For astrophysicist David Spergel, teaching at a summer school about data science in August 2023 in Ukraine was a “surreal” experience. At times, utterly normal—smart students and collegial dinners in the charming cobblestoned city of Lviv. But punctuated by sirens and cellphone alerts warning of Russian missile attacks that compelled attendees to seek refuge in bomb shelters. Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation, started to think there had to be something more the West could do to aid his Ukrainian colleagues.
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Society of Fellows
Founded in 2014, the Simons Society of Fellows is a community of scholars that encourages intellectual interactions across disciplines and across research centers in the New York City area.
Senior Fellows are distinguished scientists based in New York City. Junior Fellows are outstanding young scientists who receive support from the foundation for three years to conduct independent research at an institution of higher learning in New York City, with no teaching obligations.
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Autism exists on a spectrum because it is an inherently diverse condition. It manifests everywhere, paying little mind to culture, gender, race, religion or family income. Within this magnificent diversity there is only one constant: every person with autism deserves access to dignified care and support to help them thrive.
It’s time to welcome a new type of cell to the club of living things that can harvest nitrogen from the atmosphere. Until now, the only lifeforms thought to pull nitrogen from the air and turn it into a biologically useful form were bacteria and archaea. But the discovery of a special ammonia factory inside a single-celled ocean alga adds eukaryotes — organisms with membrane-bound structures called organelles — to the list, researchers report in the April 12 Science.
It’s now thought that they could illuminate fundamental questions in physics, settle questions about Einstein’s theories, and even help explain the universe.