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One in three cases of dementia could potentially be prevented if brain health is improved throughout life by targeting nine risk factors, including continuing education in early life, reducing hearing loss in mid-life, and reducing smoking in later life.

Treating people who start HIV treatment late with a package of low-cost drugs to prevent serious infections saves three lives for every 100 people treated, according to the findings of a trial led by the Medical Research Council (MRC) Clinical Trials Unit at UCL.

Aquatic plants in 'ghost ponds' are able to survive more than 100 years buried beneath cropped agricultural fields, according to new UCL research. Ghost ponds are abundant across many agricultural regions, often visible as damp depressions, areas of poor crop cover, or changes in soil colour. Many UK ponds were filled-in during agricultural land intensification that took place after the 1950s.

Fear of crime is perpetuated by the opinion of others, and often doesn't correlate to the actual likelihood of experiencing crime, according to new UCL research. The findings of the study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A , help to explain how a generalised fear of crime exists in cities and countries in which crime rates are low.  'The fear of crime can be considered contagious, because social interaction is the mechanism through which fear is shared and chronically worried populations are created.

Professor David Price, UCL Vice-Provost (Research), has been appointed to chair one of the four main panels for the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021, through an open recruitment process.

The number of LGBTQ+ venues in London has fallen by 58% from 125 to 53 since 2006, according to a new report published today by the UCL Urban Laboratory, and commissioned by the Mayor of London and Greater London Authority (GLA).

By 2040, there will be over 1.2 million people living with dementia in England and Wales (an increase of 57% from 2016), largely due to increased life expectancy, according to new UCL research. The study, published in the BMJ, shows that, although the incidence (number of newly diagnosed cases) of dementia is falling, the overall prevalence (number of people living with the condition) is set to increase substantially as people live longer and deaths from other causes, such as heart disease, continue to decline.

More than a quarter (28 per cent) of women who are overdue for a smear test don't know about the cervical screening programme, according to research conducted by Cancer Research UK-funded scientists at UCL. The research included survey responses from more than 3,100 eligible women aged 24-64, of whom around 790 were overdue for a smear test.

School staff are not sufficiently trained to meet the needs of pupils with learning difficulties, with special needs education heavily reliant on under-skilled teaching assistants, finds a UCL Institute of Education (IOE) study.

The activity of urban bats in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London is being monitored in real-time using new, automated smart detectors that have been developed and installed by UCL and Intel scientists in collaboration with Arup, the Bat Conservation Trust and the London Wildlife Trust. Bats are a good indicator species, so are often used to measure how healthy our environment is.

A research team has successfully used magnets implanted behind a person's eyes to treat nystagmus, a condition characterised by involuntary eye movements. The case study, published in Ophthalmology and led by UCL and University of Oxford academics, described the implantation of a newly developed set of magnets in the socket beneath each eye of one patient with nystagmus.

UCLSat, a satellite designed and built by UCL engineers and scientists, has been launched today from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in India as part of an international mission called QB50.

Early intervention to maintain and raise expectations could increase the number of teenagers from less privileged backgrounds entering higher education, finds a new study by the UCL Institute of Education (IOE). The research, published in the Oxford Review of Education, analysed how young people's expectations of applying to university change between the ages of 14 and 17, finding that those from less advantaged backgrounds were more likely to stop, and less likely to start or consider applying, than their more advantaged peers.

UCL archaeologists are working with experts from 24 other universities to create the UKâ?'s first University Archaeology Day, aimed at inspiring a much needed next generation of archaeologists.

Adolescents who are admitted to hospital for alcohol, drug, or violence related injuries are at a similar risk of suicide 10 years later than those who have self-harmed, according to a study using data from 1 million adolescents in the UK, published in The Lancet .

Urgent need for better disease prevention policies targeting poor diet, smoking, alcohol, high blood pressure and physical inactivity, as well as increased investment in health and social care.

The Campi Flegrei volcano in southern Italy may be closer to an eruption than previously thought, according to new research by UCL and the Vesuvius Observatory in Naples.

Professor Mohan Edirisinghe FREng (UCL Mechanical Engineering) has received three prestigious awards in as many months, recognising his groundbreaking research in materials science at UCL.

Four UCL scientists have been elected as Fellows of the Royal Society in recognition of their outstanding contribution to science.

The activity of cancer drugs changes depending on the types of microbes living in the gut, according to a UCL-led study into how nematode worms and their microbes process drugs and nutrients. The discovery highlights the potential benefit of manipulating gut bacteria and diet to improve cancer treatment and the value of understanding why the effectiveness of drugs varies between individuals.

The area of the brain used to control the hand gets used instead to support the lips, feet or arms of people who were born with only one hand, finds a new study led by researchers at UCL and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. 'Our brains have evolved over millions of years so that a specific area of the brain becomes specialised in controlling hand function.

The locations of the centres that complete the UK Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI), whose hub of research activity and operational headquarters is based at UCL, have been named as the University of Cambridge, Cardiff University, the University of Edinburgh, Imperial College London and King's College London.

The ability to distinguish objects in peripheral vision varies significantly between individuals, finds new research from UCL, Paris Descartes University and Dartmouth College, USA. For example, some people are better at spotting things above their centre of vision while others are better at spotting things off to the right.

UCL has this week expressed its support for the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, following legislation newly passed in Hungary's National Assembly, which places restrictions on overseas universities in Hungary and could threaten the future of the CEU.

Professor Michael Arthur, UCL President & Provost, addresses the UCL community following the triggering of Article 50 by the UK government.

Heavy-handed approaches to issues around social media and digital communication such as 'sexting', may be damaging to children's emotional development, according to new research on childhood in the digital age, by academics at the UCL Institute of Education (IOE) and Plymouth University.

Two images by UCL researchers depicting embryos - of a mouse and of a zebrafish - are among the winners of the 2017 Wellcome Image Awards, given out annually to the most informative, striking and technically excellent images from healthcare and biomedical science.

This week, the European Research Council (ERC) celebrates its 10th anniversary with a special 'ERC Week', with subsequent events taking place throughout Europe in 2017.

Children from disadvantaged families in the UK are more likely to have lower education, be out of work and experience poverty in adult life than their peers in other European countries, apart from Ireland and Belgium, according to new research from the UCL Institute of Education (IOE). The study, which was carried out by researchers from the Department of Social Science at the IOE in collaboration with the University of Bath, will be released in a working paper on Friday 10 th March.

A pioneering new computer model has been developed to simulate the whole chain of hazard events triggered by offshore mega subduction earthquakes, by a team involving UCL and Bristol engineers.

The Brain Prize for 2017, worth '1m, has been awarded to Professor Peter Dayan (UCL Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit), Professor Ray Dolan (UCL Max Planck Centre for Computational Psychiatry an

Screening women at high risk of ovarian cancer every four months may reduce the likelihood of them being diagnosed with advanced cancer, according to the results of the UK Familial Ovarian Cancer Screening Study (UK FOCSS), which is led by UCL.

UCL is involved in the Rosalind Franklin Institute (RFI) - a major new £100 million investment by the government into the development of an innovative multi-disciplinary science and technology research centre. The new Institute, announced today by Business Secretary Greg Clark, is named in honour of the pioneering scientist, Dr Rosalind Franklin, whose use of X-rays to study biological structures played a crucial role in the discovery of DNA's 'double helix' structure by Francis Crick and James Watson.

A European-wide study published today in the journal Neuroepidemiology has found that whilst older people with a higher level of education have better memory function, it does not protect them from cognitive decline as they age. In one of the largest and most comprehensive studies on education and cognitive decline to date, researchers at UCL and funded by the Medical Research Council and Alzheimer's Society, explored changes in memory and cognitive performance over an eight-year period in over 11,000 Europeans aged 65 and over from 10 different countries*.

A simple rule can accurately predict when Earth's climate warms out of an ice age, according to new research led by UCL. In a new study , researchers from UCL, University of Cambridge and University of Louvain have combined existing ideas to solve the problem of which solar energy peaks in the last 2.6 million years led to the melting of the ice sheets and the start of a warm period.

The amount of effort required to do something influences what we think we see, finds a new UCL study suggesting we're biased towards perceiving anything challenging to be less appealing. 'Our brain tricks us into believing the low-hanging fruit really is the ripest,' says Dr Nobuhiro Hagura, who led the UCL team before moving to NICT in Japan.

Researchers from the UCL Institutes of Health Informatics and Cardiovascular Science in collaboration with other UK and European institutes, were recently awarded '20 million research funding from the European Innovative Medicines Initiative.

The number of alien species is increasing globally, and does not show any sign of saturation, finds an international team involving UCL researchers. Led by scientists from Senckenberg, Germany, and the University of Vienna, Austria, the team found that during the last 200 years, the number of new established alien species has grown continuously worldwide, with more than a third of all first introductions recorded between 1970 and 2014.