A viral risk for young vapers

Teenagers and young adults who use e-cigarettes are up to seven times more likely to be infected with the coronavirus than their nonvaping peers, new research suggests. Stanford University researchers surveyed some 4,300 13- to 24-year-olds for the first nationwide study into the connection between vaping and Covid-19 in young people. Those who had used e-cigarettes were five times more likely to have been diagnosed with Covid-19 than those who hadn’t, while respondents who’d used both e-cigarettes and regular cigarettes within the previous 30 days were 6.8 times more likely to be diagnosed. “We were surprised,” senior author Bonnie Halpern-Felsher tells NBCNews.com. “We expected to maybe see some relationship, but certainly not at the odds ratios and the significance that we’re seeing it here.” Several factors may be at play. Vaping can damage lungs and hamper the immune system, making each exposure to the coronavirus more likely to trigger an infection. Many behaviors associated with vaping—hand-to-mouth contact, sharing e-cigs—are also risky in a pandemic.

of images snapped by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft suggests Ceres is in fact an “ocean world” with a vast subterranean reservoir of seawater. Dawn orbited the asteroid from 2015 to 2018 and captured high-resolution shots of the 20 million–year-old Occator crater while flying 22 miles above the surface. Previous studies highlighted deposits on the crater that hinted at the presence of salty water below ground. Using infrared imaging, researchers spotted the compound hydrohalite—a material common in sea ice that has never previously been seen beyond Earth. The deposits likely built up in the past 2 million years, and the brine may still be ascending from Ceres’ interior. Lead author Maria Cristina De Sanctis tells Agence France-Presse it is an “extremely important” discovery because the minerals are “essential for the emergence of life.”