Free Republic

In the fall, after Samar Khan came down with a mild case of COVID-19, she expected to recover and return to her previous energetic life in Chicago. After all, she was just 25, and healthy. But weeks later, she said, “this weird constellation of symptoms began to set in.” She had blurred vision encircled with strange halos. She had ringing in her ears, and everything began to smell like cigarettes or Lysol. One leg started to tingle, and her hands would tremble while putting on eyeliner. She also developed “really intense brain fog,” she said. Trying to concentrate on a...

After Orlando and San Bernardino and Paris, there is new urgency to understand the signs that can precede acts of terrorism. And with the Islamic State’s prolific use of social media, terrorism experts and government agencies continually search for clues in posts and Twitter messages that appear to promote the militants’ cause. A physicist may not seem like an obvious person to study such activity. But for months, Neil Johnson, a physicist at the University of Miami, led a team that created a mathematical model to sift order from the chaotic pro-terrorism online universe. In a study published Thursday in...