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From thoughts to words: How AI deciphers neural signals to help a man with ALS speak

Nicholas Card, University of California, Davis

Listening in on neural activity is a promising way of restoring the ability to communicate for people whose bodies no longer can. Artificial neural networks are the key middleman in the process.

Italian teenager Carlo Acutis’ upcoming canonization reflects the Vatican’s desire to appeal to a new generation of Catholics

Michael A. Di Giovine, West Chester University of Pennsylvania

Italian priest Padre Pio was one of the world’s most prayed-to saints in recent times. As Pio’s generation ages, the Catholic Church is turning to Carlo Acutis to appeal to a new demographic.

‘Time poverty’ can keep college students from graduating − especially if they have jobs or children to care for

Claire Wladis, CUNY Graduate Center

Jobs and child care duties can seriously hamper a student’s chances of finishing college. The problem affects Black and Hispanic students and women in particular.

Can a political party get any attention when its rival holds a national convention? Yes, but it’s not easy

Stephen J. Farnsworth, University of Mary Washington

The best an opposing party can hope for during convention week is some sort of misfire. But those are rare in this era of scripted conventions designed to minimize controversy.

Treating Nord Stream blasts as a whodunit misses the point – and plays into Russia’s plan to distract and divide

Keith Brown, Arizona State University

Since saboteurs blew up the Russia-Germany gas pipelines in September 2022, theories have swirled about who was responsible. German prosecutors recently issued a warrant for a Ukrainian.

How debt and taxes conspired to rob Nairobi’s slum-dwelling youth of the promise of a better life

Angela R. Pashayan, American University

A 2010 constitution offered Kenyans economic and social rights that have faded in the face of mounting national debt.

Want to fight gender inequality? A review of data from 118 counties shows that development aid works

Bedassa Tadesse, University of Minnesota Duluth

Aid successfully narrowed gender gaps in nearly every country researchers examined.

As human population grows, people and wildlife will share more living spaces around the world

Neil Carter, University of Michigan; Deqiang Ma, University of Michigan

As the world’s population grows, contact between humans and wildlife will increase in more than half of Earth’s land areas. A new study shows where the largest changes will occur.

Thwaites Glacier won’t collapse like dominoes as feared, study finds, but that doesn’t mean the ‘Doomsday Glacier’ is stable

Mathieu Morlighem, Dartmouth College

Antarctica’s riskiest glacier is a disaster in slow motion, a polar scientist writes. But in a rare bit of good news, the worst-case scenario may be off the table.

Politicians step up attacks on the teaching of scientific theories in US schools

The mystic and the mathematician: What the towering 20th-century thinkers Simone and André Weil can teach today’s math educators

Ancient Rome had ways to counter the urban heat island effect – how history’s lessons apply to cities today