Scientific American 2019-04

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