Plant Based Diet Connected to Lower COVID-19 Rates

- Adam Clare

Covid-19 Transmission graphic

It’s been years that we’ve been living with COVID-19 and it looks like we missed the window to fully eradicate it, which means we need to adapt our lifestyles to ensure that rates of transmission are as low as possible. Of course, the obvious things involve collective action like improving indoor air quality and filtration. As an individual you should consider switching to a plant based diet.

Plant-based and vegetarian groups had a higher intake of vegetables, legumes and nuts, and lower intake of dairy and meat. After adjusting for important confounders, such as body mass index, physical activity and pre-existing medical conditions, the plant-based diet and vegetarian group had 39% (OR=0.61, 95%?CI 0.44 to 0.85; p=0.003) and 39% (OR 0.61, 95%?CI 0.42 to 0.88; p=0.009) lower odds of the incidence of COVID-19 infection, respectively, compared with the omnivorous group. No association was observed between self-reported diets and COVID-19 severity or duration.

Conclusion Plant-based and mainly vegetarian diets were associated with a lower incidence of COVID-19 infection. These dietary patterns may be considered protective against COVID-19 infection. (Study protocol registered in CAAE: 54351421.4.0000.0068.)

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Batteries Still Work in Winter

- Adam Clare

The myth that batteries are useless in the winter continues to spread despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. This myth has slowed the uptake of elective vehicles, which is a bad thing. The CEO of a an EV car company is trying their best to dispel that myth and get consumers to understand that batteries do work even when it’s cold outside. In fact, fossil fuel cars which are a direct cause of the climate crisis are worse than EVs in the winter.

“The number of stories that talked about EVs that weren’t operating properly in that time was staggering,” Scaringe said. “There wasn’t a single story about the thousands and thousands of combustion vehicles that didn’t start that morning because of the cold weather.”

While EVs have gotten a bad rap when it comes to cold weather, a recent study showed the challenges that EVs face from extreme cold weather are actually less than those encountered by gas-powered cars, concluding that EVs are “almost twice as good as fossil cars in the cold.”

“The desire to tell a negative story was so strong and so surprising to me — it was so biased,” Scaringe told TCD. “All we can do is continue to try to balance the story with the facts and a true story.”

Of course, the best thing to do is not drive any car; and we should focus on sustainable transportation solutions like bicycles and public transit. Cars are harmful not just because of their emissions.

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Thanks to Micheal!

House Eating Mushrooms are Good for the Planet

- Adam Clare

the suburbs

For the last one hundred years in North America we’ve been building low density energy inefficient housing and now we need to deal with the economic and environmental harm from this approach. In Cleveland they are using mushrooms to deal with housing that is no longer habitable while also cleaning the local environment. Cleveland has a lot of homes left to the elements which are leaking dangerous chemicals into the soil, to address this there’s a company that takes the shreds of a building and converts into a great spot for mycelium to grow. It’s a very novel use of fungi and I’m sure we’ll see more fungi being used to address climate change at a local and even global level.

While digesting entire houses may seem like a mighty task for the humble mushroom, some species’ ability to devour waste and eradicate pollutants – among other characteristics – means they present an oversized opportunity to extract harmful toxins from both our built and natural environments. Along the way they may help to address a spectrum of additional ecological concerns. This is the emerging field of mycoremediation, which researchers assert could also create a “circular bioeconomy” in which less waste and contaminants are produced in the first place.

Its applications are abundant. In Delhi, India, the hope is that fungi will help to clean the infamously polluted air. In New Zealand, mushrooms have been used to filter oil from a canal. Operating across Europe, the LIFE MySOIL project has leveraged mycoremediation to reduce Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons in soil by 90% spanning three pilot sites. The list goes on.

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Thanks to Mike!

Brazilian City Planting Mangroves to Protect Itself Against Climate Change

- Adam Clare

Down in Brazil there’s a city in that is increasing the size of their local mangrove forest to protect itself against raising seas and more intense storms. Mangrove forests are excellent at buffering against storms due to their root systems (and that trees in general are good at slowing storms) and how they start beyond the shore line which reduces coastal erosion. The Greater Florianópolis of Brazil’s program to expand their mangroves is improving the local environment while also helping the city’s coastal economy, it;s a win-win.

As a bonus, mangroves are really good at capturing carbon and putting it in the soil so everyone on earth benefits when Brazilians increase their mangroves.

Master’s students are currently comparing the potential for carbon sequestration and storage in natural mangroves and those growing in the landfills of the Greater Florianópolis area. To do this, they’ve collected soil samples from four mangrove areas: two natural ones and two from the artificially created landfills.

The study aims to find out whether mangroves in the latter, human-generated ecosystem have the same carbon-absorbing capacity as natural ones. “Mangrove soil has a high carbon storage capacity, which is why we chose to focus our main analysis on soil rather than roots and leaves,” says Aline Zanetti, a master’s student working on the project.

Mangroves accumulate 50-90% of their carbon in the soil. The waterlogged soil gives rise to a low-oxygen environment, which means that the organic matter that piles up here — leaves, branches, dead animals — don’t decompose as quickly as they would in the open air, thus keeping the carbon they hold in the soil for longer. It’s this waterlogged property that makes coastal ecosystems much more effective carbon sinks than terrestrial forests. For their study, the researchers will also collect samples of mangrove roots to see if there’s a difference in the carbon stock potential of created and natural mangrove roots.

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Get Your City to Experiment With Joy

- Adam Clare

Table of contents of the Joy Experiments book

A new book wants you to make your city a better place by brining joy into the equation. In The Joy Experiments the authors who work in real estate and architecture argue that we need to have more fun and levity in our cities. In this easy to read book they explore ways they and others have improved their cities through seemingly simple interventions. What’s more – they break down their book into useful chapters (see image above) that you can jump around and read as you like, just like a well-designed city.

Our divided society is quicky reaching crisis level.

We are no longer able to sustain social and economic prosperity nor ensure democracy. Fuelling this crisis is a growing sense of social isolation caused by the divisive nature of social media and the decline of infrastructure that used to bring communities together.

But there is hope for rebuilding our collaborative society, and it is found in our mid-sized urban areas. These towns and cities offer a scale that can tangibly change the quality of our lives and an intimacy that allows us to influence what our communities can become.

Changing cities can change the world!

In The JOY Experiments, real estate developer Scott Higgins and creative mind Paul Kalbfleisch use their own mid-sized city-building experiences to present a new way for citizens to engage with their city and an urban planning strategy that prioritizes infrastructure for the human spirit.

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