Start the day with what went right.

At the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in London this July, a room full of researchers watched a video of a nonscientist named Isabel Beltre thanking, in Spanish, both her faith and a clinical trial for changing her life 18. Beltre was one of 1,200 participants aged 60 to 77 in LatAm-FINGERS, the...

Pictureda group of older adults exercising together outdoors · RDNE Stock project (via Pexels)

For most of animal history, creatures reproduced and left their offspring to fend for themselves. A new Nature study out of Rockefeller University suggests caregiving may not have required evolution to build anything new at all 15.

Picturedants tending larvae inside their nest · Petr Ganaj (via Pexels)

Drawing on the 2024 National Survey Investigating Hallucinogenic Trends, a nationally representative dataset, researchers found that adults who use psilocybin alongside alcohol report fewer depressive symptoms than adults who drink but don't use psilocybin 36. The study, published in the Journal of Drug Issues...

Pictureda person walking through a forest foraging · cottonbro studio (via Pexels)

In 2013 and 2014, poachers killed 27 rhinos a year in Assam, India, home to the world's largest population of greater one-horned rhinoceroses 119. In 2022, the state recorded zero rhino poaching for the first time since 1977, its first poaching-free year in 45 years.

Pictureda greater one-horned rhinoceros in Kaziranga National Park · Madhumita7 (Wikimedia Commons)

Conventional topological photonic chips only carry light along their edges, wasting most of the material in between, like a road surrounded by wide, useless safety barriers 83. Researchers in China redesigned the structure so nearly the whole chip does useful work: a honeycomb lattice built from magnetic rods...

Pictureda fiber optic cable glowing with colored light · Suki Lee (via Pexels)

Maria Popova gathered ten writers and thinkers, spanning more than a century, on what it actually means to grow old in a culture built around youth 132. Classicist Jane Ellen Harrison, writing decades ago, dismantled the wistfulness of wanting to be young again in a single line: asked whether she'd like a second...

PicturedUrsula K. Le Guin · Wikimedia Commons / Ursula K. Le Guin