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Venus has an 'electric wind' strong enough to remove the components of water from its upper atmosphere, which may have played a significant role in stripping the planet of its oceans, according to a new study by NASA and UCL researchers. "It's amazing and shocking," said Dr Glyn Collinson, previously at UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory and now a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Researchers at UCL and Queen's University Belfast have discovered that a drug originally developed to treat cardiovascular disease has the potential to reduce diabetes related blindness. According to recent WHO global estimates, 422 million people have diabetes. One of the most common complications of this disease is vision loss.

Drugs currently being trialled in cancer patients have been used to successfully target an autoimmune condition in mice at UCL and King's College London. The study, published in Cell Reports, involved giving cancer drugs to mice and inducing uveitis, an incurable autoimmune eye condition responsible for 1 in every 10 cases of visual impairment in the UK*.

Older people are less willing to take risks for potential rewards and this may be due to declining levels of dopamine in the brain, finds a new UCL study of over 25,000 people funded by Wellcome. The study, published in Current Biology , found that older people were less likely to choose risky gambles to win more points in a smartphone app called The Great Brain Experiment.

A region of the brain that responds to bad experiences has the opposite reaction to expectations of aversive events in people with depression compared to healthy adults, finds a new UCL study funded by the Medical Research Council. The study, published in Molecular Psychiatry, found that the habenula, a pea-sized region of the brain, functions abnormally in depression.

The discovery of early changes in the cells of the Fallopian tubes of women carrying the BRCA genetic mutation could open the way for new preventative strategies for ovarian cancer, reducing the need for invasive surgery, according to research published today in science journal Nature. The research, undertaken by the Department of Women's Cancer at UCL led by Professor Martin Widschwendter and funded by The Eve Appeal, sought to understand why women with the BRCA1/2 mutations develop ovarian cancers and what happens in the cells where the cancers originate to trigger them.

Genes that drive the shape of human noses have been identified by a UCL-led study. The four genes mainly affect the width and 'pointiness' of noses which vary greatly between different populations. The new information adds to our understanding of how the human face evolved and may help contribute to forensic DNA technologies that build visual profiles based on an individual's genetic makeup.

Injecting mice with a UCL-discovered bacterium can reduce stress and inflammation, preventing them from developing PTSD-like conditions, finds a new international study led by the University of Colorado Boulder. The research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that mice injected with the bacterium were more resilient to stress, showing less fear and anxiety in stressful situations.

Approximately two children in each Year 1 class will experience a clinically significant language disorder that impacts learning, according to a UCL-led study on language impairment at school entry age. The study, published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry , found that children with unexplained language disorders have higher social, emotional and behavioural problems, with 88% failing to achieve early curriculum targets.

Around 33,000 deaths could have been avoided if heart attack aftercare guidelines outlining when to give treatment were followed, according to a study funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) looking at the frequency of missed opportunities to treat people after a heart attack.

The Alzheimer's Research UK UCL Drug Discovery Institute was launched at an event last Wednesday 4 May as part of the Alzheimer's Research UK Drug Discovery Alliance. Part of a network of three Institutes, the UCL Drug Discovery Institute will work with its counterparts at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge to support the translation of cutting-edge academic science towards new treatments for dementia.

The time-dependent role of the hippocampus in memory storage has been revealed through new research led by UCL and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The paper, published in PLOS ONE , investigated the dynamic nature of memory storage in the brain - studying the role of the hippocampus in the storage of contextual memories in rodents.

Women with lower incomes have higher concentrations of the stress hormone cortisol in their hair, according to a new study from UCL. The study also found that women whose income has gone up over the last 4 years have lower cortisol levels than those whose income went down, suggesting an association between long-term financial strain and stress hormones.

Patterns of brain activity thought to show pain responses have been called into question after researchers from UCL and the University of Reading saw such patterns in rare patients born without a sense of pain. The study, published in JAMA Neurology and funded by the Medical Research Council and European Commission, was designed to test the 'pain matrix'.

The surface of Mars - including the location of Beagle-2 - has been shown in unprecedented detail by UCL scientists using a revolutionary image stacking and matching technique. Exciting pictures of the Beagle-2 lander, the ancient lakebeds discovered by NASA's Curiosity rover, NASA's MER-A rover tracks and Home Plate's rocks have been released by the UCL researchers who stacked and matched images taken from orbit, to reveal objects at a resolution up to five times greater than previously achieved.

Memories formed in one part of the brain are replayed and transferred to a different area of the brain during rest, according to a new UCL study in rats. The finding suggests that replay of previous experiences during rest is important for memory consolidation, a process whereby the brain stabilises and preserves memories for quick recall in the future.

Scientists at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology have identified the mechanism behind a common inherited cause of severe sight loss in young children. The results also point to a potential new treatment that may be possible to deliver by simple injection to the eye. Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA) is the name for a group of disorders that make up 5% of all inherited retinal dystrophies.

The biggest library of bat sounds has been compiled to identify bats from their calls in Mexico - a country which harbours many of the Earth's species and has one of the highest rates of extinction and habitat loss. An international team led by scientists from UCL, University of Cambridge and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), developed the reference call library and a new way of classifying calls to accurately and quickly identify and differentiate between bat species.

Fruit flies live 16% longer than average when given low doses of the mood stabiliser lithium, according to a UCL-led study. How lithium stabilises mood is poorly understood but when the scientists investigated how it prolongs the lives of flies, they discovered a new drug target that could slow ageing - a molecule called glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK-3).

A drug currently being trialled in cancer patients could also be used to treat an often incurable condition that can cause painful blood vessel overgrowths inside the skin, finds new research in mice led by UCL, Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Center in New York and the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) in Barcelona.