In 1996, cryobiologist Gregory Fahy walked into his doctor’s office and got a monthly supply of growth hormone. Your hope, reinforced by a single study in rats1was that the injections would help him grow his thymus, a peculiar immune organ that atrophies and virtually disappears as people age. Regenerating it, Fahy thought, would help it
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I have studied climate tipping points.1 for more than 20 years, and I am increasingly concerned that scientists have overlooked the most dangerous aspect of these for societies. The possible collapse of important parts of the Earth system (from ice sheets to ocean circulations) will profoundly alter the planet’s warming and tilt it irreversibly toward
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The Mayan temple of Tikal in Guatemala is about a day’s walk from Xultun, where researchers discovered mathematical formulas scrawled on the walls.Credit: Kryssia Campos/Getty A mathematical formula inscribed on a wall at the Mayan site of Xultún in Guatemala has revealed for the first time the name of an important Mayan mathematician and astronomer.
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Is a river alive? Robert Macfarlane Penguin (2026) Turn off your headlamp in the Los Cedros cloud forest in Ecuador and the darkness begins to shine. Fallen branches and tree stumps glow a soft silvery yellow, illuminated by webs of fungi beneath the forest floor. It is a fascinating opening to the work of writer
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Editor’s Note: Today’s story is the answer to the July Puzzle. Call it an alluvial showdown. At the southern tip of Severny Island in the Russian Arctic, rivers descend from rugged terrain flanking a wide valley. Upon reaching flatter terrain, the waters slow down and distribute the sediments in the shape of cones called alluvial
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Researchers found a four-carbon sugar called erythrulose in a cloud of gas and dust at the center of the Milky Way (Spitzer Space Telescope image shown here).Credit: NASA, Caltech, Susan Stolovy (SSC, Caltech) Call it an extra sweet discovery. Astronomers have detected a sugar molecule swirling within a cloud of gas and dust near the
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