Migraine sufferers will tell you how their intense, painful headaches can last up to 72 hours, disrupting daily routines and leaving them miserable. While there is no cure for migraines, recent research shows that electrical stimulation of certain nerves—a technique called neuromodulation—can help abort migraines without the use of drugs.

Neuromodulation devices typically are designed to be worn on the head, but Israeli startup Theranica has published promising results of a study in which a wireless armband reduced migraine headache pain as effectively as current migraine drugs.

The patchlike device, known as Nerivio, contains a small battery, a computer chip, and two small electrodes that make contact with the skin of the arm. A smartphone app controls the strength and duration of the device’s tiny electrical pulses, which stimulate nerves in the arm, relaying messages up the brainstem and activating neurotransmitters that act as natural painkillers.

The study, published online March 1 in the journal Neurology, involved 71 participants, all of whom reported at least eight migraines per month. Their armband devices were programmed to randomly intersperse active stimulations with placebo or “sham” stimulations. With a total of 299 migraines treated during the study, 64 percent of participants reported at least a 50 percent reduction in pain with the active treatment compared with only 26 percent reporting improvement after the sham treatments.

A Theranica medical adviser, David Yarnitsky of Technion Faculty of Medicine in Haifa, Israel, said in a statement the technique needed further testing but was exciting: “People with migraine are looking for non-drug treatments, and this new device is easy to use, has no side effects and can be conveniently used in work or social settings.”

One tiny bit

Advances in data storage mean a modern smartphone can store as much data as a refrigerator-sized computer from a couple of decades ago. That’s impressive, but IBM published breakthrough research in March that could lead to storage devices thousands of times more efficient than today’s.

Scanning tunneling microscope Stan Olszewski/IBM

IBM scientists were able to create a magnet out of a single atom of the element holmium. Applying an electric current to the atom, the researchers could vary its polarity in two directions, allowing it to represent a single bit of binary data: a 1 or a 0. By comparison, today’s hard drives need about 100,000 atoms to store one bit.

The process, still in the early research stages, requires the use of a scanning tunneling microscope that can manipulate individual atoms in a vacuum. IBM scientists believe a storage mechanism based on this technology could hold 35 million songs on a disk the size of a credit card. —M.C.

On the fast track

The high-speed train concept known as Hyperloop is moving closer to reality. In March Los Angeles startup Hyperloop One unveiled photos of its full-scale test track under construction near Las Vegas. Hyperloop is a transportation system in which powerful electromagnets propel pods containing passengers or cargo through airless tubes at speeds of nearly 760 miles per hour. The 1,600-foot test track, composed of cylindrical sections 11 feet in diameter, will eventually reach a length of nearly 2 miles. Hyperloop One hopes to demonstrate a full-scale Hyperloop prototype later this year. The company has proposed a Hyperloop connection between Abu Dhabi and Dubai that it claims would reduce a two-hour drive time to just 12 minutes. —M.C

Scanning tunneling microscope Stan Olszewski/IBM