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21 Articles

Leaning Forward

EVERY SUMMER, we like to devote the bulk of this issue to important news and breakthroughs that could change the future of medicine as we know it. This time, we’re looking back as well as leaning forward to tell some important stories from the field. For example, a few years ago (in our May 2018 issue, to be precise), we published a piece about the dangers of opioids, with a focus on research into newer, safer painkillers. While that research continues, so too does the problem of opioid abuse, made worse by the increasing availability of powerful drugs like fentanyl and synthetic opioids. In our feature on page 30, writer Elizabeth Svoboda revisits the crisis through the eyes of one sufferer, showing the impact of ever-more-potent opioids on users, and the…

Leaning Forward

HAPPINESS IS A GREEN THUMB (“The Science of Happiness,” Mar/Apr 2024) Martin Seligman, past president of the American Psychological Association, outlined PERMA, his own theory of well-being, in 2011. Seligman identifies Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment as the key elements to human flourishing. I have engaged in research with adolescents who grow food in youth gardening programs for their communities, schools, and families to determine the impact of this on their well-being, and Seligman’s framework made analyzing the more than 100 interviews I conducted with them easy for me. What they self-reported fit the PERMA matrix perfectly. Part of the magic for youth gardeners is time spent in nature, collaborating with nature. Your article misses this key element for happiness which has been researched all over the world: Time spent in…

THE LATEST NEWS AND NOTES

LOOKING SHARP Despite its otherworldly appearance, this vibrant burst of color belongs to a much-studied subject: The multicolored hues form a wiring diagram of a mouse’s brain. A team led by Duke University’s Center for In Vivo Microscopy tapped into cutting-edge MRI technology to produce a brain scan 64 million times sharper than those from clinical MRIs. To achieve the record resolution, the researchers harnessed some powerful components, including a 9.4 Tesla magnet and special gradient coils. Then, they used an imaging technique called light sheet microscopy to put the brain’s cells and circuits on full display. The unparalleled image clarity could catalyze a better understanding of how certain diseases can burden human brains, potentially shedding light on the progression of neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s.…

THE LATEST NEWS AND NOTES

THE SECRETS OF ANCIENT EGYPT’S SACRED, MUMMIFIED BABOONS

DATING BACK to the Ptolemaic dynasty of ancient Egypt, the ornate tombs at Tuna el-Gebel offer a curious glimpse into ancient Egyptian beliefs. In one chamber in the massive necropolis, square windows framed with lavish script open into vaults holding mummified remains — but not from any human. Instead, the treated cadavers of long-dead baboons, animals once thought to have a rare connection with Egyptian deities, sit up in the niches. Stone steps lie underneath the windows, and large conelike pillars framing the stairs are flattened off at the top for offerings. While these tombs were built late in ancient Egypt’s long history, a period that represented huge changes in governance and society, Egyptians had been upholding baboons as sacred since the beginnings of complex civilization in the Nile Valley. The reasons…

THE SECRETS OF ANCIENT EGYPT’S SACRED, MUMMIFIED BABOONS

Beavers Helped Shape the Lives of Ancient Humans

BEAVERS ARE nature’s architects. Active molders of the environment, they cut down trees and modify woodlands, building dams that transform rivers and valleys into rich wetlands. And while these large rodents have long been known to be sources of food and furs to humans, scientists recently posed a new question: How has beavers’ role as shapers of the natural landscape informed their relationship with humans? Examining 116 archaeological sites across northern Europe, the research team tracked patterns of abundance of Eurasian beavers (Castor fiber), as well as other mammals and fish, in a 2023 study in The Holocene. By tracing these patterns as far back as 9,000 years ago, to the Mesolithic era, the researchers found that beaver-modified landscapes created more opportunities for early humans to forage and obtain food. In short,…

Beavers Helped Shape the Lives of Ancient Humans

FEELING EXHAUSTED? MAYBE IT’S EMPATHY

IN 1978, Kathy Kleiner was asleep in her bed at the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University when serial killer Ted Bundy entered through an unlocked door. After attacking two of her sorority sisters, Bundy found the door to Kathy’s room also unlocked. Kathy survived the attack and is one of only a few Bundy survivors. When we began writing her memoir, A Light in the Dark: Surviving More Than Ted Bundy, she said she wanted to weave in as many stories about the other victims as possible. For about two years, I researched the more than 30 women and girls Bundy killed. By the time I started compiling their biographies for an appendix, I often felt stressed, saddened, and a bit on edge. There were certain victims who I…

FEELING EXHAUSTED? MAYBE IT’S EMPATHY

HOW OUR DREAMS EVOLVE AS WE AGE

I STILL remember the nightmares I had as a kid, often with vivid clarity. In one recurring dream, my parents’ German shepherd transformed into a monstrous beast with glistening fangs and glowing eyes. Yet the older I got, the more mundane my dreams became, mostly populated by humdrum social interactions with friends and acquaintances. It’s no secret that dreams vary wildly in tone and content. What’s more, scientists have found that the different types of dream states — from lucid dreams to nightmares — can be just as varied as our waking states. But how do our dreams change across our lifespan, in general? “There is, surprisingly, very little data on this question,” says Patrick McNamara, a neurologist and dream researcher at Boston University School of Medicine. “From one or two studies,…

HOW OUR DREAMS EVOLVE AS WE AGE

JUNO PHOTOGRAPHS BILLOWING VOLCANIC PLUMES ON IO

NASA’S JUNO mission captured a marvelous image of volcanic activity during its second flyby of Jupiter’s moon Io in early 2024. The spacecraft snapped the image of two plumes (seen in the top-right image above) with its visible-light camera JunoCam as it skimmed 2,400 miles above Io’s surface. The trails may be from one giant volcano or two smaller ones on Io’s terrain, according to a press release. The flyby, in which Juno got as close as 930 miles to the surface, was the spacecraft’s second visit to Io. (Its first flyby was late in 2023.) Scientists planned both trips to collect data on Io’s volcanic surface and to see whether the moon hosts an ocean of magma underneath its rocky surface. Researchers will compile data from both flybys to understand the…

JUNO PHOTOGRAPHS BILLOWING VOLCANIC PLUMES ON IO

This Is Your Brain on Anesthesia

UNTIL THE middle of the 19th century, surgery was performed with no anesthesia. You don’t need a fertile imagination to realize how excruciating the experience was for patients. Nor did the surgeons who administered this particular type of torment take it lightly. In The Worst of Evils: The Fight Against Pain, scientist and author Thomas Dormandy describes how 19thcentury surgeon and medical pioneer Sir James Paget recalled those gruesome days before anesthesia in his memoirs: “They had been the worst nightmares. I can remember them still. Even now, they sometimes rouse me from my sleep. I wake drenched in sweat.” Paget wasn’t the only one who was disturbed by the experience. Charles Darwin dropped out of medical school at least partly because he didn’t have the stomach for pre-anesthesia surgery. These days,…

This Is Your Brain on Anesthesia

FRUIT FLIES AGE FASTER AFTER SEEING DEATH

COMING TO terms with death isn’t easy — even if you’re an insect that’s little more than an eighth of an inch in size. For fruit flies, or Drosophila melanogaster, the mere sight of their companion’s corpses can trigger certain cues known to alter their brain chemistry, deplete fat stores, and even cause other flies to avoid them, as if the traumatized insects still carried the stench of death. What’s more, scientists from the University of Michigan have found that fruit flies who witness their dead comrades age faster and die sooner. They’ve peered inside the insects’ pintsized brains to better understand what happens when fruit flies are exposed to death, according to a 2023 study in PLOS Biology. The research may have implications for pausing the clock on human aging triggered…

FRUIT FLIES AGE FASTER AFTER SEEING DEATH

A Spine-Tingling Tale

“It’s my feet,” the 50-year-old man said. Medium height, hair tousled, Harold looked as if he had thrown on his sweatpants and loose flannel shirt in a moment of concern. Still, he appeared more intrigued than anything. My low-key shift in the emergency department’s walk-in section had brought the usual array of back pain, ear infections, sore joints, and lacerations. This sounded no different. “Both feet,” he continued. “I woke up this morning, and they were numb and tingly. Here.” “Let’s step into the exam room,” I told him. Once there, he sat down and removed his shoes. “They don’t hurt,” he said, massaging insteps. A distant alarm began buzzing in my head: Something might have happened to Harold’s spine. “Nothing else hurts? No pain any-where else?” I asked. “No fall recently?” “No,” he replied. Fit and trim, Harold had…

A Spine-Tingling Tale

Normandy’s beaches bear more than memories of D-Day, the 1944 landing of some 130,000 Allied troops in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. Another human species once stalked those grounds. About 80,000 years before WWII, when the shore lay several miles farther out, Neanderthals camped on the dunes of what is now Normandy. Butchering prey, fashioning stone tools, building fires — as the group busied themselves with daily chores, they left hundreds of footprints in the mud. Sands swept over the tracks, which stayed buried for millennia, until 21st-century archaeologists uncovered nearly 600 of the footprints. Based on the size and shape of prints that likely had been laid within a few days, researchers reconstructed a unique snapshot of a Neanderthal community: A few adults accompanied about 10 teens and children, including…

Another advantage of close-knit groups is knowledge and traditions passed on between generations: Indeed, some of the technologies Neanderthals developed would necessitate collaboration and teaching. Take birch tar, a natural glue distilled from tree bark. Although the adhesive can seep from birches near open flames, a 2023 Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences analysis found Neanderthals developed a far more sophisticated procedure. Comparing chemical properties of experimental birch tars produced by different methods to two ancient birch tar pieces, researchers concluded Neanderthals probably extracted the sticky stuff by heating rolls of bark in a low-oxygen environment, buried below a campfire. Because the transformation — bark to glue — occurs underground, out of sight, no one could invent the procedure from scratch. “It must be based on previous knowledge,” says Patrick Schmidt, a University of…

THE OPIOID CRISIS IS NOT OVER

Madeleine Sweet’s fentanyl addiction started with an unexpected freebie. Already addicted to opioids and grappling with the sense that her life was going bottom-up as her student debts mounted, she was finding it difficult to access enough oxycodone and other opiates to satisfy her dependency. So, in 2016, Sweet gravitated to the dark web. That’s where sellers were hawking designer drugs crafted to hijack the brain’s reward system, including mass-produced fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times stronger than heroin. Sweet reached out to a seller for designer opiates and was sent a gram of fentanyl as a free sample with her purchase. Soon, the sample arrived at her home in Monterey, California — a postage-stamp-sized bag of what looked like taupe-colored powdered sugar. Seconds after Sweet snorted the powder, an atomic-scale dopamine…

THE OPIOID CRISIS IS NOT OVER

How to Detect and Respond to a Fentanyl Overdose

More and more, communities ravaged by synthetic opioids are opting for a pragmatic response — training the public, and opioid users’ family members, in rapid overdose response. Here’s four steps for helping someone who’s overdosed, based on materials from San Francisco’s Department of Public Health and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (Whether or not you have naloxone, call 911 immediately.) 1 Signs of an overdose include unconsciousness and slow or shallow breathing. If someone is not responding, see if you can bring them back to consciousness by yelling something like, “Hey, are you OK?” If loud voice commands don’t work, clench your hand into a fist and rub your knuckles back and forth on the person’s sternum, the bony middle part of the ribcage. Because this feels uncomfortable,…

How to Detect and Respond to a Fentanyl Overdose

Biologist and bioengineer Donald E. Ingber doesn’t have time to sleep. As the founding director of The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, finding time outside of work hasn’t gotten easier with age. At 67, his morning still starts at 5 a.m., running through a pile of emails that seems to grow larger by the day. By lunch, he’s already revised the budget for a crucial government grant and met with postdoctoral fellows regarding work on various research projects. Ingber also deals with unexpected issues, like immigration and political turbulence, that he never dreamed would fall under his purview. Recently, when a scientist he hired from Germany came with his wife and child and was turned away at Logan Airport for having an Iranian passport, Ingber spent the…

EXPLORING THE FUTURE

IN 2012, Discover got an exciting if dizzying tour of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, then only 3 years old. Director Don Ingber led our reporter through a maze of rooms and labs, discussing and displaying a range of research projects: a mattress to prevent sleep apnea; a cancer-fighting implant about the size of a Tic Tac; a device to speed the diagnosis of sepsis; and organs-on-chips, including a brain-on-a-chip to help study traumatic brain injury. (Ingber’s pioneering lung-on-a-chip had first been featured in Discover as one of the top science innovations of 2010.) It was like getting a tour of the future. “There’s just so much,” Ingber remarked, inviting our readers to marvel with him in the range of ongoing research. And marvel our readers did. We got…

EXPLORING THE FUTURE

SLEEP SPELUNKING

WHEN University of Chicago physiologist Nathaniel Kleitman told fellow faculty members he was seeking a locale for a month-long sleep experiment — someplace as isolated from the rhythms of day and night as the Arctic in summer — a colleague in the geology department said he knew just the spot. Between 10 million and 15 million years ago, in what is now south-central Kentucky, trickles of groundwater began probing the cracks in a fossil seabed. Over the eons, the pockets grew and grew until they’d formed the most extensive cave system in North America — over 400 miles of underground chambers, canyons, tubes, shafts, and passageways, interwoven with Stygian rivers. Within a few months of the suggestion, on June 4, 1938, Kleitman and a companion — a graduate student named Bruce Richardson…

SLEEP SPELUNKING

Taking the High Road

Each day, thousands of animals face one of the most deadly predators in America — a road. More than 4 million miles of public roads across the U.S. provide vital links for commerce, services, and travel, but they’re treacherous barriers for wildlife seeking food, water, and mates. Exposed and unsure about the noisy, unfamiliar terrain presented by an open road, an animal that hesitates or misjudges the speed of an approaching vehicle risks fatal consequences. Unfortunately, those encounters are all too common on busy roadways. According to the Federal Highway Administration, there are more than 1 million wildlife-vehicle collisions (WVCs) every year in the U.S. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of animals killed and maimed, WVCs also result in hundreds of human fatalities and tens of thousands of injuries. Collisions are…

Taking the High Road

Is Earth the Only Goldilocks Planet?

Humans have wondered about life in the universe since antiquity. Early Greek philosophers argued that the cosmos contained “a plurality of worlds.” Today we know that exoplanetary systems are indeed ubiquitous, but the question now is: How common are planets that can support life? In 2000, paleontologist Peter Ward and astronomer Donald Brownlee of the University of Washington in Seattle penned a controversial book, Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe. In it, they propose that Earth is an unusual world where complex life-forms developed over an extended period. They further assert that though simple, unicellular life may be abundant in the universe, complex life must be exceedingly rare. In sharp contrast, noted Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics astrophysicist Avi Loeb passionately argues in his book Extraterrestrial: The First Sign…

Is Earth the Only Goldilocks Planet?

In 2015, citizen scientists began tracking a long, streaking pattern across the night sky. Resembling a purple ribbon with distinctive green picket-fence bars, the phenomenon was later dubbed Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement, or STEVE. Since then, researchers have been working to understand the forces fueling it. Although auroras and STEVE can have a similar appearance, especially to casual observers, they are not the same. Auroras form when charged particles in the magnetosphere run into atoms in the atmosphere, resulting in curtainlike arcs of light. STEVE, however, is caused by a stream of hot, fast-moving ions vibrating nitric oxide molecules to create a narrow, mauve-colored glow. These light bands occur between 80 to 170 miles above Earth’s surface, and can last anywhere from minutes to hours. STEVE also can pop up…

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