Nvidia is flexing its graphics muscle at the 2012 GPU Technology Conference, and the videos below show off Kepler’s new visual tricks:real-time ray tracing, simulation of physical bodies, and cloud gaming powered by its new GeForce Grid system.

Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Brain Research researchers have used new-generation sequencing to directly identify a very large number (more than 2500) of mRNA molecules present in axons and dendrites. The finding my help explain how proteins establish long-term memories.

During learning, information is stored at the synapses, the junctions connecting nerve cells. Synapses also…

An Indiana University-led research team and collaborators have identified and prioritized a comprehensive group of genes most associated with schizophrenia and that can generate a score indicating whether an individual is at higher or lower risk of developing the disease.

They used a convergent functional genomics approach that incorporates a variety of experimental…

NASA is training a team of astronauts to land on an asteroid to explore its surface, search for minerals, and even learn the skills they may need to destroy it should one pose a threat to the Earth.

NASA hopes to launch an unmanned spacecraft that will use a robotic arm to collect… [ The Telegraph ]

Mouse lifespan was extended up to 24 percent with a single gene treatment in research at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), using gene therapy, a strategy never before employed to combat aging.

Mice treated at the age of one lived longer by 24% on average, and those treated at the age…

Weill Cornell Medical College scientists have discovered that single protein alpha 2 delta controls the volume of neurotransmitters and other chemicals that flow between the synapses of brain neurons.

The study shows how brain cells talk to each other through these signals, relaying thoughts, feelings and action, and this powerful molecule plays a crucial…

North Carolina State University researchers are using light-activated molecules to turn gene expression on and off. Their method enables greater precision when studying gene function, and could lead to targeted therapies for diseases like cancer.

NC State chemist Dr. Alex Deiters decided to use Triplex-forming oligonucleotides (TFOs), which are molecules that can…

Patients see potential benefits from direct-to-consumer genetic testing, but are also concerned about how the test results will be used, and are generally unwilling to pay more than $10 or $20 for them, according to focus groups conducted by researchers at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine.

More than a dozen…

Baidu, the Chinese answer to Google, has announced details of its soon-to-launch new smartphone and the cloud-centric operating system (OS) that will power it.

The Foxconn-built Changhong H5018 will be the first device powered by Baidu’s “Cloud Smart Terminal” platform, marking ”the arrival of a new era” of sub $150 (1,000 RMB)… [ The Next Web ]

Researchers from the Italian Institute of Technology took their quadruped robot HyQ for a test run outside the lab for the first time to test new tricks HyQ has learned, including the ability to trot over obstacles without falling, IEET Spectrum Automaton reports. 

The robot is still a strange headless creature, and…

It was widely reported yesterday that Apple will likely announce at its WWDC in June that the new version of the built-in maps app in iOS6 will not be fed by Google maps. Instead, Apple has developed its own, in-house 3-D mapping database, based… [ Forbes ]

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a way to generate power using harmless viruses that convert mechanical energy into electricity.

The generator produces enough current to operate a small liquid-crystal display. It works by tapping a finger on a postage stamp-sized electrode coated…

Fitness trends and health-care problems are creating demand for tiny computers we won’t even notice we’re carrying.

What if your doctor had already received the information from a tiny device built into your cell phone, wallet, or undershirt? Sonny Vu, a cofounder of the medical-device company AgaMatrix, believes a device like this could fundamentally change… [ Technology Review ]

Scientists tested the photovoltaic stimulation using the prosthetic device’s diode arrays in rat retinas in vitro and how they elicited electric responses, which are widely accepted indicators of visual activity, from retinal cells . The scientists are now testing the system in live rats, taking both physiological and behavioral measurements, and are hoping to find…

Today ten years have passed since A New Kind of Science (”the NKS book”) was published. But in many ways the development that started with the book is still only just beginning. And over the next several decades I think its effects will inexorably become ever more obvious and important.

Indeed, even at an…

Are you ready for Eye-Bots — flying smarms of intelligent drones that zoom in and track everything going on?

Yo boy, this one’s gonna make them spyder bots in Minority Report and Big-Brother TV sets in 1984 look positively user-friendly.

A flock of flying robots rises slowly into the air with…

Are you a Facebook addict? Take the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale test, developed in Norway, and find out.

Do you (1) Very rarely, (2) Rarely, (3) Sometimes, (4) Often, or (5) Very often:

• Spend a lot of time thinking about Facebook or plan use of Facebook.
• Feel an urge to use Facebook

…

University of Texas at Dallas researchers have designed an imager chip that could one day turn mobile phones into devices that can see through walls, wood, plastics, paper and other objects.

The UT Dallas imager chip technology being explored by UT Dallas researchers is designed for imaging in the terahertz frequency range, specifically from 280 GHz…

A new bill (Senate Bill 1813, known as MAP-21) passed by the U.S. Senate in March calls for “mandatory event data recorders” to be installed in all new passenger motor vehicles sold in the U.S. for recording data before, during, or after a crash.

As stated in Section 31406 of the

…

[Note: according to a knowledgeable intel source, this report from What Does It Mean blog is based on Russian disinformation, with the intention of neutralizing what the Russians see as a Japanese threat.]

According to What Does It Mean, a new report circulating in the Kremlin prepared by the Foreign Ministry on the planned re-opening of talks with…

UPDATE APR 17, 2012: “One, however, has to be cautious because while this experiment from Delft has provided the likely necessary evidence for the existence of the Majorana, the sufficient conditions are more difficult to achieve and may take more time.” — Sankar Das Sarma, University of Maryland (press release). Also see: “Zero bias…

Machine intelligence is improving rapidly, to the point that the scientist of the future may not even be human! In fact, in more and more fields, learning machines are already outperforming humans. As noted in this transcript of a talk at TEDxLausanne on Jan. 20, 2012, artificial intelligence expert Jürgen Schmidhuber isn’t able to predict the…

For 3 days in late February, Russian businessman Dmitry Itskov gathered 500+ futurists in Moscow for a “Global Future 2045 Congress” — the latest manifestation of his “Russia 2045” movement.

The Congress featured an impressive roster of Russian scientists, engineers and visionaries, along with American and West European futurist leaders like Ray…

What we’re missing now, on another level, is not just biology, but cosmology. People treat the digital universe as some sort of metaphor, just a cute word for all these products. The universe of Apple, the universe of Google, the universe of Facebook, that these collectively constitute the digital universe, and we can only see…

Dale J. Stephens, age 20, is a Thiel Fellow and leads UnCollege, the social movement changing the notion that college is the only path to success. His first book, Hacking Your Education, will be published by Penguin in 2013.

The idea that the world is constantly changing — and faster than ever before — is nothing…

It occurred to me recently that the world possesses some very powerful intelligent organisms that are directly and clearly opposed to the Singularity — corporations.

Human beings are confused and confusing creatures. We don’t have very clear goal systems, and are quite willing and able to adapt our top-level goals to the circumstances. I…

Got a cool idea for a research project, but need funding? Check out Petridish.org, which has just launched crowdfunded science and research projects. I think this is a really great idea that could open up funding for some amazing research ideas.

On Petridish.org, researchers post materials about themselves and their research, and…

This is the most interesting event at SXSW I’ve heard of so far: “Robot panelists, AI and the future of identity.”

It’s a session Monday at SXSW (3:30PM  – 4:30PM), where Bruce Duncan, Managing Director of the Terasem Movement Foundation, will bring us up to date on Terasem’s amazing LifeNaut project.…

The new iPad, introduced today, has a 264 pixels/inch “retina” display with 2048 x 1536 pixels (3.1 million), compared to 1920 x 1080 with HDTV; 5 megapixels camera with 1080P HD video (and new version of iMovie) with autofocus and face detection in still images; new A5X quad-core processor that is “four…