Latest news with #MonashUniversity
NDTV
2 hours ago
- Health
- NDTV
Casino Lighting May Be Secretly Pushing You To Gamble More, Reveals Study
A new study by researchers from Flinders University and Monash University in Australia suggests that casino lighting may play a surprising role in encouraging risky gambling behaviour. The research found that blue-enriched lighting, commonly used in casino decor and LED screens, may influence brain responses, making individuals less sensitive to financial losses. The study published in Nature's Scientific Reports journal examined participants' economic decisions using a series of casino scenarios under blue-enriched and blue-depleted light to assess the impact of light wavelengths on risk preferences. "We found that light with more blue wavelengths in it, which is frequently emitted by LED screens and casino lighting, could subtly influence how people perceive losses and gains," says lead author, Dr Alicia Lander from FHMRI Sleep Health. "This raises questions about the role of lighting in environments like casinos or online gambling platforms." According to the news release by Flinders University, the study investigated whether circadian photoreception affects risk-taking behaviour during gambling by manipulating the 'melanopic' brightness of light, which targets the body's internal clock, while keeping visual brightness constant. The results showed that participants exposed to blue-enriched light became less sensitive to losses, making them more likely to choose risky financial options over safer alternatives. "Typically, people have a strong tendency to avoid losses, often outweighing potential gains in their decision-making," says Dr Lander. "However, under blue-enriched light, which stimulates non-visual circadian photoreceptors, they demonstrated a reduced sensitivity to financial losses that may influence gambling tendencies, potentially encouraging riskier behaviours. "Under conditions where the lighting emitted less blue, people tended to feel a $100 loss much more strongly than a $100 gain - the loss just feels worse. "But under bright, blue-heavy light such as that seen in casino machines, the $100 loss didn't appear to feel as bad, so people were more willing to take the risk." The study suggests that blue light alters neural processing in brain regions tied to reward and decision-making, such as the amygdala and habenula, possibly dampening negative emotions associated with losses. "Interestingly, we found that women displayed greater loss aversion than men, showing more reluctance to take risks under both light conditions," says Dr Lander. "This aligns with previous research indicating that women often experience stronger emotional responses to financial uncertainty, while men may have a greater tolerance for risk."
ABC News
2 days ago
- Health
- ABC News
Eligible medical school candidates turned away in their thousands each year
Medical education experts say the federal government needs to fund more medical school places for local students amid a dire shortage of GPs. The federal Department of Health and Aged Care has forecast that Australia will need a further 8,600 GPs by 2048. Monash University academic teams say that with more funding they could admit more eligible students to be trained in medicine. "We turn away thousands and thousands and thousands of Aussies every year from medical school," Monash University professor and Medical Deans Australia and New Zealand president Michelle Leech said. "They're all smart and they're all good people." Professor Leech said at Monash University's medical school there were 12 to 15 eligible applicants for every single place. In Australia, a student who achieves a 99-plus ATAR scores in the 95th percentile for the medical aptitude test. A competitive percentile is above the 90th percentile. Passing the multi-stage interview process may still not gain qualifications for medical school. Pasindu Bandara is a University of Queensland medical student and founder of Strive Academics, a tutoring company that specialises in helping students get into medical school. "We've seen a lot of students where we feel like they would make great doctors, and they would serve the community well, but one of the different obstacles stops them from doing so," Mr Bandara said. "These are top students, they get the best scores in their schools, they're dux in their schools, they've got heaps of volunteering experience, they give back to their communities, but … on the interview day they don't perform well and they don't get through. "In our last cohort, there was one student with a 99-plus ATAR and a 95th plus percentile score in the UCAT who ended up receiving multiple interview offers but didn't get through that interview stage. "It's for a few different reasons — sometimes students get anxious and they're not ready for an interview-style [or] high stakes day because that's not something high school prepares you for." Mr Bandara also said students who could not afford tutoring were at a disadvantage when it came to applying for medical schools. "Students that can afford this tutoring essentially have one foot in the door in terms of getting a competitive score," he said. The number of medical places for Australian students in universities is controlled by the Commonwealth. But Professor Leech said that number had not grown in the past decade. "The reason I think the Commonwealth has been cautious about expanding places is because over many years we have been getting our medical workforce from overseas," she said. "But it's important to know that international students are funded separately and don't take spots from local students. Royal Australian College of General Practitioners president Michael Wright agreed. "For too long, we haven't trained enough GPs in Australia," Dr Wright said. "We've been relying a lot on doctors who did their medical degrees overseas coming here and working, and they've been a great addition to our health system. "But we need to pull our weight and make sure that we do train more GPs." In its latest budget, the federal government announced that from 2026 100 new student positions will be shared between 22 medical schools Australia-wide, per year, increasing to 150 by 2028. "More doctors have joined our healthcare system in the last two years, more than any time in the past decade," a federal government spokesperson said. Experts agree the GP shortage is bad in the cities but was worse in the regions. Aspiring medical students living in regional areas require a lower ATAR than their city peers to get into medicine at university. However, Mr Bandara said the rural quotas for universities were a "broken system". "For example at James Cook University, there's a big focus on rural health, but at the end of the day, a lot of those students preference [city hospitals] for their intern year, and they never end up actually servicing these rural areas." Deakin University is one of only six universities Australia-wide that offer rural medical training end-to-end to encourage regional residents to stay locally. It offers 30 rural training places at its Victorian regional campuses in Warrnambool and Ararat and says it fills those positions every year. Rural Doctors Association of Victoria president Dr Louise Manning said having these "end-to-end" programs and "boosting positions in those programs would be much more likely to deliver some more for our workforce". "Hopefully [they encourage] rural general practitioners rather than putting all these spots in the cities," she said. Dr Manning said affordable and available accommodation for doctors, availability of childcare services, and support for partners of doctors were factors affecting regional recruitment. Melbourne University declined to say how many students it turns away from medical school each year.
ABC News
2 days ago
- Science
- ABC News
The world's shrinking cloud cover is driving record temperatures, new research finds
The world's cloud cover has been shrinking significantly and may help explain the extraordinary heat of the last two years, new research led by NASA found. The research, published this month, analysed satellite observations during the past 24 years. It found areas over the ocean where storm clouds often form have dwindled by between 1.5 and 3 per cent per decade. It may not sound like much, but Monash University professor Christian Jakob, who leads the ARC's 21st Century Weather Centre of Excellence, said that loss has amounted to a significant portion of sunlight being absorbed by the Earth instead of being reflected out to space. "So that increase is what's providing extra warming to the climate in addition to the greenhouse effect, that's also increasing," Professor Jakob, who was a contributing author to the study, said. He said the new finding could even help explain one of the big climate mysteries of the past couple of years. The years 2023 and 2024 saw global average temperature reach record highs — each becoming the hottest year on record, and by a long way. While most of the extraordinary heat could be explained by greenhouse gas emissions and the presence of the El Niño climate driver, there was still a margin at the top that puzzled climate scientists. Scientists were looking into several possible explanations, including changes to shipping regulations and the underwater volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption in January 2022. However, Professor Jakob said the change in clouds amounted to a significantly larger difference. "What we found is the effect of clouds, and the shrinking of highly reflective clouds, is much, much larger," he said. "I would say it's at least three or four times the influence of the other effects that have been put forward. "So, while we can't say with certainty that it's the reason 2024 was so warm, it's fair to assume it contributed to the extraordinary warmth over the last few years." The loss of clouds has to do with the changes in wind patterns, as a response to climate change, according to Professor Jakob. This has led to a growth of the subtropical regions — where cloud is generally more sparse and patchy — while stormy regions have retracted toward the North and South poles. These stormy regions, to the north and south, contain extensive cloud cover, which is highly reflective, sending sunlight back into space. "The patchy clouds … these are the clouds that we are getting more of, while these intense grey skies, where more or less the entire sky is covered, are reducing," he said. "And so, therefore, the area of the clouds that are very good at reflecting sunlight is getting smaller. And the area of the clouds that are not so good at reflecting sunlight is getting bigger." Professor Jakob said this change was particularly evident at the boundary of these climate zones, including to the south of Australia. "The most affected regions are actually over the oceans," he said. "The ocean is an extremely good storer of energy, and it warms in the process of storing that energy. "So, as the clouds no longer reflect the sunlight, it now reaches the ocean surface. "The ocean takes up that energy that comes from the sun, and the sea surface temperatures go up, and that has major implications for how weather systems behave, but also major implications for the general warming of the planet." Clouds are a really important part of the Earth's climate system, yet they remain one of the most challenging features in our climate models. Professor Jakob said one of the keys to understanding them better was to understand changes to our weather. "The clouds don't just magically change; they change because climate change changes how weather systems behave," he said. "In this case, where they (the weather systems producing high cloud cover) occur is pushed further towards the poles." Investigating changes in our weather and climate systems is the main aim of ARC Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather. He said that for communities to be better prepared for a future climate, a shift in thinking from climate change to weather change needed to take place. "The poster child numbers we use to describe climate change are things like global mean temperature. Global mean temperature is really a very nice and very clear indicator that the climate system is affected by humans," he said. "However, when's the last time you've planned a barbecue on a forecast of global mean temperature? "What are we actually interested in in terms of the impacts that change in global mean temperature will have on us? And that's of course the weather." He said we had a good knowledge about how climate change was currently affecting temperatures on the ground and several types of extreme weather, but there was still a lot to learn.
Sydney Morning Herald
2 days ago
- Health
- Sydney Morning Herald
More young people are getting colon cancer. Here is what you can do to protect yourself
Do you want the good news, or the bad news? The good news is that the rates of colon cancer in the over-50s are falling. The bad news? Cases of colon cancer, also known as bowel cancer, are rising in younger people, with numbers more than doubling in Australia since 2000. Australia now has the highest rates of reported early-onset colon cancer among 50 countries worldwide. While the falling rates in older Australians have coincided with the introduction of the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program, attention is now turning to the alarming rise among young people, with one in nine Australians diagnosed with bowel cancer under the age of 50. The list of suspects for the increase is long, but rising rates of overweight, obesity and inactivity in younger adults are major contenders, says Professor Karen Canfell, professor of public health at the University of Sydney. 'There's already good evidence that they can cause colon cancer, and a major line of inquiry is the extent to which under-50s are now affected by them – it's likely to explain part of the phenomenon.' Diet, alcohol, smoking, early exposure to antibiotics, and infection from bacteria are other suspects. So is a relative newcomer: microplastics, those invisible fragments of plastic in food and water that can end up inside us, say a group of researchers and colorectal surgeons from Monash University and Cabrini Health in Melbourne. Loading Not-so-fantastic plastic Reading their recent summary of what's known so far about the impact of microplastic in the gut in the ANZ Journal of Surgery makes you regret ever sipping water from a plastic bottle or diving into a takeaway container of green curry – especially when you learn that adults consume up to 52,000 particles each year, with babies and small children potentially taking in more via plastic drink bottles. 'We're seeing more young patients with rectal and distal colon cancer, often without the usual risk factors. This motivated us to explore whether microplastics could contribute in some way,' says senior author Dr Vignesh Narasimhan, a colorectal surgeon at Monash Health and Cabrini Hospital.
The Age
2 days ago
- Health
- The Age
More young people are getting colon cancer. Here is what you can do to protect yourself
Do you want the good news, or the bad news? The good news is that the rates of colon cancer in the over-50s are falling. The bad news? Cases of colon cancer, also known as bowel cancer, are rising in younger people, with numbers more than doubling in Australia since 2000. Australia now has the highest rates of reported early-onset colon cancer among 50 countries worldwide. While the falling rates in older Australians have coincided with the introduction of the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program, attention is now turning to the alarming rise among young people, with one in nine Australians diagnosed with bowel cancer under the age of 50. The list of suspects for the increase is long, but rising rates of overweight, obesity and inactivity in younger adults are major contenders, says Professor Karen Canfell, professor of public health at the University of Sydney. 'There's already good evidence that they can cause colon cancer, and a major line of inquiry is the extent to which under-50s are now affected by them – it's likely to explain part of the phenomenon.' Diet, alcohol, smoking, early exposure to antibiotics, and infection from bacteria are other suspects. So is a relative newcomer: microplastics, those invisible fragments of plastic in food and water that can end up inside us, say a group of researchers and colorectal surgeons from Monash University and Cabrini Health in Melbourne. Loading Not-so-fantastic plastic Reading their recent summary of what's known so far about the impact of microplastic in the gut in the ANZ Journal of Surgery makes you regret ever sipping water from a plastic bottle or diving into a takeaway container of green curry – especially when you learn that adults consume up to 52,000 particles each year, with babies and small children potentially taking in more via plastic drink bottles. 'We're seeing more young patients with rectal and distal colon cancer, often without the usual risk factors. This motivated us to explore whether microplastics could contribute in some way,' says senior author Dr Vignesh Narasimhan, a colorectal surgeon at Monash Health and Cabrini Hospital.
