Latest news with #UniversityofCentralLancashire
The Star
03-05-2025
- Health
- The Star
Managing chronic stomach pain in children
Hypnotherapy and talking therapy are the best treatments for long-term stomach pain in children, a new study suggests. Experts said that more needs to be done to make these therapies available for children and to tackle the 'prejudice' linked to psychosocial treatments for abdominal pain. It comes after a new study – the largest of its kind – saw researchers analyse various treatments for chronic stomach pain, including irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), abdominal migraines and unexplained pain. These conditions affect up to 12% of children and it is estimated they cause 'chronic, debilitating pain' in 300 million children around the world. Promising results The researchers examined 91 studies involving more than 7,200 children aged four to 18 years. The studies assessed dietary treatments; medicines; probiotics; psychosocial treatments, including cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), also known as talking therapy; and hypnotherapy. The team of academics, led by experts at the University of Central Lancashire in Britain, found that 'hypnotherapy and CBT show moderate certainty for treatment efficacy with clinically relevant effect sizes'. Hypnotherapy is 68% more successful and CBT 35% more successful than taking no action, the university said. ALSO READ: Is hypnotherapy a legitimate treatment method? ALSO READ: Change your negative thoughts and behaviours with CBT But 'no conclusions can be made about the other therapies and treatment success due to very low evidence certainty', the authors wrote in the journal Lancet Child and Adolescent Health . Study lead author and consultant paediatrician Professor Dr Morris Gordon said: 'In Britain, almost one in 20 of every single children's appointment in a hospital outpatients will be explicitly for this problem, compared to all other problems. 'So it's a huge burden, not just on the NHS [National Health Service], but more importantly, for the kids, and of course, their families – they can't go to school, they can't function. 'You've got someone who was a high-flying gymnast or had a really good hobby – BMXing, and you name it – I've heard both of those examples in the last couple of years, and it's gone, it's done.' He went on: 'We have found that hypnotherapy and CBT have the best evidence of providing successful treatment and to reduce pain. 'Other therapies have evidence of an effect, but due to systematic concerns with the findings, no conclusions can be drawn at the moment.' A treatment guideline Prof Gordon, who carried out the study with colleagues from the Netherlands and Florida in the United States, said that a new guideline for treating abdominal pain in children has been created off the back of the study. 'Currently, there no guidelines available for medical practitioners, so treatment methods are sporadic with no real evidence to underpin them,' he said. 'One GP [general practitioner] may prescribe probiotics, while another may prescribe pain medication, whereas others prefer a diet or a psychological treatment. 'This analysis provides, for the first time, an accurate way of grading the success rate of treatments.' He added that there is often an expectation for 'medicalisation' and a 'prejudice' against psychosocial therapies. 'All that matters is the right outcome for the child and the family,' he said. He went on: 'It is important to point out that we're not suggesting the condition is psychological because we don't know of a single definite cause in these cases. 'What we're suggesting is the best way to manage it, taking into consideration the frequency and severity of the pain, the way they impact a patient's life and the side effects of treatments. 'Think about it in the same way we don't take paracetamol to cure a cold, but to manage the pain. 'You can't stop the music playing, but you can turn down the volume.' Meanwhile, he said that hypnotherapy and CBT are difficult to access to treat abdominal pain and called for more to be done to make them more widely available. 'So, what we've essentially got here is a top therapy in terms of safety, relatively easy to offer with good acceptability and tolerability. and yet, despite all of that, they're not being used,' he said. Prof Dr Marc Benninga, a paediatric gastroenterologist from Emma Children's Hospital in Amsterdam who also worked on the study, called for more trials to assess the other treatment methods for abdominal pain in children. 'This study highlights the low quality of the scientific research that has been performed to date in a very common condition as abdominal pain,' he said. – PA Media/dpa
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
The 'significant' recycling change that's coming for all of our plastic
Most British people dutifully separate their waste and fill their bins correctly each week, but some might be surprised that not all their plastic is recycled. Plastic films, for example, used to wrap many foodstuffs, are not recycled in most areas. But this is changing, with some councils already expanding the range of plastics they can recycle. Defra says the recycling rate across the UK was 52.5% in 2023. Industry group the British Plastics Federation believes that the UK can move towards a 70% recycling rate by 2035. Some of us imagine that anything plastic can be safely put in the recycling bin, but that's not the case, Professor Karl Williams, director for waste management at the University of Central Lancashire, explains. Speaking to Yahoo News, Prof Williams said: "There are three main types of plastic that we use every day, which can be easily recycled at home. "These include PET, or polyethylene terephthalate, which is most commonly found in plastic drinks bottles; HDPE, or high-density polyethylene, which is typically used for milk containers; and LDPE, or low-density polyethylene, which is used for flexible packaging such as food bags.' Plastics such as polystyrene and low-density polyethylene – which are used in bags and films – cannot be collected from home recycling collections. Such waste often ends up being burned in waste-to-energy incinerators. In some areas, these plastics can be collected at supermarkets or via other special collections. However, recycling systems are not uniform across the UK, meaning that it can be hard for households to understand which plastics can and cannot be recycled. "One of the major challenges we face is that recycling systems vary between regions," says Prof Williams. "What can be recycled in one area may not be accepted in another, depending on the local collection and processing facilities. "This is why packaging often carries the message 'recyclable where facilities exist', reflecting the inconsistent availability of recycling options across the country.' The government's Simpler Recycling scheme – in force for businesses from 2025 and households from 2026 – aims to ensure there is no 'postcode lottery' around plastic recycling so that all areas have the same rules around what is recycled. Under Simpler Recycling, all councils must collect the same waste streams, one of which is dry recycling, including plastic. By March 2027, plastic films will be able to be recycled in all areas. Prof Williams says that this will mean councils will be able to 'upgrade' their recycling to include plastics such as polystyrene, which are currently not recycled. He said: "A significant change being introduced is the move towards a more consistent recycling system, so that households across the UK can recycle the same materials regardless of where they live. This national consistency supports the development of recycling infrastructure and helps create stable markets for recyclable materials. "By ensuring a uniform collection system, it becomes more feasible to collect and process harder-to-recycle plastics, such as polystyrene. It is essential that we do not continue to produce plastic products unless there is a clear, accessible route for their recycling that is available to everyone." Plastic put in recycling bins across the UK is relatively likely to travel abroad to be recycled. Turkey remained the top destination for UK exports of plastic last year, according to Basel Action Network, a European NGO which records plastic waste exports. British exports of plastic waste increased to 598 million kilos a year in 2024, with exports to Turkey increasing to 151 million kg per year from 141 million last year. The next most popular destinations for UK plastic waste were the Netherlands, Poland and Vietnam.
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Giant Structure in Deep Space Challenges Our Understanding of The Universe
A colossal structure in the distant Universe is defying our understanding of how the Universe evolved. In light that has traveled for 6.9 billion years to reach us, astronomers have found a giant, almost perfect ring of galaxies, some 1.3 billion light-years in diameter. It doesn't match any known structure or formation mechanism. The Big Ring, as the structure has been named, could mean that we need to amend the standard model of cosmology. The discovery, led by astronomer Alexia Lopez of the University of Central Lancashire, was presented at the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in 2024, and has been published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. It's the second giant structure discovered by Lopez and her colleagues. The first, called the Giant Arc, is actually in the same part of the sky, at the same distance away. When the arc's discovery was announced in 2021, it puzzled astronomers. The Big Ring only deepens the mystery. "Neither of these two ultra-large structures is easy to explain in our current understanding of the universe," Lopez said in January 2024. "And their ultra-large sizes, distinctive shapes, and cosmological proximity must surely be telling us something important – but what exactly?" The most immediate link seems to be with something called a Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO). These are giant, circular arrangements of galaxies found all throughout space. They're actually spheres, the fossils of acoustic waves that propagated through the early Universe, and then froze when space became so diffuse acoustic waves could no longer travel. The Big Ring is not a BAO. BAOs are all a fixed size of around 1 billion light-years in diameter. And thorough inspection of the Big Ring shows that it is more like a corkscrew shape that is aligned in such a way that it looks like a ring. Which leaves the very unanswered question: What the heck is it? And what does it mean for the Cosmological Principle, which states that, in all directions, any given patch of space should look pretty much the same as all other patches of space? "We expect matter to be evenly distributed everywhere in space when we view the universe on a large scale, so there should be no noticeable irregularities above a certain size," Lopez explained. "Cosmologists calculate the current theoretical size limit of structures to be 1.2 billion light-years, yet both of these structures are much larger – the Giant Arc is almost three times bigger and the Big Ring's circumference is comparable to the Giant Arc's length." But the size is just one of the problems. The other is what it means for cosmology, the study of the evolution of the Universe. The current model is the one that currently fits the best with what we observe, but there are some features that are challenging to explain under its framework. There are other models that have been put forward to address these features. Under one such model, Roger Penrose's conformal cyclic cosmology, in which the Universe goes through endless Big Bang expansion cycles, ring structures are expected – although it's worth noting that conformal cyclic cosmology has significant problems of its own. Another possibility is that the structures are a type of topological defect in the fabric of space-time known as cosmic strings. These are thought to be like proton-wide wrinkles that emerged in the early Universe as space-time stretched, then froze into place. We've not found much physical evidence of cosmic strings, but the theoretical evidence is pretty promising. At the moment, nobody knows for sure what the Big Ring and the Giant Arc signify. They could just be chance arrangements of galaxies twirling across the sky, although the likelihood of that seems pretty small. The best hope would be to find more such arrangements of galaxies, scattered throughout the Universe, hiding in plain sight. "From current cosmological theories we didn't think structures on this scale were possible," Lopez said. "We could expect maybe one exceedingly large structure in all our observable Universe. Yet, the Big Ring and the Giant Arc are two huge structures and are even cosmological neighbors, which is extraordinarily fascinating." The findings are reported in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. An earlier version of this article was published in January 2024. Magnetar 'Starquakes' Could Forge Gold in Space, Scientists Discover Depictions of Milky Way's River of Stars Found in Ancient Egyptian Art Dawn's Second Look Reveals Vesta Could Be Part of a Lost World
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
'Remarkable' astrophysicist praised by top scientist
A Nobel Prize winning scientist has praised the "remarkable" work of an astrophysicist at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan). PhD student Dr Alexia Lopez discovered the Giant Arc - a gigantic, ring-shaped structure in space, made up of galaxies and galaxy clusters that scientists say is so big it challenges our understanding of the universe. Sir Roger Penrose, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on black holes, has invited her to meet in person at Oxford University, where he is an Emeritus Professor. Ms Lopez, 28, said she "thought someone was playing a joke at first" when she heard he got in touch to say he was "fascinated by my findings". "I couldn't believe someone of such gravitas was interested in my work," she said, adding he is "so passionate about his research and it's infectious to see how excited he is about the possible links" between their findings. Sir Roger, a world-renowned mathematician and physicist who mentored Professor Stephen Hawking, has a keen interest in the cosmological discoveries because they could show signs of his theory of the origin and development of the universe. He has cited Ms Lopez in his latest research publication, The Physics of Conformal Cyclic Cosmology. He said: "Alexia Lopez has discovered a remarkable effect which appears to substantiate the conformal cyclic cosmological model that I originally suggested in the early years of the 21st Century. "Her observations provide what appears to be a very strong challenge to conventional cosmology which had not been previously anticipated." Ms Lopez, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at UCLan in Preston, has been with the university since 2015 when she began an undergraduate degree in physics with astrophysics. She then went on to complete a Masters and PhD with the University's Jeremiah Horrocks Institute for Maths and Physics (JHI). Professor Derek Ward Thompson, director of the JHI, said: "We're very proud of what Alexia has achieved so far and she's still only at the beginning of her scientific career. "To have the backing of Sir Roger Penrose is amazing and really highlights the significance of her research." Listen to the best of BBC Radio Lancashire on BBC Sounds and follow BBC Lancashire on Facebook, X and Instagram and watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer. Huge galaxy ring challenges thinking on universe Astronomers discover 'the perfect solar system' US issues first ever fine for space junk
BBC News
30-04-2025
- Science
- BBC News
'Remarkable' UClan astrophysicist praised by top scientist
A Nobel Prize winning scientist has praised the "remarkable" work of an astrophysicist at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan).PhD student Dr Alexia Lopez discovered the Giant Arc - a gigantic, ring-shaped structure in space, made up of galaxies and galaxy clusters that scientists say is so big it challenges our understanding of the Roger Penrose, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on black holes, has invited her to meet in person at Oxford University, where he is an Emeritus Lopez, 28, said she "thought someone was playing a joke at first" when she heard he got in touch to say he was "fascinated by my findings". "I couldn't believe someone of such gravitas was interested in my work," she said, adding he is "so passionate about his research and it's infectious to see how excited he is about the possible links" between their Roger, a world-renowned mathematician and physicist who mentored Professor Stephen Hawking, has a keen interest in the cosmological discoveries because they could show signs of his theory of the origin and development of the has cited Ms Lopez in his latest research publication, The Physics of Conformal Cyclic said: "Alexia Lopez has discovered a remarkable effect which appears to substantiate the conformal cyclic cosmological model that I originally suggested in the early years of the 21st Century. "Her observations provide what appears to be a very strong challenge to conventional cosmology which had not been previously anticipated."Ms Lopez, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at UCLan in Preston, has been with the university since 2015 when she began an undergraduate degree in physics with astrophysics. She then went on to complete a Masters and PhD with the University's Jeremiah Horrocks Institute for Maths and Physics (JHI).Professor Derek Ward Thompson, director of the JHI, said: "We're very proud of what Alexia has achieved so far and she's still only at the beginning of her scientific career. "To have the backing of Sir Roger Penrose is amazing and really highlights the significance of her research." Listen to the best of BBC Radio Lancashire on BBC Sounds and follow BBC Lancashire on Facebook, X and Instagram and watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer.
