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Today:
47-Year Study Reveals The Age We Hit Our Physical Peak
NEWS | 06 February 2026
Even if physical activity won't help us delay our peak, it can make a difference in how rapidly our abilities deteriorate, the study suggests. Previous research on elite athletes has shown that, despite continuous training, physical performance typically peaks by about age 30. By age 63, participants' overall drop from their peak physical capacity ranged from 30 percent to 48 percent. While we may be unable to dodge or delay our physical decline, we can reduce its speed with regular exercise, the authors report. Participants who became more active in adulthood still managed to improve their physical capacity by around 10 percent, the study found.

Top Stories:
Discovery of Mammoth Ivory Tools Resets Human Timeline in North America
NEWS | 06 February 2026
Human-made ivory and stone tools have been found in a 14,000-year-old layer of Alaskan earth, providing evidence of some of the first people to inhabit the Americas. This means the middle Tanana Valley site in Alaska, where the 14,000-year-old tools were discovered, is one of the earliest archaeological sites on the American continents. Mammoth ivory is a signature of the Clovis culture's technology, and the methods used to create the ivory tools in the Tanana Valley site suggest a lineage spanning from Siberia to the Great Plains. In a slightly younger, 13,700-year-old layer, the team discovered a large workshop complete with quartz – essential in creating the mammoth ivory tools – the by-products of mammoth tool production, and the earliest-known ivory rod tools found in the Americas. "Mammoth ivory and lithic material appear to factor prominently in resource circulation throughout eastern Beringia and the eventual dispersal of people further south into the Rocky Mountains and Northern High Plains of North America," the researchers write.

World:
'Burping' Your Home Really Could Be Good For Your Health, Says Expert
NEWS | 06 February 2026
In a previous study, my colleagues and I conducted, we found many diseases linked to indoor air pollution. During the COVID pandemic, public health agencies stressed that better ventilation – including simply opening windows – could help cut the risk of catching the virus indoors. Studies link higher levels of fine particles and carbon dioxide to poorer concentration, slower thinking, and raised risks of anxiety and depression. Treating COPD (a chronic lung disease) from poor indoor air can cost thousands yearly in drugs and hospital stays – a lifelong burden once diagnosed. Opening windows for five minutes in winter loses just pennies in heat.

Current Events:
'Brain-Bone-Axis' May Link Depression With Osteoporosis, Study Claims
NEWS | 06 February 2026
Their conclusion is that the bone-brain axis, once considered a speculative construct, now "represents a legitimate physiological network." Both osteoporosis and depression are common issues among older patients, and often, they go hand in hand. Conversely, patients who have osteoporosis, which is a disorder characterized by low bone mass, tend to have higher rates of depression. The review authors say our traditional view of the mammal skeleton has "fundamentally transformed" in recent years. In other words, the severity of depression and osteoporosis may feed into one another via the bone-brain axis.

News Flash:
Mormon Hair Clippings Preserve Legacy of US Ban on Leaded Gas
NEWS | 06 February 2026
Hair samples preserved in family scrapbooks across the past century have revealed the success of the US Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) efforts to crack down on lead pollution since the 1970s. Now, University of Utah researchers have traced this win for human health through locks of hair passed down through generations. Similarly, Utah's smelters would have added to the levels of lead exposure. Related: Lead Exposure in Childhood Linked to Future Crimes, Study FindsWhile gasoline consumption continued to rise in the US after 1970, lead levels were curtailed by the new EPA regulations. And, in lock-step, lead levels in the Utah hair samples decline around this time, from 50 parts per million (ppm) down to 10 ppm in the 1990s.

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SPONSORED | 06 February 2026
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Latest:
A Pretend Tea Party May Have Revealed a Chimp's Imagination
NEWS | 06 February 2026
Scientists wondered whether Kanzi had the capacity to play pretend – that is, act like something is real while knowing it's not. They poured imaginary juice from a pitcher into two cups, then pretended to empty just one. They asked Kanzi which cup he wanted, and he pointed to the cup still containing pretend juice 68% of the time. But not all scientists are convinced that Kanzi is playing pretend as humans do. "To be convinced of that, I would need to see Kanzi actually pretend to pour water into a container himself," Tomasello wrote in an email.

Breaking:
Baby Giants Were The Fast Food of The Jurassic, Study Reveals
NEWS | 06 February 2026
Baby long-necked dinosaurs might have been the fast food of the Jurassic Period. A detailed food web of the time, reconstructed from fossil data, shows that the young not-yet-giants almost single-handedly supported predator populations of the area. So few, in fact, that baby sauropods might have become one of the most plentiful food sources for Jurassic predators. "Life was cheap in this ecosystem and the lives of predators such as the Allosaurus were likely fueled by the consumption of these baby sauropods." But the most fascinating observation of the food web study was that this abundance of easy meals could explain why evolution appears to have slackened off for a bit.

Trending:
Signs of Mysterious Structures Near The Core Detected in Earth's Magnetic Field
NEWS | 06 February 2026
And this has had a noticeable effect on Earth's magnetic field over the last few hundreds of millions of years at least. Adding the Blobs therefore enabled us to reproduce the observed stable behaviour of Earth's magnetic field over a wider range. The huge Blobs therefore gave rise to characteristic longitudinally varying patterns in the shape and variability of Earth's magnetic field. Most of the time, the shape of Earth's magnetic field is quite similar to that which would be produced by a bar magnet aligned with the planet's rotation axis. This is what makes a magnetic compass point nearly north at most places on Earth's surface, most of the time.

This Just In:
Scientists Scanned a Black Rock From Mars And Found Something Surprising
NEWS | 06 February 2026
In the paper, the researchers use both of these techniques to non-destructively test Black Beauty and see what it held. While non-destructive, they did, admittedly, use only a small sample of the meteorite, which had been previously polished. In geology terms, a clast is just a word for a small rock fragment stuck inside a bigger rock. Black Beauty itself has an estimated 6,000 parts-per-million (ppm) of water, which is extremely high coming from a planet with so little water on it currently. However, the scientists who analyzed it were hoping to use the same non-destructive CT techniques on future Mars Sample Return mission samples.

Today:
Record Smashed For Largest Object to Be Seen as a Quantum Wave
NEWS | 06 February 2026
A microscopic clump of sodium has become the largest object ever to be observed as a wave, improving upon previous records by thousands of atoms. In a new study, researchers from the University of Vienna in Austria and the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany report one of the largest objects observed in a superposition. Their experiment shows that even nanoparticles of sodium, each with thousands of individual atoms, follow the rules of quantum mechanics, despite their relatively enormous size. "The fact that it still interferes shows that quantum mechanics is valid even on this scale and does not require alternative models." Known as quantum decoherence, this collapse from a superposition to a definable position may explain why we don't observe quantum mechanics in macroscopic systems.

Top Stories:
Autism Probably Affects Boys And Girls Equally, Massive New Study Reveals
NEWS | 06 February 2026
Autism has historically been viewed as a condition that affects men and boys more frequently than women and girls. But a massive new study based on data from millions of people suggests this isn't actually the case, at least in Sweden. This suggests it's not a case of fewer women having autism: it's just that they aren't diagnosed until later in life. That finding suggests autism isn't actually a predominantly male condition: it just takes longer for girls and women to be diagnosed. There's clearly a lot more to learn about autism, particularly among women and girls.

World:
Wildfires Claim 24,000 Lives in The US Each Year Through Smoke Alone
NEWS | 06 February 2026
"Our message is: Wildfire smoke is very dangerous. Other scientists who have studied the death toll from wildfire smoke were not surprised by the findings. "Nobody's going to have 'wildfire death' on their death certificate unless the fire actually burned them or a tree fell on them or something like that," said Jerrett. They also included deaths related to falls and transport accidents – which are unlikely to be linked to wildfire smoke – to ensure their other observations weren't biased. But he said the county-level data could have led to over- or underestimates because wildfire smoke is very dynamic.

Current Events:
Bacteria at The Back of Your Eye May Be Linked With Alzheimer's Progress
NEWS | 06 February 2026
A common bacterium usually found in the respiratory system appears to be linked to cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease when it's present in the retina. Now, a new study has detected C. pneumoniae in the vision-generating tissue that lines the back of the eye, at higher levels in people with Alzheimer's. Some had Alzheimer's disease, some had mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and some hadn't reported any cognitive problems. They found a clear association between the presence of C. pneumoniae in the eye and brain and having a diagnosis of Alzheimer's. Next, the researchers ran tests using lab-grown neurons and animal models to determine what C. pneumoniae might be doing biologically.

News Flash:
Cholesterol Levels Slashed by 60% in Promising New Pill Trial
NEWS | 06 February 2026
If approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, the pill, named enlicitide, could offer an easier-to-use option for millions of people. In a major study, more than 2,900 high-risk patients were randomly assigned to add a daily enlicitide pill or a dummy drug to their standard treatment. The enlicitide users saw their LDL cholesterol drop by as much as 60 percent over six months, researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. Heart disease is the nation's leading cause of death and high LDL cholesterol, which causes plaque to build up in arteries, is a top risk factor for heart attacks and strokes. Statin pills like Lipitor and Crestor, or their cheap generic equivalents, are highly effective at lowering LDL.