UCLA researchers have fabricated the fastest graphene transistor to date, using a new fabrication process with a nanowire as a self-aligned gate.

Self-aligned gates are a key element in modern transistors, which are semiconductor devices used to amplify and switch electronic signals. Gates are used to switch the… more

A new “smart materials” process — Multiple Memory Material Technology — developed by University of Waterloo engineering researchers promises to revolutionize the manufacture of diverse products such as medical devices, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), printers, hard drives, automotive components, valves and actuators.

The breakthrough technology will provide engineers with much more freedom and creativity… more

Sugar, salt, alcohol and a little serendipity led a Northwestern University research team to discover a new class of nanostructures that could be used for gas storage and food and medical technologies. And the compounds are edible. The porous crystals are the first known all-natural metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) that are simple to make.… more

Dr. Suzanne Gildert will speak on “Building large-scale quantum computers: Fundamentals, technology and applications” at Teleplace, September 4, 10 a.m. PST.

“The talk will explain why quantum computers are useful, and also dispel some of the myths about what they can and cannot do,” she says. “It will address… more

God did not create the universe, says Stephen Hawking in a new book, The Grand Design, co-authored with U.S. physicist Leonard Mlodinow (to be released Sept. 7).

He said the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting another star other than the Sun helped deconstruct the view of the father of physics Isaac Newton that… more

Scientists are reporting new evidence that the fat tissue — far from being a dormant storage depot for surplus calories — is an active organ that sends chemical signals to other parts of the body, perhaps increasing the risk of heart attacks, cancer, and other diseases.

They are reporting discovery of 20 new hormones… more

Researchers in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering have developed software that can simulate complicated physical phenomena — how cracks form in building materials, for instance, or fluids flow through irregular channels — on an ordinary smartphone.

Although the current version of the software is for demonstration purposes, the work could lead to… more

MIT researchers have developed a new concept of personalized energy systems, in which individual homes and small businesses produce their own energy for heating, cooling and powering cars.

“Our goal is to make each home its own power station,” said study leader Daniel Nocera, Ph.D of MIT. “We’re working toward development of… more

Venture Beat, Sep 1, 2010 — Google TV and Apple TV, introduced Wednesday, both aim to redefine the home entertainment experience by creating a seamless system for viewing movies, videos, and music from various sources on a TV.

New York Times`, Aug 31, 2010 — “In Google, we are at once the surveilled and the individual retinal cells of the surveillant, however many millions of us, constantly if unconsciously participatory,” opines novelist William Gibson. ”We are part of a post-geographical, post-national super-state, one that handily says no to China. Or… more

“Gmail Priority Inbox” video on YouTube is self-explanatory.

VentureBeat, Aug 31, 2010 — Author Neal Stephenson has launched Subutai, which has developed the “PULP platform” for creating digital novels, using a new model for publishing books in which authors can add additional material like background articles, images, music, and video. There are also social features that allow readers to create… more

the physics ArXiv blog, Sep 1, 2010 — For years, claims have circulated that red rain that fell in India in 2001 contained cells unlike any found on Earth. Now new evidence that these cells can reproduce is about to set the debate alive.

“The flourescence behaviour of the red… more

Technology Review, Sep 1, 2010 — The AlloSphere, a three-story-high globe at the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara,  facilitates interactive 3-D visualizations to enables scientists to dive into data in unprecedented ways. Inside the sphere, they can get their hands on the atoms making up the crystal structure… more

While most of PZ Myers’ comments (in his blog post entitled “Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain” posted on Pharyngula on August 17, 2010) do not deserve a response, I do want to set the record straight, as he completely mischaracterizes my thesis.

For starters, I said that we would be… more

Demis Hassabis, a research fellow at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College London, is out to create a radical new kind of artficial brain.

A former well-known UK videogame designer and programmer, he has produced a number of amazing games, including the legendary Evil Genius — which he denies selling to Microsoft, thus… more

Humans will one day defeat aging with AI, make death and disease relics of the past, regrow lost tissues and body parts as needed, control robot arms on another continent, unravel the complexities of cells, and in their spare time, save the world. At least that’s the hope of six speakers at Singularity… more

At the Singularity Summit in San Francisco at 11 AM on Saturday August 14, Ray Kurzweil will present an overview of “arguably the most important project in the history of the human-machine civilization”: to model and reverse-engineer the brain, with the goal of creating intelligent machines to address the grand challenges of humanity. He… more

Picture a scene in the ancient wild: a time when drought and famine have taken the land, food is scant and predators are near, and staying alive depends on being active, alert, and quick-witted — and asking, “Where did I find those nuts last year, and where was that water hole?“

A… more

What might brains and minds look like in the future? It can be difficult to manage and organize ideas from many highly specialized fields of expertise that must necessarily converge to answer this intriguing question. Not only must one consider the areas of brain imaging, neuroscience, and cognitive psychology, but also artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, biotechnology,… more

Eliezer Yudkowsky is a Research Fellow at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence and founder of the community blog Less Wrong. We discussed his coming talk at the Singularity Summit on August 15, his forthcoming book on human rationality, his theory of “friendly AI,” and the likelihood of the… more

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published Tuesday a landmark paper entitled “Network architecture of the long-distance pathways in the macaque brain” (an open-access paper) by Dharmendra S. Modha (IBM Almaden) and Raghavendra Singh (IBM Research-India) with major implications for reverse-engineering the brain and developing a network… more

A new generation of biohackers is literally taking the future of biology into their own hands, and it’s raising some red flags with the government. The basic concern: how can we avoid proliferation of dangerous bioagents?

The situation will come to a head on Friday night July 30 at the… more

A handful of forward-thinking biogerontologists has joined together to offer a new direction for aging intervention. Their commentary, published July 14 in Science Translational Medicine, presents the case for preventing what the scientists call an “unprecedented global aging crisis”—a sharp rise in the numbers of retired elderly in developing and industrialized nations across the… more

As noted in our 2010 State of the Future (the 14th annual report from the Millennium Project, just published), the world is in a race between implementing ever-increasing ways to improve the human condition and the seemingly ever-increasing complexity and scale of global problems.

If current trends in population growth,… more

On June 12-13 of this year, Harvard University hosted the H+ Summit, organized by the nonprofit Humanity+ and loosely focused on the theme, Rise of the Citizen Scientist.

I attended and spoke at the Summit and enjoyed it very much; nearly every speaker had something interesting to say, and one came away… more

Follow Osama’s Example–Shred Red Tape With Personal Tech

What Do Brooklyn’s Tea Lounge and Al Qaeda Have In Common? It’s time to kill bureaucracy. What do I mean? And what does this call for revolution have to do with the next generation of netbooks, Apple tablets and Google Phones? Not to mention with the… more

Seeing Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland in IMAX 3-D (which continues as No. 1 in box office sales for the second weekend in a row), I thought that the Jabberwocky poem came from the original Alice in Wonderland, but it didn’t. It came from the sequel, Through the Looking Glass.

Recall that Lewis Carroll… more

What if there was a central place for all of humanity to text, tweet, email, blog and click in the essence of their mood in the moment? This gigantic feelings aggregator would provide a massive emotional pulse check on the planet that runs continually. Represented as a color wheel inspired by the… more