The disappearance of the Mayan Empire is all the more mysterious because it happened not once, but twice. The earliest civilization that took root during the heart of antiquity prospered for hundreds upon hundreds of years, with innovations that rivaled those of Egypt. Unlike the Egyptians and Mesopotamians, however, the Mayans grew their population on the back of corn, beans, squash, and chiles, rather than wheat. Even so, they began building the first of their grand temples before they would vanish, but what was the cause of the end of this empire?
BALTIMORE – In a first-of-its-kind surgery, a 57-year-old patient with terminal heart disease received a successful transplant of a genetically-modified pig heart and is still doing well three days later. It was the only currently available option for the patient. The historic surgery was conducted by University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) faculty at the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC), together known as the University of Maryland Medicine.
Even if you planned on watching this year’s Golden Globes ― the precipitous drop in ratings over the past decade might suggest otherwise ― you couldn’t. After a scandal and COVID-plagued year, the 79th annual ceremony wasn’t televised or livestreamed on Sunday night. There was no red carpet, host, A-list presenter or even a single celebrity in sight. Instead, winners were announced on social media throughout the evening, as the event thrown by the beleaguered Hollywood Foreign Press Association dispensed with the trappings of a traditional awards show altogether.
NASA’s long-delayed James Webb Space Telescope, a $10 billion marvel of engineering and scientific ambition, is finally poised to rocket into deep space from a launchpad in French Guiana, on the northeast shoulder of South America. What happens in the following days and weeks will either change our understanding of the universe, or deliver a crushing blow to NASA and the global astronomical community. The Webb must cruise for 29 days to a unique orbit around the sun that keeps it roughly 1 million miles from Earth, four times the distance to the moon. At launch, it will be folded upon itself, a shrouded package inside the cone of the European Space Agency’s Ariane 5 rocket.