Category: Reviews

The Future of Language

After linguist Philip Seargeant’s grandmother suffered a stroke, her thoughts remained trapped in her body. Although she had no cognitive damage, her paralysed muscles didn’t allow her to speak or write. To communicate, she would

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Virtual Therapeutics

All of us have felt that itch which cannot be scratched. Even worse, imagine feeling pain in a missing limb It is a maddening sensation and for some amputees, the feeling is very real. Called

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The Atlas of Perfumes

  The gods created scents; humans make perfumes. Naked and frail, they survive only by artifice (trickery). Jean Giono   In the late 1960s, Jean-Claude Ellena, an apprentice perfumer in France, tried to reproduce Eau

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The mRNA Nobelist

  One day in 1997, University of Pennsylvania molecular biologist Katalin (Kati) Karikó met a new hire at the photocopier who would change the trajectory of her research forever. At 42, the scientist had made

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The Power of Language

At the pediatrician’s clinic, a nurse told Viorica Marian, who is a native speaker of Romanian, to use only English with her American-born daughter. Speaking another language would “confuse” the child and hurt her long-term,

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