Most people will learn one or two languages in their lives. But Vaughn Smith, a 47-year-old carpet cleaner from Washington, D.C., speaks 24. Smith is a hyperpolyglot—a rare individual who speaks more than 10 languages. In a new brain imaging study, researchers peered inside the minds of polyglots like Smith to tease out how language-specific regions in their brains respond to...

New Englanders are used to cold temperatures, but a combination of extreme cold accompanied by powerful winds is downright dangerous, and enough to send even bundled-up skiers scampering indoors.

Astronomers have discovered 12 new moons around Jupiter, putting the total count at a record-breaking 92.

Rubble pile asteroids are extremely shock resistant which may explain how they've stayed together for almost as long as the solar system is old. It also has important implications for how we might deal with one that's heading towards the...

Alondra Nelson, who led the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) during a tumultuous period last year, is leaving next week to return to her faculty position at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey. Her decision was first reported by Axios. A 64-year-old sociologist, Nelson has a lengthy resume of “firsts” as she...

A study published in a recent issue of INFORMS journal Marketing Science has found evidence of a questionable practice that tricks consumers into thinking they are getting a discount when they are actually paying more.

In the summer of 2021, a 54-year-old man was brought to a hospital in Northern California after an unexplained seizure. When an MRI revealed a mysterious mass in the left side of his brain, he was transferred to the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Medical Center. A brain biopsy and other tests revealed not a tumor, but an incredibly rare infection of the central nervous...

Dickinson was a prominent popularizer of astronomy, author, magazine editor, and regular contributor to Quirks & Quarks for fifteen...

Volcanoes draw plenty of attention when they erupt. But new research led by the University of Washington shows that volcanoes leak a surprisingly high amount of their atmosphere- and climate-changing gases in their quiet phases. A Greenland ice core shows that volcanoes quietly release at least three times as much sulfur into the Arctic atmosphere than estimated by current climate models.

With temperatures on the moon ranging from minus 410 to a scorching 250 degrees Fahrenheit, it's an understatement to say that humans will need habitats with heat and air conditioning to survive there long term.

The universe was simply different when it was younger. Recently astronomers have discovered that complex physics in the young cosmos may have led to the development of supermassive stars, each one containing up to 100,000 times the mass of the sun.

A new method developed at the University of Córdoba has tested how substances secreted by the roots of olive trees impact infection by the Verticillium dahliae fungus, and studied its effects on different varieties of olive trees

Scientists from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) have designed a new methodology to analyze political polarization through the Facebook posts of European parties. They have also created a website openly displaying these results, where it is possible to make comparisons by country at different times.

Van der Waals heterostructures integrated from various two-dimensional (2D) layered materials provide fundamental building blocks for optoelectronic devices with novel functionalities, such as photovoltaic solar cells, light emitting diodes (LEDs) and photodetectors. Two-dimensional and quasi-two-dimensional perovskites (abbreviated as 2D perovskites hereafter) exhibit unique properties, such as...

How long people live is less predictable and life expectancy for young people can be as much as 14 years shorter in violent countries compared to peaceful countries, according to a new study today from an international team, led by Oxford's Leverhulme Center for Demographic Science. It reveals a direct link between the uncertainty of living in a violent setting, even for those not directly...

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine from February 24, 2022, energy prices rose by up to 20% worldwide for five months. WTI crude oil was $92.77 per barrel on February 24, 2022, but rose and averaged $106.96 (+15.3%) from February 28 to August 3.

A cascade of various events is required for the transmission of signals within cells. These include several modifications of proteins to switch their function on or off. In order to ensure rapid signal transmission, signaling proteins transiently accumulate at specific sites in the cell, where they can form biomolecular condensates.

A new study shows that a calculation method used by international measurement networks creates a systematic bias in carbon balance estimates for northern ecosystems. The study, led by the Finnish Meteorological Institute, shows that a machine learning method can be used to substantially reduce the error.

Anette Bringedal Houge uses experiences from her own research projects to discuss ethical dilemmas researchers face when working on sensitive topics.

New research has revealed that the process of 'peopling' the entire continent of Sahul—the combined mega continent that joined Australia with New Guinea when sea levels were much lower than today—took 10,000 years.

A recent breakthrough publication by scientists at the Masonic Medical Research Institute have discovered a novel way of treating pulmonary fibrosis, a progressive incurable disease that results in the stiffening of the lungs through scarring, using nanoparticles.

War, budget cuts, a pandemic and a crash: For all its trials, Europe's ExoMars mission might be more deserving of the name Perseverance than NASA's Martian rover.

Experts have warned that the recent detection of bird flu in mammals including foxes, otters, minks, seals and even grizzly bears is concerning but emphasized that the virus would have to significantly mutate to spread between humans.