The Science Of ‘Inception’
Real-life technologies can perform some of the mind-reading tricks shown in the new film Inception, in which people are able to observe and participate in someone’s dreams.
Jack Gallant, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley shows people images and movies while taking a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan of their brains. He uses [...]
Google, CIA Invest in ‘Future’ of Web Monitoring
The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time — and says it uses that information to predict the future.
The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, [...]
Using exploding nanoparticles to insert DNA and proteins into cells
Chemical “nanoblasts” activated by bursts of laser light can punch tiny holes in the protective membranes of cells just long enough to admit therapeutic small molecules, proteins and DNA directly into living cells, Georgia Institute of Technology.researchers have discovered.
“One of the most significant uses for this technology could be for gene-based therapies, which offer great promise [...]
Aging and longevity tied to specific brain region in mice
Researchers watched two groups of mice, both nearing the end of a two-day fast. One group was quietly huddled together, but the other group was active and alert. The difference? The second set of mice had been engineered so their brains produced more SIRT1, a protein known to play a role in aging and longevity.
“This [...]
Big Bang Abandoned in New Model of the Universe
A new cosmology successfully explains the accelerating expansion of the universe without dark energy; but only if the universe has no beginning and no end.
Wun-Yi Shu at the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan has developed an innovative new description of the Universe in which time and space are not independent entities but can be [...]
X PRIZE Foundation to Announce Multi-Million Dollar Incentive Competition to Clean Up Oil
On July 29, 2010, the X PRIZE Foundation will launch its sixth major competition, a multi-million dollar privately funded Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE, designed to inspire entrepreneurs, engineers, and scientists worldwide to develop innovative, rapidly deployable, and highly efficient methods of capturing crude oil from the ocean surface.
The announcement will be made at the National [...]
Multifunctional nanoparticle enables new type of biological imaging
University of Washington researchers have developed a multifunctional nanoparticle that enables a more precise form of medical imaging.
Nanoparticles are promising contrast agents for ultrasensitive medical imaging. But in all techniques that do not use radioactive tracers, the surrounding tissues tend to overwhelm weak signals, preventing researchers from detecting just one or a few cells.
The new [...]
A Smoother Street View
New street-level imaging software developed by Microsoft could help people find locations more quickly on the Web.
Microsoft researchers have come up with a refinement to Bing Streetside called Street Slide. It combines slices from multiple panoramas captured along a stretch of road into one continuous view. This can be viewed from a distance, or “smooth [...]
Intel Turns to Light to Transfer Data Inside PCs
Intel on Tuesday announced it had developed a prototype interconnect that uses light to speed up data transmission inside computers at the speed of 50 gigabits per second.
Intel researchers said that the optical technology could ultimately replace the use of copper wires and electrons to carry data inside or around computers. An entire high-definition movie [...]
Scientists ‘reprogram’ mouse fat cells into clinically useful stem cells
Australian scientists from the Monash Institute of Medical Research have reprogrammed adult mouse fat cells and neural cells to become stem cells that can differentiate into a variety of different cells (pluripotency).
The induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) are nearly identical to the naturally occurring pluripotent stems cells, such as embryonic stem cells, which are highly [...]
Study shows infectious prions can arise spontaneously in normal brain tissue
Scientists from The Scripps Research Institute in Florida and the University College London (UCL) Institute of Neurology in England have shown for the first time that abnormal prions, bits of infectious protein that can cause fatal neurodegenerative disease, can suddenly erupt from healthy brain tissue, promoted by contact with steel surfaces.
Mammalian cells normally produce harmless [...]
First step toward electronic DNA sequencing: Translocation through graphene nanopores
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a new, carbon-based nanoscale platform to electrically detect single DNA molecules.
Using electric fields, the tiny DNA strands are pushed through nanoscale-sized, atomically thin pores in a graphene nanopore platform that ultimately may be important for fast electronic sequencing of the four chemical bases of DNA based on their [...]
Hire out your spare brainpower, says Internet optimist
The Internet allows us to participate in large-scale collaborative projects, say Clay Shirky in the new book Cognitive Surplus. “We used to spend this time watching television, now we are migrating to the internet where our leisure time can be put to good use.”
“We can design services and institutions that rely on that resource in [...]
We humans can mind-meld too
Uri Hasson of Princeton University.found that fMRI scans of 11 people’s brains as they listened to a woman recounting a story.showed that the listeners’ brain patterns tracked those of the storyteller almost exactly, but 1 to 3 seconds behind. In some listeners, brain patterns even preceded those of the storyteller.
Why Fair Use is Not Just Acceptable, It’s Essential for the Future
New exemptions have been added to the the Digital Millenimum Copyright Act (DMCA) that provide protections for “fair use” in several different circumstances:
Permission for cell phone owners to break access controls on their phones in order to switch wireless carriers or “jailbreak” their device
Permission to break technical protections on video games to investigate or correct [...]
The Consumer Genetic Testing Industry Strikes Back
Last Thursday, the Government Accountability Office presented Congress with a damning report on the consumer genetic testing industry, concluding many tests are “misleading and of little or no practical use.” Company leaders and some geneticists, responding via blog and twitter, have called the report one-sided and unscientific, citing concern it will do irreparable harm to the [...]
App Lets You Know When Friends Are Nearby
A new location-based application for mobile phones called face2face lets users see if any of their connections on Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter are nearby, but for security, does not give out that contact’s exact location.
The application also comes with privacy settings that let users decide if they want to be invisible to others, and [...]
Invisibility cloak makes objects seen in infrared invisible
Scientists at Michigan Technological University and Pennsylvania State University have developed a nonmetallic cloak that uses identical glass resonators made of chalcogenide glass. In computer simulations, the cloak made objects hit by infrared waves—approximately one micron—disappear from view.
The invisibility cloak metamaterials are made of tiny glass resonators arranged in a concentric pattern in the shape of a cylinder. [...]
Taming time travel
Researchers led by Seth Lloyd at MIT have a new theory of time travel that evades the “grandfather paradox,” in which a traveler jumps back in time and kills his grandfather, which prevents his own existence.
This version is called a post-selected model, in which paradoxical situations are censored. A downside: this version causes possible but unlikely [...]
‘BodyShock The Future’ contest seeks innovative ways to improve health
The Institute for the Future (IFTF) has launched a new contest called BodyShock The Future to develop innovative ways to improve individual and collective health over the next 3-10 years by transforming our bodies and lifestyles.
IFTF is looking for visual ideas — video or graphical entries illustrating new ideas, designs, products, technologies, and concepts. Entries [...]
Study Links More Time Spent Sitting to Higher Risk of Death
A new study from American Cancer Society researchers finds it’s not just how much physical activity you get, but how much time you spend sitting that can affect your risk of death.
Researchers say time spent sitting was independently associated with total mortality, regardless of physical activity level. They conclude that public health messages should promote [...]
India develops 35-dollar ‘laptop’ for schools
India has come up with a $35 solar-powered, touch-screen “laptop” — a computing prototype that it aims to make available to students from elementary schools to universities.
Buckyballs Found in Space
Astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered carbon molecules known as “buckyballs” in space for the first time.
“We found what are now the largest molecules known to exist in space,” said astronomer Jan Cami of the University of Western Ontario, Canada, and the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. “We are particularly excited because [...]
Nanoribbons for graphene transistors
In Nature July 22, 2010, scientists from Empa and the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research report how they have managed for the first time to grow graphene ribbons that are just a few nanometres wide, using a simple surface-based chemical method.
Graphene ribbons are considered to be hot candidates for future electronics applications because their [...]
Quantum entanglement in photosynthesis and evolution
Physicists have suggested that entanglement (the quantum interconnection of two or more objects like photons, electrons, or atoms that are separated in physical space) could be occurring in the photosynthetic complexes of plants, particularly in the pigment molecules, or chromophores. The quantum effects may explain why the structures are so efficient at converting light into [...]
Twitter mood maps reveal emotional states of America
Emotional words contained in 300 million tweets suggest that the West Coast is happier than the East Coast, and across the country happiness peaks each Sunday morning, with a trough on Thursday evenings, computer scientists at Northeastern University have found, describing the technique as “the pulse of the nation.”
To glean mood from the 140-character-long messages, [...]
Google Tells FTC Enforcing “Hot News” Would Create a Hot Mess
The Federal Trade Commission’s proposed “hot news doctrine” — legislation that would prevent others from reporting the same facts as a traditional publisher for a period of time after a news event — “would not only hurt free expression … [but] make it virtually impossible for aggregators such as Google News and Yahoo News to [...]
Less Than 1 Year Until The Internet Runs Out of Addresses
With a maximum of just over 4 billion unique addresses, the Internet will run out of Internet addresses in about 1 year’s time, due to an explosion of data about to happen to the Web — thanks largely to sensor data, smart grids, RFID and other Internet of Things data; the increase in mobile devices connecting to the Internet; and [...]
Musical training linked to language, speech, and memory skills
A data-driven review by Northwestern University researchers that will be published July 20 in Nature Reviews Neuroscience pulls together converging research from the scientific literature linking musical training to learning that spills over to skills including language, speech, memory, attention and even vocal emotion.
Musicians are more successful than non-musicians in learning to incorporate sound patterns for [...]
Brain training reverses age-related cognitive decline
Intense auditory brain training targeted at the regions of a rat’s brain that process sound reversed many aspects of normal, age-related cognitive decline and improved the health of the brain cells, according to a new study from researchers at University of California, San Francisco.
The results indicate that people who experience age-related cognitive decline, including slower mental [...]
Finding frugal aliens: ‘Benford beacons’ concept could refocus search for intelligent extraterrestrial life
UC Irvine astrophysicist Gregory Benford and his twin, James — a fellow physicist specializing in high-powered microwave technology — suggest that signals from ET would not be continuously blasted out in all directions but rather would be more cost-effective “Benford beacons”: pulsed, narrowly directed and broadband in the 1-to-10-gigahertz range.
A Prettier Way to Browse the Social Web
Flipboard, a start-up that is unveiling its iPad app on Wednesday, builds a personalized magazine full of updates, photos and articles shared by a reader’s friends or by people they choose to follow on Twitter and Facebook. Soon it plans to incorporate material from other sources, such as Flickr, Foursquare, Yelp and perhaps e-mail messages [...]
The Lifeboat Foundation: Battling Asteroids, Nanobots and A.I.
The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit that seeks to protect people from some seriously catastrophic technology-related events. It funds research that would prevent a situation where technology has run amok, sort of like a pre-Fringe Unit.
The organization has a ton of areas that it’s looking into, ranging from artificial intelligence to asteroids. A particular interest for the [...]
Autism has unique vocal signature, new technology reveals
LENA (Language Environment Analysis), a new automated vocal analysis technology, could fundamentally change the study of language development as well as the screening for autism spectrum disorders and language delay, reports a study in the July 19 online Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The LENA (Language Environment Analysis) system automatically labeled infant and child vocalizations [...]
Polymer synthesis could aid future electronics
In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of researchers from Canada and the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. and two Canadian universities outlined their success in growing highly structured short chains of polymer poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene), or PEDOT.
Synthesis of a conjugated organic polymer–widely used as a conductive material [...]
Artificial gut frees sewage-eating robot from humans
The Bristol Robotics Lab in the UK has developed the self-sustaining Ecobot III robot. It has an artificial gut and digestive tract, allowing it can survive for up to seven days, feeding and “watering” itself unaided.
It uses a recycling system that relies on a gravity-fed peristaltic pump which, like the human colon, applies waves of pressure to [...]
Top Secret America
The Washington Post has released its interactive “Top Secret America” website, describing the huge national security buildup in the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
The series of articles and an online database at topsecretamerica.com depict the scope and complexity of the government’s national security program through interactive maps and other graphics. More than a [...]
Reprogrammed Stem Cells Remember Their Past
Harvard Medical School scientists and associates have discovered that reprogrammed stem cells–those derived from fully differentiated adult cells–preserve a memory of where they came from.
That memory appears to influence the cells’ development; reprogrammed stem cells are more easily converted back to their original identity, according to a study released online today in Nature.
The findings could [...]
Artificial cells communicate and cooperate like biological cells, ants
Inspired by the social interactions of ants and slime molds, University of Pittsburgh engineers have designed computational models of artificial cells capable of self-organizing into independent groups that can communicate and cooperate to transport chemicals and drugs.
The Pitt group’s microcapsules interact by secreting nanoparticles in a way similar to how biological cells signal to communicate [...]
H+ Magazine relaunches, published by Humanity+
H+ Magazine will relaunch Tuesday July 20, now published by the nonprofit organization Humanity+ (formerly the World Transhumanist Association), KurzweilAI.net has learned.
H+ Magazine, which covers technological, social and cultural trends that change humans in fundamental ways, began publishing in 2008, and went on hiatus June 1. R.U. Sirius, a.k.a. Ken Goffman, will remain as the [...]
Vibration-powered Generators Replace AA, AAA Batteries
Brother Industries Ltd. has developed small vibration-powered generators that can replace AA and AAA batteries in devices that do not always consume electricity and have a power consumption of about 100mW (a maximum for a normal remote).
The battery-shaped case includes an electromagnetic induction generator and a 500mF double-layer capacitor. The average output of the AA-size [...]
Bye-Bye Batteries: Radio Waves as a Low-Power Source
Devices and systems are being developed that consume so little power that it can be drawn from ambient radio waves from radio and television stations, WiFi systems and other sources, reducing or even eliminating the need for batteries.
Joshua R. Smith, a principal engineer at Intel’s research center in Seattle has developed a device that collects enough [...]
Thought-Controlled Prosthetic Limb System to be Tested on Humans
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded a contract for up to $34.5 million to The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., to manage the development and testing of the Modular Prosthetic Limb (MPL) system on human subjects, using a brain-controlled interface.
The MPL offers 22 degrees of motion, including [...]
Embedded Technologies: Power From the People
Under a DARPA grant, MIT scientists are harnessing the body’s movements to generate electrical power for bionic devices, using piezoelectric materials, which produce an electric current when subjected to mechanical pressure.
Steven Feiner, professor of computer science at Columbia University, says by 2050 embedded devices will allow us to immerse ourselves in a sea of not [...]
REX robotic exoskeleton gets wheelchair users back on their feet
A robotic exoskeleton called REX puts wheelchair users back on their feet, enabling a person to stand, walk and go up and down stairs and slopes, controlling it with a joystick.
REX users can stand up, walk, move sideways, turn around, go up and down steps, as well as walk on flat, hard surfaces including ramps [...]
Google Buys Metaweb, the One Company That Could Revolutionize Google Search
Google has acquired Metaweb, which maintains a database (“Freebase”) of 12 million “entities” (persons, places, or things), and all the different ways they relate and you might refer to them.
According to The Official Google Blog, Metaweb will allow Google to “improve search and make the web richer and more meaningful for everyone.” Metaweb was founded [...]
Silicon chip speed record broken on a lead-coated track
A “racetrack” developed by Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea has set a theoretical new record for silicon chips: 20 times faster. It uses an atom-thick layer of lead added to the surface of a silicon block.
The development could allow silicon to compete with graphene, a form of carbon.
Nanopillars that Trap More Light
A material with a novel nanostructure developed by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley could lead to lower-cost solar cells and light detectors. It absorbs light just as well as commercial thin-film solar cells but uses much less semiconductor material.
The new material consists of an array of nanopillars that are narrow at the top [...]
Talking to Your Phone
A new wave of smartphone apps combines speech recognition and artificial intelligence to help people carry out simple tasks on their mobile devices.
The latest such service, “SuperDialer” from Vlingo, combines a user’s spoken commands with personal data (such as address book) and information online. The forthcoming Vlingo Answers will attempt to answer a user’s question, using search [...]
Submarines could use new nanotube technology for sonar and stealth
“Nanotube speakers” made from carbon nanotube sheets have been found to be able can both generate sound and cancel out noise — properties ideal for submarine sonar to probe the ocean depths and make subs invisible to enemies, according to a report in ACS’ Nano Letters.
Ali Aliev of MacDiarmid NanoTech Institute, University of Texas at Dallas and colleagues explain [...]
|