Snuff tubes uncovered at Chavin de Huantar in Peru reveal how leaders used mystical experiences to cement their power.

Children who grow up in disadvantaged neighborhoods – areas with higher levels of crime and deprivation, and lower access to community resources – are at risk of developing depression, and new research led by faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York, may help to explain why. 

Researchers participating in the Cilento Initiative on Aging Outcomes or CIAO study will gather in Acciaroli (Pollica-Cilento) Salerno, Italy to review a decade of work and plan their next steps. Launched in 2016, the CIAO study seeks to identify key factors (biological, psychological and social) that promote healthy aging and extreme longevity.

Endemic to China’s Yangtze River, the Yangtze finless porpoise is known for its intelligence and charismatic appearance; it looks like it has a perpetual smile on its face. To track how this critically endangered porpoise’s habitat range has changed over time, a team of biodiversity and conservation experts compiled 724 ancient Chinese poems referencing the porpoise from historic collections across China. Publishing in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on May 5, their results show that the porpoise’s range has decreased by at least 65% over the past 1,400 years, with the majority of this decline occurring in the past century.