What the scientists are saying…

Fibre could be a lifesaver Most Britons could substantially reduce their risk of developing a host of serious diseases by making a few simple tweaks to their diets, a new meta-analysis suggests. Commissioned by the World Health Organisation, this review of the existing evidence concluded that a high-fibre diet, consuming 25-29g a day, is associated with a substantially reduced risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke and colorectal cancers. Yet in Britain, fewer than one in ten adults consume the 30g of fibre per day recommended by the NHS: most adults get only about 18g a day. “Our findings provide convincing evidence for nutrition guidelines to focus on increasing dietary fibre and on replacing refined grains with wholegrains,” said Professor Jim Mann of the University of Otago, New Zealand, who led the Lancet-published study. Fibre can be found in a range of foods, such as porridge oats, certain breakfast cereals, wholemeal and granary bread, wholewheat pasta, nuts, lentils and some fruits and vegetables, including carrots, broccoli, potatoes with their skins, bananas and apples.

A machine to keep livers alive A machine that can greatly extend the viability of donor livers – and that has the potential to save scores of lives – has been approved for use in the NHS, says The Times. Currently, most livers donated for transplants are stored on ice and become unusable within six to 12 hours. In a perfusion machine – which keeps them at body temperature, while flushing them with blood, oxygen and nutrients, so that the tissue does not deteriorate – they can remain viable for more than 24 hours. As well as extending the “window” for using each organ, the machine means doctors have more time to assess whether damaged livers that might otherwise have to be discarded are, in fact, usable. Some 200 patients are thought to die each year in Britain because of a lack of suitable donors. With NICE having approved the machines, it is now up to NHS clinical commissioning groups to decide whether to invest in them.

Green shoots on the Moon A cotton seed has become the first plant ever to germinate on the Moon. The tiny green sprout emerged from the soil last week, in a biosphere transported to the far side of the Moon in China’s Chang’e 4 probe. The plant-growing experiment had been activated on landing and, according to Chinese media, it was originally due to last 100 days. In the event, it had to be terminated after only nine: while the biosphere had a climate-control system, it first became too hot (surface temperatures on the Moon can reach 120°C) and then impossibly cold, as the lander experienced it first lunar night, and it was sent into “sleep mode”. Even so, the Chinese described the experiment as a success, as it had proved that plants can grow in the low gravity, high radiation of outer space. However, other seeds in the canister did not grow; nor, it seems, did fruit-fly eggs in the canister hatch, though this has not been confirmed.

Wild coffee endangered More than half the known species of coffee plant are at risk of becoming extinct in the wild, scientists have warned, mainly because of deforestation and climate change. Although there are 124 different known species of coffee, the beans of only two are used to make the coffee we drink – Coffea Arabica and Coffea robusta. These plants are both cultivated on a vast scale, but wild varieties still have a vital role in coffee production. Requiring specific climatic conditions, and vulnerable to pests and pathogens, coffee plants can only be grown in a few areas, and as the world warms, there is a very real risk that commercial crops will start failing. This wouldn’t only be a problem for coffee drinkers; it would also be devastating for coffee-cultivating countries (Ethiopia, for instance, accounts for only 3% of the global supply, but 15 million Ethiopians are involved in coffee production, and coffee is one of its largest sources of foreign income). That’s where the wild species come in, say the study’s authors, from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew: among the threatened species are some with particular genetic traits – making them more tolerant of drought and more resistant to disease – that we may need to breed the coffee plants of the future.