wire

The UCL Institute of Child Health and partners have secured a five year, £4.6m grant from the Department of Health Policy Research Programme, to lead a new Policy Research Unit in the Health of Children, Young People and Families (abbreviated to CPRU). The Unit was formally launched on Wednesday 20 July at the UCL Institute of Child Health.

Plans to build a new research centre at UCL have been approved by London Borough of Camden, subject to referral to the Mayor.

This year more scientists from UCL than ever are taking part in the Royal Society's Summer Science exhibition, which showcases the most exciting cutting-edge science and technology research from around the country.

A UCL scientist and his team designed and built the synthetic windpipe 'scaffold' used in an operation in Sweden announced by the Karolinska University Hospital and Karolinska Institutet today.

The Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases (GACD) today announced that UCL will host the organisation's secretariat, working to curb chronic diseases such as stroke, diabetes, chronic lung disease and heart disease throughout the world.

Nerve cells that transmit light signals from the eye into the brain use a molecule best known for its role in blood vessel growth as a 'stepping stone' to help them reach the opposite brain hemisphere, according to research published in Neuron.

Researchers have for the first time succeeded in transforming a new type of stem-like cell in the adult heart, into heart muscle in mice. The research suggests that in the future hearts damaged by a heart attack could be encouraged to repair themselves. The damage caused by a heart attack is currently permanent.

Specialised teaching for individuals with dyscalculia, the mathematical equivalent of dyslexia, should be made widely available in mainstream education, according to a review of current research published today .

Imperial College London and King's College London are set to join UCL and the other partners behind the world-leading medical research institute: the UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation (UKCMRI).

The UCL Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging (CABI), a new multidisciplinary research centre for experimental biomedical imaging, held its official opening this week. The collaborative approach of the Centre brings together technology and expertise from world-class research groups across UCL, aiming to develop and apply different imaging technologies to a broad range of fundamental and applied research areas in order to enhance human well-being.

Scientists have moved a step closer to being able to develop a computer model of the brain after developing a technique to map both the connections and functions of nerve cells in the brain together for the first time. A new area of research is emerging in the neuroscience known as 'connectomics'. With parallels to genomics, which maps the our genetic make-up, connectomics aims to map the brain's connections (known as 'synapses').

Three UCL engineering researchers have each received £1 million of funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), in a grant scheme that recognises the most promising engineering researchers in the UK.

A report by Dr Laura Vaughan (UCL Bartlett School of Graduate Studies), Beyond the Ghetto - An interdisciplinary perspective on patterns of ethnicity in the built environment , has been published to mark UCL Migration Week.

A team of researchers from UCL Earth Sciences departed today for the Arctic to test how well sea-ice thickness is measured by the European Space Agency's ice satellite CryoSat-2, which originated at UCL. The project team consists of researchers from UCL Earth Sciences? Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM): Dr Katharine Giles (Natural Environment Research Council postdoctoral fellow), PhD student Rosemary Willatt and Director of CPOM Dr Seymour Laxon.

Links: UCL Epidemiology & Public Health Research paper in Annals of Internal Medicine Medical Research Council Working more than 11 hours a day increases your risk of heart disease by 67 per cent, compared with those working a standard 7-8 hours a day, according to a new UCL study. The authors suggest that information on working hours could be useful to GPs when calculating a patient's risk of heart disease, alongside other health measures such as blood pressure, diabetes and smoking habits.

A UCL study aiming to reduce neonatal mortality rates and maternal depression in very poor communities in eastern India has been awarded 'Trial of the Year' by the Society for Clinical Trials (SCT).

Early-onset eating disorders affect about 3 in every 100,000 children under the age of 13, according to a new study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry. Experts from the UCL Institute of Child Health, who carried out the research, are calling for 'urgent action' to improve both the detection of eating disorders in young children and availability of services.

An innovative strategy for regenerating skeletal muscle tissue using cells from the recipient's own body is outlined in UCL research published today. The paper, authored by Dr Paulo de Coppi (UCL Institute of Child Health and surgeon at Great Ormond Street Hospital) and colleagues, shows that damaged muscle tissues treated with satellite cells in a special degradable hydrogel showed satisfactory regeneration and muscle activity.

'More than just a Janet and John guide to the Queen and stuff' was how Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell, Britain's most senior civil servant, described the Cabinet Manual, the subject of one of the UCL Constitution Unit's Public Seminars on 24 February.

UCL space scientists are involved in two out of four missions that have been selected by the European Space Agency to compete for a launch opportunity at the start of the 2020s.

The largest ever UK-wide study of babies and young children, led by scientists at UCL,  today received a landmark £28.5 million commitment from the Government Department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS).

UCL has been voted the best place for postdoctoral researchers to work for the second consecutive year in an international survey run by The Scientist magazine.