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Colorado Sen. Mike Weissman calls for cold water on heated hate speech
Likening the recent record-setting warm temperatures to hot political rhetoric, Colorado Sen. Mike Weissman, D-Aurora, pleaded for an end to death threats and other hate speech directed at lawmakers of both parties. “The increasingly tragic reality of our politics, however, like the increasingly tragic reality of our climate, is one of combustibility,” Weissman said from the well […]
Ottawa County Health Dept. issues new 'no body contact advisory' following sewage discharge
Travis Kelce reportedly re-ups with Chiefs on a 3-year, $54.7 million deal, but there's a catch
Health experts say spring cleaning can help boost mood
Woman dies after collapsing inside business while seeking help
From radio to newsreels to Netflix, Yankees chart course through entertainment history
For more than a century, the Yankees have been more than a baseball team. The sport’s most storied franchise is a pop culture touchstone, a versatile backdrop that serves as both a symbol of excellence and a punchline across television, movies and more. So as the Yankees prepare to break
Trump says talks are happening. Iran says they’re not. Why a former Trump Iran negotiator says both might be true
Bird‑like robots promise greater flexibility and control than drones
A bird banking in a crosswind doesn't rely on spinning blades. Its wings flex, twist and respond instantly to its environment. Engineers at Rutgers University have taken a major step toward building bird-like ...
Women's March Madness live updates, scores, results: Alabama leads Louisville in tightly contested first half; UConn, South Carolina, UCLA back in action Monday
WATCH LIVE: Trump joins Memphis Safe Task Force roundtable, initiative aimed at combating crime
NBA MVP rankings: Luka Dončić is rising, but can anyone take the trophy from Shai Gilgeous-Alexander?
WATCH LIVE: Senate expected to vote on DHS secretary confirmation for Mullin
"Patriotic Kenny" facing health problems, according to his social media
This Web Tool Sabotages AI Chatbots By Making Them Really, Really Slow
Artist Sam Lavigne created ‘Slow LLM’ to make people question their dependence on tools like Claude and ChatGPT. Or at least, make them super annoying to use.
Revolutionary Submarine Mysteriously Disappears Without a Trace – Scientists Are Now Preparing for a Bold Return
A pioneering robotic submarine that explored beneath Antarctica’s glaciers has been lost, but its discoveries are reshaping our understanding of ice melt as a more advanced successor is prepared to continue the mission.
Roger Bennett of the Men in Blazers discusses the agony and the ecstasy of watching a penalty shootout
Rahm Emanuel proposes banning all federal employees from betting on prediction markets
How AI is transforming health care and what it means for the future
WSU launches bilingual video series to help beekeepers improve colony health
Researchers with WSU's Honey Bee and Pollinators Program have produced a new video series giving novice keepers a strong introduction to best practices and the science of apiculture, in both Spanish and English.
Sewing And Munro Continue Dominance In New Global Sports Alliance International Pickleball Tour With Two Golds In Vietnam
The third event of the new Global Sports Pickleball Alliance saw the tour head to Ho Chi Minh City over the weekend, where Jack Munro and Sofia Sewing both won two golds.
The final four of Business Insider's business-focused bracket
The business-focused March Madness bracket narrows to four trends: SaaSpocalypse, tariffs, longevity, and robotics.
My husband and I were laid off at the same time. Instead of panicking, we started our own business that now has 600 employees.
We both lost our jobs. So we started a company.
After being laid off in 2020, my husband and I launched Larroudé from home. Today, the shoe brand employs 600 people and generates millions.
Why the BTS Comeback Concert Was a ‘Disaster’ for Some Businesses
The turnout for the K-pop titans’ show was much lower than projected by officials, hitting the bottom line of some restaurants. Shares in the group’s management company also fell.
Winners and losers from first weekend of the NCAA tournament feature John Calipari, Darryn Peterson, Big Ten and blue bloods
Toto Wolff: Mercedes team principal wary of 'politics' as Charles Leclerc makes 'extremely strong' Silver Arrows claim
Pfeiffer, Pulley Join The Core Entertainment Leadership Team.
The Core Entertainment has added Sarah Pfeiffer as Head of Marketing and Gabriella Pulley as Chief of Staff. Both will report to Co-Founders and Co-CEOs Simon Tikhman and Chief Zaruk
NCAA women's tournament takeaways, Day 3: Minnesota drains buzzer-beater as LSU, Texas dominate again
Cleanup underway after pick-up truck crashed into science surplus store in Geneva
NCAA tournament takeaways, Day 4: Big Ten's March Madness domination continues with 6 league teams making Sweet 16
Thru The Game is changing the game for athletes' mental health in Colorado
CBS Sports and TNT Sports Announce Tip Times and Commentator Teams for Regional Semifinals on Thursday, March 26, and Friday, March 27
Two veteran relievers clinch jobs on Diamondbacks' Opening Day roster
Right-handers Jonathan Loaisiga and Joe Ross have made the Diamondbacks' roster for Opening Day. Both will pitch in relief.
How the G.O.P. and Democrats Are Talking About the Surge in Gas Prices
Republicans have largely been on defense against Democratic criticism. Here are five arguments advanced by figures in both parties.
Students compete in Virginia Science Olympiad State Tournament at UVA
The tournament’s events ranged from knowledge tests to building robots.
Students compete in Virginia Science Olympiad State Tournament at UVA
The tournament’s events ranged from knowledge tests to building robots.
Apple already has the perfect platform for deploying conversational AI
When Apple initially rolled out Apple Intelligence, the company was pretty openly against the idea of creating a Siri chatbot....
Fire destroys 30,000 square feet of Aledo plating business, no injuries reported
Why Have Patriots Not Done More To Address Pass Rush?
The New England Patriots had just 35 sacks last season, ranking near the bottom of the league in the regular season.
Women's March Madness live updates, scores: LSU makes history in NCAA tournament; Minnesota stuns Ole Miss to advance to Sweet 16
Former acting ICE director under Obama shares concern about ICE airport deployment
Nasal swab may catch Alzheimer's disease earlier — here's how it works
Would you fart for science? Slap you with Science 3-22-2026
Michael McCarthy Considering Three Races As Options For Journalism's Return
After Journalism worked five furlongs in company Sunday at Santa Anita, trainer Michael McCarthy said he is looking at three potential races to kick off the colt’s 4-year-old campaign. Journalism could return in either the Oaklawn Handicap (G2) or Ben Ali (G3) at Keeneland, both on April 18, or ...
Midtown's '42 Below' retail occupancy rising faster than the rest of Manhattan
Your Thymus and Your Healthspan
Our thymus gland plays a central role in the development or our immune system, specifically for supporting T cell development (how these cells got their name, maturation and differentiation in the thymus) and discriminating between self and foreign, non-self antigen proteins with production of dendritic cells. As we age, our thymus gland shrinks—the process known as involution—with progressive change from spongy to fatty tissue, with loss of functionality. But this process, with respect to timeline and extent, markedly varies from one person to the next. And to make things even more complicated, our thymus gland anatomy and precise location in the chest also is highly variable. So the famous Frank Netter diagrams from the 1960s (such as at left below) don’t capture the remarkable heterogeneity that a random set of 12 chest CT scans (below at right). What I consider as 2 landmark papers in Nature this week (here and here) used AI to quantify health of the thymus in 2 large cohorts, and then correlate the metric to a broad array of health outcomes. In this edition of Ground Truths, I’m going to cover three questions: (1) How was thymus health determined by AI?; (2) How is thymus health linked to key clinical outcomes? and (3) Are there ways we can promote a healthy (aka rejuvenate) thymus gland in our later years? Subscribe 1. How was thymus health determined by AI? This was accomplished by extensive work developing and validating an AI pipeline for 2 stages, the first for localization and segmentation of the thymus bed, and the second to quantify a digital marker, termed the thymic health score. There’s a lot to this algorithmic development, so I won’t go into all the details, but just provide a rudimentary outline of what was done. The 1st stage used supervised learning with 2 radiologists reviewing 2,461 chest CT scans. That work trained a 3D U-Net model to automatically identify the thymic bed’s 3D cropped region using center of mass coordinates, which reached 99.8% accuracy. The 2nd stage used a foundation model that was pre-trained with SwAV (which stands for Swapping Assignment between multiple Views), a self-supervised model, that generated a high-dimensional thymus representation of 4,096 features. That compares to the radiology reductionist and subjective scoring of 0 to 3 where 0 means the thymus is fully degenerated and fatty, and 3 is considered dense, intact glandular soft tissue. Notably, the self-supervised learning (SSL) performance was superior to supervised (AUC ~0.75 vs 0.55, respectively) reflecting the shallowness of the 0-3 classifier vs SSL’s holistic, self-taught AI. The thymic health score ranged from 0 to 100, with the highest number indexed to fully preserved thymic health. The algorithmic work extended to explainability with both Shapely value distribution, meaning the model was holistic not relying on any “magic” pixel, and occlusion sensitivity, demonstrating the model’s performance was not affected by ribs, sternum, lung tissue, but rather focused on the thymic bed directly. Below are a few saliency maps from the occlusion sensitivity that indicate the thymic bed focus, not affected by neighboring structures, using the jet color scale. Now the AI was ready for processing ~25,000 CT scans, each over 30 MB files, from the 2 large participant cohorts to provide a thymic health score, it did so in less than 14 hours, which is less than 2 seconds per scan! Share 2. How is thymus health linked to key clinical outcomes? The two cohorts were the National Lung Screening Trial, NLST (N=25,031) and the Framingham Heart Study, FHS (N=2,581) each with baseline demographics and long term follow up of >12 years for health outcomes. From the NSLT, you can see below that increased age and body-mass index were correlated to reduced thymic health. And, overall, men had reduced thymic health scores compared with women. There are a lot of graphs in the paper for outcomes, for both the NLST and FHS cohorts. To simplify the major outcomes, below is a composite Figure with striking reduction of all-cause mortality and for the different causes of death. The results were consistent between the 2 cohorts. For example, the cardiovascular mortality hazard ratio average was 0.57 in NLST and 0.38 in FHS (weighted to be 0.53 for the aggregate). The reduction of mortality also extended to digestive diseases and pulmonary disease (data not shown below). Lung cancer incidence was reduced by 36% for high vs low thymic health (Figure below, with a panel -incidence and b panel-mortality, adjusted for age, sex, BMI, smoking status). Notably, there was a smoker’s paradox: lower incidence and improved survival for lung cancer in smokers who had a high thymus health score. Smoking was associated with lower thymic scores whereas alcohol was not. Higher thymic health was linked to higher HDL cholesterol, lower triglycerides, lower fasting blood glucose, and lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Inflammation biomarkers, such as C-reactive protein and interleukin-6, were elevated in the people with lower thymic health scores. In their second paper, the same team looked at the relationship between thymic score and outcomes for 3,476 patients receiving cancer immunotherapy. The non-small cell lung cancer progression-free survival was reduced in patients with low thymic health score. A parallel relationship for survival was seen for other types of cancer including melanoma, breast, and kidney with a 44% lower risk among high thymic scores (Figure). A similar pattern was seen with different immune checkpoint inhibitors. The thymus health score outperformed programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1)and tumor mutation burden (TMB) assay of the tumor and was an independent prognostic marker of progression-free survival. In this dataset, a direct connect with thymus score and adaptive immune function was noted with a correlation before cancer treatment for both T-cell diversity and thymus T-cell production (a metric known as T cell receptor excision circles). Thymus Removal Study There is a highly relevant citation about thymus function before moving onto ways to rejuvenate it. In 2023, a very important study of thymus removal during cardiothoracic surgery was published, with 1146 patients undergoing thymus removal vs 1146 matched controls (mean age 55 years). The adverse outcomes for thymus removal were striking, with a 2.9 higher risk of all-cause mortality and doubling of cancer incidence, 1.5 fold increase in cancer mortality, and 1.5-fold increase in autoimmune diseases. The immune function showed marked compromise after thymus removal, as reflected by CD4+ and CD8+ T cells (Figure below) Share Ground Truths 3. Are there ways we can promote a healthy (aka rejuvenate) thymus gland in our later years? In recent months we’ve learned a lot about the process of thymus involution and the pathways by which this may be modulated. Thymus involution is primarily due to loss to thymus epithelial cells (TECs) and there are 2 subtypes with different functions: the cortical, responsible for positive selection of T cells, and the medullary, for negative selection. When adipose tissue infiltrates the thymus, thymic adipocytes are pro-inflammatory, knocking out T-cell output. Likewise, systemic inflammation, or “inflammaging,” from smoking, obesity, and chronic stress promote thymic adipocytes. Now, from preclinical studies, we know about key pathways that account for these processes. Historically, back in 2014, FOXN1 was recognized as a single master transcription factor essential for TEC function, with studies in mice with forced FOXN1 upregulation leading to thymus regeneration. That laid the foundation for potential regrowth of quiescent thymus cells. It took awhile to find pathways to accomplish this goal and to even refute its role as the master regulator. The Liver-Thymus Axis Feng Zhang and his team recently showed that injection of an mRNA vaccine to the liver encoding DLL1, IL-7 and FLT3-L in combination, factors known to support thymopoiesis (Figure), successfully enhanced immune function in aged mice. However, the effect was transient. The FGF21 Story Two reports in 2025 addressed the thymus gland’s production of FGF21, a growth factor (fibroblast growth factor 21) and its control of thymus involution. This growth factor is also produced by the liver, but it doesn’t have impact on the thymus in aged rodent models. In contrast, The liver’s hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) has been shown to reverse senescent TEC structural changes. Growth hormone stimulates production of insulin growth factor-1 (IGF-1) in the liver and the thymus. Two small studies in human participants (TRIIM, for Thymus Regeneration, Immunorestoration, and Insulin Mitigation) of 6 and 50 people, respectively, treated with combined human growth hormone, metformin and DHEA, suggested the potential of slowing epigenetic aging and improving thymus mass and function. But the combination of drugs, small sample, and lack of controls make conclusions murky. Increased thymus FGF21 led to increased CD8 T cells in old mice and extended healthspan and improved physical performance. Building on the previous FOXN1 data, ablation of β-klotho, the obligatory co-receptor for FOXN1, accelerated thymic aging. The benefit to FGF21 was confirmed in a companion paper using an FGF21 knock-in mouse model showing thymus enlargement and increased TECs throughout the lifespan. (schematic Figure below). The accompanying editorial for these 2 papers speculated: “The proposed link between age-associated thymus involution and organismal aging is intriguing, and suggests we might seek to achieve systemic rejuvenation by counteracting thymic involution.” Other Factors Lessons from the Axolotl (Mexican Salamander) In an elegant set of experiments of the axolotl (Figure), known for its complete thymus regeneration after total surgical removal, mediators were identified. Surprisingly FOXN1 was dispensable. But midkine, a growth factor, appeared to be the driver, the initiator of thymus cell growth, survival, and repair. Other components that contributed were Postn+ (periostin-expressing mesenchymal niches) and Ccl19, a chemokine protein from the bloodstream. RANK and RANKL RANK (receptor activator of nuclear factor κB its ligand (RANKL) have been considered key regulators of medullary TECs. In a study of both aged mice and human thymus cell cultures, their key role was confirmed, with multiple benefits of resorting TEC function, recruitment of progenitor cells, and T cell development. Subscribe Summing Up This body of work strongly supports the health of the thymus gland as a critical regulator of human healthspan, not just a correlate or link. The new landmark studies are reinforced by the regenerative biology experimental models that have shown, via an array of mediators, that healthspan of aged mice is at least in part dependent on thymus gland function and its critical role for maintaining adaptive immunity. It sure seems that we’d be better off having an immune reservoir of naive T cells instead of a profile in older adults of exhausted, low quality, memory T cells, with a senescent phenotype. It is striking that we ignored the importance of the thymus gland for many decades. A wake-up call was the results of the thymectomy matched control study reviewed here, with the opposite of high thymic health score improved health outcomes. The convergence of AI and healthspan here is notable. The exceptional and laborious work for developing and validating (no less explaining) the AI to quantify thymus health set the foundation for probing the connect the major health outcomes in two cohorts with extensive follow-up. We’ve never had a way to meaningfully quantify the thymus gland before, so this represents important leverage of supervised, self-supervised, and transformer models. The study wouldn’t have been possible without AI. And it begs the question as to whether there are ways we can maintain our thymus at a high health score. But it’s not so simple to rejuvenate our thymus. There are multiple risks including the induction of autoimmunity, increasing the risk of cancer, and inducing a pro-inflammatory state. For example, factors that increase TEC proliferation could compromise the medulllary negative selection process and leak out auto-reactive (self-attacking) T cells. Thymic cells could be induced to proliferate, but we know, for example, that growth hormone and IGF-1 are associated with an increase risk of cancer. If thymus rejuvenation doesn’t clear out the accumulated senescent cells in older adults, then inflammation within the gland could block the production of TECs. Keeping these risks in mind, we now have identified many ways to keep our thymus healthy as we age that undoubtedly will be tested in clinical trials going forward. Ultimately, the benefit-to-risk tradeoffs will be defined. In the meantime, we have desperately needed an immunome. As I’ve stressed in multiple prior Ground Truths, we have no test in the clinic to assess a patient’s immune status! It was very encouraging for me to get an email from Hugo Aerts, the senior author of the landmark papers in the days after they were published: “I also wanted to say that your Substack on “Why We Need an Immunome” was inspiring for this work. We found it a very compelling perspective and greatly enjoyed reading it.” Just having an assessment of a person’s immune status via a chest CT scan, with millions of these performed per year, might help in guiding the right immunotherapy for cancer (e.g. more intensive, combinations for those with low thymic health scores) and help define people who are increased risk for age-related diseases of cancer, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative. The main theme of Super Agers is that we now have many layers of data (genetics, proteins, biomarkers, organ clocks that can be integrated via multimodal AI) for us to define a person’s specific risk decades before one of these age-related diseases leads to symptoms, enabling prevention. From the new studies this week, we can add thymus health score as yet another way to understand a person’s risk, a window into their adaptive immune system and healthspan. And perhaps someday we will be able to safely rejuvenate the thymus, or maintain its health through one’s life, and use the thymus health score to monitor. NB: I wrote this post (No A.I.) A Quick Poll Loading... ********************************************************************* Thanks to Ground Truths subscribers (now > 200,000) from every US state and 212 countries. Your subscription to these free essays and podcasts makes my work in putting them together worthwhile. Please join! If you found this interesting PLEASE share it! Share Ground Truths Paid subscriptions are voluntary and all proceeds from them go to support Scripps Research. They do allow for posting comments and questions, which I do my best to respond to. Please don’t hesitate to post comments and give me feedback. Let me know topics that you would like to see covered. Leave a comment Many thanks to those who have contributed—they have greatly helped fund our summer internship programs for the past two years. It enabled us to accept and support 47 summer interns in 2025! We aim to accept even more of the several thousand who will apply for summer 2026.
Fear of immigration enforcement in NC keeps immigrants home, hurting Latino-owned businesses
Syracuse reportedly targeting former player Gerry McNamara as its next men's basketball coach
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How iNaturalist app users have fun while aiding science
Why mosquitoes always find you and how they decide to attack
Scientists have finally cracked how mosquitoes decide where to fly—and it’s not by following each other. Instead, each insect independently reacts to visual cues and carbon dioxide, zeroing in on humans when both signals align. Dark colors and CO2 together create the strongest attraction, triggering swarming and biting behavior. This insight could reshape how we design traps and prevent mosquito-borne diseases.
I left Goldman Sachs to build a small baking business. Here's how my time at the firm is giving me a leg up.
‘Bet on the most wild things’: After sports gambling, prediction markets open door for all wagers
Prior authorization can delay needed health care. A new 'Gold Card' targets that bottleneck.
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NCAA tournament takeaways, Day 3: Big Ten reigns supreme, 'Cinderella' Texas and an extra edge for Houston
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Tottenham Hotspur have chance to turn relegation narrative around against Nottingham Forest
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Beshear Criticizes Vance in Ohio, Stoking 2028 Presidential Tensions
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No. 11 Texas becomes 6th First Four team to make NCAA tournament's Sweet 16 with upset win over No. 3 Gonzaga
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Comedians react to GOP senator’s comment during Mullin’s confirmation hearing
Clemson's Mia Moore and USC's Kara Dunn renew rivalry in overtime thriller
Moore and Dunn both grew up near Atlanta, and first matched up in middle school. They also played AAU together in high school.
Amanda Peet Shares Breast Cancer Diagnosis
Amanda Peet detailed her recent breast cancer diagnosis in a new essay, sharing that her health battle coincided with both of her parents' final months in hospice care.