As the Institute for the Impact of Faith in Life study found Hindus are at the forefront of environmental activism, British Hindu, Muslim, and Christian participants discuss how they reconcile faith and the environment

Does belief in God make you more environmentally friendly? It depends on which God you believe in.

That’s the conclusion of new research by the Institute for the Impact of Faith in Life (IIFL), which found that British Hindus lead the way in environmental action compared with other faith groups.

Is the goal of a ‘long and lean’ physique promised by influencers attainable? Or does long and lean essentially just mean lean?

Pilates has been hailed as something of a wonder exercise in recent years. Some fans claim the low-impact conditioning workouts can lengthen muscles, leaving participants with longer, leaner physiques. But is that true?

Absolutely not, says Dr Christopher Morse, reader in exercise physiology at Manchester Metropolitan University Institute of Sport. For a start, he says, there’s little evidence to show human muscle fibres can be lengthened by stretching – and if it were possible, it would require putting the muscle under great strain, which pilates doesn’t do. “There is some data that shows you can lengthen muscles,” he says, “but it was performed on the wings of quails with a weight hanging off them for 16 days of continuous stretch.”

A new study suggests it’s possible, but even with gains in shoe technology it may be out of reach – for now

The day before Eliud Kipchoge’s first attempt at a sub-two-hour marathon in 2017, a Nike vice-president described it to me as “a moonshot”. Now, though, the track and field equivalent of landing on Mars is apparently just away.

That was the startling conclusion of a study in the Royal Society Open Science journal last week, which predicted that a woman could shatter the four-minute mile barrier with the help of aerodynamics. Not just any woman but Faith Kipyegon, the Kenyan Olympic 1500m champion and the greatest female middle distance runner in history.

A new study suggests it’s possible, but even with gains in shoe technology it may be out of reach – for now

The day before Eliud Kipchoge’s first attempt at a sub-two-hour marathon in 2017, a Nike vice-president described it to me as “a moonshot”. Now, though, the track and field equivalent of landing on Mars is apparently just away.

That was the startling conclusion of a study in the Royal Society Open Science journal last week, which predicted that a woman could shatter the four-minute mile barrier with the help of aerodynamics. Not just any woman but Faith Kipyegon, the Kenyan Olympic 1500m champion and the greatest female middle distance runner in history.

Get in position

Today I unveil a fantastic new type of Sudoku invented by reader Alf Smith. Like all Sudoku, the digits from 1 to 9 must appear in all rows, columns and boxes.

What’s different in this new variant, however, is that the starting grids have no number clues. Instead, some cells are coloured gold. The extra rule is that the numbers in gold cells must describe the position of that cell in either its row, column or box (read left-to-right, top-to-bottom.)

Award winners and celebrities party into the night on Oscars night in Los Angeles at the Vanity Fair party and the Governors Ball