The COVID Zoom Boom Is Reshaping Sign Language

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February 26, 2021

Arts & Culture The COVID Zoom Boom Is Reshaping Sign Language Deaf people are adapting signs to accommodate the limitations of video communication while working from home By Sarah Katz

Behavior & Society 'Saving the World' Inspires More Female Founders How different messages motivate entrepreneurs By Matthew Hutson

Policy & Ethics America's Immigration System Is a COVID Superspreader ICE detention centers have some of the worst outbreaks in the country, endangering migrants, staff and local communities By Eli M. Cahan

Public Health COVID, Quickly Episode 1: Vaccines, Variants and Diabetes Today, we begin a new podcast series: "COVID, Quickly." Every two weeks, Scientific American's senior health editors, Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman, catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic, from vaccines to new variants, and everything in between. By Tanya Lewis,Josh Fischman,Jeffery DelViscio,Sunya Bhutta | 04:13

Computing Machine Learning Pwns Old-School Atari Games You can call it the ‘revenge of the computer scientist.’ An algorithm that made headlines for mastering the notoriously difficult Atari 2600 game Montezuma’s Revenge, can now beat more games, achieving near perfect scores, and help robots explore real-world environments. Pakinam Amer reports. By Pakinam Amer | 07:46

Policy & Ethics Expert Opinion Can't Be Trusted If You Consult the Wrong Sort of Expert The failure of the U.S. to respond appropriately to the pandemic could have been predicted if anyone had bothered to ask social scientists By Naomi Oreskes

Physics Mystery of Spinning Atomic Fragments Solved at Last New experiments have answered the decades-old question of how pieces of splitting nuclei get their spins By Charles Q. Choi

Biology Graveyards Are Surprising Hotspots for Biodiversity Even the smallest burial sites could help conserve natural habitats in agricultural landscapes By Gemma Conroy

Behavior & Society How to Restore America's Humanity Guaranteeing economic security is crucial. So is sending the message that every one of us matters By Scott Barry Kaufman

Biology Microscopic Wrinkles in Leaves Ward Off Insects Researchers identify a new insect-defense mechanism By Monique Brouillette

Public Health Coronavirus News Roundup, February 20 – February 26 Pandemic highlights for the week By Robin Lloyd

FROM THE STORE Scientific American Mind, Volume 32, Issue 2

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FROM THE ARCHIVE Sign Languages Display Distinct Ancestries Well more than 100 distinct sign languages exist worldwide, with each having features that made it possible for researchers to create an evolutionary tree of their lineages.   By Susanne Bard | January 2020

QUOTE OF THE DAY "ASL is defined by how it is used. How it is used is not static, and the Zoom changes show us this. Words, concepts and pragmatics [the use of language in social contexts] themselves evolve and shift given new mediums of expression." Michael Skyer, senior lecturer of deaf education at the Rochester Institute of Technology

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