One of the biggest surprises to come out of microbiology in recent years is that bacteria have a social life. Rather than existing as lonely, autonomous creatures, bacteria live in communities, in which they cooperate, compete, and communicate. In the January issue of Scientific American, I have a featureabout how some scientists are trying to translate their growing understanding of the social life of bacteria into a new kind of medicine. By preventing microbes from cooperating, we may be able to bring infections to a halt. Better yet, this kind of antisocial medicine may even be able to avoid–or at least slow down–the evolution of drug resistance in bacteria.

Here’s the introduction to my piece:

Continue reading “Antisocial Medicine” →

For many paralyzed people, their problem is a communication gap. They can generate the signals in their brain require to control their muscles–to walk, to wash dishes, to weed a garden. But damage to their nervous system prevents those signals from reaching their destination.

Last year, in a feature I wrote for National Geographic about the brain, I recounted the work of scientists and engineers who are trying to bridge that gap. Their dream is to create a technology that reads signals from people’s brains and uses them to control machines. The machines might be robot arms that people could use to feed themselves, or computers to compose emails, or perhaps even exoskeletons that could enable people to walk.

Scientists have been investigating these brain-machine interfaces for decades, and in recent years they’ve made some impressive advances–some of which I described in my story. But it would be wrong to giddily declare that scientists have reached their goal. You need only look at this picture below to get a sense of how far we are from science-fiction dreams.

Continue reading “Wi-Fi Brain Implants For Robot Arms” →