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Deep Brain Stimulation therapies have proven an invaluable treatment option for patients suffering from otherwise debilitating diseases like Parkinson's. However, it — and its sibling tech, brain computer interfaces — currently suffer a critical shortcoming: the electrodes that convert electron pulses into bioelectric signals don't sit well with the surrounding brain tissue. And that's where folks with the lab coats and holding squids come in! InWe Are Electric: Inside the 200-Year Hunt for Our Body's Bioelectric Code, and What the Future Holds, author Sally Adee delves into two centuries of research into an often misunderstood and maligned branch of scientific discovery, guiding readers from the pioneering works of Alessandro Volta to the life-saving applications that might become possible once doctors learn to communicate directly with our body's cells.

Hachette Books

Excerpted from We Are Electric: Inside the 200-Year Hunt for Our Body's Bioelectric Code, and What the Future Holds by Sally Adee. Copyright © 2023. Available from Hachette Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

Lost in translation

“There’s a fundamental asymmetry between the devices that drive our information economy and the tissues in the nervous system,” Bettinger told The Verge in 2018. “Your cell phone and your computer use electrons and pass them back and forth as the fundamental unit of information. Neurons, though, use ions like sodium and potassium. This matters because, to make a simple analogy, that means you need to translate the language.”

“One of the misnomers within the field actually is that I’m injecting current through these electrodes,” explains Kip Ludwig. “Not if I’m doing it right, I don’t.” The electrons that travel down a platinum or titanium wire to the implant never make it into your brain tissue. Instead, they line up on the electrode. This produces a negative charge, which pulls ions from the neurons around it. “If I pull enough ions away from the tissue, I cause voltage-gated ion channels to open,” says Ludwig. That can — but doesn’t always — make a nerve fire an action potential. Get nerves to fire. That’s it — that’s your only move.

It may seem counterintuitive: the nervous system runs on action potentials, so why wouldn’t it work to just try to write our own action potentials on top of the brain’s own ones? The problem is that our attempts to write action potentials can be incredibly ham-fisted, says Ludwig. They don’t always do what we think they do. For one thing, our tools are nowhere near precise enough to hit only the exact neurons we are trying to stimulate. So the implant sits in the middle of a bunch of different cells, sweeping up and activating unrelated neurons with its electric field. Remember how I said glia were traditionally considered the brain’s janitorial staff? Well, more recently it emerged that they also do some information processing—and our clumsy electrodes will fire them too, to unknown effects. “It’s like pulling the stopper on your bathtub and only trying to move one of three toy boats in the bathwater,” says Ludwig. And even if we do manage to hit the neurons we’re trying to, there’s no guarantee that the stimulation is hitting it in the correct location.

To bring electroceuticals into medicine, we really need better techniques to talk to cells. If the electron-to-ion language barrier is an obstacle to talking to neurons, it’s an absolute non-starter for cells that don’t use action potentials, like the ones that we are trying to target with next-generation electrical interventions, including skin cells, bone cells, and the rest. If we want to control the membrane voltage of cancer cells to coax them back to normal behavior; if we want to nudge the wound current in skin or bone cells; if we want to control the fate of a stem cell—none of that is achievable with our one and only tool of making a nerve fire an action potential. We need a bigger toolkit. Luckily, this is the objective for a fast-growing area of research looking to make devices, computing elements, and wiring that can talk to ions in their native tongue.

Several research groups are working on “mixed conduction,” a project whose goal is devices that can speak bioelectricity. It relies heavily on plastics and advanced polymers with long names that often include punctuation and numbers. If the goal is a DBS electrode you can keep in the brain for more than ten years, these materials will need to safely interact with the body’s native tissues for much longer than they do now. And that search is far from over. People are understandably beginning to wonder: why not just skip the middle man and actually make this stuff out of biological materials instead of manufacturing polymers? Why not learn how nature does it?

It’s been tried before. In the 1970s, there was a flurry of interest in using coral for bone grafts instead of autografts. Instead of a traumatic double-surgery to harvest the necessary bone tissue from a different part of the body, coral implants acted as a scaffold to let the body’s new bone cells grow into and form the new bone. Coral is naturally osteoconductive, which means new bone cells happily slide onto it and find it an agreeable place to proliferate. It’s also biodegradable: after the bone grew onto it, the coral was gradually absorbed, metabolized, and then excreted by the body. Steady improvements have produced few inflammatory responses or complications. Now there are several companies growing specialized coral for bone grafts and implants.

After the success of coral, people began to take a closer look at marine sources for biomaterials. This field is now rapidly evolving — thanks to new processing methods which have made it possible to harvest a lot of useful materials from what used to be just marine waste, the last decade has seen an increasing number of biomaterials that originate from marine organisms. These include replacement sources for gelatin (snails), collagen (jellyfish), and keratin (sponges), marine sources of which are plentiful, biocompatible, and biodegradable. And not just inside the body — one reason interest in these has spiked is the effort to move away from polluting synthetic plastic materials.

Apart from all the other benefits of marine-derived dupes, they’re also able to conduct an ion current. That was what Marco Rolandi was thinking about in 2010 when he and his colleagues at the University of Washington built a transistor out of a piece of squid.

Last year, NASA's DART spacecraft successfully completed its mission: To collide with an asteroid called Dimorphos to see if it was possible to change the trajectory of any potentially planet-killing space rock. Scientists from the DART team have been analyzing the data collected from the mission since then, and they've now published five papers in Nature explaining the details of DART's results. They've also decided that, yes, the method can be used to defend Earth if ever an asteroid big enough to kill us all heads our way. 

Apparently, one of DART's solar panels hit Dimosphos first before its body fully collided with the rock at 6km per second (3.7 miles per second). The spacecraft smashed into the asteroid around 25 meters (85 feet) from its center, which was a huge factor in the mission's success, since it maximized the force of the impact. According to the studies, the collision had managed to eject 1 million kilograms or 1,100 tons of rock from Dimorphos. That spray of rubble flew outwards away from the asteroid, generating four times the momentum of DART's impact and changing Dimorphos' trajectory even further.

While NASA has only tested the mission on one space rock, scientists have concluded that for asteroids as big as Dimorphos (around 560 feet across), we don't even need to send an advance reconnaissance mission. As long as we get at least few years of warning time, though a few decades would be preferable, then we will be able to intercept future asteroid threads. Franck Marchis at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, told Nature: "[W]e can quickly design a mission to deflect an asteroid if there is a threat, and we know that this has a very high chance of being effective."

We're bound to get an even better look at the mission's effect on the asteroid after European Space Agency's Hera spacecraft arrives at Dimorphos in 2026. The mission will study the binary asteroid system Didymos and Dimorphos to further validate DART's kinetic impact method or future use. 

Amazon is closing down two cashierless Go stores in New York City, two in Seattle and four in San Francisco on April 1st, according to GeekWire. The e-retail giant made the announcement on the same day it admitted that it's pausing construction on its second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia as it reassesses its office needs in the face of more and more people preferring to work remotely. As Bloomberg notes, these are but Amazon's latest cost-cutting moves amidst slowing sales growth. In January, the company expanded its planned job cuts from 10,000 to 18,000 roles, with the layoffs since then mostly impacting personnel from its retail and recruiting divisions. 

Company spokesperson Jessica Martin told the publications in a statement: "Like any physical retailer, we periodically assess our portfolio of stores and make optimization decisions along the way. We remain committed to the Amazon Go format, operate more than 20 Amazon Go stores across the US and will continue to learn which locations and features resonate most with customers."

The internet retail titan's Go stores were designed to be high-tech shops equipped with cameras and sensors that can detect when products are taken and returned to shelves. Customers can grab any item they want, which will be added to their virtual cart for online payment, and then walk out of the store without having to pass by a cashier. 

While Amazon still has over 20 Go stores in the country, it has long struggled to conquer the physical retail space and has been changing up strategies every so often. It used to have 87 retail pop-up kiosks across the US, but the company shut them down before the pandemic hit. And in 2022, Amazon closed down all 68 of its physical bookstores, pop-up locations and 4-star shops in the US and UK. Just this February, though, CEO Andy Jassy said the company plans to go big on its brick-and-mortar grocery store business. He told the Financial Times: "We're hopeful that in 2023, we have a format that we want to go big on, on the physical side."

A new Senate bill aims to expand protections for Americans' health and location data. It follows concerns that such information could be used to identify individuals seeking reproductive health care services after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion last year. 

The Upholding Protections for Health and Online Location Data (UPHOLD) Privacy Act seeks to block companies from selling personally identifiable health data for advertising purposes and ban data brokers from buying and selling precise location data. Moreover, the proposed legislation would afford consumers more access to and ownership over their health data. It would also place more restrictions on companies’ use of personal health data without the explicit consent of a user.

The bill aims to prohibit the use of personally identifiable health data from any source for advertising. This includes data from users themselves, medical centers, fitness trackers and browser histories. The UPHOLD Privacy Act's restrictions wouldn't apply to public health campaigns.

The legislation was introduced by Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren and Mazie Hirono. “With Republicans working to ban and criminalize reproductive health care nationwide, it’s critical we safeguard the reproductive data privacy of everyone in our country,” Hirono said in a statement. “Everyone should be able to trust that personal data about their bodies and their health care will be protected. By restricting the sale and use of personally identifiable health data, this bill will give patients and providers the peace of mind that their private information is secure.”

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last June, legislators have not made much headway toward protecting consumer health data. Period-tracking apps have given some particular cause for concern. Developers of some of these apps have since introduced features and policies to help protect their users' data.

The Federal Trade Commission said soon after the Supreme Court ruling that it would clamp down on companies which misuse health and location data. This week, the agency moved to ban online counseling service BetterHelp from sharing consumers' health data for ad targeting without consent. The FTC found that the company shared users' email addresses, IPs and health questionnaire responses. BetterHelp says it has never shared clinical data from therapy sessions with advertisers, publishers or social media companies.

Meta sees Reels as an important aspect of its apps, and the platform is rolling out some new features for the format on Facebook. For one thing, Facebook is extending the maximum length of Reels to 90 seconds, up from 60. Meta increased the Instagram Reels time limit to 90 seconds last July, but both fall someway short of the maximum length of a TikTok video, which currently stands at 10 minutes.

TikTok and Instagram Reels both have ways to sync clips with a song, and Facebook Reels is getting a similar feature called Grooves. Meta says this uses "visual beat technology" and that it automatically syncs and aligns motion with the beat of a song.

Elsewhere, Facebook will offer an easy way to generate Reels from your memories. You'll also be able to take advantage of trending templates. This allows you to replace clips from an existing template with your own ones.

Meta claims Reels is its fastest-growing format. The number of Reels plays have more than doubled over the last year across Facebook and Instagram. The company says reshares of Reels have more than doubled on both platforms in the last 6 months too. Since August, users have been able to cross-post Reels between the apps.

Somehow, it's Friday again (I'm pretty sure someone added an extra Monday to this week) and Friday means it's time for our weekly roundup of the best tech deals we could find. Apple discounts were the most abundant, with sales on the second-gen Apple Pencil, Apple Watch 8 and Apple Watch Ultra, iPad mini, and the MagSafe power bank. All have dropped down to or near their all-time lows. If you're an Android user and considering the latest flagship from Samsung, you may want to check out Amazon's gift card bundle with Galaxy S23 smartphones. Anyone who could use a little help keeping their floors clean might want to take a look at iRobot's Roomba 694. It's our pick for the most affordable ways to enter the robo-vac market and it back down to its lowest price. Here are the best tech deals from this week that you can still get today.

iRobot Roomba 694

We've tested quite a few robot vacuums over the years and our current favorite budget pick is iRobot's Roomba 694. This week, it dropped back to its all-time low price of $179, which is $95 off and a great price for a solidly performing vac that will do a good job of keeping your floors clean without much effort on your part. It's part of a wider sale on Roombas both at Amazon and on iRobot's site, with discounts of up to 35 percent. Also part of the sale is the best premium robot vacuum we've tested, the self-emptying Roomba s9+. Usually $999, the sale knocks $200 off, making it a little more affordable. We also tried and liked the Roomba Combo j7+ which combines mop and vacuum functions. The sale brings that one down to $849, which isn't cheap, but considerably better than its $1,099 list price.

Samsung S23 Ultra and Amazon gift card

Amazon is offering a $100 gift card for those who buy an unlocked Galaxy S23, S23+ or S23 Ultra on their site. It's not the $140 discount we saw last week, but $100 might make a difference to someone who's still on the fence about picking up one of Samsung's latest flagships. We gave the S23 Ultra a review score of 89 and liked the bright display, powerful performance from the custom Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip that makes everything smooth and speedy. The massive 200MP sensor camera Samsung added was the big news upon the phone's debut, though it takes some tinkering to get the most out of those extra pixels. The battery lasted an impressive 19 hours and 26 minutes and it's got a great build. One caveat we mention is the high price tag. But perhaps Amazon's gift card offer will ease up on that drawback a little. 

Eargo 7 Micro Hearing Aid

If you're looking for FDA-approved, self-fitting hearing aids that are pretty close to invisible, you may like this deal on the new Eargo 7 hearing aid. They're on sale for $360 off the usual price, bringing the $2,950 devices down to $2,590. When we wrote about Eargo last year, we said the brand acts "more like a technology company instead of a stuffy medical-device provider" and that's partly due to its annual release cycle — like you get with Samsung or Apple — that continually improves upon the technology with each new version of a product. This week, our editor James Trew checked out the latest release from Eargo and called the Eargo 7 the best model to date.

Apart from a few set-up snags within the app and the fact that the case deep sleeps when it needs a charge (even if the hearing aids are full), the experience with the devices was smooth sailing. These are CIC or in-canal hearing aids, which tend to be fairly unobvious when you wear them and they're even rated to handle sweat from workouts or minor splashes in the shower. Trew likes how they adequately amplify sound but don't emphasize sharp noises like keys. The battery lasts all day and the customer service is pretty great — important for a medical device that you buy direct from a company, instead of going through an audiologist.

Apple M2 Mac mini

This week, Apple's new M2 Mac mini dropped to its lowest price since its debut earlier this year with the entry level models for $50 off the list price. B&H Photo is applying the discount to the 256GB mini M2 and the 512GB mini M2, both with 8GB of RAM, bringing the tiny but mighty computers down to $549 and $749, respectively. If you'd rather pick them up from Amazon, both the 256GB model and the larger 512GB configuration are $50 off there too. The Mac minis with the M2 Pro chip aren't seeing the same discount, though Amazon is listing those $10 below Apple's suggested price.

The new Mac mini packs Apple's new M2 chip, which you'll also find in iPad Pros and the latest MacBook Pros. Both discounted models have eight CPU cores, 10 graphics cores, 8GB of RAM and either 256GB or 512GB of storage. As for ports, you get two Thunderbolt 4 UCB-C ports, an HDMI port with 4K output at 240Hz and 8K at 60Hz, two USB-A ports, a 3.5mm headphone jack and a gigabit Ethernet port.

Apple iPad Mini

The iPad mini is super portable, and now it's a little more affordable with a 20 percent discount on the 64GB model. That brings it down to $400 instead of its usual $499 and matches the lowest price the diminutive slab has ever gone for. If you want the higher capacity 256GB model, that's getting a 15 percent discount, bringing it down to $550, which is also $99 off. The deals apply to the gray, starlight and purple colors, though it looks like pink is only available on the 64GB configuration. We gave the mini an 89 in our review, noting that it received a significant redesign over its predecessors, adding iPad Air-style features like a Liquid Retina all-screen design, USB-C charging, a Touch-ID button and support for the new Apple Pencil. 

Apple Watch Series 8

We think the Apple Watch Series 8 is the best overall smartwatch and right now you can snag the 41mm Product Red version for just $329, which is $70 off the usual price. If you don't mind the color red, you're set. If the hue's not your speed, keep in mind that the bands are swappable, though they're not particularly cheap and the case will remain red. It's still a great watch with excellent health and fitness features, including EKG tests and crash detection. It also has solid GPS tracking and great integration with iPhone apps. Yes, it's only for those who carry iPhones. If you're an Android user, we recommend Samsung's Galaxy Watch 5. The Bluetooth 40mm model is still on sale from last week, down to $220 instead of its usual $280, which is an all-time low for the wearable.  

Apple Watch Ultra

Apple's burliest smartwatch dropped to $749 a couple weeks ago, and now the Apple Watch Ultra is $50 off once again at Amazon. We gave it an 85 on our review, praising the bright screen, extra long, three-day battery life and the impressive array of health tracking, fitness and GPS functions. Even with a $50 discount, it's not a cheap watch, and probably best suited to die-hard adventurers and athletes. 

Apple Pencil (2nd generation)

The second generation Apple Pencil had returned to the all-time low it hit during the shopping holidays at the end of last year. Usually $129, a 31 percent discount brings the stylus down to just $89. It's one of our favorite accessories for iPads and comes with a number of improvements over the first generation, including wireless charging that magnetically attaches to your compatible iPad. The second-gen Pencil only works with newer versions of iPad Air, iPad mini, or iPad Pro — the standard iPad still supports the first-gen stylus. If that's the iPad you have, you can grab the first-gen Pencil from Amazon for a $20 discount today. 

Apple MagSafe Battery Pack

Apple's MagSafe Battery Pack is currently 20 percent off at Amazon, bringing the charge-anywhere power bank down to $79. That's not the lowest it's ever gone, but it's only $8 higher that its all-time low of $71. The power bank is small and compact, firmly attaching to the back of your iPhone (model 12 and newer) as long as your case isn't too thick. In our tests, it delivered a 43 percent charge to an iPhone 14 Plus — you'll get a smaller or larger charge depending on the model and size of your phone. While it didn't win as the best MagSafe charger, it is well designed and remarkably compact. Our top pick for a MagSafe battery pack, Spigen's ArcHybrid goes for $60, but right now Amazon is offering a coupon for 35 percent off. Just check the box on the product page to apply the discount. 

If you want to wirelessly charge your iPhone at your desk or bedside table, you may want the wired, Apple-made MagSafe charger. It's on sale for $31 or 21 percent off.   

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Nintendo has taken Wii U titles Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon offline indefinitely while it attempts to resolve security issues. "This network service is currently unavailable due to urgent maintenance required to fix a vulnerability related to online play," reads a message posted to Nintendo's website at 11:30PM ET on Thursday. "We do not yet have information on when network services can be restored. We apologize for any inconvenience caused."

As VGC notes, the vulnerability could be related to an exploit that allows an attacker to take control of a victim's system simply by way of being matched with them in an online multiplayer game. Dataminer OatmealDome suggested the issue is “almost certainly” due to ENLBufferPwn.

Mario Kart 7 on the 3DS was previously vulnerable to that exploit. Several Switch games apparently were too, including Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Nintendo Switch Sports and Splatoon 2 and 3. Nintendo has seemingly patched all of those titles to protect them against the exploit.

A video posted by YouTuber PabloMK7 in December shows ENLBufferPwn in action on Mario Kart 7. It's used to inject custom firmware onto the targeted console. PabloMK7 wrote on GitHub that "it would be theoretically possible" to steal an account or credit card information and to record a victim using the 3DS' mic and cameras.

With nearly 8.5 million copies sold, Mario Kart 8 was the biggest-selling game on the Wii U. The original Splatoon sold almost 5 million. Those who are still playing the games on the discontinued system might be disappointed that the online features are currently unavailable, but it seems Nintendo was left with little choice but to take them offline for now.

The issue emerged only a few weeks before Nintendo shuts down the Wii U and 3DS eShops. After March 27th, owners of the systems won't be able to make purchases on the digital storefronts, but they'll still be able to download titles they previously bought. Meanwhile, Nintendo just revealed the latest courses that are coming to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on Switch next week as part of the Booster Course Pass.

Meta has responded to the dozens of recommendations from the Oversight Board regarding its controversial cross-check program, which shields high-profile users from the company’s automated content moderation systems. In its response, Meta agreed to adopt many of the board’s suggestions, but declined to implement changes that would have increased transparency around who is in the program.

Meta’s response comes after the board had criticized the program for prioritizing “business concerns” over human rights. While the company had characterized the program as a “second layer of review” to help it avoid mistakes, the Oversight Board noted that cross-check cases are often so backlogged that harmful content is left up far longer than it otherwise would be.

In total, Meta agreed to adopt 26 of the 32 recommendations at least partially. These include changes around how cross-check cases are handled internally at the company, as well as promises to disclose more information to the Oversight Board about the program. The company also pledged to reduce the backlog of cases.

But, notably, Meta declined to take the Oversight Board up on its recommendation that it publicly disclose politicians, state actors, businesses and other public figures who benefit from the protections of cross-check. The company said publicly disclosing details about the program “could lead to myriad unintended consequences making it both unfeasible and unsustainable” and said that it would open cross-check to being “game(d)” by bad actors.

Likewise, the company declined, or didn’t commit, to recommendations that may alert people that they are subject to cross-check. Meta declined a recommendation that it require users who are part of cross-check make “an additional, explicit, commitment” to follow the company’s rules. And Meta said it was “assessing the feasibility” of a recommendation that it allow people to opt out of cross-check (which would also, naturally, notify them that they are part of the program). “We will collaborate with our Human Rights and Civil Rights teams to assess options to address this issue, in an effort to enhance user autonomy regarding cross-check,” the company wrote.

While Meta’s response shows that the company is willing to make changes to one of its most controversial programs, it also underscores the company’s reluctance to make key details about cross-check public. That also aligns with the Oversight Board’s previous criticism, which last year accused the company of not being “fully forthcoming” about cross-check.

Yuji Naka has pleaded guilty to insider trading charges filed last fall. The Sonic the Hedgehog co-creator has admitted to violating Japanese financial law by buying shares in the game studio Aiming before its team-up with Square Enix on Dragon Quest Tact became public. Naka admitted to making a profit over 20 million yen (about $150,000) after selling his investment. He hasn't yet received a penalty for the illegal trade.

The veteran developer signed on with Square Enix in 2018, but abruptly left soon after his one project at the company (the mobile platformer Balan Wonderland) shipped to customers. He sued the company for removing him as director of Balan six months before launch. He was still with Square Enix when he heard about the Dragon Quest Tact work.

Two other former employees, Taisuke Sasaki and Fumiaki Suzuki, were also arrested for buying Aiming shares using insider knowledge. Square Enix says it's cooperating with investigators and has established a system that prevents insider trading. It's not clear how well that protection will work in practice, but the guilty plea theoretically discourages developers from using industry secrets to manipulate the stock market.

Amazon is pausing construction on its second headquarters in Arlington, VA. The company tied the decision to “a reassessment of office needs to account for remote work,” although the move came months after the retailer laid off around 18,000 workers.

The online retailer confirmed the move to Bloomberg while insisting it’s still committed to the second headquarters (HQ2) in the Washington, DC suburb, where it has committed to hiring 25,000 workers and spending $2.5 billion. Amazon has already hired more than 8,000 people while completing the first phase of the new campus, including two towers in the 2.1-million-square-foot Metropolitan Park. The suspension affects development on PenPlace, a larger area across the street where it plans to build three 22-story office towers, a 350-ft corporate conference center and an indoor garden. In addition, the delay could have a ripple effect on the area as local developers, construction workers and other businesses have set plans in motion based on Amazon’s timeline.

“We’re always evaluating space plans to make sure they fit our business needs and to create a great experience for employees,” said Amazon real estate chief John Schoettler. “And since Met Park will have space to accommodate more than 14,000 employees, we’ve decided to shift the groundbreaking of PenPlace out a bit.” 

Amazon’s county-approved plans require it to meet construction and permitting goals by April 2025 unless it gets an official extension.

The company settled on the Arlington offices after its hyped nationwide search for a second headquarters in 2017. Critics panned the move as a stunt to start a bidding war over who could offer the mega-corporation the juiciest taxpayer-funded incentives. Amazon initially settled on a split between Queens, NY and Northern Virginia but withdrew from Queens after facing opposition from local politicians and officials, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who objected to the nearly $3 billion in financial kickbacks the company was set to receive. Around 10 months after Amazon withdrew its New York plans, the company announced it would still build new offices in the Hudson Yards neighborhood of Manhattan’s West Side.