The EconomistSeptember 5th 2020 Science & technology 692 not Mr Musk’s presentation but rather the
arrival of Gertrude. Her bciis connected to
nerve cells in a part of her brain called the
olfactory bulb. As she snuffled around her
pen searching for food, and also sniffed her
handler’s hand, a display showed the elec-
trical activity which those cells were mani-
festing in response to these stimuli.
Not everyone is impressed. Andrew
Jackson, a professor of neural interfaces at
Newcastle University, commented that
there was not anything “revolutionary” in
the presentation, saying it was “solid engi-
neering but mediocre neuroscience”. Mr
Musk replied, in a tweet, that it was com-
mon for academia to undervalue the bene-
fits of bringing ideas to fruition.
Pig headed
Admiration will surely increase if and
when Neuralink performs on people a sim-
ilar procedure to that which Gertude has
undergone. The firm received a “break-
through device designation” from Ameri-
ca’s Food and Drug Administration (fda) in
July. This means the fdathinks the gadget
shows promise (in this case for the treat-
ment of paraplegia), and offers it a faster
pathway for regulatory review.
The next challenge the firm wants to
tackle is that of sending electrical signals
into the brain. Mr Musk says this will re-
quire a range of inputs, as some brain areas
require delicate stimulation while others
take a “lot of current”. The point of doing so
will be to establish two-way communica-
tions. This could allow entirely new areas
of treatment to be explored. Besides epilep-
sy suppression, some think that such brain
stimulation might also work to treat de-
pression and anxiety. More important in
the long run, it is also essential to Mr
Musk’s vision of widespread engagement,
at a neurological level, between people and
machines. This, he hopes, will result in a
future in which memories can be down-
loaded and stored elsewhere, and human
beings can form a “symbiosis” with artifi-
cial intelligence.
Critics worry that Neuralink is too se-
cretive, and that Mr Musk’s vision prom-
ises more than he can deliver. He does,
though, have a record of doing what he says
he is going to, albeit sometimes not as rap-
idly as he says he will. He more-or-less sin-
gle-handedly introduced battery-electric
cars to the market and he built a successful
space-rocket business out of nothing.
Brains are a lot more complicated than
cars, and even than rocket science. But do
not bet against the coming into being at
some point of the Musk vision of brains
and computers collaborating directly. 7T
he body farm, known officially as the
University of Tennessee Anthropologi-
cal Research Facility, is a gruesome place. It
is a hectare of land near Knoxville, cut off
from the rest of the world by razor wire,
that has, for more than three decades, been
at the forefront of forensic science. It is
both a laboratory which examines how
corpses decay in different circumstances,
so that matters such as time of death can be
established more accurately, and a training
facility for those whose jobs require an un-
derstanding of such processes.
To study a body forensically, though,
you first have to find it. For a corpse
dumped in a city this is hard enough. If the
burial site is a forest it can be nigh impossi-
ble. Searchers must cover huge amounts of
ground, and may therefore not do so as
thoroughly as might be desirable. Vegeta-
tion broken by people burying bodies is
easy to overlook. And soil perturbed by dig-
ging tends not to remain perturbed for long
once it has been exposed to wind and rain.
For homicide detectives, then, wood-
lands are a problem. At least, they have
been until now. For Neal Stewart, co-direc-
tor of the Tennessee Plant Research Centre,
another part of the university, reckons that
a bit of botanical thinking brought to bear
on the matter may turn trees from being
cover for the disposal of bodies to sign-
posts showing just where they are hidden.
To pursue this idea, he has organised a
group of researchers from various depart-
ments of the university, one of whom is
Dawnie Steadman, the head of the Body
Farm. And, as they write this week in
Trends in Plant Science, this group has come
up with three ways in which vegetation
might flag up illicit burials.
The most obvious is fertilisation—for
bodies are good fertilisers. Calculations
suggest that a decaying adult human body
releases about 2.6kg of nitrogenous com-
pounds (mostly ammonia) into the sur-
rounding soil. That, the researchers found
when they looked through the relevant lit-
erature, is 50 times the average annual rec-
ommended level of nitrogenous fertiliser
for trees and shrubs native to temperate
North America.
Such an overdose would surely have
consequences for nearby plant life. In par-
ticular, it would increase chlorophyll pro-
duction, and thus cause a perceptible
greening of plants near a buried body. In
principle, this would be true of the decay ofthebodyofanylargeanimal. But the re-
mains of wild creatures, left on the surface,
are usually scavenged quickly. People with
a human body to dispose of generally
prefer to inter it so that it cannot be seen.
A more subtle change in the foliage near
a buried body would be brought about by
any cadmium present within its flesh and
bones. Cadmium is rare in nature, but not
in some human bodies. Smokers, and also
those who work in industries involving
welding or electroplating, have high con-
centrations of this metal. Cadmium is easi-
ly taken in by plants through their roots
and, once present in their leaves, affects
the structure of a molecular complex called
photosystem two, which houses chloro-
phyll. That changes the way this complex
absorbs and reflects light. This, in turn, af-
fects the colour of the leaves.
A third change which might be detect-
able in foliage is induced by the artificial
polymers found in clothing and shoes.
These can be taken up by plants, too—end-
ing up in their leaves and sometimes alter-
ing those leaves’ colour.
Crucially, all these effects would be vis-
ible from above. Drones fitted with spec-
troscopes that seek abnormal colours in fo-
liage are already used by farmers to check
crops for disease and drought. Dr Stewart,
Dr Steadman and their colleagues are now
investigating whether a similar approach
can be used to scan woodlands for telltales
of buried bodies. 7Buried corpses may change the colours of surrounding plantsForensic botanyMurder will out
Doing it the old wayCorrectionIn “The aliens among us”, the cover
leader of the August 22nd edition, we said that 10^31
is ten followed by 31 zeros. It is, of course, one
followed by 31 zeros. Sorry for the mistake.