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Life can be yale again! of your own body weight on ur feet and relieve the harmful stress “L recommend Gravity Defyer Gat eaning ani tine Can pit on shoes to my patients and friends... | wear them myself!” 3s, bones and joins, This a e atonal Lecturer Board Certs in Postri lomectanic. i nl ary rg ou hare wr Ce before, reducing nerve pressure and allowing your muscles to relax. They wil help you fel rejuvenated by restoring energy and propelling you forward with every step. Imagine a healthier more active you ~ free from the stress and discomfort Walk more, run more, jump higher and stay on your feet long mance: the new NEXTA by G-Defy"™ ing on your f 2 in comfort and athletic ps A" 1 (800) 429-0039 Coupon Code: MB2MDJS ultimama 4 Dr ee +e THE TOP 10 Landing, p. 18. 3. A Census of Your Inner Ecosystem, p. 21. 4. Environmental Extremes af the Year, p. 22. 5. Dld Dads Drive Evolution, p. 24. 6. Space Taxis Take Off, p. 24. 7. Q&A: Mind-Control Robots, p. 26. 8. Dark Matter Comes Into View, p. 29. 9. Social Jet Lag, p. 30. 10. The Case for Fracking, p. 31. 1contents // january/february 2013 Astronomy Nearest star has a planet. Explosion that made the Earth, Probe exits the solar system... Overgrown galaxy cluster ‘Severe weather on Uranus. ‘Viewing the cosmos in 3-0. Photo of the year: Our angry SUM uuu82 Biology/Zoology Debunked: Arsenic-eating Hf nu 50 Debunked: Promiscuous Mal@S 50 Gray wolves become fair 2aM€ on 52 Bizarre NeW CICALUTES sn How the tiger got its stripes Whale’ sixth sense. Rip Van Winkle microbes... Environment/Energy/earth Germany's solar success EPA cleans up coal Driverless cars, coming soon, Sandy reigntes climate concerns. Engineered crops work.. Arctic ice meltdown... Exploring @ buried ake . QBA: James Cameron's deep dive Groundwater running dry... Genetics Learning to read A, ©, G, T 34 QA: Personalized medicine. 38 Noninvasive fetal testing Cancer genes unmasked, Synthetic DNA. Human mutation explosion Health Should sugar be regulated? nnn 35 Rice tainted with arsenic. 59 Calorie restriction: Mixed Verdi... 85 Deadly bacteria breed on pig farms...67 Why the low-carb diat works. a4 Human Origins Inside a Mayan astronomer’ office... Cooking with fre, {000.000 8C....83 China's mystery hominid 56 Ancestral genomes decoded... 56 Worlds oldest 62¥@ aft nnn 60 Medicine Paralyzed patients stand again... Gastric bypass cures ciabetes, Nano: Injection stops suffocation Debunked: Chronic fatigue virus. Meningitis outbreak Vaccine for cancer. Measles and mumps reappear. Four steps against Alzheimers. New pill for cystic fibrosis. Protein boost halts Huntington ..m.. Whooping cough vaccine fails. Lab flu raises pandemic fears. Why polio is still around... MindBrain Transit map of the brain, Psychiatry debate: Who is normal? Brain imperiled by fused gonos. Wiy kids make rash decisions Paleontology Dinos: Killer fuzz ball Dinos: Digitizing fOSSI5 nou Dinos: How to feed a Diplodocus. Spider attack frozen in amber. Giant Jurassic tleas.. People Daredevil jumps trom 24 miles. Citizen scientists make their mark Q&A: Crowdsourcing peer review in memoriam: Armstrong and Ride. in memoriam: Ray Bradbury Year ofthe bionic man, italian seismologists convicted... 36 37 43 50 53 57 59 84 87 68 75 vo 46 49 43 76 70 70 n 75 82 52 75 78 a0 81 a4 vw 88 Physics QA: Einstein strikes back How to hide fn time. Forget lasers: get masers... ‘Shadow of an atom. Space Vesta, the Earth that never W238 ‘An ocean inside Satu moon on. 48 QUA The FedEx of spaceight....54 Chin’ tetonauts take of 57 Spy scopes donated to NASA .n..66 Russian Mars probe fails Lighting up the jet steam... Technology Printing in three dimensions nun 37 Nano: Mini memory... 42 Nano: Carbon computing. a2 Nano: Singlo-atom transistor 43 Nano: Quantum diamonds. 43 Fastor data crunching 45 4,000-megapixel COMeFA cnn How to translate anything. 59 QBA: The new cyberattacks. 52 Symphony i OF nnn 87 Spam capital ofthe world. n Contributors. 4 Editors Note 6 Mail 7 Vital Signs 8 Impatient Futurist. 10 Calendar: Best Science Culture nnn 12 20 Things You Didn't Know About Inner Earth, seeeeeeaod = — Te ee zs ta -_ot Year Resolve t0 this year Make 2013 the year of ORGANIZATION Free your home from clutter with The Neat Digital Filing System Meet NeatCloud’ + NeatMobile’. all of your important files, your packet. Whether you scanned it at home, emailed it in from the road, or even snapped it with your phone-it’s all together and always available. A place for what's important. NeatCloud lets you access your most Up-to-date information on multiple computers, your mobile devices, or any web browser. It also keeps things securely backed up, making it the perfect home for your important files. Keep the information, lose the paper. Once it’s in Neat, you don't need to keep the paper. Reclaim your desk from paper and your home from clutter. Use NeatMobile to scan with your phone, $0 you can leav eipts at the store. Can Ae ees ee esl aN FREE 30-DAY TRIAL OF NEATCLOUD + NEATMOBILE T NEAT.COM/DCCLOUDCONTRIBUTORS Bil Andrews, previously at Astronomy, isa new editor at DISCOVER. He has also wri ten for MayoClinic.com Nate Berg isa Los Angeles-based writer ‘who covers cities, science, and design. Kevin Berger isthe features editor of Nautilus, a new digital science magazine. Hes a former senior editor at DISCOVER. Jennifer Berglund, a Boston-based writer interested in biology and ecology, isa film producer at prehensileproductions.com David Brin (davidbrin.com) is a physicist and writer whose novels include The Post- ‘man, Earth, and Existence. Enma Bryce, a former internat DISCOVER, {sa freelance writer and a contributor to ‘The New York Times. Res ND e ee Misa raise ons Pree aie) SO OT uc} a ea) Glan Conahan lives in New York and focuses on physies and technology. She is ‘DISCOVER researcher. ‘Andrew Curry isa journalist based in Bertin More of his workis at andrewcurry.com aso Daley’ wife claims he is 50 percent ‘Neanderthal, which may explain his inter- cstin paleoanthropology. Tasha Eichenseher, a new senior editor at DISCOVER, isa former editor and producer at National Geographic Digital Media. ‘Adam Fisher is San Francisco-based writer. The one and only time he jumped ‘out ofa plane, he passed out from fright on the way down. Michael Fitzgerald writes about creative people and their impact on business and society, Tim Folger is a veteran science writer and series editor of The Best American Science ‘and Nature Writing. Douglas Fox, a piscoven contributor, also rites for Scientific American and Esquire, Mary Beth Griggs a former DIscovER intern, is a Brooklyn-based science journalist who also writes for Popular Mechanics. ‘Adam Hadhazy is a freelance writer whose ‘work also appears in Popular Science and Popular Mechanics. Jesse D, Jenkins, a writer and energy ana- Iystsisa researcher at mrt. Jonathon Keats is based in San Francisco and is the author of Forged: Why Fakes Are ‘the Great Art of Our Age. Linda Marsa isa contributor to DISCOVER and the author of Fevered, an investigation into the effects of climate change. Kat McGowan shuttles between New York ‘and California covering health and medicine, She is the editor of piscovEn’s single-topic special issues. Michael Meyer isthe lead scientist of Nasa’ Mars Exploration Program. Gregory Mone is frequent piscover contributor and the author of the novel Dangerous Waters. Melinda Wenner Moyer isa science writer based in Brooklyn and an adjunct professor ‘at CUNY's Graduate School of Journalism. slllNeimark is a contributing editor at DISCOVER. Her adventure fantasy novel, ‘The Golden Rectangle, will be published in February. Erik Ness writes about science and the envi- ronment from Madison, Wisconsin. His ‘work has also been featured in Prevention, OnEarth, and Preservation, Wendy Orent, the author of Plague, writes frequently about infectious disease and evolution. ‘Adam Preis a former Newsweek general ‘editor who covers science and technology. ‘Todd Ptock (toddpitock.com) contributes to The Atlantic and the Discovery Channel. Fangfei Shen isa researcher at DISCOVER ‘with a master’ in science wting from MT. Elzabeth Svoboda lives in San Jose, She is ‘working on a book about the science of heroism and altruism, Bia Tivedi writes about medicine, genom- ies, and health from Washington, D.C. Ed Yong writes the blog Not Exactly Rocket Science. His work has been published in ‘Nature and Wired. Carl Zimmer isa blogger and contribut- ing editor at DISCOVER. His latest book is Evolution: Making Sense of Life, coauthored ‘with biologist Douglas Emlen,a kk kk Gener eas CR an i ecg cod fe got engaged. This ring is so much more clear and sparkly than my real diamor a rea) URGENT: Diamond Ring Recall Experts warn that millions of rings may be “romantically defective” when compared to the spectacular 4-Carat DiamondAura ° Avalon. ae loves natural diamonds. She loves you even more But when even che skimpiest | carat solitaire sells for as much as $16,000, its time to reconsider your relationship..with diamonds, Have you recently overpaid only to be underwhelmed? Send it back, You can do bolder, You can do brighter. You can own the Seauer 4-Carat Diamonddura” Avalon Ring for under $100. When “cute” ia four-letter word. Ifyou wane to make a romantic impression, go big. Cate doesnt cut i. Your love deserves to be wowed. Ifyoute a billionaire with money 10 burn, eur he page. Everyone else? What you read next juse might change your love ie, There’ only one w: find out. PL We rewrote the rules of romance. Only Sawer's exclusive lab-created Diamonddunt gives you the luxury look of layge- PERE sive hes bere Busia ES For fastest service, call toll-free 24 hours a day 1-800-721-0357 Stauer’ 14101 Southeross Drive W, Dept. AVR345.04 Burnsville, Minnesota 55337 www.stauer.comCoda and Prelude ‘YOU HOLD IN YOUR HANDS (OR VIEW ON YOUR SCREEN) AN object steeped in history It is a record of science advances from 2012, yes, butalso much more. Our #1 story, the discov- ‘ery of the Higgs boson, is the result of one ofthe largest and ‘most complex collaborations in history. The two teams that did the research include more than 5,000 physicists. Collec- tively the 100 stories in this issue represent tens of thou- sands of people-years of work—a monumental, global effort to-expand the reach of the human mind, ‘This issue also represents a more personal historic ‘moment. After 32 years in New York City ignoring a short, ill-fated vacation in California), piscoveR is closing its editorial offices here. And after 15 years at the magazine, 1 will soon be stepping down as editor in chief. Readers generally do nat see much of the process You are holding tetindite age norsboud they: as the ol joie goes, nobody wants to know how the sausage gots much more than — ™©B#thisisatimetodropsome othe rive ‘Magazines are their own grand collaborations, and Ihave had the honor of working with one of one year’s Worth tnesmartes, most dedicated asin publishing ‘SCOVER of history. ‘The style and intelligence of DISCOVER are a direct reflection of the people who make i Recently that staff got caught up in yet another kind of history. When hurricane Sandy ripped through the region it left us all scrambling for ‘transportation, many without power, afew dealing with har- rowing personal crises. Emails flew around. Tree editors established a makeshift workspace in Dunkin’ Donuts. Our ‘web producer walked two and a half hours each way to get into the office. One researcher postponed a moxe to Boston soshe could make her final corrections. Lam proud to say you ‘wort se even a trace of those disruptions. The las issue here willbe made with the same passion asthe fist. ‘But! should not end on a note of finality. wil continue ‘with DISCOVER as a columnist and blogger. A fabulous new staffs poised to uphold the magazine’ traditions while injecting a dose of fresh thinking It is only right that asc ‘ence magazine should abide by the rules f evolution: Every ‘change of environment isa spur to innovation and adapta tion, atime of endless possibility aC M Corey $. Powell, noirox 1x entre DISCOVER Corey S, Powel Miche Gat tian COEF ren esha To Been Satie Lone Shona Toggar thar! ch Ames Zacbere aac FOR OSE taney yor ee oeemag se, Le ‘en Eers Kon Woinger grou enctnarion antcen a Bs Must. @November 2012 Send email to editorialiscovermagazine.com Address letters to DIscovER 21027 Crossroads Circle P. Box 1612 Waukesha, WI 53187-1612 Include you fll ame, bdress and daytime phone | umber. The Meaning of Life “Frozen. radiated. Desolete, Alive?" (page 30) profiled astronomer Britney Schmidt, whose work makes a compel- ling case that Jupiter's moon. Europa could support life. Schmidt says that extra- terrestrial worlds such as Europa must satisfy three basic requirements to support lie: energy. a substantial callee- tion of molecules, and water 1 ‘would submit that those fac- tors are necessary only fr life fas we know it Isrtit reasonable tosuspect that with billions ofplanets inthe galaxy, ile ‘may exist ina form completely unknown to our Earth-bound scientists? Jeff Rodgers Lewes, DE. Inexploring the falibity of eyewitness testimony (False Eyewitness” page 38), writer Douglas Starr shared the case of Berion Perry amen convicted cof burglary onthe basis of one witness who had seen him at right from a thireloor balcony. Was the woman's testimony the sole eiterion for Perry's conviction? Was any other evidence submitted? Kenneth L. Mathias ‘Taunton, MA Starr responds: A car inthe parking lot had been burglar- ‘zed, and Perry was found ‘carrying two radio speakers ‘that he said he had found on ‘the ground. That is undoub edly suspicious, but those “factors by themselves di not ‘establish guilt, ‘The key othe conviction was the woman’ eyewitness testimony, without which Perry would have gone fee. That's why the fallibiltyofher testimony as so crucial. By the way, although the woman identified Perry that night in the parking ot, she was unable to later pick him out ofa photo array. es St Reemeoat Cararaars Peeceeeey the ABILITY SMUD EMA oem LIE? theCONFIDENCE Tod eke a ecm Mate rete Learning a new language is a smart career Rosetta Stone Live life fluentlyGt (Ay BY W. ROY SMYTHE, Save the Linebacker WeRoy Smythe ‘smedical director ‘ofinnevation {forthe Scott & ‘White Healthcare ‘System in Temple, ‘Texas. The cases Vital Sign are real, but names ‘and certain details have been changed. DSCOVER When a young athlete arrives in the ER dangerously short of breath, a surgeon must improvise to save his life ARLYN a CAREER, WAS ‘the resident on call one night in the cardiothoracie intensive care nit when an emergency room doctor called and asked me to come down and see a patient. "Young guy” he sid. "He has some sort ofan airway problem” ‘Those were worrisome words, because airway problems canbe immediately life-threatening I rushed tothe patients examiningroom, ‘where two men were supportinga ‘third, younger man, One ofthe two supporting him was graspinghis upper arm so tightly that his own arms were visibly shaking He looked very scared. “Tim Stews dad, doc” He looked atthe man onthe other side ofthe patient. ‘And this is Coach Alexanded? “ey, doe” grunted the coach. “Somethin airtight here. This is one tough kid? Lrwalked around to the other side ofthe bed so could see the patient. Steve was about 0. His forearms, bioeps.and triceps. under stress as he leaned forward on the bed, were wall developed and defined. His hands were large, with abrasions on his knuckles. He was wearinga white and blue athlete shirt and a matching cap with the ogo of local college. He ‘was sweating despite the fact that it ‘was cool inthe ER. He was extremely short of breath, and hs shoulder and ‘me, gasping between words. "Ifelta little..weied.the last couple of days... and then got... cold or something... really. hard to breathe...nov “What happened to your knuck- les?” Tasked He looked up, managing a crooked grin on his red, sweaty face, and replied, “Linebacker” ‘At that moment, the emergency oom resident walked in, "We have the cr-scan’ he sa. ABasic Procedure Goes Awry ‘We walked over and looked at the scan on a monitor Lwas stunned. ‘There was a huge mass, the szeand shape ofa small cantaloupe in Steve's upper chest. twas compressing the azea where the trachea spi into two smaller tubes called the main-stem bronchi The ight main-stem bron- chus was obliterated, and the let was only about hafits normal diameter. “This explains why he wants to lean forward Isai,“ takes pressure off his airway? “What doyou thinkit is?” the emergency room resident asked. “Ldonitknow’ Isaid,"buta Iymphoma has to be high on thelist? ‘Atumor originating from the white blood cells ofthe immune system, Jymphoma represents almost 15 per- cent ofall eancer diagnoses in young adults. Stews symptoms had come ‘upper-back muscles evidently called on quickly, and ofthe tumors that into play tosupplementthe usual can occurin this area ofthe chest, cones, were heaving in concert with _Iymphoma is one ofthe fastest the movements of hs chest. ‘We took Steve tothe operat- “steve, what’ up? Tasked Jngroom to biopsy the mass. The Hereplied withoutlooking up at stffsurgeon asked me to have the RANE anesthesiologist insert the breathing tube into the patient’ airway while hhe was awake and sitting upright. ‘Although patents are usally sedated and paralyzed during this procedure, the surgeon worsied tha ifSteve were relaxed and ving down, the tumor could pros on the airway o firmly that the anesthesiologist would be unable to pass the breathing tube at all—what we term “losing the airway. As L walked into the of, the anes thesiologist was lowering Steve from siting to alying position, counter to the surgeons instructions. “We think you should intubate him awake and upright’ sad hurriedly, “due to the tumor’s location” “Idon't think that is necessary?” he replied, and immediately injected Stove with the intravenous anesthetic. Overthe next several seconds, watched in horror as the anesthesiol- git tried five times to pass the tube, only to have it stop halfway down The tumor had slammed the trachea shut. “Dammit!” the anesthesiologist sald, "it wont go!” His face was red, and his hands trembled from ansiety. Tran overto the bedsideand barked at the circulating nrse:"Get the tigid bronchoscope, stat!” Unlike the thinner and flexible breathing tube, the rigid broncho- Scope is not much more than a ‘metal tube about balfan inch in diameter with alighted fiber optic shaft. We occasionally use this device to remove foreign bodies orto biopsy airway tumors. ean also be used to ventilate a patient when the ‘more flexible breathing tube cannot be inserted, As the nurse ran out of the room, Ilooked over at Steve's oxygen saturation monitor, which displays the amount of oxygen being carried by the red blood cells to the tissues of the body. The monitor both displays a number and beeps with each heartbeat: the beeping tone Got more heart-stopping drama from our Vital Signs podcast, wen you want it, on demand, only at discovermagazine.com/podcastgets lower as the numbers go dawn, ‘A normal blood saturation level is between 95 and 100 percent. Anything lower than 80 percent for more than ‘afew minutes can damage the brain and other organs and possibly result in death, With no oxygen reaching Steve'slungs, Ilistened and watched helpless as the numbers got smaller and the beeping tone went lower: 90 70.52. Steve's heartbeat began to slow and became irregular “Were losing him!" Iyelled. knew that cpr would be futile—it pushes ‘oxygen through the airway, and the airway was closed, ‘The nurse wheeled a cat into the room. [grabbed rigid bronchoscope and attached the light cord as the anesthesiologist moved out of the way {placed the scope in Steve's mouth, identified the larynx, and shoved the ‘metal scope past the vocal cords felt bump as it slid past the tumor and down the le main-stem bronchus. heaved a sigh of lie We could deliver enough oxygen to one side to sustain hhim, Now I just needed tubing to hook the bronchoscope ta the ventilator. “Hand me the ventilator tubing” I told the anesthesiologist, “Thank God!” he said, handing me thetubing. froze. The tubing retrieved in haste by the nurse, was the wrong size and lacked the connective hardware the device required. “Get me acon: rector” yelled The nurse ran out of| the room again. Allofthe alarms on the machine ‘were now going off Steve’ oxygen saturation was 25 percent, and his heartbeat was erratic. ‘We were out oftime and had to do something immodiately or Stove was {going to suffocate right in front of us, suddenly flashed back tothe way | hhad been taught as a medical student todo mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, andit triggered an idea, Desperate, 1 began to blow into the tube—some- ‘thing that int part of any standard ‘medical procedure. “What the hell are you doing?” the anesthesiologist shouted. But within seconds the saturation was up to 50, then 65, then the low 8s Steve's heartbeat normalize. “The air we exhale has lower oxygen content than what we normally breathe in, but it is close, and much better than nothing. Iwas actinglike ‘ahuman ventilator, delivering enough oxygen to sustain Steve lif As the operating stafTlooked on, dumbfounded, continued breathing through the tube. Eventually the nurse founda fiting, and we hooked Steve toa proper ventilator, from which 100 percent oxygen could be delivered. ‘was finally able to make an incision above his breastbone and biopsy the tumor, We sent a piece of the mass to the pathology lab down the hal. few ‘minutes later the pathologist called, It was probable lymphoma. “The best treatment for lymphoma inthe airways chemotherapy. not surgery, so we called in an oncologist who was able to administer chemo- therapy in the operating room, We then transferred Steve to the cu with the rigid scope sil in his airway. The plan was to try to shrink the tumor with the tube in place, protecting his airway from collapsing again. “The pathologic examination showed that Ste Iymphoblastic leukemia, which can spread very rapidly. But the prognosis inyoungadults is much better than in ‘older age groups. Some 75 percent of ‘eases in young patients are curable, Steve underwent more chemo: therapy while still on the ventilator. Luckily, despite the size and danger- ‘ous location of his tumor, Steve was a fighter and was soon breathing on his own. The tumor shrank, and he ‘got more good news when we found the cancer had not spread to his bone marrow: On his tenth day in the hospital he was transfered out of intensive care Aweek later, as Iwas walking, across the hospital lobby, lencoun- tered a gratifying sight: two men supporting a third as they walked toward the front door. Steve’ father ‘and coach were taking him home. is cancer was related to acute 9aa FUTUI ul BY DAVID H. FREEDMAN The Happiness App David H. Freedman isa freslance Journalist, author, ‘and longtime contributor to DIScoveR. You can follow im on Titer at dhfreedman 10 Improving your mood can begin with a phone download. And from there—perhaps you would care for'a magnetic mental massage? Y WIFE HAS TRIED T0, convince me fom time to time that I sf from depression. I point out that I fet fine, 'm productive Teengage in all the basic elements of a reasonably ful if. She counters that this isall evidence ofhow deeply Im ‘burying my depressive feelings. hehas gone onto suggest that my fascination with technology isa way of distancing myself from other people ‘Tm not buying But her comments did get me wondering If really did ‘become depressed, could I count on gadgetry tohelp me find a way out? Foronce Im not alone in my distorted thinking Or so Lam assured bby dick Dorian, clinical and police psychologist in Encino, California, “Unfortunately some people docit ‘want to go toa therapist because of ‘the cost and the perceived stigma Dorian says. Thats one reason he and Drew Erhardt, a psychology professor at Pepperdine University ame up ‘with MoodKit,a smartphone app that canhelp treat depression and other psychological problems. MoodkKit employs the tools ofa ‘technique called cognitive behavioral therapy. The basic idea is that depres- sion results in patterns of behavior and ‘thought that reinforce depression, For ‘instance, ifa person is spending most ‘ofthe day in bed thinking he will never ‘be happy again because he has just Jost a loved one, his depression may persist because he is spending most of ‘the day in bed thinking he will never ‘be happy again. In many cases, getting the person out and about and thinking about the stuf of everyday fe isl it takes to lift the clouds. Being depressed can cause us to Jookat our situation in distorted, “unhelpfal ways” Erhardt says “And we tend toll back from activities that ‘might otherwise boost our mood, like exercise, interacting wth others, and oingto enjoyable places? Cognitive behavioral therapy prods patients todo things that will make them feela sense of accomplish- ‘ment and connection, and to avold interpreting situations as being worse than they are. Clinical studies have consistently shown that this approach isa roatively fast and effective treat- ‘ment, with outcomes at least as good as those achieved by antidepressant ‘medications like Prozac, and without the drugs side elects. Think About Beer and Italy Loaded into a smartphone, MoodKit prompts users to link their moods, activities, and thoughts, For example, itmight indicate that a user's low point coineides with thinking his friends don’t care about him, or with cating at a fast-food restaurant. It ‘might then help the user think about ‘making weekend plans or eating in a park, activities associated with high points in his mood, Such guidance hhaslong been available in books, but the phone’ interactivity ubiquity. and privacy offerbigaadvantages. People ddnit want to pullout Overcoming Your Personality Disorder when theyre in Starbucks’ Eshardt says—a mistake that for one, will never make again. Studies of Moodkit' effectiveness arent in yet. But for what its worth, the app is being used by thousands of people. [tried it and was immediately able to identify several problem areas in my thinking and behavior Idorit care to share the specifics of what MoodKit uncovered in me, IfTwere aan inner-thought-sharing sort of pee- son, I would have solved my problems along time ago, But speaking hypothetically if MoodiKit were to note that a user could lift his spirits by thinkingess about unmeetable deadlines and ‘unpayable bills from his youngest kids callege, and more about beer, expen- sive eameras, and his upcoming trip totaly, the app would be doingits job quite well. In fact, the app did sucha good job of highlighting those entirely: lunrelated-to-me examples that I started wondering if my wife might be right about my being depressed, For- tunately MoodkKit was thereto remind ‘me that thinking my wife was right was associated with low points in my mood, prompting me to think cheering ‘thoughts that she was wrong, Aseffective as cognitive behavioral therapy can be, though, being told ta fixyour mood problems by working ‘on your thinking and behavior isa little ke being told by the doctor to fix your cold by resting up and drinking plenty ofliquids. ts good advice, but it leaves you wishing you could just got 2 prescription for something that directly blasts away atthe rot ofthe problem, Tarique Perera is taking more ofthat direct-fix approach. A Harvard-trained psychiatrist and formerly a professor at Columbia University, Perera isa leading practitioner of abrain-altering process known as transcranial magnetic stimu- lation, or TMs, Electromagnetic coils are positioned near a patient’ skull to. deliver brief pulses of magnetic fields: these induce electric curents inside the head, which cause neurons to fire in brain regions associated with mood, Introduced in 1985,1s wasapproved by the US.Foodand Drug _side of your forehead or duet-taping good reason to believe it will Research- ‘Administration fouryeasagofor half dozenrngingsmartphones to ershave or years been triggering the treatmentofdepreson, Using your skal Nether as much eect neuronal ring and specific behaviors dletcitytoafect the bran makes asf asTean te although the ater such as eye movement in primate, ras soundsiniartoectroconulswe technique temporal causes nose by performinga similar trick wit laser therapy ais clectroshocktherapy. bleeds and some oss of visionifthe lghtinsteadofhet.awelhestabished Butwhereasthelaterblankets lange tape isto ight) approach called optgenetics, swaths ofthe brain with awiteout Thebig drawbackto optogeneicsis storm ofeletricalsctiviy—leadngto Let Bacteria Lift Your Mood that requires surgical implanting temporary and occasionally perma Well whoneeds Tas when you can optical bers inthe ran. hough nent memory mpaiment—Tasis have magnetic nanoparticles injected that hasbeen done many ines i tore ofafoctsed ele ftheciratry. rectly into your brain? Ara Palle variety of animals itis not something Athough the exact process by which aphyses researcher atthe Sate Timing have done to men spite ‘magnetic timation eles depres- University of New York a Bal, has ofthe potential formalingme ait sion remains anopenquestion,TMS_ developed a technique fr employing at paris. Palle approach, onthe Practitioners have reported thatabout magnetic fields to heat up nanopar- otherhang, merely requires injecting 6o percent ofpatients ee remission tiles that have been implanted in a needle fil ofmagnetialy sensitive oftheiesymptoms. Perera. whokas neurons, The heat activates temper nanoparticles int specif brain ares recently established his own Tas cine, _ature-senstve channels in the cells Magnetic fields can then bebeamed describes thisapproachas"thefiture "and stimulates potently beneficial in fiom the outside. Tat sounds ike of neuropsychiatry changesin the neural circuitry. At somthing could ve with Terried (ike most technophiles) atleast, thats the theory. Bvenbettr Pals workingona the thought ofbeinglttbehindinan So farPrallehas proved that his technique that should do aray with the earlier century, tried to get someone nanoparticles can affect the behavior of inmy area to magnetically scour away nematodes, causing the roundworms ‘my nonexistent depression. Butthey _tochange their direction of motion. He all refused, citing various vague ethical has also shown thatthe technique stirs cancers over physically ateringthe changes in mouse cells in petri dishes. brain ofsomeone who doesrit havea Although Pralle and others involved in diagnosis. (Ifyouirea do-it-yourselfer this suddenly hot research field havenit like me, let me save you the trouble of demonstrated thatthe trick works in briskly waving magnets around theleft thera oflving animals, there is need to inject anything at all In opto- genetics researchers make brain cells responsive to light by stealing genes fom light-sensitive bacteria and then packing those genes intoa virus that infects an animal’ brain cells. “Were Jooking at bacteria that make magnetic ‘nanoparticles, so we can insert their genes into brain cells in the same way” Prallesays. The result would be an ality to get specific brain eiruits to fire, just as optogenetcists do now. And that could open the door to all sorts of psychological treatments. “This would be a way to fix depres- sion and other disorders that is uch more specific to the groups of neurons that are causing the problems? Pralle explains “Other techniques are very generic to most of the brain ‘in comparison, which makes them less effective and causes them to have other effects on the brain” ‘What's not to lke about shooting bacteria genes into your brain to have your thoughts magnetically manipu- lated? As soon as someone builds the ‘magnetic activating system into a base- ball cap, I'l pounce on it. leven let my wifehave the controls. What have got tolose?l either shed my supposed depression or prove her wrong Either way be happy. u ILLUst aE ATION BY DAVID PLUNKERIJanuary Oo mae y VERSE The Tinkerers eee o Universe ROMY Tonight is the Witi oak of this Biologist Né Pouce Shubin tracks Tike Stes ee the universe's | “blue box" phone, RUE ness 46-billion-year NEIL can jump-start Jentenau any history through PSM quadcantids 2075 the molecular 1 growth, structures of our own bodies. q Birth of the Subway ‘On this day in 1863, London Seattle's EMP Museum ‘opened the first underground = sereens over a dozen sci-fi passenger railway system. | flicks including one that Just 4 miles long, itcarried = chronicles a feline 2.5 milion people within space mission). year. Great Balls of Fire fos aenc ‘The Florida Museum of Natural History Peete hen aa Peete ern rks Geers nt creer a en a Projects to this innovation bee «man who invented ee con coc Le 12 This month's calendar is produced in afflation with the National Science Teachers Assocation ‘iSCOVER Submit your events to‘The Anchorage Museum celebrates the history of powered fight in a state that depends on aviation lke no other. Arizona SciTech Festival {A statewide celebration of science offers hundreds of events for science enthusiasts ofall ages, including a Geeks’ Night Out street fair and @ reenactment of Galileo's discoverie ‘The Chemistry of Valentine's Day Delve into the science of romance, courtesy of the American Chemical Society: Read hidden messages in valentine cards, for instance, and learn how the rose gets its fragrance. Earth follows the adventures of the heroic blue alion ‘Scorch Supernova and his geeky brother Gary, who find themselves imprisoned with other extraterrestrials in Area 51. Closest Encounter of the Asteroid Kind Head over to the University of Central Florida for a special viewing party of 2012 DA14, an asteroid that will pass within 17,000 miles of Earth—closer than some TV satollites—on this date, Family Science Days, Boston Paint with bacteria or get to know the nanoparticles in sunscreen at this free two-day event, hosted by the American Association for the ‘Advancement of Science. on Valley, PBS ‘This documentary tells the improbable tale of the team of maverick Sciantists who invented the microchip. Adin Sub rab BI eet Pcs S0 Unit Conversion Temperature Deny ‘Nomi Theory Compounds topes Chemical Reactions Stoichiometry Solutions ProjectieMoton Nevrton Lams Work Kinetic Potential Energy Rotational Motion Thermedynamis sellations Waves ‘Ser ogni ard More! Engineering Creu Analy Order Orline at: ee)THE GREAT CoursEs’ Unearth Ancient Secrets from the Holy Land ‘With a rich history stretching back over 3,000 years, the Holy Land (the area in and around modern-day Israel) isa sacred land for three major faiths and the setting for defining events in religious history. And with the help of information uncovered at various archaeological historians have shed intriguing new light on our understanding of t area—and its powerful role in religious history ‘Comb through these remains for yourself with The Holy Land Revealed, an unforgettable experience that will add new dimensions to your understanding of the millennia-long story of this dynamic region Delivered by archaeologist and Professor Jodi Magness, these 36 lectures give you an insider's look at ruins, artifacts, documents, and other long, buried objects that will rake you deep beneath the pages of the Bible. Offer expires 02/08/13 1-800-832-2412 WWW.THEGREATCOURSES.COM/4DSCY The Holy Land Revealed eee eee Peery Peer peer ate eee eg rem ren Tee a Pa een Cee eee Cee eran nara 7. Fortifications and Cult Practices eS ee ee 9. Alexander the Great and His Successors 10, The Hellenization of Palestine ets a een er Peer es ee eee 15. The Sectarian Settlement at Qumran a eee es ere 18, From Roman Annexation to Herad the Great ee tee eats Poesy earch reese el eee ete eet eRe en epee ey cet Preece ne ergy peepee ac aed eae eae gees a ee eee pans nan eee oe) 29. Masada—Herod's Desert Palace and the Siege 30-Flavius Josephus and the Mass Suicide ee ont See ore tony See eee a ue 34, Judaism and Synagogues under Christian Rule cera a ee Eat er ae The Holy Land Revealed LYE ye) DD re me ee) Ce ee ge Sitcretemereet a) prea neeyetee ee change how you think about the world Since Sees ete taeA LOOK BACK AT AN EXTRAORDINARY YEAR OF DISCOVERY We found the Gad particle, learned to make clean READ ON 15 ouee2208HIGGS: WHAT CAUSES Physicists have identified the “God” particle responsible for all the matter in the universe, coming closer to a theary of everything. BY TIM FOLGER A DECADES-LONG, MULTIBILLION-DOLLAR SEARCH PAID OFF LAST | itwould beapartcl ike no other, epresenting not abuild- July when physicists at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva | insblockot mater but apiee of space-time tela funda- ‘mental component that allows the material world to exist Experimental physicists were damental that without it there would be no atoms in the universe— ‘eager to hunt for the Higgs boson, butto do that they and therefore no stars, no planets, and no one to wonder about it all. | neededaparticleaccelertor energies, similar to those that existed immediately after the Big Bang, And then any Higgs of California, Santa Barbara, spokesman for one of the two teams that particle would exist for less than a billionth ofa trilionth of made the discovery anda master of scientific understatement. “Were | second Decades of searches, at wo previous generations o acoelerators—Europe’s Large announced that they had discovered the Higgs boson, a particle so fun- “It's kind of profound? says Joe Incandela, a physicist at the University still absorbing it ourselves, and electrons that constitute | quarks (which combine to form | Electron Positron collider (pre- ‘We've touched on something | every atom in the universe the protons and neutronsin | decessor tothe n1tc) and the now that really is way beyond | Something gave matter its atoms), and other particles, the | Tevatron at the Fermi National anything we'vedone before” | mass. Yet other particles, like | Higgs field islike an infinite, | Accelerator Laboratory in Ii- ‘The Higgs holds. special _|_ photons (which make up light), | sticky ocean. Particles that nois—fulled to find the Higgs. place in physicists'hearts (and | remained massless interact most strongly with it_| Some physicists began to doubt equations) because it helps 1In1964 several theoretical | have the most mass. Stars, plan-| its existence. explain aaffling dichotomy in. | physicists, including Peter ets, skyscrapers, your shoes ll nature: Why do some particles | Higgs ofthe University of the cellsin your body—every | THE $7 BILLION LARGE HADRON havo mass, while others do not? | Edinburgh in Scotland, tried to | piece of matter in the universe, | Collider represented physicists Based on models of the Big explain this dichotomy. They | when broken down into its, last, best hope for finding the Bang, physicists ave inferred | proposed that an invisible simplest parts, derives its heft | Higgs boson. Beginning in that the cosmos began asa _| field pervades all ofspace. This | from the Higgs field 2010, same 1,600 giant magnets ballofenengetic, ephemeral _|_ so-called Higgs field essen- Higgs’ theory was both grand) inside a17-mile-long circular particles, all moving at ight | tally drags on certain particles | and specific. Although the field | tunnel began accelerating speed. An instant later,some | and imparts them with mass. | itself would not be detectable, | protons to more than 93.9999 ‘of those particles slowed down | Photons travel freely through | the theory also predicted the | percent of the speed of light and ‘and acquired mass; these are | the field, never interacting existence ofa new particle that | then smashing them head-on. now the protons, neutrons, with itatall. But for electrons, | would be: the Higgs boson. Into each other at energies nearly 16THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD four times higher than the Tevatronis, When the protons collide they unleash a shower of particles. For every billion coll- sions, physicists expected to see ‘one Higgs boson. After analyzing 800 trillion collisions in two years worth of data, physicists at the Lic finally uncovered the traces they were looking for. On July 4 2012 they officially announced the discovery ofa particle that looks very much lke the Higgs, saying that the odds of false signal were less than one in 3 nillion. (Being good physicists, ‘though, they are not ruling ‘out the possibility that itis an even more exotic particle.) In particle physics, that’s as close as you get toa sure thing, Peter Higgs’ far-out speculations have been proved correct. To researchers at the LHC, though, the discovery ofthe Higgs is a beginning more than anend. The enormous collider ‘was designed to reveal new levels of reality beyond the standard model, the theory that has been the foundation ‘of particle physics for the past 50 years. As successful as the standard model has been, it is clearly incomplete. It does not explain the perplexing phenomenon of dark energy, hich is accelerating the expansion ofthe universe, nor does it account for dark mat ter, the invisible material that outweighs visible galaxies five to.one (see page 29). ‘The leading contender to extend the standard model and explain those mysteries Js known as supersymmetry, Which predicts that every known fundamental particle has a heavier counterpart, called a super-partner. So far scientists have found no sign of super-partiles atthe Lac, although there are hints that the Higgs is interacting with Why does matter have mass? After @§7bilfon ‘search, we now have ‘the answer, yet-to-be-discovered particles. To advance the search, scien tists will shut down the 1c later this year to upgrade its equipment. When the accelera- tor switches on again in 2015, its proton beams will be almost twice as powerful. “hat means ‘we can look for supersymme- tay? Incandela says. “IFwe get to the higher energy and don't find anything, that will be very troubling. We think there has to be something new out there” FFRobo-Geologist Lands on Mars ree a uot Ree ea ay Sem Re Rees Sed ANDREW GRANT ILLUSTRATIONS BY RON MILLER errs Pe es eee CRU es Se ae ene ry pe eee cee could not communicate with the Se et tao ry Poe eee would, within “seven minutes of ee Ce ey and precisely deposit Curiosity at freemen teneo ey ee eerie Protea naa = Re a Corea ee ere eee ee cy eT eed ee ee en Coe a man = = Se ter =o Se een) altitude using onboard radar. Just one mile before touchdown, the spacecraft played its trump card: Audacity, a rocket- powered platform designed specifically to shuttle Curiosity to the Martian surface. (Previous Mars ravers had landed with air bags, but the one-ton Curiosity was far too porky for that approach.) Audacity used eight engines to a ee ee en ‘nti it sensed the raver was stable on the ground. Then it cut itself loose, throttled up its rackets, and flung itself See eae ee eee ekand ait, were ‘evelopment of microbial ieA Census of Your Insides A pioneering project is mapping the microbes that ive inside us all and showing how they can be tapped ta fight coitis, asthma, and cancer. ey KAT MCGOWAN 1 CONTAIN MULTTTUDES— June described the cumulative Anotherfinding: People are very Drawingoon thet insight, seien- Jiterlly—and so do you. A findings. In parallel a European- different from one another but tists are starting to investigate hundred tion bacteria, funded projet called Metaitr they reconsistent with them- _microbiome-based therapies. Viruses and other microbes, _ studied the gutsof:a4 people selves. Twohhealthy Americans’ Already doctors are havi collectivelyknownas thehuman and found more than 1000 ricrobialcommunitiescan _suecess treating diseases ike nierobiome,iveonandinside bacterial species differby as much as 0 percent, colitis with fecal transplants to courbodies Last yea scientists Both projetsfind thateach _butan individual’ distinctive reestablish gut lora in patients ‘working on two major collabora- persons body upportsmary ensemble of bugs tendstostay _who have received intensive tiveprojects produced the most diffrent microbial ecosystems. stable over many years. rounds of antbitis. comprehensive censussofarof Thevagina.forexampl,is tte Microbiome sudies are Inthe future, cancer patients thisinner woud, ‘sparsely populated prairie, demolishingthe medicalcom- might bank thei own microb Many commen discasesmay _whereasthelowergutislikea munity raditional‘usversus mes before chemotherapy and beinthienced bythemicrobi- rainforest, teeming with fe. them attitude toward bacteria then be e-noculated afterward come, because microbes contral “The istalgutofahumanis anther micrabes.“The micro _ to speed their recovery. An even many ofthebody'sessentisl _—_oneothedensest microbial —dbiomeismeanttoethere” —_moredistant possibility treating chemical proceses: They ecosystems on the planet” says says Lita Proctor ofthe National babies with microbes that shape predgest our fod, chemically Stanford University microbilo- Human Genome Research the immune system to stave ‘modify the pillswetake,shape gist David Relman, pioneer inInstitute,who alsodirects the off autoimmune diseases like urimmunesystemresponses, human microbiomeresearch. Human Microbiome Project. asthma and psoriasis. 9 and repel infectious invad- crs, Everyone’ microbiome is, "unique, which may help explain why acertain drug helps one person but hurts another, why chronic conditions like inflam ‘matory bowel disease suddenly flare up and then die down, and ceven why some individuals suffer from asthma or cancer, Inthelastfour years, the US-based Hum Project used genomic analysis toidentify bacteria, virus fang, archaea, and protozoa in thenoses, gums, tonsils, genital tracts, and guts of 242 healthy Americans between the ages of 8 and 40; more than 1,000 Sy samples were taken in all. Two * ‘major papers published in See eo 21Earth Goes to Extremes nd melting: In 2012 our p nt places it ing of costly and destabilizing environment Canada, United States / Oyster acidification, partly driven States experienced the hottest Die-Off More than 8oppercent by carbon dioxideemissions, _ temperatures ever recorded, ofoyster larvae renotsurviv- according toan April 2012 study, with 4,420 daily records broken ing in Pacific Northwest com din July. That helped mercial hatcheries. he high, United States /Heat Waves trigger droughts affecting 80 mortality rate is due to ocean ‘The continental Unitedfires that incinerated 9 million acres, and severe thunder storms that cut power to 42 million Americans. ‘Arctic Ocean | The ice coverage on the Arctic Ocean shriveled last Sep- tember to 1.g2 million square miles, the smallest expanse ever recorded and less than half the area covered by sea ice three decades a go (for more detail soe page 44). United States / Warmer ocean tempers- tures and reduced Arctic may have helped steer hurri cane Sandy toward the North: east coastline in late October. Rising sea levels definitely amplified the storm’ impact (for more detail see page 40). Greenland /| In July asa satellite thawing of the ie sheet that covers about 80 percent of Greenland. Within four days, ‘more than 9o percent of the ice's surface had begun to ‘melt—the most since satellite began in 1979, Nigeria The worst floods in Nigeria in 40 years displaced 1.4 mil- lion people over the summer and fall, claimed atleast 431 lives, and left 120,000 homeless in 30 of the country’s 36 states. India| The failure of India’s sum. mer monsoons, which usually supply the subcontinent with more than three-quarters ofits rainfall, used a nationwide drought. A water shortage at hydroelectric power plants contributed to outages that left more than half of India's 2 billion people witho tricity over two days in July— the largest blackout in history China From May thro July torrential rains lashed China from Yunnan province inthe southwest to Beijing inthe northeast. Floods and landslides affected at least 38 million people and resulted in the evacuation of .3 million residents, economic losses of $6.2 billion, the destruction of nearly 1 million acres of farm- land, and shortages of clean drinking water, ‘Australia Due ton unusually intense La Nifia that was probably exacerbated by climate change, heavy monsoons drenched eastern Australia in February ind March, At one point sin waters threatened about 70 per cent of New South Wales, home to Sydney and about a third of the nation’s 22 million residents. oe! The Great Barrier Reet system has lost more than halfits coral cover in the past 27 years, according toa survey published in October. The report blames the explo- sive growth of coral-eating starfish, intense storms, and coral bleaching associated with warming ocean waters,Old Dads Yield New Mutations Elderly fathers pass along many more DNA errors than do young ones—a source of genetic diversity, but also a possible diver af ‘autism and other disorders, JILL NEIMARK totheir children, By introducing change, older mens genes appear tobe ‘amajor driving force inhuman evolution, says Kéri Stefinsson, founder of the company decovE Genetics and author of a study published in August, But the mutations from a growing number of oder fathers may aso account for a portion ofthe recent inerease in autism, Because the cells that give rise to sperm divide frequently about 23, times a year—they are much more likely to accumulate genetic copy ing errors than the female precursor cells, oocytes, which divide only twice before becomi The mistakes add up aver a lifetime, so that the older the father, the more mutations he has in his sperm. Ste- that a 70-year-old dal passes on fansson and his colleagues estimat eight times as many mutations as does a 20-year-old To grasp the implications, Stefnssonis team compared the whole genome sequences of 78 Icelandic people diagnosed with autism or schizophrenia with the sequences of their fathers and mothers. Four times as many of the children’s new genetic mutations came from their fathers as from their mothers. Similar results were announced in Apri and September by bioinformatician Evan Bichler atthe University of ‘Washington in Seattle, who demonstrated that the mutation rate in men rises linearly with ag. A father 50 or older is about twice as likely ‘as one29 or under to have an autistic child, Bichler says Also in April of last year, Yale University geneticist Matthew State further quantified that risk. n families that have only one autistic child he found, about 15 percent ofthe cases are linked to new mutations in sperm cells. Other studies suggest that offspring of older dads are at higher risk ofschin iphrenia, bipolar disorder, and epilepsy as wel, Overall,advanced paterna than 25 percent of the risk for autism, depending on whom you ask, Because the ave of fatherhood is rising in many Western coun. tries, more mutations are probably being passed along. Ultimately older fathers are a double-edged sword, Most of the ‘mutations they pass on are harmless and some may be beneficial, age probably accounts for 5 percent to more even essential to our long, term survival as a species, since age varied population isthe raw material of evolutionary chan mutations can be dangerous for the next generation” Steflinsson says, they also increase the diversity in our genome” 24 (OW OCTOHER 12, A 160-WHEEL TRANSPORT CARRIED THE space shuttle Endeavour through Los Angeles ata stately two miles per hour, As the shuttle—the centerpiece of American space exploration for the last 40 years—paraded to its final resting place atthe city's California Science Center, the future ‘of spaceflight was orbiting overhead: Space Exploration Tech nology (SpaceX) Corporations Dragon, an unmanned capsule, was circing.240 miles up, delve ngnearly 900 pounds of fod, ‘water, and equipment to the International Space Station Industry stakeholders have been heralding the dawn of pr- vate spaceflight for nearly a decade, but the 2012 success of ‘SpaceX and several other companies, along with the announceEnterprising companies are jostling to te Spaceflight Era Begins s27:73:2— vehicle that never reached the launchpad, SpaceX plans to use ‘a modified version ofits Dragon capsule to accommodate passe: gers, and Boeing is developi crew capsule dubbed cs?:200. The companies are assuming that Nasa will not be their sole ceustomer. Boeing has signed an agreement with Bigelow Aero: space, a Las Ve $s company planni tolauneh a space sta ton for government and corpo- rate research, Richard Bra Virgin Galactic will take the first ration of space tourists on suborbital lights as early as this year, And Sierra Ne Chasers designed to carry pas sengers, dock with various sta tions, and repair broken satelites. Entrepreneurs hope this com- adals Dream bination of tourism, researe and exploration will add up to ‘viable spacefl forward-looking entrants Plan- etary Resources, whose high- profile backers include Goog founder Larry Page and Micro- soft Word developer Charles economy. A Simonyi, In April the company Capet, frabbedby announced aplanto mine aster Meee ids or water and nineras that, Fobetie gm, ——couldbe used to supply orbit eters. stations or permanent outposts: inthe solar system, mentofinnovaivenew ventures, astronauts ino space NASA was space station trip planned eatly _Panetary Resources president suggests thoerahasfinalyarved, clearly bankingon private comp ar—to become a UPS of Chris Lewicki, a NASA veteran, “This year was pivotal” says Phil_nlesto stopp. In May they dias orbit admits this business plan might MeAlter Nasxdisctorforcom- — SpaceXs Dagon became the fis the next few years. NASA have been laughed out of board itdevelopment. nongovernmental vehicletodock ishoping for similar commercial rooms a few years ago. Now, due ‘We actually have real perfor- with the ISS (see page 54). The success in taxiingastronauts. In in partto the success of SpaceX, ‘mance.Itsnolongerhypothetical” company has also signed a $1.6 August the agency split $1 bil- the situation has changed. “It's The breakthroughs come billion, four-year contract with lion among SpaceX, Boeing, and _ gotten to the point where things justin time. In 2011 NASA ended NASA to haul cargo; that October the Sierra Nevada Corporation like this are becoming more and the space shuttle program and flight carried its first delivery. fordevelopingashuttlesuccessor. more possible” Lewickl says. "Its announced an unpopular plan SpaceXis now vying with Orbital Slerra Nevada recently finished a going to be a terribly exciting ansport US. Sclences—which has its awn prototype of the Dream Chaser, next couple of years” B 2 to pay Russia toDISCOVER (124) JOHN DONOGHUE Debut of the Mind- Controlled Robots Using a brain implant, a paralyzed stroke victim directed a robotic, ‘arm to accomplish basic tasks. People who cannot control their limbs may soon regain maverment and independence, John Donoghue, the director ofthe Institute for Brain Science at Brown University, could not contain his excitement. For years he had been working on a revolutionary method to pick up brain signals from peralyzed patients and translate them into com- ‘mands to move mechanical imbs. If ll went well in this exper ‘ment, Cathy Hutchinson, a 58-year-old woman who lost the use of her limbs in a stroke, would control a robotic arm and hand ‘and use them to lft @ bottle of coffee to her mouth—just by thinking. “Guys,” Donoghue told his collaborators, “buy the most expensive camera we can afford and shoot this in high-defini- tion. Ths is @ historic moment.” ‘And so it was. Hutchinson sipped coffee from a bottle, the first time she had served herself in 14 years and the first time ‘ person had ever guided a robotic limb with her thoughts. The achievement was reported in a May 2012 Nature article. Ina sense Donoghue, 63, has been buiding upto this moment alls life. As a child, he suffered from Leggs-Calvé-Perthes dis- cease, which prevented him from walking for two years. In his first job after college, he worked at the Walter E. Fernald State School, an institution for the mentally handicapped. “I was looking at brains in the lab and then looking out the window at people who had brain diseases that completely took away their humanity their ability to interact,” he says. ‘I've been trying to Lnderstand what the brain is doing because to me the brain is the organ of our humanity. I gives us our mental life, and that makes us what we are.” DISCOVER senior editor Kevin Berger spoke with Donoghue in his Brown University office. You have found a way to help paralyzed people by convert- ing brain signals into computer, ‘code to maneuver a robotic arm, How does that work? Neurons in the brain create BY KEVIN BERGER PHOTOGRAPHY BY JESSE BURKE 26 electric neurons are sufficiently tickled by inputs, they fire electrical impulses called spikes. We have simple tool to record those spikes, the microelectrode, ‘hich has been around since the 19308. 286 [electroencepha: ography] electrodes record the neurons activity from outside ‘the head or on top of the cor tex, but the resolution i blury. Ws sort of like listening from the Goodyear blimp toa crowd inthe s need to drop the microphone right next to people's mouths to really hear them. ots stadium. You ‘So you created that neural ‘microphone—a silicon chip with 100 electrodes implanted inthe brain—and connected it with wires to a computer. Then what do you do? Once I have the microelectrode array in your motor cortex. the brain's command center for movement, you ‘on avideo moving left and right. I then say, “Imagine youre doing that by moving your hand on a mouse” As you imag- ine doing this, and the cursor moves to the right, Trecord the number of spikes, and it’ five ‘And when the cursor moves to atch a cursor the lef, is two, So now Thave coding model. Five means right, two means let You can tell what l want to do by recording a single neuron? But we have 100 billion neu- rons in our brain! “That's what's so remarkable “The brain operates over broad networks, Theres a tendency to think you've got one neuron that’s saying “Left” But if that ‘one cell dies, it doesn't make any difference, beeause the message is distributed over many neurons. Ofthe many million neurons in the motor cortex, most afthem have some kind of information about lefiness. Now, the code for a single neuron isnot so simple. Sometimes imagining left might produce two spikes, sometimes four. Its variable. So we average set of neurons together, With [my patient] Cathy, we were using a few dozen neurons, and the computer decoded the lke lihood that they were signaling “go left” or “go right” How does that code then tell the robotic arm what to do? ‘The signal comes out ofthe computer and its converted Into electronic commands thatheal me-y-nae move alittle bit forward, bacl signals out of apatient’s uP. down, goleft, go right, or We play all the data throu the computer, and it gives the com ‘mands, Virtually 100 percent of people who hear Cathyis story for the first time think that shes learning haw to control a cursor or robotic arm. In re ity she doesn learn anything. She tries tocontrol the arm controlling it. nd we use the neural data from her brain and the map of her brain signals we' generated to under stand what she’ try- ing todo and make that happen, I don't think we can go there. But what might happen is that we could address schizo- phrenia, depression, or other psychiatric diseases. I couldDISCOVER {8 [@4) JOHN DONOGHUE {Imagine that with an electrode array inthe right location in the brain, we might learn to understand the differences {in neuronal spiking between normal and aberrant brains. Itmay be that a disease forms aberrant patterns, and those pattems lead to the psychosis. This is alittle bit sci-fi, but it in the realm of things that could be done. Imagine you could deliver medication to the site in the brain when it’ upset. With hair-thin electrodes it is now possible to put a pump ‘on the side of them and deliver drugs to the site when there is aberrant activity, quiet it down, 28 Our focus is the arms, We want fo give paralyzed people hack something that is extremely liberating.” ‘The robot arm controlled by Donoghue's test suber was ly developed to ad amputee veterans Nts designers nicknamed it Luke, after Luke Skywalker from Star Wars. Technically, yes, but we don't know a lt yet about the source of leg signals. And the problem of walking is much harder, You have to coordinate both limbs and balance. Another complication isthe cosmetic factor. Christopher Reeve once said, “Tdon't want to look like ‘robot! That goes for nearly everybody who is disabled. Also, today’s wheelchairs are pretty good. So our focus is the arms. Ifyou can't move your arms, itis extraordinarily debilitat- ing. We want to people back someth extremely berating,[MORE THAN 80 PERCENT OF THE ‘matter inthe universe consists ofan unknown substance that cannot be seen through any tele scope nor detected in any lab, ‘This invisible stu interacts with normal matter only through gravity which is how astrono ‘mers frst inferred its existence ‘More recently, computer models sdthat dark matter is actually crucial to the have demonstra Visible realm, Without it galax Jes never would have pulled together There would be no stars There would be no people. Although astronomers till do not know exactly what dark matter is, in 2012 they learned ‘alot more about how it works. ‘One team traced the way it spreads its tentacles throughout the cosmos. And another found hints that dark matter may not always be invisible ater al Mapping the Dark Cosmos ark matt r—the unseen stuff that makes up more than four fifths of the matter in the universe—s finally coming into view, What we see may change aur entire picture of reality TIM FOLGER Last January, Ludovie van Waerbeke: ryof British Columbia and Catherine Heymans ofthe University of Edinburgh announced that they hhad mapped a web of dark mat ter more than 1 billion ight- across, “Thats the largest map ever made of dark matter? Van Waerbeke says, Although the dark stuff cannot be observed direetly its gravity bends light from any galaxies shin ing through it. Measuring the amount of ending reveals how rch dark matter is present. Van Waerbeke and Heymans collected data for more thar five years using the Canada- France-Hawali Telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawai, They then analyzed light from 10 million sglaxies, noting exactly where concentrations of dark matter distorted the galaxies‘ appear- ance, The resulting map shows sigantic clumps and strands of dark matter separated by enormous voids, wth all the visible galaies in the uni embedded in the datk web, The structure closely resembles what computer models predicted, but Van Waerbeke notes that the new map covers les (04 percent ofthe sky. “It doesn't mean we wont find anything weltd when we go to much larger coverag Last summer, to astrophysi- cists from the University of Cali fornia, Irvine, took another step toward making sense of the dark universe. They detected a stream of gamma rays from the center Large-scale map (above) Shows dist bution of dark matter, which ISidencest in yellow area. An entire galaxy cluster {let} formed within one of those blobs (cited). of ou galaxy, the Milky Way and suggested the radiation might be linked to dark matter. Accondingto some theories, dark matter consists of particles called WIMP (weakly interact ing massive particles) that could destroy each atheron contact. If so, whenever darkpartices co lide, they would release a burst ofigh-energy radiation Kevork Abazalian and Mano} Kaplinghat found the gamma. ray signal in data collected by aSws Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope. They tried to account foritfrom known abject, but dark matter was also consistent with the observations. The cas is far from closed, though. The center ofthe Milky ‘Wayis aviolent place, and the sheerinten- sity ofradiation there leaves any interpreta tion. Abazajian and Kaplinghat continue to mine data from the Fermi telescope. attempting to confirm their interpretation IFthey are right, they are seeing levels of realty that go even deeper than the mind-boggling discoveries atthe Lange Hadron Calder (page). Dark matters tling us there are fundamental things that wedonit understand about phasis” says Van Waerbeke “Maybe wear atthe beginning ofa complete revolution” D 29we Social Jet Lag 3 | Irregular sleep patterns associated with intense weekday on warkmay de dabets and est Ard Seep deprivation Dooets he rk of hypertension, Alzheimer's oven career wy ERIK NESS IF YOU EVER HAVE THE IMPULSE TOSMASH YOUR other health conditions as well.A Penn State alarm clock, Ludwig-Maximilians University study showed that short sleep combined with biologist Till Roenneberg understands. This year insomnia heightened the risk of hypertension. he described the increasingly common phenom- European data linked restless or otherwise enon of social jet lag” experienced by those who troubled sleep in older adults to a 36 percent sleep short on workdays, then stay uplater but increased risk of Alzheimer's. More unexpected, sleep longer on weekends. Ithat is your pattern, researchers at the University of Wisconsin at you aremorelikely tobe depressed and obese. Madison uncovered a link between sleep apnea ‘Sleep is one ofthe most underrated phenomena and cancer mortality: Cancer deaths among, inmodern society’ Roenneberg says.A growing _patients with severe apnea were five times higher than among those without, Perhaps the biggest sleep news from the past year, thou the significant health penalties of varying when we sleep regardless of the total amount. Anecdatal reports had suggested that shift work—con- sistently working nights or rotating between night and day—contributes tobad health, But how? A study by Harvant’ Orfeu Buxton, a neuro: scientist, limited participants to less than 6 hours of sleep and then an % reconfigured thir day sit stretched eM 6°28 housinsteadofthe expected 24 The raat was dysfunction o bevoreserchs showingthatifyoudoitget the panceas which produces the insulin that enoughor gett the wrongtimesyouexpose regulates sugar inthe blood. As ares the stn yourself toa widerangeofhedlth consequences. ofexteme time shifingled toa form ofhypery- ve Van auteranendocrinologistatthe cea that foreshadows diabetes University of Chicago, began untangling the Bren those with only slightly alteedseep | f connection between sleep deprivation, diabetes, schedules paya price. Accordingto Roenne- | # and obesity more than a decade ago. Thisyear berg athirdofthe population inks database |! her team discovered that slep deprivation aufersfrom two ormore hours ofsocialjet | E impedes the metabolism of gucose.theaugar lag and 6 perent reported at east one hour that powers the body, in fat cells by startling of social jet ag, That might be enough, studies | # 0 peroent Lackofleepafects appetite. too:A sugges to increase theriskofbecomingover- | § 20m Swedish brai-scan stay identified height- weight or obese by 3 percent ened activity inthe right anterior cingulate “Ietook me about 0 years of my hfe to under corter—abrtinregonanociated with imnger simdwhat malanncockwount Rosunebarg | contro!—in the sleep-deprived. concludes. “It means that you haven't slept your | 2 Sleep loss is increas Jybeing implicatedin biological sleep tothe end! 30.Natural Gas Boom Rewrites the Energy Rules THE UNITED STATES’ ENERGY BALANCE shifted dramatically in 2012 as natu: ral gas production in North America surged, driven by the controversial extraction method known as racking. Last April natural gas tied coal a the top electrcity-producing fuel in the United tates (each generated 32 per- cent ofthe total). This was the first time ny generating source had challenged ‘coal for dominance since the dawn of electric power generation in the 1880s. “The glut of cheap gas and tightening regulations on air pollutants (Gee next page) have prompted the planned closure of 75 coal-fired power plants by 2016, representing 8 percent ofall coal- fueled electricity capacity in the county. One-third of those plants, among the ‘oldest and dirtiest in the United States, wore to be shuttered by the end of 201, ‘makingit the biggest year for coal plant retirements in the nation’s history Those closures have helped reduce US. energy-related carbon emissions to thelr lowest levels in 20 years But in the energy world, everything comes at n environmental price. typical rack: ing job involves pumping more than million gallons of water, sand, and Dimock, Pennsylvania, helped ‘rive the rapid rise in US. production of natural gas. twas also the target of a federal lawcult in which locals claimed thal water had been contaminated. chemicals—including carcinogenic benzene, formaldehyde, and lead—into shale rock formations deep below the Earths surface to free locked-in natural gas, Impropery drilled wells or faulty all casings can leak fracking fluids and methane gas into nearby aquifers and water wells. Near fracking opera tions in Pavilion, Wyoming, monitors with the Enviconmental Protection Agency detected unsafe levels of ben- zene in water-monitoring wells and ‘methane and various hydrocarbons in public drinkin water wells. Moreover, used fracking fluid into deep disposal wells may have triggered dozens of recent small earthquakes in northeast em Ohio and north Texas Natural gas is inherently cleaner than coal It emits about halfas much carbon per kilowatt-hour of electricity and comes without the mer cury and many other pollutants that often accompany the burning of coal But the EPA and Cornell researchers confirmed last year that methane leaks erated from gas wells area major concern. A report in Nature stated that in some cases the escape of methane, afar more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, “could effectively offset the environmental edge that natural gas is said to enjoy over other fossil fuels” Armond Cohen, executive director of the Clean Ait Task Force, a nonprofit health and environmental advocacy group, cautions thatthe carbon reduc tions from the gas boom should not induce complacency about the impor- tance of nuclear, renewable, and other zero-carbon energy sources. “The key ais managing CO, emissions down toalmost zero” Cohen says. {JESSE DAVID JENKINS 31Germany Sets Solar- Electricity Record or third ofthe entire nations midday electricity was delivered by the sun. Itwas the highest solar power output that any nation had ever achieved in one day and could mark a milestone in the transition of solar energy fom alternative to mainstream power source As the sun crested on May 25, tens of millions of solar panels across Germ s ‘work, skyscrapers busted with, activity automobile facto- ries hummed, and breweries pumped out rivers ofbeer.Every- thing seemed normal except for power, according to data provided by the nation’ four largest electrical transmis sion operators, From downtown Munich to the fields of Bavaria those panels exploited the photoelectric effect (in which light expels electrons to create an electric current) to crank out the equivalent of 16 nuclear power plants operating at full eapacity Germany's overall solar capacity is expected to grow another 30 percent by the end of 2012, making tall bt certain another new record will be set some bright day this coming spring Since 2000 Germany's solar industry has enjoyed generous pub- 1? Coal Power Cleans Up Its Act ae 32 lie subsidies that ha ‘market, While the United alled more solar in December 201 than our country did the S. like many nations, may benefit from that ship. Average solar panel prices have fallen by 55 percent since 2o10 even as German government support has begun drop- 1g sharply. The global industry is now at a tipping point between subsidy dependence and market-drive Shayle Kann, ‘avice president at crm Research, a market research fem. One perverse sign that the solar industry has come of age: A bit. ter 2012 trade dispute between the United States and the European Union against China for reportedly selling solar panels at aloss to gain market share, Such battles traditionally focus on industries considered economically and politically important JESSE DAVID JENKINS :nsformed it into the world’s largest solar wth, 8 Millions of solar panels cranked out sigawatts of electricity, from Munich to the fields of Bavaria, resistance from the coal indus- ty, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (Eva) finally upheld a rule to control mercury emissions from power plants, Called the Mercury and Air Tox- ies Standards, or WATS, the strin- {gent neve regulations limit not only mercury but also acid gases like hydrochloric acid, heavy metals like arsenic, and other toxic pollutants—and require companies to comply by 2017 ‘When fully implemented, the standards will eliminate 90 per cent of t emitted annually by coal-fired power plants in the United States, Power generation will then finaly catch up with medical waste Forty percent of US. coal eee poe ceemeres bage burning. Twenty years ago those act Jar amounts of heavy-metal pol: es contributed similation but have since drastically cleaned up their acts, leaving power plants as the leading man ‘made source, by far, of mercury emissions inthis country. The EPA, which issued the ru ing in late aon, estimates that MATS can each year prevent up to 4,700 heart attacks, 130,000 asthma attacks, and 11,000 early deaths. The costs of buying and ‘upgrading equipment to comply ‘with the regulations could reach 10 billion a year, but benefits such as improved health and reduced damage to crops should total up to $90 billion annually. The decision has been along time coming, says attorney John Walke, director ofthe Cli- ‘mate & Clean Air Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “As far back as 1990, Congress listed 189 hazardous air pollutants that it wanted the EPA to regulate, but power plants were not on the list” he says, EPA administrator Carol Browner set the groundwork for establishing new mercury limits for power plants in 2000, but her efforts were set aside by the Bush administration. It adopted a cap-and-trade system instead, but a federal appeals court struck that down in 2008, Only last June did mereury regula tion prevail, when its last chal- lenge—a resolution in the Sen- ate to invalidate mats—fell by 453-46 vote, allowing the EPA's standards to stay in effect ‘MATS will help level the com: petitive landscape in energy by forcing coal-fired utilities to absorb the costs of cleaning up their emissions. America has already seen a significant shift from coal to cleaner-burning shale gas (see “Natural Gas Every year, the new regulations could prevent upto 4,700 heart attacks, 130,000 asthma attacks, and 11,000 early deaths. Workers instal solar Boom? page 1) reducing the use ‘of coal for electricity generation by 47 pereent from 2010 to 20. Mats regulations should bring further decline. “Many of the nation’s older coal plants will be shut” predicts energy specialist David Victor of the University of California, San Diego, For now, though, the decline in coal demand is unique to the United States, In Europe and Japan, coal use may be trending up. “After the Fukushima acci- dent, Japan shut all its reactors and has switched to other fuels, including coal,” Vietor says. And in Germany, Fukushima helped convince the govern- ment to accelerate the phaseout of nuclear power, The German government says it plans to fill the gap with renewables, bt its ‘most realistic plans still involve comland gas” JILL NEIMARK 33nents are used, controlled, and organized. L researchers narrowed that gap Study Decodes DNA’s True Meaning 18 2003 THE HUMAN GENOME between reading our genome and understanding itby cata loging the activity of most ofits sbillon letters. The ambitious venture, called Encode (the Encyclopedia of DNA Flements), required a team Project gave usall the AS, Gi, and Ts inour DNA, but that readout told little about how those molecular compo- ie activity in 47 different types ofhuman cells. Just 15 percent of the genome directs the building of proteins, the molecular work: horses of our cells. The Encode team provided the first compre hensive look atthe roles played by the rest, Some of the letters The Encode results sd that most muta- tions associated with disease risk lie in parts of the genome that control the activity of other genes, Ultimately, Bieey sees the Encode data as an essential step toward understanding how strands of DNa get translated serve as landing spots for pro teins that switch genes on and off while others determine hove DNA folds inside a cel, “Encode has fundamentally changed my view of our genome’ project leader Ewan Birney says. "Ws like ‘jungle in there One immediate benefits a set of new clues about diseases such as Crohn's disease and into a ving, breathing human, g to take this century to fil n all the details? Bimey says. “That fll recon ciliation is going to be this century’sscience” ED YONG “Lthink is gol Alien Planet Found Around Nearest Star Astronomers identified more than 100 more worlds around other stars in 2012, but one especialy hit home—because itis right naxt door. Sci ents have spent more than a decade probing for plants around Alpha Centauri, a trio of stars just 44 light-years away. In October, Xavier Dumusque at the Observatory of Geneva and colleagues described a slight wobble in Alpha Centauri B, eaused by the tug of an Earth-mass planet orbiting every three days around that yellowish, sunlike str. ‘Although the planets probably rocky lke Earth, iis o close to Alpha Centauri B that its surfaces surely molten. But where there is one planet thore are usually more, Dumusque says. The worlds ofthe Alpha Contour system willbe among th few close enough to study for signs of fe, NASA upcoming James Webb Space Telescope could dissect the planets’ ight and determine whether their atmospheres contain oxygen, water, and other biological friendly ingredients, Other top 2012 planet finds: ree Penne a et Ty eed - The concepts of sunrise and sunset must be con- fusing for any inhabitants ofthe planet PHT. It orbits two stars, which stellar pair. The discovery was made by mining NASA data online. B Astronomers have found dozens of rocky worlds, but ‘some rocks are more unusual than others. In October researchers detor ‘mined that the nearby planet 85 Cancri eis composed largely of com- pressed carbon-making tn essence, an enormous diamond. Located 42 light years away, HD 40307 g orbits inthe " scaldlocks zone," where conditions are ight for quid wate. K may be the most hospitable place yet found, bt itis atleast seven times as, ‘massive as Earth. Follow-up observations will determine whether itis 2 rocky planet with chance for life ora puffy gas world, _anoxen craee ooo Sean 16 Should Sugar Be Regulated Like a Drug? Refined sugar is notorious for promoting tooth decay and obesity, But last February a group of scientists Issued a much more damning charge against the white sttt. Robert Lustig, an endocrinologist atthe University of California, San Francisco, argued inthe journal ‘Nature that sugar is adctive and toxie—that it ean poison the liver, cause metabolic syndrome (increas- ing the risk of heat disease, stroke, and diabetes, suppress the brain's dopamine system, and cause us to ‘rave mote. Lustig concluded, controversially, that sugar shouldbe regulated like a drug. Alcohol is rogu- lated because of its ubiquity, tovcity, abuse, and negative impact on society, he wrote, and “sugar meets the same criteria.” ‘Some researchers, along with (no surprise) the American Beverage Association andthe Sugar Associa- ton, claim that Lustig has gone to far. Obesity and its associated diseases result from taking in too many Calories overall, not just calories from sugar, they say. However, recent results from an ongoing study by Kimbor Stanhope, a nutritional biologist at the University of California, Davi, provide ‘some support for Lusti’s view. Stanhope showed that beverages loaded with sug~ ‘ars (4 20-ounce Coke for instance, contains the equivalent of 16 teaspoons of ‘sugar in the form of high-ructose corn syrup) increased lipid levels and in some ‘easos decreased insulin sensitivity factors associated with heart disease and iabetes. Simitary, a 2012 Harvard University study found that men who drank at least four sugar swootoned beverages por week over a 22-year period were 20 percent more likely to develop heart disease than those who dranknone. “Its not just excoss calories and excoss woight gan that promote cardiovas- cular disease and type 2 diabetes,” Stanhope say. “The source of the excess calories is important too.” seamen women woven 15 selt- Driving Cars _ Hit the Road Last May a convoy of three cars ‘and one truck glided, without ary drivers, onto a Spanish highway. Following 2 conventionally driven vehicle, the group safely traveled 120 miles, a major move forward in the effort to make self-diving cars commonplace. ‘The Spanish trip was the latest feat of the European Commis: sion’s Sartre Project, which aims. ‘todevelop semiautonomous “toad trains” that could increase gas mileage, improve trafic flow, and feduce accidents twas also just ‘one of several dramatic advances in 2012 toward the ereation of a viable auto-chautfeur Inthe most prominent achieve- ment, Google's sel-driving cars ‘completed 300,000 miles without ‘a major accident, They ate now licensed for road use in Nevada ‘and soon should be in othe states as well, Stanford Univer sity’s autonomous car flawlessly ranat 115 miles per hour ona test track, And projects in Michigan ‘and Germany began road-esting ‘communications systems that will let vehicles automatically share upto-the-second information on ‘traffic conditions and hazards. Sartre is particularly significant because, with a human driver leading the way, it relies mostly on ‘commercial technologies such as radar-based cruise contro, bind spot'monitoring cameras, and lasers for automatic emergency braking, And its car-to-car com: ns system could soon be on the market, says Eric Chan Sartre's project lead. Within afew years, then, road trains could be led by professional drivers, leav ing everyone else free to safely answer texts, MoWAELTCC Teter ao cory ery cone ran cia ’ B 7 Relic Protoplanet Is a Survivor Last summer, after a year in orbit around Vesta, NASAs Dawn spacecraft took one last image ofthe Arizona: size asteroid and pushed oft. While the probe spends two years traveling to its next destination, the dwarf planet Ceres, scientists are knitting together remarkable results from its frst mission. “Vesta turned out to be a realy fascinating abject,” says Mark Sykes, an investigator at the Planetary Science Institute Dawn's measurements show Vesta has @ core, mantle, and crust. That structure proves i isnot a simple hunk of rock but a relic protoplanet that survived the chaos of the eary solar system. Hundreds of such bod- jes ctcled the sun before the larger ones cannibalized the rest to form Earth and the other modern planets. Vesta also has pitting on its surface that may have been let by water boling into space. Ceres, in contrast, ‘may harbor enti subsurface oceans-~or maybe somthing utterly different. Whenever we gat to someplace ew” Sykes says, ‘we see something we didnt expect.” roar SHEN 36 18 Spine Stimulator Lets the Paralyzed Stand Again Last year two paralyzed people broly stood again, aided by a device that electrical stimulates the lower spina cord. They were among the ist beneficiaries ofa hugely promising technique that researchers, hhope could one day enable many earalyzed people to walk again. The spina cord cates the brain signals that control movement of the nbs. I the cord gets clipped by disease or injury, the communication lines go dead; because neve fibers have limited abit to regrow, the resulting paralysis can be permanent. But starting inthe 1990s, UCLA neuroscientist Regpie Edgerton showed that when stimulated with ‘smal electrical pulses the spinal cord can wake up those nerve {fibers and coordinate standing and \walking—without any input from the brain. Edgerton implanted electrodes in paralyzed rats then stimulated thei spinal cords while researchers ‘moved te animal lags na stepping ‘motion ona treadmill After four to ight weeks of training the rats were able to walk on thee own. Now thre is competing evidence that what worked for ats wil work for humans oon £2008 Edgerton’ team implanted ‘ctrodes in the spinal cord of paralyzed former college baseball player Rob Summers. After three {ays of treadmill therapy, Summers was able to stand on his own, Unexpectedly, he aso experienced gradual improvements in blood pressure ragulation, bladder control, ‘and sexual function Last year ‘wo other patients experienced similar suecoss—an important advance, because unlike Summers, neither wasn exceptional physical condition prior toinjury, and o of them had absolutely no fooling below the chest. The next step is ogo from standing to walking. Edgerton's ‘most successful rat experiments required administering drugs that help muscles contract. He hopes to conduct analogous human tests within few years. Ene19 3-D Printers Make Every Home a Factory ns to tech-savvy engineering students and Silicon Valley tinkerers, the 3-D printer has suddenly morphed into an off-the-shelf technology, with big implications for R&D and society at large. The printers, which create physical objects directly from digital render- ings, could revolutionize the manufacture of everything from pharmaceuticals to automobiles, In one notable application, chemists at the University of, Glasgow last year developed method for assembling chemi cal compounds using open: source software and a pair of $2,000 3-D printers. One printer's robotically controlled syringe deposited gels that hardened into half of a reac E LONG CONFINED process to create a common painkiller, ibuprofen. In the future, automated labs outfit- ted with just afew chemical printers and an Internet con: nection might make custom. tailored medicines on demand in your doctor’ afice, says study author Lee Cronin, Also this year, a team of Belgian engineers printed a full-sized race car, suggesting a more efficient alternative to assembly lines. In another, more politically charged development, an American gunsmith printed function- ing parts for a.22-caliber pistol. Soon after, a group called Defense Distributed generated controversy when it announced a project to create a fully printable 3-D gun and then make its plans freely tion vessel. A second printer available on the Internet. The painted chemical compounds into the shell, which was sealed by the first printer. The compounds then combined in the completed reaction ves- sel, ereating new, previously unsynthesized chemicals. As. test, the Seottish team oup raised $20,000 before the company from which it had rented its printer revoked the lease and reclaimed it, citing legal issues. D Distributed, however, remains ‘committed to its goal of mak ing3-D printed guns common: baldnotanempmen. aw) Bypass surgery etd levels even pane coo UTS ge eh tr io PEER CRC aN leg Ce a or Coen LL e set | Cee ene betcs as well, and that it outperforms drugs in treating the disease, Bee eal Ce ead Cre De ed Cece ae ees these changes curb diabetes was unclear. So teams at Catholic University of Rome and Ohio's Cleveland Clinic followed nearly 200 advanced dabet- Intstine. Se eee et ee tee) drug therapy: Remission rates ranged from 37 to 95 percent, depending on Ce ee Root Dee Ce een ee Read eee ua mt 37yea lle raha Cl The World’s Most Detailed Health Profile Michael Snyder created one for himself. Before long you'll have one, too, so every doctor's visit can be customized to you. Blood, sweat, and tears: Every researcher experiences them ‘from time to time, but for Stanford geneticist Michael Snydor, ‘they are at the heart of his work. Three years ago, he set out to create a microscopic profile of personal health, catalog- ing not just an individual's genes but also proteins, snippets of RNA, and other crucial molecules. Snyder needed a reliable ‘test subject who would not balk at any distressing information the project might uncover, so he volunteered himself. Over the next 14 months, he donated 20 blood samples. He sequenced his own genome and then analyzed 40,000 molecules, tracking how their levels changed over time. It was the first time such @ detailed, integrated profile had been created. n the end, Snyder ‘got more than he bargained for as he watched himself develop predicting what you might be at risk for and in catching dis ‘eases early, shifting medicine type 2 diabetes. DISCOVER reporter Valerie Ross spoke with from reactive to proactive. him about the project and about his hopes for anew medicine Viral infections have been thats personalized toa patient's precise molecular makeup, _ associated with type dia~ betes, but not with type 2. diabetes, which was notrely S88 Stes8 responses have : been associated with ype 2, Asimple version could be done jn my family history sothat was. interpretation is that my for under $1,000. That price Whenyoustarouin bind abigaupseOvertiecoune | ™einerrtatonthatmy fr uner sono That rie tes dactoreopily measure of thesia hadawoconmon ering dibees andthe the a5 We gt good att nthe beabletogetamuch better -otherarespiratory virus After ‘“Te##Tesponsetothevirus —_—_not-so-distant future, it will be sense ofsomeone’ risks and therespiratoryinfection. my -_“ Stauer hara Better Buiiness| tO this ad [Bureau Rating of A+ Stau Ct Burnie, Minesoes 95387 www.stauer.com ‘What Stauer Clients Are Saying .San reccc ec CORA pack onto the public agenda ar flood o° Andrew C day after the storm, hen it comes tothe ry 2 yea omo said the fe a new real Hetbor the is about a foot higher than it 2g0, Similar adaptation project bbe needed in other major co nt Hel They 2, but Sandy starkly framed the 23 Saliva Test Screens a Fetus’s DNA The main options fr parents who want to test their unborn child for genetic diseases are imasive procedures that pose upto a percent isk of miscarriage. But in landmark studies published las year, ‘wo research teams pieced together nearly an entire fetal genome using just esy-o-obtain parental ‘blood and saliva samples. One technique, developed by University of Washington gonetcist Jay ‘Shondue, involves comparing fetal DNA from the mothers blood plasma with DNA from the mother's ‘blood and from the father’ saliva. A statistical algorithm then analyzes which gone variants the fetus has inherited from each parent and detects new mutations in he child's DNA. A similar technique, ‘roated by researchers at Stanford, requires only blood from the mother, but provides les hereditary information. Both methods have downsides: They could flood parents with ambiguous genetic informa- tion, or encourage selective abortions for nonmedica eacons. Nevertheless, Shendure thinks that ‘within fve to ten years such tests could become the standard fr early detection of genetlecondltons ‘sucha cyte brosis and Tay-Sachs disease, ruc svenconEarth’s Explosive Origins Revealed LOCKED INSIDE THE LITTLEST “objects ofthe solar system — asteroids, comets, and meteor ites—is a secret history. These small fry retain many character: istics they had when they formed 44sbillion years ago. A series of studies in 2012 pried from them. telling new clues about how Earth and the other ‘major planets came to be One insight came from Nasa’s Dawn space- craft, which circled the asteroid Vesta in aon and 2012. Over the past year, using Dawn's measure- ‘ments, astronomers determined that Vesta has an iron core, That bolstered the theory that Earth and the other inner planets swallowed an earlier set of small, iron-cored planets (see page 36) Vesta isa survivor of this original solar system. Astrophysicist Alan Boss at the Carnegie Inst tution and his colleagues pushed farther into the past by analyzing small particles inside primitive meteorites, which preceded the first mini-planets, ‘They determined that the particles contained products of the decay of radioactive iron-6o. ‘The iron-6o could have originated in a nearby supernova explosion—but how, Boss wondered, didit end up the meteorites? To investigate, he ran a 3-D computer model, and in September he Deere rerio’ ero Seer Transgenic Crops Cut Toxins, Boost Ecosystem Environmentalists who are skeptical about _eneticaly modified crops should think again, judging from a study published last June. Researchers reported inthe journal Nature that transgenie cotton bred to resist pests increases biodiversity by reducing the amount of insecticide sprayed on fields. ‘The scientists tracked cotton plots in China ‘rom 1990 to 2010 as farmers switched from conventional seeds, which requir insecticide ‘spraying as many as 15 times a year, toa transgenic varity that produces a protein toxic to crop-avaging insects lke the cotton bollworm. Today so-called Bt cotton i planted ‘on nearly 60 milion acres in China, making ‘up more than 96 percent ofthe countrys total crop. The result: “With the Bt cotton, chemical use decreased 60 percent,” says Kongm Wu, an entomologist with the Chinese Acad- ‘omy of Agricultural Scioneas. ‘Wu and his colleagues determined that reduced spraying result collateral damage to other insect species, particularly beneficial predators like spiders, ladybugs (nymph pictured tight, and lacewings. That Eee es Cree ecard published his results: local supernova could have sprayed radioactive elements into the dusty {gas cloud from which our solar system formed, and then triggered a shock wave that caused the cloud to begin collapsing, In Boss’ simulation, ‘turbulent flows within the shock wave injected ‘lumps of radioactive iron into the cloud, match- ing the observed properties of the meteorites, ‘Boss’ computer simulations also helped solve ‘the mystery ofthe comet Wild- The comet is Jy, butt contains particles that appear to have formed in a hot zone. Boss built 3-D model that could account for the seeming paradox. It showed ‘that the young sun was surrounded by a disk of gas and dust so agitated that particles in the hot inner regions might be lung out to the cold, distant zone where eomets formed. This turmoil also helped keep gas giants like Jupiter far from ‘the sun, leaving space for rocky planets to form, Without such violent mixing, Earth might not have come to exist JONATHON KEATS. heartir population of predators in turn feasted on harmful pests that are unaffected by insecticides, such asthe cotton aphid. Such ‘natural pest contol occurred not only inthe plots of Bt cotton but also in neighboring fields ‘of conventional corn and soy. ‘The findings also provide a cautionary lesson, ‘though. Chinese farms are small on average, Wu ‘notes, and farmers typically plant conventional ‘crops next to their Bt cotton, “That way, insocts ‘can use corn as a natural refuge so they don't evolve resistance to Bt.” he sys. But the commercial farms that predom- ‘atoin the United State tnd to plot large plats ofa single crop. Without accessible refuges, Ws Rx was that practice cul lod tothe emergence of Btesistantsuper-pests. 41wi ee EE te ely 26 WORLD'S SMALLEST MEMORY GATE AAs our electronic devices get ever smaller and more powerful, they are generating mountains of data—documents, pictures, rich at IBM Research. in California, has a solution. This past year that they had created the world smallest magnetic memory, stor- recorded as 2.0 oF 4) on just 12 iron atoms Today's hard drives need about 4 million atoms to do the same. Heinrich used a scanning tun- noling microscope to align the iron atoms so each one takes ‘on a magnetic polarity oppo- site that of its neighbor. Such sul, the data storing groups of atoms—which record information magnetically—do with each other. The units of data storage can ‘then be packed together more than 100 times as densely as (on existing microchips. Heinrich highlighted his breakthrough by configuring 96 iron atoms five times, wit representing one byte of code, to spell IBM's motto: T-H-AN-K, PATHON HEAT configuration eal een eee ts Computer engineers are forever trying to make micro- chips smaller and more efficient. So far, essential ll resulting improvements (smarter smartphones, more Powerful laptops, and the ike) have come from better use of traditional silicon, But last January scientists {at IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center showed that @ Aitferent matrial—cylinder-shaped molecules known ‘as carbon nanotubes~may be the chip ofthe future. Computer chip are made of transistors, which work by letting current flow through a channel only ‘when voltage is applied to gate, IBM researcher Aaron Franklin explains. “The thiner the channel or ‘semiconductor material the easier itis to control eS) ae Nai P aa tat) the current” As silcon transistors are scaled down, Franklin says, the gate becomes less effective at controlling the current. Carbon nanotubes, one-tenth tocone-hundredth the thickness ofthe smallest silicon transistors, remain functional at smaller scales. “The carbon nanotube transistor caries over four times the electrical current density ofthe best similarly scaled sllcon-basodtransisto,” Franklin says. “This can yield a technology that uses much less power while