The Maya calendar recently entered another 260 day cycle.

We have science within our practices that it had been

copiers with like religions of sacred and then that's why

community still believe it in what we we do and how we count time and how we advise

the community to behave. It's Friday, May 24th, and yep, today is Science Friday.

I'm Scifry producer Charles Berquist. Coming up, Ira talks with a Maya calendar keeper about pre-Hispanic astronomy traditions in Guatemala.

But first, let's check in on some of the week's news and science.

Some hopeful news for people with spinal cord injuries this week.

Results of an early trial published this week in the journal Nature Medicine

shows some improvements in arm and hand function

after people received electrical stimulation near the

sight of their spinal cord injury. Sophie Bushwick, senior news editor at

News Scientist, is back to tell us more. Hi Sophie. Hi Ira. This is really exciting. Tell us more about the

spinal cord research. Yeah this is a really great intervention because these are external pads that are placed on the skin near the

site of the spinal cord injury and the participants in this trial received

electrical stimulation from the pads while they were doing physical therapy to improve hand and arm function and more than two-thirds of those who tried it said they had a significant improvement in their ability to grasp things and to move their their hands after they had this treatment.

That's a lot of people, isn't it?

Yes, and gains like that for someone who's maybe is suffering from paralysis or

other problems from the spinal cord injury can really be life-changing.

It suggests also that they might have nerves regrowing as a result of this therapy because even

after the pads were removed, they continued to have this improvement improvement so they didn't have to be actively receiving the electrical stimulation to benefit from it.

That is really amazing now is is this something that could help all kinds of spinal injuries?

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