Breaking news

Top story

Decoding spoken words from brain signals

September 7, 2010 by Editor

Magnetic resonance image (MRI) of an epileptic patient's brain superimposed with the locations of two kinds of electrodes: conventional ECoG electrodes (yellow) to help locate the source of his seizures so surgeons could operate to prevent them, and two grids (red) of 16 experimental microECoG electrodes used to read speech signals from the brain. University of Utah scientists used the microelectrodes to translate brain signals into words. (Kai Miller, University of Washington)

University of Utah researchers translated brain signals into words using two grids of 16 microelectrodes implanted beneath the skull but atop the brain.

“We have been able to decode spoken words using only signals from the brain with a device that has promise for long-term use in paralyzed patients whomore

Self-assembling photovoltaic technology can keep repairing itself

September 7, 2010 by Editor

This proof-of-concept version of the photoelectrochemical cell, which was used for laboratory tests, contains a photoactive solution made up of a mix of self-assembling molecules (in a glass cylinder held in place by metal clamp) with two electrodes protruding from the top, one made of platinum (the bare wire) and the other of silver (in a glass tube). (Patrick Gillooly)

MIT scientists have created a novel set of self-assembling molecules that can turn sunlight into electricity; the molecules can be repeatedly broken down and then reassembled quickly, just by adding or removing an additional solution.

In an attempt to imitate the  process of photosynthesis, Michael Strano, the Charles and Hilda Roddey Associate… more

New book says we relate to our computers like humans

September 7, 2010

VentureBeat, Sep 6, 2010 — Sociologist Clifford Nass, who’s just published the book The Man Who Lied to his Laptop, in which he uses our interactions with machines to investigate how human relationships could be improved.

Here They Come: The Android Tablet Invasion

September 7, 2010

ReadWriteWeb, Sep 6, 2010 — A number of Android alternatives are ready to hit the market over the next several months and there’s something for everyone.

The Boss Is Robotic, and Rolling Up Behind You

September 7, 2010

(InTouch Health)

New York Times, Sep 4, 2010 —

Mobile robots are now being used in hundreds of hospitals nationwide as the eyes, ears and voices of doctors who cannot be there in person.

They are being rolled out in workplaces, allowing employees in disparate locales to communicate more easily and letting managers… more

Magic mushrooms reduce anxiety over cancer

September 7, 2010

(Dohduhdah/Wikipedia Commons)

New Scientist Health, Sep 6, 2010 —

The active ingredient of magic mushrooms, psilocybin, has been shown to reduce anxiety and improve mood in people with cancer. researchers from Harbor-UCLA Medical Center have found.

Volunteers reported feeling less depressed and anxious two weeks after receiving psilocybin. Six months later, the… more

Immortal signals promise perfect web video

September 7, 2010

New Scientist Tech, Sep 7, 2010 — Optical engineers at the University of Central Florida have developed a system that improves the bandwidth of transmission via optical fibers, such as those used in transmitting cable TV and Internet data, to compensate for attenuation (signal losses) in the fiber.

Their device makes… more

Physicists Build A Memory That Stores Entanglement

September 7, 2010

the physics ArXiv blog, Sep 6, 2010 — The first quantum memory that stores and releases entanglement has been built by researchers at the University of Geneva.

Their device consists of neodymium atoms buried in a crystal of ytterbium silicate, which when cooled, can absorb and store photons.They… more

Pentagon May Send Robotic ‘Mule’ to War

September 7, 2010

AOL News, Sep 4, 2010 — The Rapid Equipping Force, a part of the Army designed to provide urgently needed equipment to commanders in military operations, says it wants a cargo robot that can transport supplies to troops.

There are military robots in various states of development that could help carry supplies.… more

High-speed graphene transistors achieve world-record 300 GHz

September 3, 2010 by Editor

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

New ’smart materials’ process promises to revolutionize manufacturing of products

September 3, 2010 by Editor

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

Edible Nanostructures

September 3, 2010 by Editor

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

Caltech chemists develop simple technique to visualize atomic-scale structures

September 3, 2010 by Editor

(Heath group/Caltech)

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have devised a new technique — using a sheet of carbon just one atom thick — to visualize the structure of molecules.

The technique, which was used to obtain the first direct images of how water coats surfaces at room temperature, can also be… more

Building large-scale quantum computers

September 3, 2010 by Editor

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: Stephen Hawking

September 3, 2010 by Editor

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

More news

Latest blog posts

Providing Low-cost Clean Water for a Billion People

September 6, 2010 by William Bing

A possible implementation of our Naishio solution.  The pressure from the water volume is sufficient to propel fresh water across the membrane (A), and photovoltaics (D) generate all the energy needed to pump water from the repository (C) to the water tank and circulator (E).  Sensors (B) communicate between the solar pump and membrane to regulate the water level and ensure it doesn’t become contaminated. (Image credit: Sarah Jane Pell)

This summer I attended Singularity University’s graduate studies program. Alongside 79 extraordinary entrepreneurs and scientists from around the globe, I had the opportunity to learn from some of the best minds in the world about a variety of rapidly advancing areas of technology. The context of these discussions was how we might use… more

Ray Kurzweil Responds to “Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain”

August 20, 2010 by Ray Kurzweil

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

A new blueprint for artificial general intelligence

August 12, 2010 by Amara D. Angelica

Demis Hassabis, a research fellow at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience UnitUniversity 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

‘Artificial Biology’ at Singularity Summit 2010

August 12, 2010 by David Despain

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 Singularitymore

The Mind and How To Build One

August 12, 2010 by Ray Kurzweil

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. Hemore

Why SIRT1 in your brain may keep you smart

August 10, 2010 by David Despain

Can a protein called SIRT1 in your head boost brain power, learning and memory? (iStockphoto)

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

Carboncopies–Realistic Routes to Substrate-Independent Minds

August 9, 2010 by Randal Koene

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

Singularity and Rationality: Eliezer Yudkowsky speaks out

August 5, 2010 by Thomas McCabe

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 themore

IBM scientists create most comprehensive map of the brain’s network

July 28, 2010 by Amara D. Angelica

"The Mandala of the Mind" (Professor Kenneth Kreutz Delgado). The long-distance network of the Macaque monkey brain, spanning the cortex, thalamus, and basal ganglia, showing 6,602 long-distance connections between 383 brain regions. A high-resolution version of this figure is here. (PNAS)

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

From DIY to DIWO: biohackers, synthetic biologists, and FBI to dialogue at Open Science Summit

July 26, 2010 by Amara D. Angelica

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

How to Prevent a Global Aging Crisis

July 17, 2010 by David Despain

Chronic diseases and aging. The incidence of major chronic diseases rises exponentially with age, as shown: cardiovascular disease (blue squares) [data from (32) , cancer (red diamonds) [data from (32) , AD (gray squares) [data from (33) , and influenza-associated hospitalization (green triangles)"]. Incidence rates are normalized to the first data point. (Illustration: AAAS)

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

The state of the future

July 14, 2010 by Jerome C. Glenn

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

H+ Summit @ Harvard: The Rise of the Citizen Scientist

July 4, 2010 by Ben Goertzel

Shoshin character

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

Is the iPad the New Guillotine?

July 4, 2010 by Howard Bloom

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 themore

Jabberwocky, AI, and aging

July 4, 2010 by L. Stephen Coles

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

More blog posts

close and return to Home