What the scientists are saying…
Nuclear testing in the Cold War era created rainy weather in countries thousands of miles away, including in Scotland, researchers have discovered. During the 1950s and 1960s, atomic tests were carried out in remote locations across the world – from the Nevada desert to the Arctic – causing radioactive pollution to spread through the atmosphere. Scientists have long suspected that charged particles emitted during radioactive decay may cause water droplets to coalesce, increasing the volume of rainfall. To test the hypothesis, scientists from the University of Reading compared rainfall records from the Shetland islands between 1962 and 1964 with data on radioactivity levels over Britain. On days when radioactivity was high, the clouds above the Shetlands were thicker than normal and, on average, each downfall produced 24% more rain. The team hope the finding can be used to help combat the effects of global warming. “We obviously want to steer well away from using nuclear bombs, but the concept that you can inject droplets with an electrical charge could be used to address rainfall shortages in desert areas,” study co-author Dr Graeme Marlton told The Times.
When faced with life-changing choices, people tend to be quite cautious – preferring to stick with the status quo than take a leap into the unknown. But a new study has found that fortune very often favours the bold. Steven Levitt, professor of economics at the University of Chicago and co-author of the bestselling book
set up a website that offered to toss a virtual coin to help people struggling with “life decisions”. Over the course of a year, 22,000 people posed the
Freakonomics,
site a range of dilemmas, from “Should I quit my job?”, and “Should I go back to college?” to “Should I break up with my partner?” Follow-up surveys revealed that those who’d got heads in the coin flip – make the change – were 25% more likely to have ultimately opted for change than those who’d got tails; and that six months later, the participants who’d changed their lives were significantly happier, and had fewer regrets, than those who’d stayed on the path they were on (regardless of what the coin had said). The study had several limitations, including the fact that its subjects, recruited on social media, tended to be highly educated young people familiar with Even so, Levitt believes its findings have general applicability, in the right circumstances. “A good rule of thumb in decision-making is, whenever you cannot decide what you should do, choose the action that represents a change,” he said.
Freakonomics.
Training algae to withstand warmer waters could help protect coral reefs from climate change, scientists have claimed. Algae live in the cells of coral polyps, and provide them with energy. When sea temperatures rise, coral becomes stressed and expels the algae – causing “bleaching” events such as the ones that have damaged swathes of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. But the new study suggests that the more heat-resistant algae are, the less likely coral is to bleach. Researchers heated algae in a lab until they showed signs of being heat-resistant. They then mixed them with coral larvae, and heated the mix to 31°C for one week. This temperature is known to cause bleaching, yet the coral remained healthy. “We found that the heat-tolerant microalgae are better at photosynthesis and improve the heat response of the coral animal,” said Prof Madeleine van Oppen, from the University of Melbourne. The researchers hope that large amounts of heat-resistant algae could be grown in aquaculture facilities and then implanted into damaged reef systems.
Antarctica is turning green, as warmer weather encourages algae to bloom on the snow. New research, based on satellite surveys and field work, has shown that in the summer, 1,679 blooms of snow algae covered up to 0.7 sq miles of Antarctica. It seems the algae thrive when it is warm enough for the snow to be slushy, and there is a source of nutrients for them to feed on – in this case, penguin guano. The impact of the greening is not clear, however. These blooms are estimated to capture 479 tonnes of CO from the atmosphere each year. On the other hand, they also darken the snow, causing more of the sun’s heat to be absorbed.