Lei Wu

Inside a tiny accelerometer, gas behaves nothing like the air in a room. There are so few molecules that they rarely collide with one another, and the familiar laws of viscosity and thermal conductivity stop working.

A patient with schizophrenia comes in for a procedure that feels like a mild tingling in the ear. The doctor switches on a small electrical stimulator attached to the earlobe, and after a few weeks, some people find their apathy and withdrawal receding, while others see no change at all. Until now, predicting this was impossible.