and not from random wear and tear or loss of function, and the same is likely to be true in humans, according to research by UCL, Lancaster University and Queen Mary University of London scientists. The study, published in Current Biology and funded by Wellcome, shows that normal biological processes which are useful early on in life, continue to 'run-on' pointlessly in later life causing age-related diseases.

The location of road accidents is not random and they tend to be highly concentrated in urban areas, according to a new UCL study. The study, published in the open-access journal Plos One , found that nearly 50% of the serious and fatal accidents in London take place in 5% of road junctions. PhD candidate Rafael Prieto Curiel, lead researcher (UCL Mathematics), said: "Despite being a rare event, road accidents are among the top ten causes of death worldwide.

Researchers at UCL and the University of Nottingham have mapped the brain's language area in the first study of human cognition using a new generation of brain scanner that can be worn like a helmet. This marks an important step forward in the translation of their new technique from the laboratory bench to a genuinely useful tool for cognitive neuroscience and clinical application, enabling researchers to scan the brains of people while they move about.

Rates of dementia diagnosis are higher among black ethnic groups compared to white and Asian groups in the UK, a new UCL-led study has found. The study, published in Clinical Epidemiology , is the first to compare incidence of dementia diagnosis by ethnicity in any nationally representative sample. Researchers from UCL and King's College London analysed data from 2,511,681 people, including 66,083 who had a dementia diagnosis, from The Health Improvement Network primary care database between 2007 and 2015.

While Government-imposed restrictions on immigration can reduce overall migration, they can also be ineffective or even counterproductive, pushing more would-be migrants into unauthorised channels, finds new UCL-led research in collaboration with Royal Holloway and University of Birmingham. The study, published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , investigated how individuals are likely to move from one country to another based on varying levels of restriction.

Feeling stressed or anxious makes people more able to process and internalise bad news, finds a new UCL-led study. The research, published in The Journal of Neuroscience , reveals that a known tendency of people to take more notice of good news than bad news - the optimism bias - disappears when people feel threatened.

Care from peer support workers with lived experience of mental health conditions may help reduce the likelihood of readmission for people who have recently left acute mental health care, finds a new UCL-led study. The research, published today in The Lancet , found that close to 24% fewer people who received peer support were readmitted to acute care within a year, compared to people who only received a workbook.  "People discharged from community crisis services are often readmitted to acute care.

People who abstain from alcohol or consume more than 14 units a week during middle age are at increased risk of developing dementia, finds a study co-led by UCL. As people live longer, the number living with dementia is expected to triple by 2050. So understanding the impact of alcohol consumption on ageing outcomes is important.

People buried at Stonehenge 5,000 years ago likely lived in west Wales where Stonehenge's smaller standing stones - bluestones - originated from, according to a new study involving UCL, University of Oxford, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle de Paris, France. The study, published in Nature Scientific Reports , suggests that a number of people buried at the Wessex site had moved with and likely transported the bluestones, which were sourced from the Preseli Mountains in west Wales and used in the early construction of Stonehenge.

Differences in social status and political belief increase paranoid interpretations of other people's actions, finds a new UCL experimental study. Paranoia is the tendency to assume other people are trying to harm you when their actual motivations are unclear, and this tendency is increased when interacting with someone of a higher social status or opposing political beliefs, according to the study published today in Royal Society Open Science .

UK doctors think Britain's exit from the European Union will be very bad for the NHS, reveal the results of a study from UCL, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Queen Mary University of London. The study, published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health ,  anonymously surveyed UK doctors asking questions about their political beliefs and voting patterns.

The decline in working-class MPs and rise of career politicians shifted the Labour Party towards a more right wing policy stance on welfare, according to a new study by UCL. The research, published in Comparative Political Studies , examined the policy preferences of working-class and career politicians within the Labour Party both pre and during Tony Blair's leadership of the Labour Party.

Parents consider that spending money on learning resources such as books, educational games and private tuition for their children is more productive if the child attends a higher quality school, according to new research led by UCL. The study, which recently came out as a Human Capital and Economic Opportunity ( HCEO) Working Paper, was funded by the Nuffield Foundation.

A new dinosaur called Lingwulong shenqi or 'amazing dragon from Lingwu' has been discovered by an Anglo-Chinese team involving UCL. The announcement, published today , reports the surprising discovery of the new dinosaur which roamed the Ningxia Autonomous Region, northwest China, approximately 174 million years ago.

Thinner retinas in the human eye are a clear sign a person is at significant and increased risk of future mental decline, a UCL-led study has concluded. Researchers say this breakthrough study, suggests regular eye tests could help identify those likely to get dementia at a much earlier stage, which means suitable treatments could be prescribed at a more effective time to slow or stop the onset of dementia at early stages of the disease.

Men on effective HIV treatment, where the virus is reduced to undetectable levels are sexually non-infectious, finds an eight-year study led by UCL and the University of Copenhagen. The preliminary findings of the PARTNER2 study will be presented at the 2018 AIDS conference in Amsterdam tomorrow. The study, which is the largest to look at the risk of HIV transmission when one partner is positive and on effective anti-retroviral treatment (ART) finds that having an undetectable viral load is as protective for gay men as it is for heterosexual couples.