wire

They have helped to develop the Virtual Disaster Viewer (VDV), a unique web portal that aid agencies rely on to target emergency food and medical supplies, prioritise repairs to infrastructure, and plan reconstruction and recovery.

The MPs? expenses scandal has shown the naivety of trusting our politicians to display noble conduct, writes UCL postgraduate student James Shafe.

Sophia publishes work by current UCL staff and graduate students. Editor Ed Long (UCL CoMPLEX) describes the articles on offer: ?The global economic crisis and the assorted expenses scandals of the past year have gradually engendered a rather penny-pinching culture, with the spotlight frequently fixed on the public sector.

Dr Mark Lythgoe (UCL Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging) will reveal why the pictures that have really changed the world are not those from history or art but those from the medical profession. 'Images that see inside our bodies, into our very cells, have had a bigger impact on society than the photographic or artistic image.' Over the course of the series Dr Lythgoe will look at the images that have changed lives, culture, history and politics; those that have affected our opinions and made us decide what's right and wrong.

Engineer Tal Golesworthy was suffering from a defect in his aorta ? the main artery for carrying oxygenated blood ? that left it in danger of splitting.

Press release Links: 'Grid cells? that act like a spatial map in the brain have been identified for the first time in humans, according to new research by UCL scientists which may help to explain how we create internal maps of new environments. The study is by a team from the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and was funded by the Medical Research Council and the European Union.

18 students from the UCL Slade School of Fine Art are to take up residence in the windows of Heal's flagship Tottenham Court Road furniture store to create a unique piece of retail theatre.

David Carmichael has won the 2009 UCL Centre for Neuroimaging Techniques Investigator of the Year award.

Press Release Links: A simple and inexpensive eye test could aid detection and diagnosis of major neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's at an earlier stage than is currently possible, according to new research by UCL scientists. The research, led by Professors Francesca Cordeiro and Stephen Moss, published today in Cell Death & Disease , demonstrates a new technique that enables retinal, and therefore brain cell death, to be directly measured in real time.

Dr Lindsay (UCL Spanish and Latin American Studies) explains the focus of her book, which is the third to appear in the new Routledge 'Research in Travel Writing' series: ?When I say that I work on journey narratives of Latin America, many people ask whether I have travelled much to the region.

Professor David Nicholas, Head of UCL Information Studies , explains why information professionals are making headlines the world over, and the key to the Google generation.

Richard Dent was part of a UCL student 'dream team' who travelled to Denmark last month at the time of  the Copenhagen summit on climate change ? otherwise known as COP15.

Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies , a journal edited by UCL Dutch, has received an honourable mention at the 2009 International Awards of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ). The journal, which was established 33 years ago, was recognised in the category of Phoenix Award for Significant Editorial Achievement.

Professor Moncada, who was recognised for his services to science, is the highest cited scientist in the UK, having made major contributions in three areas of cardiovascular pharmacology.

UCL?s Institute of Ophthalmology has won three out of six new grants from the charity Fight for Sight to research the prevention and treatment of eye disease.

A UCL spin-off company has given a global audience of surgeons and oncologists a glimpse of a pioneering breast cancer treatment device.

The research was covered in Pioneer , a new quarterly magazine from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), which is supporting the work. The article is reproduced below with the kind permission of the EPSRC. What do you do when you get a headache? Some people swear by paracetamol, others claim that only ibuprofen will work and for some aspirin is the key.

opens nationwide on Boxing Day with a special introduction by acclaimed director Martin Scorsese.

Project Paphlagonia is the first fully published multi-period archaeological and historical survey of the little explored region of north-central Turkey.

A UCL review of electronic patient record (EPR) programmes has revealed that while such programmes promise much, sometimes they deliver little. The major literature review, published in the US journal The Milbank Quarterly this week, identifies fundamental and often overlooked tensions in the design and implementation of EPR programmes.

New research led by UCL academics suggests that our response to disasters depends partly on the range of death tolls we are usually exposed to. Millions of lives are lost around the world each year to accidents, terrorist attacks, wars, epidemics and natural disasters. What's more, the prediction is that climate change will increase the number and intensity of some of these events.

The Leverhulme Trust has awarded UCL almost £250,000 to run a symposium on ?Population Footprints: Challenging debates on population, gender and development?, scheduled for April 2011.

Argentina has come top of a ranking of nation states according to their ratification of the world?s principle international treaties on human rights, humanitarian law and international crimes.

Chair of the Bartlett Professor Christine Hawley and alumni Andrew Porter, Abigail Ashton and Moyang Yang are part of London-based architectural practice Metamode.

The annual UCL?Lancet Lecture ? delivered on 29 November by Professor Lord (Robert) May, former Government Chief Science Adviser and former President of the Royal Society ? is now available to view online.

UCL graduate research students in the faculties of Arts & Humanities, Laws and Social & Historical Sciences are invited to enter the Graduate School review competition.

Professor Stephen Caddick, Head of UCL Chemistry, will succeed Professor Mike Spyer as Vice-Provost (Enterprise) upon Professor Spyer's retirement on 1 May 2010.

Andrew Simms, Director of the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and UCL Geography alumnus, spoke at the UCL Environment Institute on 1 December.

Ben Wood (UCL History) has spent his summer researching the demise of French cafe society in Paris and Aix en Provence as part of his degree.

A postgraduate student from the UCL Bartlett School of Architecture has won an award for his wildly imaginative architectural drawings.

UCL Eastman Dental Institute is coordinating a research consortium that has won a European Community grant worth more than £4.5 million to investigate the effects of antibiotics on antibiotic-resistant bacteria in humans. The project, which will focus on the emergence and persistence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in humans, brings together nine European partners from the university and commercial sectors with expertise in microbiology, molecular biology, metagenomics, micro-arrays, gene sequencing and clinical trials.

UCL's Kate Mandeville went inside the newsroom during a hands-on placement with The Times to uncover the workings of science journalism.

On World AIDS Day , UCL staff and students are strengthening the fight against the epidemic and tackling its effects around the world.

UCL scientists are building a clearer image of the machinery employed by bacteria to spread antibiotic resistance or cause diseases such as whooping cough, peptic stomach ulcers and legionnaires? disease.