theSIGNAL SCIENCE
18 July 2026
"The brain is wider than the sky."
NEWSBUSINESSTECHNOLOGYWORLDSCIENCECULTUREENVIRONMENTSPORT
Science

A Bypass for the Broken Spine

A New York man paralysed from the chest down can now feel his dog's fur — thanks to a chip in his brain that rewires around his injury.

On a July afternoon in 2020, Keith Thomas dived into a swimming pool in Massapequa, New York, and broke his neck. He blacked out. When he opened his eyes, there was a helicopter on his front lawn. The next morning, he could not move at all.

He was 42 years old, and his spinal cord had become a wall between his brain and his body. Then something remarkable happened. In October 2021, Thomas joined a clinical trial at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, part of New York's Northwell Health. Surgeons implanted tiny electrodes directly into his brain.

These electrodes listen for the electrical whisper of an intended movement — the thought "lift my arm" — and then route that signal around the damaged spinal cord and straight to the muscles themselves. Pressure sensors fitted to his fingers and thumb complete the circuit, sending signals back up to his brain to recreate the feeling of touch. The researchers call this a "double neural bypass," and it is, in effect, a detour around the broken road. What nobody expected was what happened next.

Photo: Shawn Day / Unsplash
Keith Thomas works with researchers to test his brain-computer interface system at Feinstein Institutes.
Discuss
  • What is the difference between 'restoring' a function and 'replacing' it with technology?
  • Keith Thomas agreed to brain surgery as part of a trial. What risks might someone weigh before making that decision?
  • The system recreates the sensation of touch through sensors. Do you think that counts as 'real' feeling? Why or why not?
Science

AI Finds 250,000 Suspicious Cancer Papers

In 2022, more than 16 percent of cancer research papers published that year raised a red flag. That is a staggering jump from just 1 percent in the early 2000s. A team led by Professor Adrian Barnett at Queensland University of Technology trained an AI called BERT to hunt for textual "fingerprints" left by paper mills — companies that sell fake studies on an industrial scale. It correctly identified fraudulent work 91 percent of the time. Gastric, liver, and lung cancer research were hit hardest.…
  • Can AI alone be trusted to decide which science is real?
∞
For years, we have been wanting to really tackle the restoration of movement and the sense of touch and bring those together and we've also wanted to create lasting effects.
Professor Chad Bouton, Director of Neurotechnology, Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research
Science

EU gives industries more time to go green

In 2005, the EU introduced a radical idea: make polluters pay. Every tonne of carbon dioxide costs a permit. Release fewer permits each year, and emissions fall. Simple — in theory. Now, Brussels is blinking. Under new proposals, some industries could receive free carbon allowances until 2038 instead of 2034, and the annual cap reduction would slow from 4.3% to as little as 1.7%. EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra calls it a "savvy" approach. Poland calls it a victory.…
  • Does extending free carbon permits help businesses or simply delay necessary change?
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AMERICAS · Science
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theSIGNAL IN THE LAB
1VOCABULARY
implanteddetour
staggeringfingerprintsfraudulent
allowancesrestoration
2GRAMMAR FOCUS
Gerunds and infinitives — complex patterns (stop to do vs stop doing)
Some verbs change meaning depending on whether they are followed by a gerund or an infinitive: for example, 'stop doing' means to quit an activity, while 'stop to do' means to pause in order to do something else. Similarly, 'remember doing' refers to a memory of a past action, while 'remember to do' means not to forget a future task.
to feel · feeling · to tackle · tackling · to move · moving · restoring
  1. After the device was switched on, Keith Thomas stopped completely and began to regain some sensation in his fingers.
  2. Professor Bouton remembers the challenge of combining movement and touch restoration when he first designed the bypass system.
  3. The surgeons tried the arm muscles directly by routing signals around the damaged spinal cord.
  4. Keith had to stop for a moment when he first stroked his dog's fur — the sensation was overwhelming.
  5. The EU's industries appear to have stopped seriously toward the original 2034 carbon deadline.
  6. Researchers working on cancer fraud went on that over 250,000 suspicious papers had been published in recent years.
3COLLOCATIONS
Match the verb on the left with the noun phrase it best collocates with on the right.
  1. implant
  2. raise
  3. rewire
  4. release
  5. tackle
4CRITICAL THINKING
Two of these three stories involve trusting a system — an AI or a regulatory body — to catch a problem before it causes serious harm. In both cases, that system appears to be struggling. What does this pattern suggest about how modern institutions manage risks they cannot fully see or measure?
5CREATIVE · HEADLINES
Write a headline for the top story in each of the following styles. One line each, no explanation:
  • TABLOID NEWSPAPER
  • LUXURY MAGAZINE
  • ACTIVIST BLOG
6WRITING
The double neural bypass and the fraudulent cancer papers both reveal how much is at stake when medical research moves quickly — one story shows what breakthroughs can achieve, the other shows what shortcuts can destroy. Write a short opinion piece arguing either that speed in medical research saves lives or that it puts them at risk.
7DEGREES OF EXTREMITY
Complete each ladder from mild to strong.
  • concerned→→
  • unusual→→
  • decrease→→
  • doubtful→→
  • adjust→→
  • slow down→→
8SPEAKING
  1. Should trial participants be paid for accepting medical risk?
  2. Could fake research papers ever cause direct patient harm?
  3. What motivates scientists to publish fraudulent work?
  4. Does slowing climate targets damage trust in EU institutions?