Clocks of data.
AS WE REACQUAINT OURSELVES WITH OUR BREATHING BODIES, then the perceived world itself begins to shift and transform. When we begin to consciously frequent the wordless dimensions of our sensory participations, certain phenomena that have habitually commanded our focus, begin to lose their distinctive fascination and to slip towards the background, while hitherto unnoticed or overlooked presences begin to stand forth from the periphery and to engage our awareness.
— David Abram, Spell of the Sensuous.
Jeez, sounds familiar. Don’t know when I said that. Hey David, you living rent free in my head? Buy a book, get a tenant.
==============================================================================================
In south-central Utah, on the western edge of the Fishlake National Forest, a single organism has been quietly making copies of itself for somewhere between 9,000 and 80,000 years. It looks like a forest. It smells like a forest. Wander through it in September and the leaves overhead rattle in the wind the way any aspen grove does. But every one of the roughly 47,000 pale trunks rising out of the soil is genetically identical to every other, all of them shoots from a single root system that spreads beneath 106 acres of Utah hillside. The whole thing weighs around 6,000 tonnes. Botanists call it Pando, Latin for “I spread.”
Pando is a quaking aspen, Populus tremuloides, and it is almost certainly the heaviest known living organism on Earth.
— Space Daily Editorial Team
Clearly, space wasn’t the final frontier.
=============================================================================================
The Humidity Body Clock: Historically, scientists knew that insects—like mosquitoes, fruit flies, kissing bugs, and spider beetles—used light and temperature to synchronize their internal circadian rhythms. However, recent research out of the University of Cincinnati published in the journal Biological Timing and Sleep shows that humidity acts as an independent timekeeper.
Even after removing humidity from their testing chambers, the insects followed the patterns set by humidity and aridity.
=============================================================================================
The Seasonal "Winter Lock": A separate study published in Science Advances by researchers at Washington State University uncovered a molecular mechanism that allows fruit flies to change how their biological clock functions depending on the time of year. Instead of their daily clock just running slower in the cold, the clock is completely rebuilt into a seasonal mode. The gene switch: The shift is driven by a gene called timeless. Through a process called alternative splicing (where a gene produces different proteins), the insect creates a winter-specific protein
==============================================================================================
Greenland sharks use a massively expanded and hyper-active DNA repair network to maintain genome stability, enabling them to avoid cancer and live for up to 400 years as the world's longest-living vertebrates. Landmark whole-genome mapping studies published in PNAS and Nature Communications have pinpointed the exact genetic mechanisms driving this extraordinary anti-aging resilience.
Genome Duplication & The DNA Toolkit
The Greenland shark genome is extraordinarily massive—clocking in at over 6 gigabases, which is twice the size of the human genome.
Gene Redundancy: Scientists discovered that the shark evolved extreme longevity by duplicating its existing genetic toolkit. It possesses multiple copies of 81 distinct genes dedicated entirely to DNA repair and cancer resistance.
Mass Production: When cellular or environmental damage occurs, these duplicated gene pathways allow the shark to manufacture massive quantities of repair proteins rapidly. This systematically corrects mutations before they can compromise tissue health.
A job of the future: DNA Mechanic and Repairer. The problem is if you’re gonna live that long, who do you want along for company? What kind of a world do we create for such long lived tenure?
===============================================================================================
Certain hormonal contraceptives are linked to an increased risk of developing meningiomas, which are primary brain tumors that are almost always benign (noncancerous). Multiple landmark epidemiological studies, including a major July 2026 registry analysis published in JAMA Network Open, have expanded this risk from high-dose clinical progestogens to everyday birth control options.
While a four-fold relative increase sounds alarming, medical experts emphasize that the absolute risk remains very low because meningiomas are rare, affecting roughly 1 in 10,000 people. The most critical takeaway from the multi-decade tracking data is that the risk is completely temporary. The elevated risk is highest for current users or those who have taken the medication within the last year. Within 5 years of stopping the contraceptive, the excess risk completely disappears, and the baseline drops back to normal. Medical bodies like the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists advise against panic, noting that the overall benefits of reliable pregnancy prevention and symptom management for conditions like endometriosis still heavily outweigh the small absolute tumor risk for most patients. If you are using one of these methods, would you like to know the specific warning symptoms to look out for, or would you like to explore non-hormonal alternatives?
The husbands of dependas are advised to take testosterone to compensate, as needed. Don’t worry about the 400 year lifespan of Greenland sharks .
===============================================================================================
