Not that much in the way of science news this month. Even the scientists are talking about economics and politics.

• The really big news this month has been in cosmology from analysis of three years’ worth of data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument. The consensus is that, whatever it is, the effects of dark energy seems to be weakening over time, rather than being constant as previously believed. This finding is also supported by measurements of the cosmic microwave background. We don’t know what this means yet, only that it throws into question our current model of the universe.
• In more uplifting news, Japanese scientists have announced some success in giving paralyzed people the ability to walk again through stem cell therapy. The team had already succeeded earlier by transplanting neural stem cells into patients with spinal cord injuries, but back then they had used cells from fetuses. This time they repeated the feat with reprogrammed stem cells, which takes mature cells and induces them to become pluripotent. The success so far is only partial but the benefits to humanity of making this work consistently are obvious.
• Finally here’s a report about how DNA analysis of two naturally mummified remains found in the Sahara Desert a different and long lost lineage of humanity. Around 7,000 the area was not a desert and instead a lush, green savannah. These two ancients humans however came from a branch of humanity that split off much earlier than that, perhaps as much as 50,000 years and so were something like ancient fossils even while they were alive. It’s simply wild how much we don’t know about our past and now will probably never know.