In Short

Neuroscience has long struggled to understand how THE NERVOUS SYSTEM controls a body’s movements. Now, a new imaging technique has enabled researchers to study the brains of worms while they wiggle. Andrew Leifer, a fellow at the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, and his Princeton colleagues have recorded whole-brain activity in freely moving nematode worms using a motorized microscope and image-recognition software. The findings, posted online by the Cornell University Library in January, offer the first insight into brain activity and its relation to whole-body movement.             

ANTIBIOTIC-RESISTANT INFECTIONS sicken more than 2 million Americans annually and create an estimated $20 billion in health-care costs, it was noted in a September report by a research group of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, co-chaired by Woodrow Wilson School professor Christopher Chyba. In January, President Barack Obama proposed doubling federal funding for combating antibiotic resistance to more than $1.2 billion in 2016.