Nature Briefing

Hello Nature readers,
Today we consider the benefits of being multilingual, discover computers that run on human brain cells and learn that Canada has lost its measles elimination status.

Being multilingual es bueno para el cerebro

The ability to speak more than one language might slow brain ageing and protect against cognitive decline. In a study of more than 80,000 people, researchers found that people who are multilingual are half as likely to show signs of accelerated biological ageing than are those who just speak one language. The effect was also larger in people that spoke more than one additional language. The researchers hope that their findings will influence policy makers to encourage language learning in education.

Nature | 4 min read
Reference: Nature Aging paper

China moves to attract top young talent

China has introduced a visa that will allow young foreign researchers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to move there without having to secure a job first. The ‘K visa’ is “a serious bid” by the Chinese government to attract the world’s brightest minds in STEM, says Jeremy Neufeld, director of immigration policy at the Institute for Progress, a think tank in Washington DC. Few details about eligibility have been released, except that restrictions will apply on the basis of an applicant’s age, education and work experience.

Nature | 5 min read

arXiv rejects computer-science reviews

The preprint repository arXiv has announced that it will no longer accept review or position papers in computer science amid a flood of low-quality submissions, some of which appear to have been written using artificial intelligence tools. “What we are seeing is many surveys that are just annotated bibliographies without analysis, synthesis or road mapping,” says computer scientist and chair of arXiv’s computer-science section Thomas Dietterich. Such papers have a whiff of paper-mill activity about them, he says, which has prompted the server to make its policy change.

Nature | 4 min read

Canada loses measles elimination status

Canada no longer holds measles elimination status after experiencing a cross-country outbreak that has persisted for more than 12 months. By default, this means that the entire Americas region has also lost its status. Infections took hold in undervaccinated Mennonite communities where the COVID-19 pandemic eroded already-shaky trust in the healthcare system — a shared source of recent measles outbreaks in the United States. The number of new cases is going down, but the loss is “a giant wake-up call that we have gaps in our public health infrastructure”, says physician-scientist Isaac Bogoch.

CBC | 6 min read

Computers that run on human brain cells

At a company on the shores of Lake Geneva, clumps of living brain cells are waiting for your call. These blobs, about the size of a grain of sand, are available to research teams studying how brains work or exploring the possibility of making computers with brain-cell processors. These neural cells can receive electrical signals and respond to them — much as computers do. For some scientists, the dream is to build supercomputers that share the astonishing power efficiency of the human brain. What they’re not working on, they emphasize, is ‘brains in jars’: the blobs are not sentient or conscious (yet).

Nature | 11 min read

Experts fill cracks in US public health

In June, many scientists were alarmed when US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr replaced the experts on the US Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) — a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) panel that makes recommendations on what vaccines should be considered safe and effective — with new advisers, most of whom have expressed anti-vaccine views. Epidemiologist Michael Osterholm and his colleagues decided to do something about it by launching a project to advise on safety data in order to inform vaccine recommendations, and by publishing the kinds of information previously disseminated in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a celebrated bulletin of public health alerts. “It’s very important to emphasize: no organization can replace the CDC or ACIP,” says Osterholm. “We can’t wait for the day when the CDC is back in full glory and ACIP is effectively doing this expert review work that they’ve done so well over the years.”

Nature | 6 min read