What the scientists are saying...
Antibody treatment to go on trial
A new “antibody cocktail” that could give vulnerable people immediate protection from Covid-19 is about to be trialled in Britain, says The Daily Telegraph. Developed by pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, it is aimed at patients with weakened immune systems, who cannot be vaccinated. Around 350,000 people in Britain alone fall into that category. If it proves safe and effective, the treatment could protect them for as long as six months. Moreover, unlike vaccines, which can take a few weeks to confer protection, it should work immediately – which means it could be used to protect people from outbreaks in settings such as residential care homes and cruise ships. “Imagine a cruise ship that has an outbreak where half the people have been vaccinated and half haven’t,” said AstraZeneca’s Sir Mene Pangalos. “You’d be able to go and immunise the whole cruise ship with this antibody and everyone would be protected straight away.” However, the drug will be far more expensive than vaccines, costing hundreds of pounds per treatment.
Vegans may be prone to fractures
Vegans are known to enjoy certain health advantages over meat- and dairy-eaters, including a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease. But their diet can, it seems, make them more vulnerable to bone fractures. Scientists at Oxford University tracked 55,000 people in Britain, including 1,982 vegans, and found that vegans suffered 43% more fractures overall than meateaters. And they were more than twice as likely to fracture their hips. In total, it amounted to 20 more fractures per 1,000 people over a ten-year period, said Dr Tammy Tong, of the Nuffield Department of Population Health. She and her colleagues suspect that lower intakes of calcium and protein are mainly to blame; they advise vegans to monitor their intake of these nutrients – and to take dietary supplements where necessary.
Microplastics on Everest
Two years ago, microplastics were found at the lowest point on Earth: the Pacific Ocean’s 36,201ft-deep Mariana Trench. Now they’ve been discovered very close to the highest point. Scientists from the University of Plymouth analysed snow samples from 11 locations on Mount Everest, ranging from 17,388ft to 27,690ft (around 1,339ft from the summit). Microplastic fibres (particles less than 5mm in size) were discovered in all those locations. The average concentration was 30 particles per litre of snow; however, this rose to 119 particles per litre in the sample from closest to Base Camp. The scientists suspect that much of the plastic comes from mountaineers’ clothing, tents and ropes. Some, however, is likely to have landed on Everest in snowfall: previous research has shown that plastic particles can be borne on the wind, and attach themselves to falling snow. “Everest is somewhere I have always considered remote and pristine,” said lead researcher Dr Imogen Napper. “To know we are polluting near the top of the tallest mountain is a real eye-opener.”
The women who went out to hunt
When archaeologists found a set of 9,000year-old human bones, buried next to a stack of spears high in the Chilean Andes, they assumed they had stumbled on the remains of a high-status hunter. “Everybody was talking about how this was a great chief, a big man,” Asst Prof Randy Haas, of the University of California, told Science. But then one of his colleagues noticed that the bones were rather small and slim to have belonged to a man. Now the team has reported that the remains are, in fact, those of a woman. The discovery would seem to be a clear challenge to the “man the hunter” hypothesis. This posits that in ancient societies, the men hunted and the woman gathered, and it is bolstered by studies of the few remaining hunter-gatherers, such as the Hadza of Tanzania: Hadza men hunt large animals, while the women gather tubers, fruits and seeds. Intrigued to find that an alternative model may have existed, the team then re-examined reports on 107 other burial sites in the Americas that were more than 8,000 years old, and discovered that their find was not a one-off: at these sites, they found ten females that had been buried alongside pointed projectiles, and 16 men. This, they say, suggests that “early biggame hunting was likely gender-neutral”.