The Everything Test Download PDF

Most diseases give off a molecular signal before they show symptoms. Can the science of proteomics learn to spot them? 

The sergeant with the Mount Crested Butte Police Department in Colorado appeared shortly after 9 P.M. It was August 1, 2017, and I was with my wife and our two young children, ages 2 and 7, at Lake Irwin, a remote campsite at 10,200 feet in the Rocky Mountains. When the officer stepped out of his S.U.V. cruiser, its blue and red emergency strobes piercing the darkness, I thought that perhaps a neighboring camper had summoned him to silence my dissonant guitar strumming beside the campfire. Continue reading →

The Forecast is Cloudy Download PDF

Hurricanes like Matthew have laid bare the dirty secret of the National Weather Service: its technologies and methods are woefully behind the times. 

At 11 o’clock on the night of Sept. 29, the National Hurricane Center in Miami posted an updated prediction for Hurricane Matthew. Using the latest data from a reconnaissance aircraft, the center’s computerized models led meteorologists there to conclude, in a post on the center’s website, that “only a slight strengthening is forecast during the next 12 to 24 hours.” Their prediction proved to be astonishingly amiss: The following day, Matthew exploded from a Category 1 into a Category 5 hurricane, with winds gusting to 160 miles per hour, strong enough to flatten even the sturdiest homes. Continue reading →

Invasion of the Body Hackers Download PDF

Can the body be programmed to fight disease with devices instead of drugs? Welcome to the brave new world of bioelectronics. 

One morning in May 1998, Kevin Tracey converted a room in his lab at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, N.Y., into a makeshift operating theater and then prepped his patient — a rat — for surgery. A neurosurgeon, and also Feinstein Institute’s president, Tracey had spent more than a decade searching for a link between nerves and the immune system. His work led him to hypothesize that stimulating the vagus nerve with electricity would alleviate harmful inflammation. “The vagus nerve is behind the artery where you feel your pulse,” he told me recently, pressing his right index finger to his neck. Continue reading →