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...
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...
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...
Methane is a stealthy greenhouse gas, erupting unpredictably from sources such as pipelines and gas fields. Scientists have wanted to catch these emitters in the act. In the past, watchdogs had to monitor likely sites from the ground or by airplane. Now, massive, short-lived leaks can be detected automatically, from space, anywhere in the world—a first step toward plugging them and...