Clare Collins, University of Newcastle
The coronavirus presents many uncertainties, and none of us can completely eliminate our risk of getting COVID-19. But one thing we can do is eat as healthily as possible.
Catherine Keske, University of California, Merced
Many Americans take comfort in the routine of jumping into the car and grabbing a burger. They choose restaurants with familiar faces behind the counter. They even yearn for a favorite “greasy spoon” diner while having to cook for themselves at home during COVID-19.
People feel emotionally attached to food and the routines associated with it. These rituals provide a sense of comfort and belonging – even if the meal is from a fast-food restaurant and they stood in line for it.
Yangyang Xu, Texas A&M University and Xiaohui Xu, Texas A&M University
The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.
Days of extreme high heat and extreme air pollution are both increasing worldwide. Last November, New Delhi experienced a week of the worst air pollution in human history. The entire city shut down and planes couldn’t see well enough to land. Not long before that, Western Europe was slammed with two record-breaking heatwaves that caused the deaths of nearly 1,500 people.
Mark Serreze, University of Colorado Boulder
The Arctic heat wave that sent Siberian temperatures soaring to around 100 degrees Fahrenheit on the first day of summer put an exclamation point on an astonishing transformation of the Arctic environment that’s been underway for about 30 years.
Chris Elliott, Queen’s University Belfast; Chen Situ, Queen’s University Belfast, and Claire McEvoy, Queen’s University Belfast
Hidden hunger affects over two billion people, globally. The cause is a chronic lack of essential micro-nutrients in the diet, such as vitamins and minerals. The effects of these nutritional deficiencies may not be seen immediately, but the consequences can be severe. They include lower resistance to disease, mental impairment and even death.
While many of the cases of hidden hunger are found in developing countries, this phenomenon is also a growing public health concern in developed countries. For example, iodine deficiency is the most common cause of preventable mental impairment and the UK ranks seventh among the ten most iodine-deficient nations. And data from the US shows that more than one in four children lacks calcium, magnesium or vitamin A, and more than one in two children are deficient in vitamin D and E.
Paul Brock Photography/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND
Gary Fuller, King’s College London
Fireworks are great fun. We all enjoy guessing the colours of the rockets before they ignite in the sky, hearing the explosions echo off nearby buildings, or writing our names in light with hand sparklers.
But there is an environmental price to pay. Firework smoke is rich in tiny metal particles. These metals make firework colors, in much the same way as Victorian scientists identified chemicals by burning them in a Bunsen flame; blue from copper, red from strontium or lithium, and bright green or white from barium compounds.
Donna Hauser, University of Alaska Fairbanks; Harry Stern, University of Washington, and Kristin Laidre, University of Washington
Most Americans associate fall with football and raking leaves, but in the Arctic this season is about ice. Every year, floating sea ice in the Arctic thins and melts in spring and summer, then thickens and expands in fall and winter.
As climate change warms the Arctic, its sea ice cover is declining. This year scientists estimate that the Arctic sea ice minimum in late September covered 1.77 million square miles (4.59 million square kilometers), tying the sixth lowest summertime minimum on record.
Elizabeth Englander, Bridgewater State University
About three years ago, a teenage girl was talking with me and other students about using her cell phone late at night. She told us how she waited until her parents were asleep, then spent at least four hours every night texting with her friends. Her parents thought she was asleep in bed. “I’d sleep a few hours, then get up at 6am,” she told me. “My parents always thought I had slept through the night and was just the first one up.” The kicker? She reported doing this virtually every night.
David J. Peters, Iowa State University
Rural areas seemed immune as the coronavirus spread through cities earlier this year. Few rural cases were reported, and attention focused on the surge of illnesses and deaths in the big metro areas. But that false sense of safety is now falling apart as infection rates explode in rural areas across the country.
Rachel Morello-Frosch, University of California, Berkeley; Joan A. Casey, Columbia University Medical Center; Kathy Tran, University of California, Berkeley, and Lara Cushing, San Francisco State University
The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.
In a California study, we found that pregnant women living near active high-production oil and gas wells have an elevated chance of having low birth-weight babies. This finding adds to a growing body of research on potential public health impacts from oil and gas operations.
