What the scientists are saying…
Active people like a drink
People who keep fit are more likely to drink alcohol than their sedentary peers – possibly because they reward themselves for taking exercise, a study has found. Scientists at the Cooper Institute, in Texas, analysed data on almost 40,000 people ranging in age from 20 to 86. The volunteers answered questions about their alcohol intake and ran on a treadmill to demonstrate their cardiorespiratory fitness. They were deemed light drinkers if they had fewer than three drinks a week, and heavy drinkers if they had more than seven a week for women, and 14 for men. Moderately fit women were found to be 58% more likely than their unfit counterparts to report drinking heavily, while the most fit female volunteers were more than twice as likely to report heavy drinking. Very fit men were 63% more likely to drink heavily than their least fit peers. The authors suggested that this link may be due to a phenomenon known as the “licensing effect”, where we allow ourselves to indulge after being virtuous.
Face masks help stop Covid
Face masks are the single most effective public-health measure to stop the spread of Covid-19, according to a new review of existing evidence. Researchers at Monash University in Australia analysed the results of six studies involving real-world settings, and found that wearing face masks was associated with a 53% drop in the incidence of the disease. The meta analysis also found that social distancing was effective: it was associated with a 25% reduction in infection. Handwashing was associated with reductions, but the study notes that the research on this subject was not of a high quality. In their paper in the BMJ, the researchers conclude that
“personal and social measures, including handwashing, mask wearing and physical distancing are effective at reducing the incidence of Covid-19”; however, they cautioned that they had not established causal links. They also said that more detailed studies were needed to establish the effectiveness of other measures, such as lockdowns and school closures. Separately, a Cambridge University study found that if a maskless individual coughs, they have the potential, even outdoors, to spread infection to a person standing more than two metres away from them.
A successor to the Hubble
A £7.5bn successor to the famous Hubble telescope is due to be launched into space by the end of the year. The James Webb Space Telescope, named after a Nasa administrator, is the biggest and most powerful ever built: it will analyse gas on planets beyond our solar system and will be able to look back in time more than 13.5 billion years. Its developers, at Nasa, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, hope that it will detect the first stars to have lit up the cosmos. The Webb, as it’s known, is sensitive enough to pick up the light of a candle on one of Jupiter’s moons. Its launch into orbit from French Guiana was initially scheduled to take place last week, and is now expected on 22 December.
The carbon stores we can’t lose
Scientists have drawn up detailed maps pinpointing the natural “carbon vaults” whose loss would be most catastrophic for the planet. Found on six continents, they include the Amazonian canopy; the rich peatlands of the Congo Basin and Northern Europe; the mangrove swamps found on the coast of Australia; and in the US Everglades, and the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest of America. According to the study, these and other ecosystems like them contain 139 billion tonnes of carbon that is “irrevocable”, because were they to be destroyed by agriculture, fire or industries such as mining, it would take decades, or even centuries, for them to regenerate. The researchers found that four billion tonnes of this irrevocable carbon has already been lost; and as temperatures rise owing to climate change, it seems inevitable that more will be lost to forest fires, creating a negative feedback loop. But there is some room for optimism, they said, because half of what is left is concentrated in just 3.3% of the world’s land – and so with targeted conservation efforts, much could be achieved. “Ecosystems with high densities or quantities of irrecoverable carbon should be considered ‘unconvertible’, or ‘unexploitable’,” the authors said.