Never too early, never too late.

Tim joined us for tonight’s CSAR lecture.  Prof Kay-Tey Khaw talking about the EPIC research project:  1/2m people studied across Europe for the past 25 years, 25k of whom are in Norfolk, looking into the effects of ageing, chronic disease etc. While suggesting that  outcomes may be influenced by modifiable lifestyle factors, it is obviously  difficult to separate out correlation and causation even with huge samples.  One odd startling bit of information was that inactivity has a greater adverse effect on certain aspects of health than smoking!  Another was that almost all of the longer life spans we are experiencing these days are made up of extra unhealthy years.  Yet another was that improving lifestyle appears to have a greater or lesser effect depending on when one starts (correlation/causation alert!), but the sooner the better - 'Never too early and never too late'.  It was good to hear this from the scientists involved rather than the garbled and consequently implausible versions that dominate in the mass media.

The difference between the colour of the heartwood and sapwood in laburnum must be one of the most striking of any wood.  Might it indicate that the inner sapwood ring converts to darker heartwood all at once in a single year without any gradual change?  Does it convert after a fairly predictable/consistent number of years of growth?  memo: I must count the sapwood rings of the logs of different diameter/age.