Latest news with #UNSW
News.com.au
10 hours ago
- Business
- News.com.au
$486 billion warning to NSW homeowners
There is a tranche of strata laws starting on July 1 in NSW, and then even more later in the year, which are aimed at improving the lives of residents. It comes at a time when data from UNSW Sydney and the Strata Community Association reveals their growing number to about 17 per cent of NSW residents. There were 91,346 strata plans across NSW as at 2024, up from 89,049 in 2022. The total number of individual lots grew to 1,077,277, up from 1,043,690 in 2022. The estimated total insured value of strata plans grew to $486bn, up from $456bn as the number of buildings and the construction cost to replace them increases. With 55 per cent of all strata plans built before 2000, it means no let up in the pressure on repairs and maintenance for those owners corporations, according to Hazel Easthope, from the City Futures Research Centre at UNSW Sydney. Prior research put the number of annual call-out jobs at 1.7m, costing $2.5bn. Unfortunately the strata management industry has some dreadful practices. It was highlighted when the ABC reported in May last year that Netstrata, one of the state's biggest, had been using its wholly owned insurance arm to charge apartment complexes excessively high insurance brokerage fees. NSW Fair Trading recently issued a 24-page report by McGrath Nicol Advisory into Netstrata that identified possible breaches of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015, including instances of nondisclosure of commissions received; instances of failing to obtain at least two quotes for expenses exceeding $30,000; and nondisclosure of commissions received from a third-party service debt collection agency, Strategic Collection Services. The report advised there were other practices not in the best interests of the consumer, including charging a premium to strata plans who did not use Netstrata's wholly owned insurance broker, Strata Insurance Services (SIS) along with a remuneration structure which incentivised its strata managers to bill for add-on charges. It found a 'highly saturated use of related entity suppliers' with whom Netstrata had a commercial arrangement. 'Netstrata's own interests appear to have trumped the interests of the people it had a duty to act on behalf of,' the Fair Trading commission's Natasha Mann advised. Netstrata disputes this. Last month, Minister for Fair Trading Anoulack Chanthivong announced the appointment of Angus Abadee to oversee the strata industry as the NSW Strata and Property Services Commissioner. Abadee will lead 'initiatives to enhance industry integrity and lift consumer confidence' having held senior positions in the Building Commission NSW. The McGrathNicol review did not consider Netstrata's actions under the new laws. The July 1 changes are aimed in part 'to protect owners in strata from unfair contract terms and facilitate an uplift of strata management services to improve owners' confidence'. NSW Fair Trading advises a meeting needs to be held between the committee and strata manager to allocate and complete the new specific task.
News18
17 hours ago
- Health
- News18
'Painwave': Scientists Develop Mobile Game That Kills Chronic Pain Without Drugs
Last Updated: Australian researchers at UNSW developed 'Painwave', a mobile game offering drug-free pain relief using an EEG headset In a breakthrough that could redefine how chronic pain is treated, Australian researchers have developed a mobile game that offers powerful pain relief, without the need for drugs. Called Painwave, the interactive digital therapy was created by scientists at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and is already showing results comparable to conventional medications. At its core, Painwave is a neurofeedback game designed to help patients manage chronic nerve pain from the comfort of their own homes. It uses an affordable EEG headset, priced at just under $200, to read the player's brain activity. As users play the game on a tablet or mobile phone, it rewards healthier brainwave patterns associated with reduced pain perception. According to findings published in the Journal of Pain, the results are promising. In a four-week trial, 75% of participants reported significant pain reduction, results that researchers say rival, or even surpass, those achieved with strong pharmaceutical painkillers. What makes Painwave revolutionary is its focus on the thalamus, a deep brain structure that plays a key role in how we perceive pain. In chronic nerve pain sufferers, thalamic activity becomes disrupted, amplifying pain signals. The game is designed to retrain the brain by encouraging relaxation, focus, and positive visualisation, helping restore normal thalamic function. ' Painwave works by gradually regulating abnormal brain activity through mental techniques, not medication," said Professor Sylvia Gustin, lead researcher from UNSW, adding that it empowers patients to take control of their pain rather than relying solely on pills. 'For the first time, many users said they felt in charge of their own pain. That kind of psychological shift is huge," Dr Negin Hesam-Shariati from UNSW's NeuroRecovery Research Hub added. Painwave headset is made using 3D-printed and open-source components, bringing down the cost and making the technology far more accessible. That's a crucial aspect of the project, said Professor Gustin, who emphasised that the game was designed with global equity in mind, targetting communities with limited access to medication or clinical pain treatment. While still in its early stages, Painwave could represent the future of chronic pain management, one that's mobile, affordable, and rooted in neuroscience rather than pharmaceuticals. The team is now preparing for larger trials and exploring regulatory pathways to bring the technology to broader markets. If successful, Painwave could soon be available as a prescription-free, game-based therapy, and a much-needed alternative for lakhs suffering from chronic nerve pain worldwide. First Published:
The Australian
2 days ago
- Business
- The Australian
Australia's highest-paid vice-chancellors' salaries and pay packets ranked
University of Sydney vice-chancellor Mark Scott. Jane Dempster/The Australian You can now listen to The Australian's articles. Give us your feedback. You can now listen to The Australian's articles. Mark Scott has a money problem and it is not finding the time to spend the $1.33m he was paid to be vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney last year. It's the perception that his pay packet encourages, and it is the same for university leaders across the country. As a class, V-Cs look opulent, out of touch and indifferent to public opinion. For institutions that still rely on public funding this is a big problem. Anthony Albanese is not about to 'Trump' the oldest and richest Australian universities, but if he did hit – like Harvard has been hit in the US – universities in Sydney and Melbourne would be light on for community support. Tasmanian senator Jacquie Lambie gets this. She introduced a bill in the previous parliament to cap V-C pay at the $435,000 the commonwealth Treasurer makes. There were 400-plus reader comments sent to The Australian on Natasha Bita's Friday coverage of the 10 NSW public universities' annual reports, and what V-Cs were paid kept coming up. Other V-Cs should be pleased Scott was top of the pay pops – his $150,000 pay rise is a sure-fire ire attractor. Not all had huge hikes. University of NSW V-C Attila Brungs made only $700 more on 2023, leaving him to subsist on $1.15m. But in 2024, every V-C in the state made more than the Prime Minister's $607,000 base pay. The University Chancellors Council ignores the comparison to Albanese's wage in its submission to the Senate committee that was considering Lambie's bill, instead offering unconvincing justifications for why the V-C pay packets they approve should not be capped. They argued, 'caps fail to account for university size and complexity'. But the way university councils set V-C pay do not either. Last year, Deborah Terry was paid $1.158m to run the huge and complex University of Queensland, which had $2.83bn in revenue. Up the road, Helen Bartlett received $935,000 to lead the University of the Sunshine Coast, a challenger brand with $435m in income. Plus, the chancellors claimed that setting ceilings on pay would discourage global top talent. The problem is Australia already pays a premium. The president of Harvard University had a total package of $US1.5m last year but will take a 25 per cent pay cut next month due to tough Trump times. According to the QS global university rankings, Harvard is consistently in the world's top-five institutions, while the University of Sydney was 61st this year. University of Queensland vice-chancellor Deborah Terry. Picture: John Gass/NCA NewsWire The chancellors add that they were already on to pay, working on remuneration codes, but they know the jig is up. 'We are committed to restoring public trust and engagement with our universities,' their submission states. It is so far lost that Education Minister Jason Clare has a committee working on improving university management, including executive pay. So lost that V-C income is now a proxy for community distrust of university leaderships. They could all collectively cut their pay by half and stay on the hook of public suspicion. There are five reasons it came to this. One is apparent management indifference to student welfare, especially for victims of sexual harassment and assault that attracted so much community attention that Clare set up a national ombudsman to assist victims when university managements apparently would not. It is not just students who need help. Last week the Australian National University released a scathing report on decades of nepotism, bullying and ill-treatment of staff as well as students. Another is the underpayment of staff at universities across the country, mainly, but not always due to incompetence. The Fair Work Ombudsman has intervened repeatedly, including in the courts, to ensure universities pay people correctly. It still has a matter involving the University of NSW, which mentions in its annual report a $78m provision for current employees that includes underpayments. A third is the apparent inability of some universities – notably the universities of Sydney and Melbourne – to protect Jewish students, indeed some staff, from harassment during Gaza protests last year. There is also the failure of universities to assure the community that they are not ignoring the interests of local students by enrolling enormous numbers of internationals. The University of Sydney earned $1.6bn in international student fees in 2024 – 40 per cent of total revenue. Last year, 46 per cent of University of Melbourne students were from overseas. Both of them, and many more universities, need to do a way better job at explaining the real benefits of international education for the country. At the height of the phony argument during the election that internationals were to blame for housing costs, university lobbies complained about the revenue they would lose from enrolment caps. Then there is the way we perceive universities. For decades, V-Cs pitched them as a national resource, but now they can appear as giant corporations, focused on their own, not community interests. V-Cs with huge pay packets and grand digs do not help. The University of Melbourne bought a $7.1m Parkville mansion that former V-C Duncan Maskell lived in (it is now for sale). One of the reasons Scott is noticed for his plutocratic pay is Maskell, the previous top earner, has left. The University of Melbourne does not name the staffer who received a total package worth between $1,575,000 and $1,589,999, which suggests embarrassment at the size of the pay packet. 'I don't strike many people who are horrified by success, whether it's in business or on the sporting field or in the arts,' said economist (and assistant Treasury Minister) Andrew Leigh recently on the Joe Walker policy podcast. 'But in terms of Australian egalitarianism, I think there is that notion that being successful doesn't cause us to put you up on a pedestal. We are a country that doesn't stand up when the Prime Minister enters the room.' We certainly don't give V-Cs standing ovations, and won't while universities don't protect their staff and students and appear aloof to the way they are seen in the community. Big pay packets, regardless of apparent performance, will ensure we stay seated. Certainly, universities publish key performance indicators, but they are generally aspirational. Scott is not going to get sacked if staff and student responses decline on his university's surveys of satisfaction. But if the V-Cs are serious about 'restoring public trust and engagement' this year could be the last of ever-increasing pay for V-Cs, and their senior staff. Clare's committee could firmly suggest V-Cs link pay to public key performance indicators that cover what universities are supposed to do for students. Scores at faculty level on the national satisfaction surveys, lower attrition rates, a major – strike that – huge investment in new courses and teaching technology, would be a start, and competitive information on smaller classes would be a winner. Leigh is right, Australians don't object to rewards for success but it has to be earned and seen to be.
Gizmodo
3 days ago
- Health
- Gizmodo
Scientists Taught People to Change Their Own Brainwaves to Feel Less Pain
In an initial trial, patients who suffer from chronic nerve pain got relief from an interactive game that trained them to alter their own brainwaves. The promising results could lead to a new generation of drug-free treatments, according to the study. A research team led by psychologists from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia developed PainWaive—a training system that teaches users to regulate abnormal brain activity that underlies nerve pain—as a potential in-home, non-invasive alternative to opioids. The results, published in The Journal of Pain in April, showed that three out of four participants saw significant reductions in pain five weeks after the last treatment. The PainWaive system consists of an electroencephalogram (EEG) headset that records brain activity paired with an app that instructs patients on how to control their brainwaves through neurofeedback games, according to a UNSW statement. Four participants who suffer from corneal neuropathic pain—a condition that causes painful hypersensitivity of the eyes, face, or head—underwent 20 PainWaive sessions over the course of four weeks. Doctors aren't sure exactly what causes corneal neuropathic pain, and this condition rarely responds to current treatments, according to the researchers. But they hypothesized that altering brainwaves generally associated with nerve pain could provide relief. 'The brainwaves of people with neuropathic pain show a distinct pattern: more slow theta waves, fewer alpha waves, and more fast, high beta waves,' co-lead author Sylvia Gustin, a clinical psychologist and UNSW professor, said in the statement. Her research has investigated changes in the thalamus—a central brain structure that relays sensory and motor signals to the cerebral cortex—associated with nerve pain. 'We believe these changes interfere with how the thalamus talks to other parts of the brain, especially the sensory motor cortex, which registers pain,' she said. 'I wondered, can we develop a treatment that directly targets and normalizes these abnormal waves?' This curiosity ultimately led to the development and first clinical trial of PainWaive. For this study, Gustin and her colleagues provided four participants with kits that included an EEG headset and a tablet pre-loaded with the game app. Participants also received guidance on mental strategies that can help them shift their brainwaves from an abnormal to a normal state, such as relaxation techniques. The researchers assessed the participants' corneal neuropathic pain symptoms immediately after using PainWaive and five weeks post-treatment. During these follow-ups, participants were encouraged to continue using the brainwave-altering strategies they learned through the training. The results suggest that three of the four participants experienced pain relief comparable to or greater than that offered by opioids, according to UNSW. While these early results are promising, further clinical trials will need to confirm the safety and efficacy of PainWaive. 'Restrictions in the study's size, design and duration limit our ability to generalize the findings or rule out placebo effects,' co-lead author Negin Hesam-Shariati, a researcher at UNSW's NeuroRecovery Research Hub, said in the statement. 'But the results we've seen are exciting and give us confidence to move to the next stage and our larger trial.' Now, she and her colleagues are recruiting participants for two upcoming trials that will investigate PainWaive's potential to reduce chronic spinal pain and chronic nerve pain in people with spinal cord injuries. The development of drug-free pain treatments plays a critical role in combatting the opioid crisis. In the U.S., opioid-related deaths have turned a corner in recent years, with provisional data pointing to a 24% decline between 2023 and 2024. But there is still a need for more non-opioid pain management options. Hesam-Shariati, Gustin, and their colleagues hope that as PainWaive progresses through clinical trials, it will tick all of those boxes. 'Owning the technology offers us the potential to one day offer PainWaive as a truly affordable, accessible solution for at-home pain management, especially for those with limited access to traditional treatments,' Gustin said.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Climate
- Yahoo
Major disaster from three years ago could impact Australia's winters for years
A major natural disaster that occurred two years ago could be impacting Australia's climate this winter, and may continue to do so for a number of years. Scientists say they are 'surprised' by the results in their study, which showed the effects may be felt around the world for up to a decade. On January 15, 2022, an underwater volcano off the Pacific nation of Tonga exploded, releasing 1,000 times more energy than the Hiroshima bomb. It was one of the most powerful volcanic eruptions in recent history, and sent up to 150 million tonnes of water vapour into the stratosphere. A study into the long-term impacts of that water vapour injection found it may temporarily alter local climates, including cooler winters in Australia, warmer winters and spring in North America, drier summers over northern Eurasia, and more rain over China's east coast. Lead author and senior lecturer of the Climate Change Research Centre at UNSW, Martin Jucker, told Yahoo News it was "really unusual" for volcanoes to leave such a long-lasting impact. "Volcanoes are generally known to impact the global climate, but that's usually a cooling due to all the smoke and for a few years. It's usually more like two to three years, not eight years." He also said the research was complex, as a multitude of things can impact the weather and worsen or placate their findings. 'One very important thing about our study is that we look into the future, and there's no way to know how the global mean temperature or sea surface temperature, El Nino, El Nina, and all of these things, how they would look in the future. So we didn't include any of those effects. I only included the volcano and nothing else,' Jucker said. In Australia, the study found anomalies in surface temperature that could see winters get up to 1°C cooler. Those in Western Australia may also see slightly lower temperatures in summer and autumn. Australia's surface temperature anomalies were described in the study as the 'most persistent, with significant cooling from year 1 to 8'. The research also picked up slightly more rain than usual in WA, and wet anomalies over northern Australia. Interestingly, the anomalies peak at years three and four after the eruption, which would be this year and next year. The three-year lag is because of the composition of the stratosphere, Jucker said. 'There are no weather systems, there's no clouds, no rain, or anything, and everything moves much more slowly. This water vapour was put into the stratosphere very locally, just above the volcano. So it needed time for this water to distribute itself across the entire globe and that takes a few years," he said. The changes can be difficult to perceive, Jucker said, and may not even be noticeable until looked at as an average over the next four years or so. 'I still hope we do [see the changes] because I just find it exciting. I'm waiting to see if we can confirm it from a scientific point of view. 'We find this effect only if we average over a long time. So four years, from now to 2029, we average, and then we see this effect. Even after year three, we don't even see these effects if we just look down one individual year, for instance.' While the study found weather anomalies around the world, the cooling in Australia and warming over North America don't have an overall impact on global temperature as they 'cancel out'. "Now, what we did find is these regional impacts which would be starting about now, so three years after. And so they globally, they sum up to zero, but locally, there's a cooling," Jucker said. "There's a cooling that we expect in winter over Australia over this time period, but there's a warming in North America in their winter, for instance. So all of these things cancel out, but regionally they're there." He added that, like all scientific studies, it's important to remember that his findings are not definitive. "So even when I say, we expect colder winters over Australia, it's really the probability of it being colder is higher. But it could be warmer, and that's fine. That would still be within our results. It's just that the probability of it being colder is higher," he said. One prediction that has so far proven correct in Jucker's study is that the volcano's eruption would contribute to a hole in the ozone layer. The large hole appeared from August to December in 2023, which is what his simulations picked up almost two years in advance. Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@ You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube.
