Scientific news in small doses

A few milligrams of all the scientific news of the week.

Eric-Pierre Champagne
The Press

The advantage of “blue spaces”

Spending part of your childhood at the beach or near a lake or river provides wonderful memories, but also improves your well-being once you become an adult. This is the conclusion of a study recently published in The Journal of Environmental Psychology. Over 15,000 participants in 18 countries were assessed by researchers at the University of Exeter, UK. In particular, the researchers found that children who had been exposed to these “blue spaces” showed a greater interest in natural environments once they became adults. According to the authors, public policies promoting better access to these spaces during childhood can improve long-term mental health.

Quiz

Does Birdsong Improve Mood?

Between the chirping of birds and the ambient noise of road traffic, the choice seems obvious. However, European researchers wanted to verify the impact of these sounds on the mental health of humans. According to their study published in Scientific Reports, traffic noise “was associated with a significant increase in depression.” This decreased with birdsong, but only if participants were exposed to a wide variety of songs. Bird vocalizations significantly reduced anxiety symptoms.

The number

25 kilometers

How fast are trees in the boreal forest migrating north since the last ice age? In the case of black spruce, this migration took place at a rate of 25 kilometers per century. The pace was slower for jack pine, at 19 kilometers every 100 years. Work directed by Professor Serge Payette, of Laval University, has established that these two species reached their current range approximately 6,000 years ago. Due to climate change, the researchers estimate that black spruce could continue to progress northward over the next few years, unlike jack pine. The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Beware of electric SUVs

The electric car is less polluting than a gasoline model if it remains light, with a battery of “reasonable capacity” and therefore a limited autonomy, underlined the French Agency for Ecological Transition (ADEME) in a notice published recently. Over its entire lifespan, an electric car driving in France has a carbon impact two to three times lower than that of a similar thermal model, provided that its battery is less than 60 kWh, i.e. the equivalent of a Peugeot e208 or a Renault Mégane at most or even a Nissan Leaf or Leaf Plus, with ranges of around 400 kilometres. With a larger, much heavier battery, “the environmental interest is not guaranteed”, explained ADEME to Agence France-Presse.

Electricity: a shift for 87 countries

According to an analysis conducted by the Bloomberg agency, 87 countries have truly started a green shift when at least 5% of their electricity production comes from renewable energies. China is one of the nations where the energy transition is taking place the fastest, despite the fact that coal still occupies an important place there. As of last year, renewables account for 20% of electricity generation in the United States. At this rate, this proportion could increase to 50% within 10 years in the country of Uncle Sam, estimates the American agency.