Scientists have figured out why salamanders can regrow limbs and we can't. And they've figured out how to fix it

Happy Wednesday. Today's lead story starts with a question Aristotle asked and scientists have been asking ever since: why can salamanders regrow lost limbs, and we can't?

A team at Texas A&M thinks they've found the answer. And more importantly, they think they know how to change it.

We also have the Yale study finding that nearly half of adults over 65 improved physically or mentally over time, and that your beliefs about aging predict which group you land in. A couple in Oregon whose decades of quiet land restoration just got its best reward yet. And the EU's €400 million push to take fossil fuels out of industrial heat.

Here's your good news.

—Stephanie S

Salamanders regrow lost limbs by organizing injured cells into a temporary structure called a blastema, which rebuilds bone, muscle, and tissue. Mammals do the opposite: our cells rush to close wounds as fast as possible, forming scar tissue. We survive, but we don't rebuild. Dr. Ken Muneoka of Texas A&M has spent his career asking why. His team's answer: the capacity was never lost. It was switched off.

Fibroblasts, the cells that respond to injury, can move in two directions: toward scarring or toward rebuilding. Using a two-step treatment, FGF2 to shift cells away from scar formation, then BMP2 to tell them what to build, the team successfully redirected healing in mice. Bone, joints, ligaments, and tendons all regenerated.

The implications reach beyond regrowing limbs. BMP2 is already FDA-approved for certain medical uses and FGF2 is in multiple clinical trials. The pathway to human application may be shorter than it appears. Even partial redirection away from scarring could meaningfully improve wound healing and recovery from amputation.

"Regenerative failure in mammals can be rescued," Muneoka said. "Now we have a model to begin figuring out how." Read the full story and watch the university video.

A long-term Yale study tracked more than 11,000 Americans over 12 years and found that 45% of adults aged 65 and older showed measurable improvement in cognitive function, physical function, or both. When participants whose scores stayed stable rather than declining were included, more than half defied the assumption of inevitable deterioration. "Improvement in later life is not rare, it's common," said lead author Dr. Becca Levy of the Yale School of Public Health.

The standout finding was what predicted improvement: how people thought about aging itself. Those with more positive beliefs about aging were significantly more likely to show gains in both cognition and walking speed, even after controlling for age, sex, education, and chronic disease. If they believed aging meant decline, they declined. If they believed aging meant refinement, they improved.

"Age beliefs are modifiable," Dr. Levy said, "and this opens the door to interventions at both the individual and societal level." The findings are published in the journal Geriatrics. Read the full study and find out what beliefs predict the best outcomes.

Bill and Sarah Epstein bought 405 acres in Oregon's Siskiyou Mountains near Ashland decades ago, after the land had been heavily logged and burned by a 1973 wildfire. They spent years helping the ecosystem recover, and have since seen hundreds of species of birds, amphibians, and mammals return as the restored habitat connected with surrounding public lands. Recently, working with the Pacific Forest Trust, they completed a permanent conservation easement ensuring the land will be managed for biodiversity in perpetuity.

Their reward appeared on a trail camera: a ringtail, also known as a miner's cat, one of North America's most elusive mammals. Smaller than a house cat, nocturnal, and rarely studied, the ringtail was kept as a pet by Gold Rush miners for its ability to hunt rodents, which is how it earned its name. Despite being a cousin of the raccoon and protected under federal law even before the Endangered Species Act, most people have never seen one.

"It is a profound comfort to know the goals we have for our property will be steadfastly managed and protected in perpetuity," the Epssteins said. The ringtail on their camera, rearing up to look around before walking off, its ringed tail unmistakable, was proof that quiet, patient restoration work pays off. Watch the trail camera video and read the full story.

Most industrial processes require intense heat, and most of that heat comes from burning fossil fuels. It's one of the hardest parts of the economy to decarbonize because the temperatures required are far beyond what standard electric heating can easily reach. The European Commission has now accepted 65 projects from 10 EU countries under its industrial heat decarbonization auction, awarding €400 million in grants to test whether a range of unconventional technologies can change that.

The proposals cover plasma cutting, solar concentration, electromagnetic and dielectric heating, geothermal heat, and heat pumps, applied across some of the largest emitting manufacturing sectors: paper, pharmaceuticals, ceramics, glass, iron and steel, food and beverages, and textiles. Applications totaled €1.4 billion, three times the available budget, suggesting strong industry appetite for alternatives to fossil fuel heat.

If all 65 projects succeed at nameplate capacity, the EU estimates savings equivalent to 1.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas over five years and 6.6 million tons of CO2 over ten. That's a meaningful contribution from a sector that has resisted decarbonization longer than almost any other. Read the full story.

☀️ USA: Solar power overtook coal in the US electricity mix for the first month ever recorded in May 2026, with solar supplying 12.8% of US electricity while coal fell to 12.2%, a complete reversal from five years ago when coal held nearly 20% and solar just 5.4%.

🧠 Global: Researchers in Spain and Switzerland have identified a molecule called OLE that reprograms the brain's immune cells to actively fight Alzheimer's disease, helping them contain and reduce toxic plaques while improving memory performance in animal models.

🌿 UK: A dairy farm turned rewilding site in Somerset has recorded a jump from 67 to 94 bird species and from 11 to 24 butterfly species in just three years, with reintroduced beavers and free-roaming pigs helping nature reclaim the land faster than anticipated.

🌬️ Global: The world's offshore wind capacity is set to quadruple over the next decade with China leading the buildout, according to the Global Wind Energy Council, a scale of expansion experts say will transform the global energy system regardless of policy headwinds in some markets.

🤖 Global: Researchers at Vanderbilt Health and Hong Kong have developed TRUECAM, an AI framework that knows when it doesn't know, flagging uncertainty in cancer slide analysis to make AI-assisted pathology significantly safer and more reliable for diagnosing non-small cell lung cancer.

South Africa's Springboks had been banned from international sport during apartheid. The 1995 Rugby World Cup was the first major international sporting event the country had hosted since the ban was lifted, and the world was watching to see what kind of nation the new South Africa would be. The Springboks, previously a symbol of white minority rule, went undefeated through the tournament. In the final against New Zealand, fly half Joel Stransky dropped a goal in extra time to win 15-12 in front of a capacity crowd. Then Nelson Mandela, wearing a Springbok jersey and cap, walked out to present the Webb Ellis Cup to captain Francois Pienaar.

Pienaar said afterwards that Mandela was godfather to his children, and that the country changed forever after the final whistle. "We didn't win it for 60,000 South Africans in that stadium," he told the Guardian. "We won it for 43 million." The moment was adapted into the Hollywood film Invictus, directed by Clint Eastwood, with Morgan Freeman as Mandela and Matt Damon as Pienaar.

Other notable June 24 events:

1901: Chuck Taylor was born in Indiana. The shoe salesman became so devoted to Converse All-Stars that he approached the company for a job, traveled America promoting them at basketball clinics, helped redesign them for better performance, and had his signature added to the ankle patch in 1932. Converse has since sold 800 million pairs. He turns 125 today.

1948: The Berlin Airlift began after the Soviet Union blockaded West Berlin, cutting off road and rail access to the city. For nearly a year, American, British, and French pilots flew more than a quarter million missions delivering food and fuel to two million people, in what became known as America's greatest humanitarian mission.

1999: Eric Clapton auctioned over a hundred guitars through Christie's to raise money for the Crossroads Center, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinic he founded in Antigua. His Fender Stratocaster Blackie sold for $959,500. Total proceeds: $5 million. Other donors included Brian May, Pete Townshend, Roger Waters, and Jimmy Page.

2010: Julia Gillard was sworn in as Australia's first female Prime Minister, becoming both the first woman to lead the Labor Party and the first woman to lead the country.

— Mark Twain

Every day brings amazing advances and uplifting moments that remind us just how wonderful the world can be. Here are five reasons why today is the best time ever to be alive:

🦷 Regrowing Teeth: A drug that stimulates the body to grow new teeth is now in clinical trials in Japan, with potential applications for anyone who has lost teeth to decay, injury, or age, turning what was once science fiction into a genuine near-term medical possibility.

🌍 Counting Every Tree on Earth: Satellite imagery and AI are now being used to map and count individual trees across the entire planet, including savannas and urban areas previously excluded from surveys, with results suggesting the world has significantly more trees than previously estimated.

🧬 Finding Cancer in a Blood Draw: Liquid biopsies can now detect DNA fragments shed by tumors from a single blood draw, identifying cancer earlier than conventional imaging, tracking treatment response in real time, and catching recurrence before it appears on scans.

🐺 What Wolves Did to Yellowstone: Thirty years of data from Yellowstone's wolf reintroduction keeps revealing cascading effects: elk behavior changed, riverbanks stabilized, songbirds returned, beaver populations rebounded, and river channels physically narrowed. One predator transformed an entire landscape.

🌊 Destroying Forever Chemicals: New electrochemical processes can break down PFAS forever chemicals in water at room temperature using electricity alone, without toxic byproducts, offering a scalable solution to one of the most persistent contamination problems on earth.

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