Learning boosts happiness more than rewards do
How we learn about our world may be more important for how we feel than the rewards we actually receive, according to a new study led by UCL researchers. The study, published […]
New Year’s Resolutions That Will Actually Lead to Happiness
If you are someone who follows a traditional religion, you most likely have a day such as Yom Kippur, Ashura, or Ash Wednesday, dedicated to atoning for your sins and vowing to […]
Christmas markets: their long history and changing future
Wooden huts with twinkling fairy lights, festive hubbub, and the aromas of roasted chestnuts and glühwein – this picture-postcard setting is recreated annually across many towns and cities in December. This year, however, most […]
Upcycling: Turning plastic bags into adhesives
While many cities and eight states have banned single-use plastics, bags and other polyethylene packaging still clog landfills and pollute rivers and oceans. One major problem with recycling polyethylene, which makes up […]
COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the UK
The pandemic is testing our societal structures like never before. To deal with it successfully, we need to think and act collectively, led by our key institutions. But at a time when […]
No country ‘immune’ to COVID-19 economic shock, but Asian nations will bounce back faster
Global GDP will drop three percent below pre-pandemic estimates by the end of 2021, with many Western nations seeing ‘deeper and longer-lasting’ effects compared to China and other Asian economies, a study suggests. Moreover, […]
You’re Right! You Are Working Longer and Attending More Meetings
Work-from-home employees whose days seem longer, with more meetings and emails than ever before, may find a new Harvard Business School study validating. An analysis of the emails and meetings of 3.1 […]
Deep learning helps robots grasp and move objects with ease
In the past year, lockdowns and other COVID-19 safety measures have made online shopping more popular than ever, but the skyrocketing demand is leaving many retailers struggling to fulfill orders while ensuring […]
Smoking cessation and high-risk drinking increased in lockdown
The percentage of people who reported stopping smoking more than doubled after the Covid-19 lockdown was implemented in March, according to a new study by UCL researchers. The research also found that […]
Is reaching zero COVID-19 possible?
Most scientists agree that stringent control measures, involving efficient contact tracing, testing and isolation, together with social distancing and mask wearing, are required to limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2. South Korea, Taiwan, China and New Zealand have all […]
Man with flu-COVID infection found in the US – but he’s not the first
As many of us get closer to our first COVID-19 winter, we have many things to feel optimistic about: vaccine results are on the horizon, mortality rates for those infected have fallen and established therapeutic […]
Coronavirus vaccine trials won’t tell us if they save lives, prevent serious illness or stop transmission – here’s why
There are currently at least six COVID-19 vaccines in phase 3 clinical trials – the final phase of testing. These trials all aim to compare the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines […]
Neurons in the Brainstem Entice Mice to Keep Snacking
As anyone who’s ever mindlessly munched through an entire bag of chips can attest, it’s easy to keep eating once you start. Just putting something tasty in your mouth makes you want […]
Why Online Reviews are Mainly Positive and Often Do not Reflect “True” Product Quality
With the global pandemic online shopping has taken a more important part in our lives than ever. Online reviews are critical to shaping the virtual marketplace. Consumer feedback on products – both […]
Largest study confirms children significantly less likely to catch Covid-19
In this study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, the researchers have updated their previous systematic review and meta-analysis, published as a preprint in May, to encompass more than 13,900 studies, to understand how likely […]
The Future Leadership Institute team in Antwerp
The staff of The Future Leadership Institute in Antwerp has been decided for the academic year 2020-2021. Despite the difficult time for organizing events and networking, this team of students is looking […]
How to (Actually) Change Someone’s Mind
If you’re a leader, it’s likely that not everyone who works with you will agree with the decisions you make — and that’s okay. Leadership involves making unpopular decisions while navigating complex […]
Genetic Tool Kit Helps Some Animals Regrow Body Parts
A peculiar question has long puzzled biologists: If a salamander can regrow a missing leg, and a fish can replace a damaged fin, why can’t humans regrow so much as a hand […]
Hints of life discovered on Venus
Astronomers have speculated for decades that high clouds on Venus could offer a home for microbes – floating free of the scorching surface, but tolerating very high acidity. The detection of phosphine molecules, […]
Lack of females in drug dose trials leads to overmedicated women
Women are more likely than men to suffer adverse side effects of medications because drug dosages have historically been based on clinical trials conducted on men, suggests new research from UC Berkeley […]
Adding a metre between meals boosts vegetarian appeal
Meat-heavy diets not only risk our health but that of the planet, as livestock farming on a massive scale destroys habitats and generates greenhouse gases. Conservationists at the University of Cambridge are […]
Authors’ ‘Invisible’ Words Reveal Blueprint for Storytelling
The “invisible” words that shaped Dickens classics also lead audiences through Spielberg dramas. And according to new research, these small words can be found in a similar pattern across most storylines, no […]
Is Online Education Necessarily Second-Best?
In 1981, Barbara Mandrell had a No. 1 hit with “I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool.” If we replace “country” with “online,” it could be sung today by professor Sam Gosling, […]
Human interactions with wild and farmed animals must change dramatically to reduce risk of another deadly pandemic
Compiled by a team of international wildlife and veterinary experts, a new study has identified seven routes by which pandemics could occur and 161 options for reducing the risk. It concludes that […]
Putting the Customer First is No Longer the Best Marketing Strategy
Businesses that want to thrive in the 21st century need to throw out the old marketing playbook that puts the customer first, according to new research from the McCombs School of Business at The […]
Why nursery schools are a secret weapon in the fight against inequality
State-funded nursery schools occupy a unique position in education. Serving children from two to four years old, they are disproportionately located in areas of deprivation – in 2015, 64% were in the […]
How Work Will Change Following the Pandemic
Economists use the term hysteresis to describe the phenomenon that, when conditions in an economy change, the effects of that change often remain even after the conditions return to normal. COVID and its […]
What Is an “Essential” Purchase for a Low-Income Family?
Do lower-income families need and deserve access to fewer things than everyone else? As a society, we seem to think so, revealing a “grim double standard,” finds a new study from Serena F. Hagerty, […]
How are our behaviours changing in lockdown?
People have had to change their lifestyles to maintain a sense of normality during lockdown, and it is clear from social media that people are finding innovative ways to keep active, stay […]
The US Turn for the Worst
As COVID-19 case numbers are rising in more than half of the states in the US, experts are now predicting 180,000 deaths by October 1, USA Today reports. A universal mask-wearing order in the US, however, […]
Coronavirus: fake news less of a problem than confusing government messages – new study
Studies have suggested social media is rife with disinformation, with surveys showing a high proportion of people have been exposed to false or misleading claims about COVID-19, fuelling dramatic headlines. But our six-week diary study of news […]
After coronavirus: how seasonal migration and empty centres might change our cities
The changes to urban space brought by the coronavirus have many people asking what the post-pandemic city might look like. For example, as people may continue to avoid crowds for fear of becoming […]
Coronavirus affects mental health too – here’s what we know
No aspect of our bodies or our lives is immune to the coronavirus pandemic. This is certainly the case for mental health, with some experts issuing dire warnings about an impending psychological […]
Covid-19 is resetting the way we talk about economics
Professor Wendy Carlin (UCL Economics) discusses how Covid-19 will change the way people talk about public policy and the economy, from general conversation to academic rhetoric and more formal language. Like the […]
Coronavirus pandemic is paving the way for an increase in superbugs
The heroic efforts of researchers and healthcare professionals globally will eventually help us gain control of the coronavirus pandemic and there will be a decrease in the rate of new infections. The […]
Coronavirus: the puzzle of why the risk of death is greater for men and for the elderly
For COVID-19, age and sex appear to be strong predictors of who lives and who dies. The fatality rate for the disease is estimated to be 0.66%, according to data from China. In other […]
Study identifies 275 ways to reduce spread of coronavirus following lockdown
Phased re-opening of schools, businesses and open spaces should be considered alongside a range of practical ways to keep people physically apart, say the authors of a new study on how lockdown […]
China says nearly 1,300 virus deaths not counted in Wuhan, cites early lapses
Nearly 1,300 people who died of the coronavirus in the Chinese city of Wuhan, or half the total, were not counted in death tolls because of lapses, state media said on Friday, […]
Coronavirus: Why is Germany’s fatality rate so low?
Germany has received a great deal of attention for having a lower death rate for COVID-19 than most comparable European countries. A simple explanation for the low case-fatality rate in Germany is that […]
How to stop touching your face to minimize spread of coronavirus and other germs
Public health officials consistently promote hand-washing as a way for people to protect themselves from the COVID-19 coronavirus. However, this virus can live on metal and plastic for days, so simply adjusting your eyeglasses […]
BMJ study suggests 78% of people with Covid-19 don’t show symptoms
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread, with 1.4 million cases and almost 75,000 deaths reported worldwide as of April 7. To slow down the spread and reduce mortality, governments across the world […]
Aggressive Testing Is Vital to Controlling the Spread of COVID19 and Saving Europe’s Economy
In a novel approach to analysing the impact of the COVID19 pandemic sweeping the world, the Brussels and Washington DC based healthcare consultancy Vital Transformation (VT) compared the strategies adopted by several […]
What does lockdown mean for the future of our food supply?
With COVID-19 dominating the news for several weeks, many of us would have anticipated the inevitable lockdown announcement made by the UK Prime Minister on the 23rd March. There was quite rightly much […]
Can a mask protect me? Putting homemade masks in the hierarchy of controls
Kirsten Koehler, PhDAssociate ProfessorEnvironmental Health and EngineeringJohns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Ana Rule, PhDAssistant ProfessorEnvironmental Health and EngineeringJohns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health There has been a lot of talk over […]
Collaborating with tech companies is key for fighting COVID-19
Writing in Nature, the group from UCL, i-sense, Chatham House, Diagonal Works, Imperial College London and the London School for Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, led by Professor Rachel McKendry (UCL and Director of i-sense […]
Failing to coordinate against the coronavirus pandemic may be very costly for the world, says Stanford scholar
Just like you can’t treat a termite infestation by fumigating only one room in a house, you can’t control the coronavirus pandemic by targeting interventions to a specific region or country, says […]
How we lost our collective memory of epidemics
Gordon Dougan is a Professor in the Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge, and has spent his career leading research into vaccines, pathogen genomics and disease tracking. His research work has helped […]
Historical coronaviruses show evidence of seasonality & immunity
Using historical data, a UCL research team has found that levels of infection from three common coronaviruses appear to have followed a seasonal pattern in England, with peaks occurring during winter and […]
How different countries are reacting to the COVID-19 risk and their governments’ responses
Researchers at the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication spent the weekend surveying people’s attitudes towards the risk of coronavirus, and their governments’ reactions. Here, Dr Alexandra Freeman takes us through data collected from the […]
