Cat or dog person?
Leah Michelle Baines and Jessica Lee Oliva of James Cook University in Australia say they have found that people who own dogs tend to be more resilient than those who own cats. They have also reported that people who own cats tend to be more neurotic than people who own dogs.
Writing in Anthrozoösthey say, “Contrary to our expectations, no other personality differences were found among pet owners… The findings suggest that personality factors may explain why people who choose to have dogs fare better than those who choose not to have dogs during difficult times in society. isolation, which may be unrelated to the animal itself.’
Dimensioning satisfaction
Much of science depends on the question, “how can I measure this thing (whatever this thing is) accurately, precisely, and reliably to get information about it.” That question almost screams out – maybe in ecstasy, maybe in agony, maybe in shock – from a piece of research that reader Nicolas Clairis brought to Feedback’s attention.
“Do sex toys satisfy me? Use of sex toys in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, France and the United Kingdom” was published by Gert Martin Hald, Silvia Pavan and Camilla S. Øverup Journal of Sex Research.
How, Feedback has woken up at night wondering, could this satisfaction be measured in someone other than oneself? Measured in a way that you feel confident that the answer is accurate and true?
Seemingly undaunted by the problem, Hald, Pavan and Øverup left. They hit it more than a thousand times. 10 times over a thousand times. They looked for metrics like “11,944 respondents from six European countries.”
Feedback here questions the details of how the team obtained and interpreted the 11,944 responses. If the temptation is too much for you to resist, go read the paper. Let us know if you find its climactic conclusion satisfying.
The coffee controversy
Nothing gets the kidneys pumping like coffee does, and nothing gets the hearts and minds of kidney researchers pumping like the kidney/coffee question. Kidney International Reports Sometimes he treats his readers to boluses of opinion and data on this from researchers who seem emotionally primed and pumped up.
A two-part question prompts this action: How exactly, and exactly how much, does coffee pump the kidneys? A back-and-forth between two teams of US researchersCoffee consumption may reduce the risk of acute kidney injury“. According to its authors, “higher coffee consumption was associated with a lower risk” of kidney problems.
The group analyzed the data collected over a period of three years, and 15,792 middle-aged people indicated how many cups of coffee they thought they had swallowed in the previous year; therefore, they invented 15,792 self-taught. The study compares those invented coffee caps to each person’s record of what it calls “acute kidney injuries,” or AKI, later in life.
A second group responded by “throwing down the name letterLack of association between coffee consumption and AKI-water“. Researchers suggest that drinking, or the lack of drinking, can have devastating effects on the kidneys. They also suggest that the first group may not have fully considered this.
The first group disagreed, and gave an okay-maybe-but-Killer response, citing a study on coffee and dehydration. The main author of that British study: Sophie Killer.
Back and forth, and back and forth, tumultuous discussion. Recently, a third group based in China, South Korea, and the Czech Republic brought feedback back into its usual middle-of-the-road mix. “In short,” says the group’s report, “several contradictory results caffeine intake has been reported to affect renal function”.
Coffee to prevent covid-19
Drinking coffee can have almost any desired medical effect on a person, to some extent. In some cases, this degree is zero. In other cases, it is not.
Chen-Shiou Wu at Taiwan’s Chinese Medical University and colleagues conducted experiments that “led to the publication of a study titledCoffee as a dietary strategy to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection“.
Their first experiment asked whether coffee could prevent the SARS-CoV-2 virus from infecting human embryonic kidney cells grown in a laboratory. They then drew and experimented with the blood of 64 coffee drinkers. The cell work and the drinker work, combined, led to some optimistic suggestions.
The team reported that the ideal time line for coffee to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 infection is within 6 hours. “Taken together,” they say, “drinking 1-2 cups of caffeine (or even) decaffeinated caffeine daily strongly reduces SARS-CoV-2 infection, including wild-type, Alpha, Delta, and Omicron variants.” These probabilities “could serve as guidelines for dietary health in coexistence with SARS-CoV-2.”
At most, it can be an effective and simple treatment that everyone is looking for. At least, coffee is as effective against covid-19 as it is against most other diseases.
Marc Abrahams founded the Ig Nobel Prize and founded the journal Annals of Improbable Research. Earlier, he worked on unusual ways to use computers. It’s his website likely.com
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