Category: English

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lyndsay Murray, Senior Lecturer, Anatomy, University of Edinburgh

Scotland has become the first UK nation to screen all newborn babies for spinal muscular atrophy. Here is what you need to know.

What is spinal muscular atrophy and how does it affect babies?

Spinal muscular atrophy is a motor neurone disease that starts during infancy. There are different types of SMA, which vary in how severely they affect the child. The most severe type of SMA is, sadly, the most common. Untreated, babies with the most severe types of SMA would not be expected to live to their second birthday.

The disease happens because the body can’t make enough of a protein needed to keep the nerves that control muscles alive. As these nerve cells are lost, muscles become weak, making it hard for babies or children to move, swallow or breathe.

How common is SMA in the UK, and why is it considered a serious condition?

SMA is classed as a “rare” condition. However, for a rare condition, it is quite common. It affects around one in 14,000 births in the UK each year. Each month, around four babies with SMA are born in the UK. It is considered serious as, untreated, babies and children would die or experience serious lifelong disability.

What is the heel prick test?

The heel prick test (also called a “blood spot test”) is already routinely performed on babies born in the UK. During this test, a small sample of blood is taken and it is used to screen for a variety of genetic diseases.

If SMA is caught at birth, can it be cured?

There is no cure for SMA, but there are treatments that aim to fix the underlying genetic problem. The treatments for SMA are much more effective when given as early as possible. When treatment is delayed, it can still be beneficial. However, children may still have difficulty standing or walking, and experience lifelong difficulties with basic functions such as breathing and eating. However, with early treatment, any remaining difficulties are likely to be milder.

How could adding SMA to routine newborn screening change children’s lives?

The ability to detect SMA in newborns means diagnosis can happen before symptoms appear. Without screening, it may take months to reach a diagnosis.

With screening, SMA can be identified within the first week of life, allowing treatment to begin soon after. If therapy is started early enough, some children may never develop obvious symptoms and can reach milestones such as sitting, crawling and walking at the same pace as their peers.

The early window matters because motor neurons – the nerve cells that control muscle movement – are rapidly lost in SMA and cannot be replaced. Starting treatment as soon as possible helps preserve these cells, slowing or even halting disease progression. The more motor neurons that remain, the better the outcome for the child.

Have other countries implemented SMA screening?

Yes. For instance, the first state in the US started screening for SMA in 2017. All 50 states in the US were screening for SMA by 2024, as were most European countries. There is a huge body of evidence that earlier treatment leads to better outcomes.

How has medical progress changed life expectancy and quality of life for children with SMA?

Medical progress has revolutionised life for people with SMA and their families. In the past, a diagnosis of SMA usually meant a very short life expectancy, or lifelong profound disability, with a high reliance on caregivers for even the most basic bodily functions.

Treatments for SMA have given huge hope to the SMA community. The treatments have the capacity to stop the progression of the disease, allowing many children who would previously not have survived to live longer, and preventing further decline in muscle strength for those living with the disease.

Could this lead to screening for more rare genetic conditions in newborns?

SMA has been added to newborn screening because effective treatments are now available. The technology behind these treatments could also be adapted to tackle other genetic conditions in the future. There is a great deal to learn from progress in SMA, from how these therapies were developed to how screening programmes were successfully introduced.

Lyndsay Murray receives funding from Cure SMA, the SMA Foundation, Muscular Dystrophy UK, Motor Neuron Disease Scotland and the Anatomical Society.

– ref. Testing newborns for spinal muscular atrophy – screening programme begins in Scotland – https://theconversation.com/testing-newborns-for-spinal-muscular-atrophy-screening-programme-begins-in-scotland-279005

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mohammad Hossein Amirhosseini, Associate Professor, Computer Science and Digital Technologies, University of East London

A workplace wellbeing app might seem like a simple and helpful tool – a mood check-in, some stress management advice, or a chatbot asking how your week has gone. But behind that supportive language, some systems are also quietly analysing your voice, writing style and digital behaviour for signs of psychological distress.

These tools are already on the market – aimed at workplaces, universities and healthcare. They are framed as early-intervention systems that promise to cut costs and identify problems before they become serious. Unfortunately, companies are under no obligation to report using them, so data about how widespread they are is lacking.

The basic idea behind these tools is that behaviour leaves patterns. Artificial intelligence (AI) systems trained on large datasets learn to recognise signals associated with particular mental health conditions, and when similar signals appear in new data, the system produces a probability estimate.

For many people, the surprising part is how much ordinary behaviour can reveal. Voice recordings can pick up changes in rhythm, pitch and hesitation. Language models can analyse word choice and emotional tone. Smartphone data has also been explored as a way of tracking changes in sleep, movement and social interaction – all without the person doing anything out of the ordinary.

But detecting a statistical signal is very different from identifying a genuine problem. Human behaviour is deeply contextual. Someone may speak slowly because they are tired, nervous or communicating in a second language. Reduced online activity might simply reflect a busy week.

Even well-designed systems will make mistakes. A person who is genuinely struggling may not show the behavioural patterns the system was trained to recognise, while someone else may be incorrectly flagged as being in distress.

The pressure to develop these tools is real. The World Health Organization estimates that depression and anxiety cost the global economy US$1 trillion (£800 million) a year in lost productivity. Universities report rising demand for counselling, and employers are dealing with burnout and stress-related absence. Automated early-warning systems can seem like an attractive answer.

When wellbeing becomes surveillance

But this technology can change something fundamental about how mental health is understood. Traditionally, mental health is assessed through conversations between a person and a therapist, where context matters enormously. These systems work differently, inferring psychological states from behavioural traces that were never intended to communicate emotional information.

Once those inferences are made, they can influence decisions well beyond healthcare. Assessments of someone’s emotional state could shape workplace programmes, student support systems or insurance models, affecting how institutions judge a person’s reliability or suitability for a role. In effect, psychological states become a new kind of data.

There are particular risks for some groups. Neurodivergent people often communicate in ways that differ from the norms assumed by many datasets. Someone speaking in a second language may pause more frequently, producing speech patterns an algorithm could misinterpret. A person going through grief or illness may display signals that resemble those associated with mental health conditions – without actually having one.

Used carefully by healthcare professionals, these tools could have genuine value – helping therapists spot early warning signs of deteriorating mental health. But the same capability looks very different when deployed across a workplace or university without people’s knowledge.

At a minimum, people should know when these tools are being used, what data is being analysed and whether the system has been independently tested. A claim that software can detect distress is not, on its own, enough.

Mohammad Hossein Amirhosseini does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Your voice, your typing, your sleep – what workplace wellbeing apps are really analysing – https://theconversation.com/your-voice-your-typing-your-sleep-what-workplace-wellbeing-apps-are-really-analysing-277692

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jake Phillips, Associate professor, University of Cambridge

The UK’s latest law on sentencing came into force on March 22. Among other changes, the new law means that, in England and Wales, people who would previously have been sent to prison for short sentences will instead serve those sentences in the community.

This means they will need to attend appointments with probation, do certain rehabilitative activities and may also be restricted from doing certain things or going to certain areas. They might also be required to do a set number of hours of community service.

The new law requires courts to avoid imposing custodial sentences of less than 12 months, except in exceptional circumstances. It also extends the maximum sentence that can be suspended from two years to three. This gives judges discretion to suspend sentences for more serious offences that would previously have required immediate custody.

Possession with intent to supply class A drugs (where a guilty plea can reduce a starting-point sentence to three years); street robbery; the most serious forms of controlling and coercive behaviour; and a third conviction for domestic burglary could now all, in theory, be suspended.

At the end of 2025, there were around 3,500 people serving a prison sentence of less than 12 months in England and Wales. Around 44% of all prison sentences are shorter than 12 months. They tend to be imposed for offences such as shoplifting, common assault or breaches of restraining orders.

People given short sentences have the highest reoffending rates when compared to other sentences. Evidence from Scotland, where a similar legal approach has been in place since 2019, has found that people released from a short sentence are reconvicted nearly twice as often as those sentenced to serve a community sentence.

Short sentences mean that people lose access to families, employment and housing, but they do not allow prisons enough time to provide the support that people need prior to release. As such, they account for more than half of all recalls to prison following release, and have contributed to increases in the prison population in recent years.

People serving short sentences typically have acute and unaddressed needs, such as housing instability, substance misuse and mental health concerns. And evidence shows that people sentenced for similar offences are more likely to offend after a short prison sentence than if they had been given a community sanction.

The changes are intended to alleviate pressure on the prison estate by reducing the number of people given immediate custody. Prisons in England and Wales have been working at capacity for years.

These new powers should also prevent the need for emergency early release schemes, which have failed in the past. Both Conservative and Labour governments have introduced emergency early release schemes in recent years. Under a scheme run by the previous Conservative government from 2023-24, 42% of people released were recalled to custody. This was partly due to an inability to plan for their release, and a shortage of support services such as accommodation.

We do not yet have recall data for the scheme introduced by the Labour government in 2024, which allows people to be released 40% of the way through their sentence. But overall recall rates have remained high.

With the new law in force, we should see a relatively quick decline in the number of people sentenced to custody. A steady reduction in the prison population should follow.

It is also worth highlighting that expanding the use of community sanctions can backfire, resulting instead in unintended net-widening: more people drawn into the penal system overall, rather than just reducing the number of people in prison. This could happen if judges begin to give more suspended sentences to those who would otherwise have been given a fine or community order. They may also sentence people to longer in prison to avoid the requirement to suspend the sentence – what criminologists call up-tariffing.

Read more:
How a doubling of sentence lengths helped pack England’s prisons to the rafters

Although broadly positive, these changes are not necessarily a silver bullet for the well-documented prisons crisis. For one thing, the reforms will result in more work for the probation service, which is already under pressure. In recent inspection reports, the probation inspectorate has described the service as having “too few staff, with too little experience and training, managing too many cases”.

Introducing more people with higher risk profiles into probation narrows the margin for error considerably. The service has been planning for these changes – by reducing the extent to which people at the end of their sentences are supervised – but how well it copes with these increased numbers remains to be seen.

If probation fails to cope, we may see more people breaching their orders. When this happens, their custodial sanction is activated, and they are swiftly put in custody to serve their sentence.

The effect on crime

There is also the question of whether the act will affect crime levels, which have been decreasing in recent decades. Criminological evidence has repeatedly shown that changing the seriousness of a punishment does not deter people from offending. What is much more important is the perception of whether one is likely to be caught, and the speed with which one might be punished.

In reality, most people who are about to commit an offence – especially those for which shorter custodial sentences are imposed – are not thinking about what sentence they may or may not receive at some undetermined point in the future.

Sentencing severity is a blunt tool for dealing with crime, especially given the complex reasons behind why people offend. The impact on crime will depend on other parts of the criminal justice system. Police performance, court backlogs and the nature of high-volume offending such as shoplifting and online fraud will all have much more immediate effects on crime levels than tinkering around the edges of sentencing.

Short sentences achieve very little beyond disrupting peoples’ lives and relationships and making it more difficult to find housing and employment, both of which are strongly correlated with re-offending rates. If probation copes with the additional workload, if recall rates do not skyrocket, and judges and magistrates stick to the ask, then the reforms could result in a more sustainable prison system that causes less harm than it currently does – that should be better for everyone.

Jake Phillips does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Will ending short prison sentences fix prison overcrowding? What an expert thinks – https://theconversation.com/will-ending-short-prison-sentences-fix-prison-overcrowding-what-an-expert-thinks-278927

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Christopher Saville, Clinical Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology and Sport Science, Bangor University

Life expectancy in the UK has risen dramatically since the Industrial Revolution. For more than a century, people lived increasingly long and healthy lives. But around the turn of the millennium, that progress began to slow.

In 2015, economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton published a landmark study showing something unexpected. From the late 1990s onwards, death rates among middle-aged white Americans without university degrees had started to rise. Three causes of death were driving the trend: suicide, drug overdoses and alcohol-related disease. Case and Deaton called these “deaths of despair” and they have been a topic of research in public health ever since.

Although deaths of despair were originally thought to be a specifically American problem, researchers have been concerned that similar patterns exist elsewhere. New research from my colleague Eurwen Williams and myself suggests they do. And in England and Wales, they are particularly common in one type of place: former coal mining communities.

Coal once powered the UK’s economy. At its peak in 1920, the industry employed more than 5% of the entire UK workforce. Mining shaped towns and villages across England, Wales and Scotland. Work was hard, but it provided stable employment and strong communities. That began to change in the late 20th century.

Competition from imported coal, the shift to oil and gas, and political conflict between miners and government accelerated the industry’s decline. The confrontation reached its peak during the 1984 to 1985 miners’ strike against the government of Margaret Thatcher.

Within a generation, most mines had closed. For many coalfield communities, the economic shock was profound. Jobs disappeared. Local economies struggled to recover. And many areas have never fully recovered. We wanted to understand whether this long economic transition has left a lasting mark on public health.

For our study we examined whether deaths of despair are more common in former coal mining areas than elsewhere. To do this, we linked death registration data from the Office for National Statistics with historical records of coal mines and the dates they closed. This allowed us to compare mortality rates between areas with a history of coal mining and those without.

We analysed deaths between 2015 and 2023 and looked specifically at three causes – suicide, alcohol-related deaths and drug poisoning. What we found was striking.

Across England and Wales, deaths of despair were consistently higher in communities that once relied on coal mining. Alcohol-related deaths were particularly elevated. In some coalfield areas, they were between 27% and 52% higher than in places without a mining history.

Drug poisoning deaths were also much more common, running 23% to 53% higher than elsewhere. While suicide rates were higher too, the difference was smaller, roughly 7% to 19% higher. Perhaps most striking was the fact that these patterns appeared even in places where coal mining ended more than 50 years ago.

More than just poverty

At first glance, it may seem obvious why this happens. Former coalfield areas tend to be poorer than other parts of the country. Poverty is closely linked to poorer health.

But when we adjusted our analysis to account for differences in deprivation, something interesting happened. The gaps became smaller but they didn’t disappear.

Former coal mining communities still had significantly higher rates of alcohol-related deaths and drug poisoning. Suicide rates also remained elevated in areas where mines closed more recently. In other words, poverty alone cannot explain the pattern. Something deeper appears to be at work.

The legacy of industrial decline can shape communities in ways that standard economic measures struggle to capture. The loss of stable employment, the weakening of social institutions and long-term uncertainty about the future can all leave lasting effects. These pressures may contribute to the kinds of distress that lead to deaths of despair.

A wider pattern of health inquality

Our findings fit with a growing body of research on health in former coalfield communities. Previous studies have found higher rates of mental health problems in these areas. Others have identified other public health issues, including greater use of anabolic steroids and lower uptake of COVID-19 vaccines.

Taken together, these studies suggest the effects of deindustrialisation can persist for decades. Coal may be gone, but the consequences remain.

The decline of coal is one of the clearest examples in modern Britain of how economic transitions can reshape communities. It shows how the effects of industrial change can outlive the industries themselves.

Many economists believe the world may be entering another major economic shift. Advances in artificial intelligence are already beginning to reshape parts of the labour market.

History suggests these transitions need to be managed carefully. For decades, the UK has often relied on markets to absorb economic shocks, with limited industrial strategy to support the places most affected. But our findings highlight what can happen when communities face large economic changes without timely support.

The story of Britain’s coalfields is not just about the past. It is a reminder that economic transitions leave deep marks on people and places. And if we want to avoid repeating those mistakes, we need to learn from them.

Christopher Saville has received funding from the British Academy, for work on coalfield health.

– ref. Why ‘deaths of despair’ are higher in former coal mining communities – https://theconversation.com/why-deaths-of-despair-are-higher-in-former-coal-mining-communities-278173

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jenny Hall, Associate Professor in Tourism and Events, York St John University

At the end of the day, as the sky begins to darken, many people instinctively retreat indoors, turn on the lights and miss the arrival of dusk.

A small but growing movement suggests people can benefit from doing the opposite: stepping outside and observing the slow transition from day to night. This practice, often described as “dusking”, involves watching the light start to disappear, noticing the changing colours of the sky, the emergence of evening sounds, and the quiet rhythms that mark the close of the day.

This practice is rooted in historical traditions found in places as diverse as the Netherlands and parts of Africa. The idea has recently been revived by artist Lucy Wright and by Dutch poet Marjolijn van Heemstra among others.

Wright performs a style of Morris dance that encourages participants “to dance the old sun down”, drawing attention to the moment when daylight fades.

Van Heemstra describes dusking as taking time to simply watch the sunset and the gradual fading of light as a way of reconnecting with natural rhythms. In a world dominated by relentless digital stimulation, she believes that taking time to look at the sky can help restore awareness of our surroundings. She now organises regular dusking events across the Netherlands. “All you need is a chair and a view,” she said.

Across cultures, dusk marks the shift from activity to rest, from work to home, and from light to darkness; a boundary where social rhythms change. These in-between moments can invite reflection on the environment.

Across many cultures, dusk has also been associated with uncertainty and imagination. The fading of light has long been linked to folklore, ghost stories and childhood fears of the dark, moments when the familiar landscape becomes slightly unfamiliar.

When the sun goes down

Dusk also marks a particular point in the daily rhythm of the natural world. Many species become active during this transitional period, including bats leaving their roosts to hunt, while moths and other nocturnal insects begin to fly, and mammals such as deer, foxes, and hedgehogs emerge to forage. Biologists often study dawn and dusk because animal behaviour shifts notably during these times of the day.

The idea behind dusking aligns with studies indicating that briefly focusing on natural surroundings can enhance wellbeing and relaxation. Simply observing changes in light, sound, and atmosphere may also encourage a shift from the constant hustle of the work day to winding down, potentially moving people towards sleep.

Sounds of twilight

In our research, carried out in the North York Moors National Park, participants said that while walking at twilight, or in darkness, they became more aware of natural smells and sounds. The group noticed the transitions from daytime birdsong, with the robin last to tweet, to nighttime animal sounds and the hoot of an owl. These moments frequently produced quiet reflection.

In the last century, the places where people can experience darkness have reduced dramatically because of increasing artificial light glow from homes and office buildings. Now only 10% of the people living in the western hemisphere experience places with dark skies, where there is no, or little, artificial light. And the number of people who can see the Milky Way is reducing all the time.

Previous generations were more accustomed to navigating in low light, using their senses to move through landscapes after sunset. Today, this sensory knowledge has become increasingly rare in our artificially illuminated world.

Artificial lighting frequently masks the subtle environmental cues that once dictated the rhythm of everyday life. Noticing dusk, even briefly, can bring those rhythms back into focus.

The sky darkens, the air cools, birds shift their calls, and the world moves quietly toward night.

To quote the 18th-century poet Thomas Gray: “Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight. And all the air a solemn stillness holds.”

Of course, watching the sunset is hardly a new idea as Gray’s poem shows, but one it seems we may have forgotten to value to our detriment.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Dusking is a trend aimed at helping people switch off at the end of the day. How does it work? – https://theconversation.com/dusking-is-a-trend-aimed-at-helping-people-switch-off-at-the-end-of-the-day-how-does-it-work-277814