A high court judge ruled that seven-year old Neon Roberts, suffering from a cancerous brain tumour, should have radiotherapy against the wishes of his mother. read more
On Friday 14 December, Adam Lanza opened fire at the Sandy Hook school in Newtown, Connecticut, killing 20 children and six adults. read more
A climate sceptic blogger leaked part of a draft version of the IPCC’s Assessment Report 5 by Working Group 1, … read more
Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey announced that exploratory hydraulic fracturing (fracking) for shale gas can resume in the UK, subject to new controls to mitigate the risks of seismic activity. read more
A review in Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin called into question the evidence backing the use of cannabis extract in the treatment of Multiple Sclerosis (MS). read more
The Climate Change Committee launched a report assessing the impact of carbon budgets on energy bills and confirms that annual household energy bills could increase by £100 in 2020 to support development of low-carbon technologies. read more
Research published in Translational Psychiatry suggested the diuretic bumetanide may mitigate some of the behavioral abnormalities associated with autism. read more
Feeling lonely was linked to an increased risk of developing dementia in later life, according to research published in the … read more
Launched at an SMC briefing in September 2012, the public consultation into emerging techniques designed to prevent mitochondrial disease closed on the 7th December. read more
David Cameron announced plans to launch a clinical DNA-reading service, focusing on patients with cancer and rare diseases, as part of efforts to open National Health Service data to medical research. read more
Sir Patrick Moore, astronomer, author and long running presenter of The Sky at Night, died at the age of 89. read more
The 2012 climate change conference, COP-18, held in Doha closed after a week of debate about how the world should tackle climate change. read more
Commonly prescribed sedatives were linked to an increased the risk of contracting pneumonia by as much as 50%, according to research published in the journal Thorax. read more
In his autumn statement, chancellor George Osborne announced an increase of £600m to the science budget. read more
Research in the journal Human Reproduction suggested that the concentration and quality of sperm in a sample of 26,600 French men has been in steady decline between 1989 and 2005. read more
The energy minister Ed Davey unveiled the government’s Energy Bill, paving the way for making the UK a low-carbon economy. read more
A sequencing and analysis of the bread wheat genome, published in Nature, identified genes associated with crop productivity and offers a valuable source of information on this important crop and future wheat improvement. read more
The European Food Safety Authority’s final review reaffirmed its initial assessment that Séralini et al’s conclusions, in a paper in Food and Chemical Toxicology which linked GM maize to the development of tumours in rats, cannot be regarded as scientifically sound because of inadequacies in the design, reporting and analysis of the study. read more
The World Meteorological Organisation released figures indicating that global warming has yet to return to levels seen in the 1990s, and that 2012 is set to be the ninth hottest since records began. read more
Sea-levels are rising 60 per cent faster than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) central projections, new research published in Environmental Research Letters suggests, while temperature rises appear to be consistent with the projections. read more
