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Frank Wilczek, a Nobel Prize–winning theoretical physicist and author, has been announced as the recipient of the 2022 Templeton Prize, which is valued at more than $1.3 million. The annual award honors those “who harness the power of the sciences to explore the deepest questions of the universe and humankind’s place and purpose within it,” according to a press release from the John Templeton Foundation. Previous recipients include scientists such as Jane Goodall, Marcelo Gleiser and Martin Rees, as well as religious or political leaders such as Mother Theresa and Desmond Tutu....

Linguists use machine-learning techniques for mining large text corpora to detect how the structure of a language lends meaning to its words. They work on the assumption that terms that appear in close proximity to one another may have similar connotations: dogs turn up near cats more often than canines appear close to bananas. This same method of burrowing into texts—more formally called the search for distributional semantics—can also provide a framework for analyzing psychological attitudes, including gender stereotypes that contribute to the underrepresentation of women in scientific and technical fields....

When John McCain’s campaign last week pulled out of Michigan—the state New York Times columnist Frank Rich called “ground zero for the collapsed Main Street economy”—it seemed to signal, along with a widening opinion poll gap between the candidates, that the time had come to reassess the “battleground” states in this election. True, Barack Obama had earlier redeployed staff from North Dakota to Minnesota and Wisconsin, where their candidate appeared to have a shot at winning....

NASA has cancelled work on a troubled radioisotope power system intended to help the next generation of spacecraft reach the planets, moons and comets of the outer Solar System. In a blog posted on November 15, NASA’s planetary science division director Jim Green said that NASA is ending work on two Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generators (ASRG) being built by the US Department of Energy (DOE). “Our decision is based purely on budgetary constraints,” Green tells Nature....

Edited by Dava Sobel I name them Upright, Lengthwise, Split Down the Middle: these granites strewn like milky stars. You could orient by them, find your way through creek, meadow, and wood. This one is here, and that one is there, its neighbor next to both, old friends grinding down shards of philosophy. It could take a million years to see the argument to conclusion, points split finer and finer, rubbed to a sheen, into pebbles, then to sand in an hourglass....

Using rare video footage from a deep-diving robot, marine biologists have for the first time identified the diet of the elusive ‘seven-arm’ octopus. The discovery, published on March 27 in Scientific Reports, provides insight into the habits of the shy cephalopod (Haliphron atlanticus), which was spotted nearly four years ago eating an egg-yolk jellyfish (Phacellophora camtschatica). But it also helps to scramble the idea that gelatinous creatures such as jellyfish are nutritional dead-ends—a reputation that is slowly being overturned....

A new method for swiftly producing proteins to fight infections could mean the difference between life and death during future pandemics. Researchers report in Nature today that they have perfected a way to manufacture monoclonal antibodies capable of destroying diseases such the avian flu, which have the ability to swap genes with human flu varieties and jump from birds to people. Their research is a dramatic advance, because it marks the first time that scientists were able to rapidly generate the disease-killing proteins, according to study co-author Patrick Wilson, an immunologist at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation (OMRF) in Oklahoma City....

Most of the afternoons I would pass looking out at the pasture. I soon began seeing things. A figure emerging from the birch woods and running straight in my direction. Usually it was the Sheep Man, but sometimes it was the Rat, sometimes my girlfriend. Other times it was the sheep with the star on its back. —Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase, 1982 Artificial intelligence has been much in the news lately, driven by ever cheaper computer processing power that has become effectively a near universal commodity....

In his Pensees (“Thoughts”), Blaise Pascal wrote: “By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom.” In Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman wrote: “I contain multitudes.” On the surface, Pascal and Whitman seem to be saying very different things. Pascal says we are small; Whitman says we are large. Yet both are profoundly correct. Science not only supports but amplifies their famous declarations. Modern cosmology has revealed a universe vastly larger than Pascal could have conceived in 1660....

The swollen, churning, unrelenting river that’s flooding towns from Minnesota to Louisiana this month is not Mark Twain’s Mississippi River. Sure, there were big floods during the 20th century, including historic tides in 1927, 1937, 1965, 1973, 1983 and 1993. But the spring floods of 2019—which experts generally agree are the most damaging in 25 years—are among a new generation of Mississippi River crests that bear only passing resemblance to the floods of distant past....

The most scientifically capable weather satellite the United States has ever launched is slated to soar into orbit on November 19. From its vantage point 35,800 kilometres up—nearly one-tenth of the way to the moon—the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R Series (GOES-R) will snap images of weather and atmospheric phenomena as they roll across the United States. GOES-R can take pictures as often as every 30 seconds, much faster than the several-minute intervals of current GOES weather satellites....

An attractive way to think of the brain is as an atlas of the mind. Continents of brain cells are given monikers such as “emotion” and “perception.” Within them, independent countries go by names such as “vision” and “audition.” The labels are not without reason. Landmark cases of people with unique forms of brain damage have allowed neuroscientists to isolate specific regions that appear vital to a particular skill or psychological process....

By Stephanie Nebehay and Ben Hirschler The World Health Organization on Monday declared the mosquito-borne Zika virus to be an international public health emergency as the disease linked to thousands of birth defects in Brazil spreads rapidly. WHO Director-General Margaret Chan told reporters an international coordinated response was needed, although restrictions on travel or trade were not necessary. The emergency designation was recommended by a committee of independent experts to the United Nations agency following criticism of a hesitant response so far....

There aren’t many things that Congress can agree on, but in early 2009 it passed a bipartisan resolution designating March 14th of each year as “Pi Day.” Pi, the mathematical constant that students first encounter with the geometry of circles, equals about 3.14, hence its celebration on March 14. The math holiday had been a staple of geeks and teachers for years—festivities include eating pie the pastry while talking about pi the number—but dissent began to appear from an unexpected quarter: a vocal and growing minority of mathematicians who rally around the radical proposition that pi is wrong....

The robots are no longer coming; they are here. And the law’s response has been lacking. Many believe that the Federal Aviation Administration has overstepped its authority in regulating drones. Lawsuits imply that the Food and Drug Administration could have done more to vet robotic surgery. Nevada—the first state to pass a driverless car law—had to repeal its definition of autonomous driving and write a new one. What is the best approach for integrating this transformative technology?...

Antipsychotic drugs are widely used to blunt aggressive behaviour in people with intellectual disabilities who have no history of mental illness, a UK survey of medical records finds, even though the medicines may not have a calming effect. The finding is worrisome because antipsychotic drugs can cause severe side effects such as obesity or diabetes. Psychiatry researcher Rory Sheehan and colleagues at University College London studied data from 33,016 people with intellectual disabilities from general-care practices in the United Kingdom over a period of up to 15 years....

The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control by Walter Mischel Little, Brown, 2014 ($29) Fifty years ago Mischel, a psychologist, presented preschoolers with a difficult choice. The youngsters could opt for immediate enjoyment of a single delectable treat—a marshmallow—or they could wait up to 20 minutes and get two of them. Over time Mischel found that kids who could hold out for greater rewards had better social and cognitive development, self-worth and SAT scores later in life....

The Kavli Prize has been honoring scientists for their seminal research in astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience since 2008. In the past decade, 40 scientists have been awarded prizes, 14 in astrophysics, 15 in neuroscience, and 11 in nanoscience. On May 31st, the Kavli Prize will add new laureates to the list. In a ceremony that spans two continents, Ole M. Sejersted, president of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, will announce the winners of the 2018 Kavli Prizes from Oslo....

A House committee on Tuesday restored to pending legislation a ban on altering the genomes of human embryos intended for pregnancies, despite calls from some scientists to lift the ban and allow the Food and Drug Administration to review applications for new technologies. Lifting the prohibition could have opened the door to clinical trials of babies being made with genetic material from three people or with genomes that had been changed in ways that would be passed on to future generations....

Every year, Americans flush 2.6 to 2.9 billion contact lenses down the drain, according to new research from Arizona State University. By tallying this detritus and studying how it persists in this environment, the study provides the first estimate of the potential burden of these tiny plastics, or microplastics. “There’s been a lot of research done on single-use, lower-value plastics such as straws, silverware and plastic bags,” says Charles Rolsky, an ASU doctoral student and the study’s lead author....