WEIRD STUFF

Morning coffee said to lower heart risk

Research suggests that people who consumed coffee in the morning were less at risk of dying from cardiovascular disease and had a lower mortality risk than all-day coffee drinkers.

However, there was no difference between participants who drank coffee throughout the day and those who had none at all.

Lu Qi, lead author of the study at Tulane University in Louisiana, said: "Our findings indicate that it's not just whether you drink coffee or how much you drink, but the time of day when you drink coffee that's important.

"We don't typically give advice about timing in our dietary guidance, but perhaps we should be thinking about this in the future."

Qi added: "A possible explanation is that consuming coffee in the afternoon or evening may disrupt circadian rhythm and levels of hormones, such as melatonin. This, in turn, leads to changes in cardiovascular risk factors, such as inflammation and blood pressure.

"Further studies are needed to validate our findings in other populations."

----------------

UK prepares bubonic plague vaccine

Scientists are developing a Black Death vaccine amid concerns that the ancient disease could re-emerge. Researchers behind the COVID jab believe that their inoculation will be the first approved in the UK to combat the infection -- which is also known as bubonic plague.

The Black Death has killed 200 million people around the world in the past, and doctors are worried that a super-strength version could appear and claim even more lives.

A trial of the vaccine on 40 healthy adults began in 2021 and has shown that the jab is safe, although the results will be assessed by global experts before testing continues this year.

Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, told the Daily Telegraph newspaper: "There are no licensed plague vaccines in the UK. Antibiotics are the only treatment. There are some licensed vaccines in Russia.

"The risk in the UK is currently very low. Previous historical pandemics that had high mortality were associated with initiation from fleas on rodents but were driven by person-to-person spread."

-----------------

Whales have long-distance relationships

Experts who studied the seemingly random movements of bowhead whales in the Arctic Ocean found that they synchronise dives with their fellow creatures up to 60 miles away.

Scientists analysed 144 days of diving records of 12 of the whales tagged in West Greenland and found two diving "in synchrony".

The duo -- one female and another of unknown sex -- were sometimes hundreds of kilometres apart, but would closely time their dives for up to a week.

Professor Evgeny Podolskiy of Hokkaido University in Japan said: "The possibility of acoustically connected whales, which seem to be diving alone but are actually together, is mind-bending."

Although the whales were in each other's acoustic range, the researchers were unable to record the sounds of the animals to establish if they were interacting, because it remains technically challenging.