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Researchers in 2024 may have found evidence of ancient life on Mars through NASA's Perseverance rover, which discovered a rock with white spots that could be linked to microbial life.
NASA’s Perseverance rover discovered leopard spot–like features in this Martian rock (closeup image shown). On Earth, similar structures are associated with microbial life.
Superconductivity may be achieved without frigid conditions, with scientists using a laser to create magnetic fields in a copper and oxygen compound.
Researchers propose that Egypt's first pyramid was built using a water-powered elevator nearly 4,700 years ago, based on a computer model of the Step Pyramid of Djoser.
A midsize black hole may have been spotted in our galaxy, with astronomers suggesting it has a mass of at least 8,200 times that of the sun.
Alzheimer's disease may be transmissible in extremely rare cases, with researchers suggesting that contaminated growth hormone injections could have caused the disease in five patients.
High levels of the protein amyloid-beta — a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease — appear orange and purple in this brain scan of a man with the disease. Childhood exposure to the protein via contaminated growth hormone injections may have led the man to develop Alzheimer’s later in life.
Dark energy may be more complex than previously thought, with new observations suggesting that its density and pressure may change over time, rewriting our understanding of the universe's history.
The one on the growth hormone is quite interesting. Especially in Korea where growth hormone treatments have become a national sport for parents who are worried their kids will be smaller than the others. Even when their kids are completely healthy.
Caveat, the treatment used in this study has (luckily) been discontinued.
The people in the study had all received growth hormone injections as children or teenagers. Used to treat various growth disorders, these hormones were extracted from the pituitary glands of cadavers and combined into batches, a source that is no longer used. Some of these mixtures were later found to be contaminated with prions, infectious, misshapen proteins, that caused a disease called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Globally, more than 200 people were affected. This type of growth hormone treatment stopped in 1985; doctors now use synthetic versions.
(emphasis mine)
Pretty disgusting~~
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Yeah it’s unsettling. Thankfully that old method of using hormones from cadavers was stopped. Definitely a relief that synthetic versions are used now.
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Well, I'd rather take this as an incentive only to consider hormone therapy as a solution of last resort. We really don't know much yet about the long-term impact of messing with this very delicate system in our body. At the same time, good some people are willing to take that risk, unintentionally for the greater good~~
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