Daniel Tammet is talking. As he talks, he studies my shirt and counts the stitches (缝线). Ever since the age of three, when he suffered a disease, Tammet has been obsessed with counting. Now he is 26, a mathematical genius who can figure out cube roots quicker than a calculator, but can't drive a car or tell right from left. He lives with extraordinary ability and disability.

Tammet is softly spoken and shy about making eye contact. He lives on the Kent coast, but never goes near the beach－there are too many pebbles to count. The thought of a mathematical problem with no solution means too much for him. Trips to the supermarket are always a chore because there's too much mental stimulus. "Instead of thinking 'What cheese do I want this week?', I just keep counting."

Tammet is also a "savant", an individual with an extraordinary mental ability. An estimated 1% of the population have savant abilities, but no one knows exactly why. A number of scientists hope that Tammet might help us understand better. Professor Allan Snyder explains why Tammet is of particular, and international, scientific interest. "Savants can't usually tell us how they do what they do. It just comes to them. But Daniel can describe what he sees in his head."

Last year Tammet broke the European record for recalling pi, the mathematical constant, to 13,514 decimal places. He found it easy, because he didn't even have to "think". He wanted to prove that though he's technically disabled, the disability needn't get in the way.

"For more than eight years we have been recommending that greater care be taken in the use of difficult loan words, but it doesn't seem to have had much effect," said an official of the cultural affairs agency, which compiled the report. "It's not our intention to try to control the spread of foreign terms, but this is something that needs to be debated by the research community."

According to a professor of linguistics at Daitobunka University, Japan adopts English words at a more rapid pace than almost any other country. "It sometimes feels like the situation has got out of hand, and there are definitely occasions when we adopt language unnecessarily, but this is a positive step toward the internationalization of Japan," Mr. Suzuki said.

In marketing, Japanglish－a hybrid of contracted English and Japanese－is used to sell everything from 'Pocari Sweat' soft drinks to famikon (family computer) games. In sports, football commentators talk of hedingu shuuto (headers at goal) and naisu kiipa (nice goal-keeping), while the manager of the country's most popular baseball team promised to meiku durama (make drama) in its chase for the league title. But the biggest exponents of foreign words are teenagers. "Sometimes, I feel that English words really hit the spot because they are often shorter and more precise," said Norihide Watanabe, a middle-aged businessman."But when my daughter uses them, I don't have a clue what she is talking about."

The very fact that English is so widely spoken around the world leads to other problems. The commonest examples cited are the British and American versions of the language, but even this is simplifying the issue. As anyone who has traveled to Britain will agree, the "British English" we may have learned at school hardly helps us cope with the varied forms of the language used in different parts of the British Isles. It is often impossible to comprehend some of these dialects. The same might be said of English spoken in the United States: the term "American English" usually means "standard American"－the language that is spoken by some of the better-known presidents, congressmen, spokesmen and women, and entertainers we see in our cinemas or on our TV screens. This form of American English is based on the dialect of English used by educated people in Boston in the northeast of the U.S., Boston-based and classless, this form of American English is the one most usually taught to foreign learners of American English. Incidentally, standard American is very similar to a standard form of British English in most respects－except in pronunciation. This form of the language is not spoken by the majority of Americans, as visitors to California, Florida, Chicago or New York quickly discover. In many parts of the U.S. people speak a dialect which even other Americans sometimes find hard to comprehend.

Other brands of English are spoken in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, the Caribbean, and various parts of Africa and Asia. Some have argued that the language is in danger of splitting up into different dialects. However, modern communication systems – radio, TV, and now computer-based communication systems such as e-mail and the Internet – make this increasingly unlikely. These modern means of communication ensure that English speakers around the world have a vested interest in communicating with each other in a common language. Speakers of different dialects of English may meet up in different places around the world, and have no difficulty in communicating with each other. Whether we like it or not, English, as an international language of communication, is here to stay for the foreseeable future!

For many years, officials of the National Institutes of Health have told Americans that they need to get enough sleep. They say this is necessary for people to stay healthy and do well. Now health officials begin to urge children to get enough sleep. They say children need at least nine hours of sleep every night. They say research shows that children who get this much sleep perform better in school and are less likely to become too fat.

Studies show that lack of sleep causes tiredness and problems with clear thinking. People who do not get enough sleep become angry easily. They also have trouble controlling their emotions.

Among children, problems that result from lack of sleep often are mistaken for more serious disorders. Unlike adults, tired children seem to have endless energy. Some doctors mistakenly identify this as hyper-activity. Many sleep disorders first develop in childhood. But doctors often do not identify the disorder until years later.

Experts say many American teenagers are not getting enough sleep. Teenagers stay up late for several reasons. For example, schoolwork, after school activities and late-night fun. Four years ago, education officials in Minneapolis changed the starting time of seven high schools. The officials delayed the starting time by almost ninety minutes.