Why did Barack Obama win the US election and did the fact he is over six feet tall influence the voters? In a synthesis of research, published in Current Biology this month, the authors of the paper ‘The Origins and Evolution of Leadership’ argue that due to ‘a hangover from our evolutionary past’ factors like [...]

A major report on managing the health effects of climate change, launched jointly by ‘The Lancet’ and UCL today, says that climate change is the biggest global-health threat of the 21st century.
Lead author Professor Anthony Costello (UCL Institute for Global Health) says that failure to act will result in an intergenerational injustice, with our children [...]

Software developed by an academic at Goldsmiths, University of London could spell the end for future melody plagiarism.
Dr Daniel Müllensiefen, from the Department of Psychology and formerly working in Computing, has co-published research on how to predict court decisions on music plagiarism using cognitive similarity algorithms.
The study has recently been published by the European specialist [...]

A daily dose of aspirin can prevent the occurrence of cancer in people with a genetic predisposition towards Lynch syndrome, a Newcastle University scientist has told Europe’s largest cancer congress.
Lynch syndrome is a condition which accounts for around 5 per cent of all colon cancers.
Professor John Burn, from the Institute of Human Genetics at Newcastle [...]

The University of California is launching an unprecedented statewide collaboration for breast cancer patients with the goal of revolutionizing the course of their care by designing and testing new approaches to research, technology and health care delivery.
Named the ATHENA Breast Health Network, the groundbreaking project will initially involve 150,000 women throughout California who will be [...]

A new study by researchers at the University of Southampton has found that sea levels have been rising across the south coast of England over the past century, substantially increasing the risk of flooding during storms.
The team has conducted a major data collection exercise, bringing together computer and paper-based records from across the south of [...]

In 1976, the Royal College of Physicians and the British Cardiac Society recommended eating less fatty red meat and more poultry instead because it was lean. However, recent research has shown that this may not be the case today.
A new paper published in the journal Public Health Nutrition by Cambridge University Press describes analysis of [...]

Princeton University scientists have shown that, in ancient times, the Earth’s magnetic field was structured like the two-pole model of today, suggesting that the methods geoscientists use to reconstruct the geography of early land masses on the globe are accurate. The findings may lead to a better understanding of historical continental movement, which relates to [...]

Scientists from the University of Bath have helped to develop new mobile phone software that will help epidemiologists and ecologists working in the field to analyse their data remotely and map findings across the world without having to return to the lab.
Dr Ed Feil and PhD student Fadaa al Own from the Department of Biology [...]

Bicyclists who wear protective helmets are more likely to be struck by passing vehicles, new research suggests.
Drivers pass closer when overtaking cyclists wearing helmets than when overtaking bare-headed cyclists, increasing the risk of a collision, the research has found.
Dr Ian Walker, a traffic psychologist from the University of Bath, used a bicycle fitted with a [...]

Our minds might be able to find the right word quicker than Google and yet we rarely pause to think about how language shapes everything we do.
One person who has delved a little bit deeper is Applied Linguistics Professor Vivian Cook, of Newcastle University, who has been intrigued by the subtle nuances and ever-evolving nature [...]

Scientists at Newcastle University are launching a ground-breaking study tying into the Great North Run to find out why some of us can run faster than others – despite doing the same amount of training.
The research team, led by Professor Patrick Chinnery, is asking the 54,000 people taking part in next month’s Bupa Great North Run [...]