The wild physics that keeps your body's electrical system flowing smoothly

Building on their pioneering 2018 research into how some of the body's cells, such as neurons and cardiac tissue, communicate via ions that flow through cellular channels, chemists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst demonstrated a "leakiness" to a particularly mysterious type of channel, known as a "big potassium," or BK channel. This leakiness is key to further studies of the body's electrical infrastructure, which, when it goes haywire, can result in maladies like epilepsy and hypertension.