Scientific American 2019-04

(Rick Simeone) #1
Illustration by Nick Higgins April 2019, ScientificAmerican.com 3

FROM


Mariette DiChristina is editor in chief of Scientific American. THE EDITOR
Follow her on Twitter @mdichristina

The Joy of Science


“I get goose bumps every time I see it.” “I saw something so
strange that I had to drop everything else to investigate.” “A tale
of shark bites at a Scottish pub has led us to some new ideas
about rebuilding broken bodies.”
Those sentences appear in three of
the feature articles in this issue writ-
ten by the researchers who are doing
the work. As a culture, we often focus
on the achievements of science. But for
me, the stories of how we got to those out-
comes—including the side tracks and the
bumps in the road—are not to be missed.
And you can find them in our print and digi-
tal editions.
What gives a neuroscientist goose bumps,
for instance? In “The Intention Machine,” the
issue’s cover story, Richard Andersen writes
about watching a paralyzed person in a wheelchair
using thoughts to control a computer or a robotic
limb. These brain-machine interfaces can send and
receive communications to and from neural circuits
in the body. Whereas existing interfaces are imprecise or slug-
gish, newer versions could be placed in brain areas that would
allow them to deduce a person’s intentions to move. That would
make them more versatile for individuals with certain injuries.
Andersen’s feature starts on page  24.

What was so strange a biologist had to drop other things to
check it out? Kenneth  C. Catania explains the allure of the
electric eel’s shocking attacks. As an eel hit a prey fish in a tank
with high voltage, all the other nearby fish became
stock-still in just three milliseconds, floating like
“little statues” in the water. “I was hooked,” Catania
describes in “Shock and Awe,” his fourth article
for Scien tific American. “I had to know how the
eel’s electric attack worked.” In a series of
experiments, he has discovered how the
eel em ploys electric fields to track and
immobilize prey. When threatened by
a potential predator, it can leap
from the water to intensify the
current delivered. You can learn
how by turning to page  62.
Dive into “A Shot at Regenera-
tion,” beginning on page 56, to find
out how shark bites drew the attention of inves-
tigators Kevin Strange and Viravuth Yin: not the bites them-
selves, actually, but what happened to the wounded dolphins
afterward. Strange and Yin heard a story about how dolphins
were beset by sharks, receiving bite wounds “45 centimeters
long and 12 centimeters deep. But remarkably the dolphins
healed up in weeks, with no signs of infection.” What could heal
tissue so quickly? I won’t spoil the surprise.

COVER IMAGE BY MARK ROSS


BOARD OF ADVISERS
Leslie C. Aiello
President, Wenner-Gren Foundation
for Anthropological Research
Robin E. Bell
Research Professor, Lamont-Doherty
Earth Observatory, Columbia University
Emery N. Brown
Edward Hood Taplin Professor of
Medical Engineering and of
Computational Neuro science, M.I.T.,
and Warren M. Zapol Professor
of Anesthesia, Harvard Medical School
Vinton G. Cerf
Chief Internet Evangelist, Google
George M. Church
Director, Center for Computational
Genetics, Harvard Medical School
Rita Colwell
Distinguished University Professor,
University of Maryland College Park
and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School
of Public Health
Drew Endy
Professor of Bioengineering,
Stanford University
Nita A. Farahany
Professor of Law and Philosophy,
Director, Duke Initiative for
Science & Society, Duke University

Edward W. Felten
Director, Center for Information
Technology Policy, Princeton University
Jonathan Foley
Executive Director and William R.
and Gretchen B. Kimball Chair,
California Academy of Sciences
Jennifer Francis
Senior Scientist, Woods Hole
Research Center
Kaigham J. Gabriel
President and Chief Executive Officer,
Charles Stark Draper Laboratory
Harold “Skip” Garner
Executive Director and Professor,
Primary Care Research Network
and Center for Bioinformatics
and Genetics, Edward Via College
of Osteopathic Medicine
Michael S. Gazzaniga
Director, Sage Center for the Study
of Mind, University of California,
Santa Barbara
Carlos Gershenson
Research Professor, National
Autonomous University of Mexico
Alison Gopnik
Professor of Psychology and
Affiliate Professor of Philosophy,
University of California, Berkeley

Lene Vestergaard Hau
Mallinckrodt Professor
of Physics and of Applied Physics,
Harvard University
Hopi E. Hoekstra
Alexander Agassiz Professor
of Zoology, Harvard University
Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
Founder and CEO,
Ocean Collective
Christof Koch
President and CSO,
Allen Institute for Brain Science
Morten L. Kringelbach
Associate Professor and Senior
Research Fellow, The Queen’s College,
University of Oxford
Robert S. Langer
David H. Koch Institute Professor,
Department of Chemical
Engineering, M.I.T.
Meg Lowman
Senior Scientist and Lindsay Chair
of Botany, California Academy of
Sciences, and Rachel Carson Center
for Environment and Society, Ludwig
Maximilian University Munich
John Maeda
Global Head, Computational
Design + Inclusion, Automattic, Inc.

Satyajit Mayor
Senior Professor, National Center
for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute
of Fundamental Research
John P. Moore
Professor of Microbiology and
Immunology, Weill Medical
College of Cornell University
Donna J. Nelson
Professor of Chemistry,
University of Oklahoma
Robert E. Palazzo
Dean, University of Alabama
at Birmingham College
of Arts and Sciences
Rosalind Picard
Professor and Director, Affective
Computing, M.I.T. Media Lab
Carolyn Porco
Leader, Cassini Imaging Science
Team, and Director, CICLOPS,
Space Science Institute
Lisa Randall
Professor of Physics,
Harvard University
Martin Rees
Astronomer Royal and Professor
of Cosmology and Astrophysics,
Institute of Astronomy,
University of Cambridge

Daniela Rus
Andrew (1956) and Erna Viterbi Professor
of Electrical Engineering and Computer
Science and Director, CSAIL, M.I.T.
Eugenie C. Scott
Chair, Advisory Council,
National Center for Science Education
Terry Sejnowski
Professor and Laboratory
Head of Computational
Neurobiology Laboratory,
Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Meg Urry
Israel Munson Professor of Physics
and Astronomy, Yale University
Michael E. Webber
Co-director, Clean Energy Incubator,
and Associate Professor,
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
University of Texas at Austin
George M. Whitesides
Professor of Chemistry and
Chemical Biology, Harvard University
Amie Wilkinson
Professor of Mathematics,
University of Chicago
Anton Zeilinger
Professor of Quantum Optics,
Quantum Nanophysics,
Quantum Information,
University of Vienna
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