A new 648-megapixel panoramic image of the full night sky, melded together from 3,000 individual photographs with mathematical models, shows stars 1,000 times fainter than the human eye can see, as well as hundreds of galaxies, star clusters and nebulae.
Patrick McGuire, a University of Chicago geoscientist, has developed algorithms that can recognize signs of life in a barren landscape, using a Hopfield neural network, which compares incoming data against patterns it's seen before, picking out those details that qualify as new or unusual.
University of Pennsylvania researchers have developed a theoretical model that provides quantitative predictions for the speed of evolution on various "fitness landscapes," the dynamic and varied conditions under which bacteria, viruses and even humans adapt.
A major conclusion of the work is that for some organisms, possibly including humans, continued evolution will not translate into ever-increasing fitness.
Rice University scientists have unveiled a method for high-throughput industrial-scale processing of carbon-nanotube fibers, using chlorosulfonic acid as a solvent.
The process that could lead to revolutionary advances in materials science, power distribution and nanoelectronics.
Washington University researchers are putting drugs inside "nanocages" (gold cubes with sides about 50 nanometers long and holes at each corner), using with near-infrared light to heat and unseal them and let the drugs out.
The nanocages can also be made to bind with tumors.
University of Pennsylvania researchers are developing silk-silicon LEDs that might act as photonic tattoos that can show blood-sugar readings, and arrays of conformable electrodes that might interface with the nervous system.
The electrodes might be wrapped around individual peripheral nerves to help control prostheses. And arrays of silk electrodes could be used for deep-brain stimulation to control Parkinson's symptoms.
University of North Carolina researchers have developed a system to make teleconferencing more realistic by projecting video images of remote participants onto a 3D dummy model of their head.
The system could also be useful by doctors and patients for remote doctor visits, and as a "prosthetic presence" for patients unable to leave their home.
Stanford engineers are developing the first autonomous racing car to climb Pikes Peak, a challenging 12.4-mile ascent in the Rocky Mountains, at 130 mph, as a way to create and test safety systems they hope one day will be used in all vehicles.
Duke University bioengineers have developed a simple, inexpensive method for loading cancer drug payloads into nanoscale delivery vehicles and demonstrated in animal models that this delivery system can eliminate tumors after a single treatment.
The system uses an E. coli bacterium that have been genetically altered to produce a chimeric polypeptide. When that molecule combines with a drug in a container, they self-assemble into a water-soluble nanoparticle of about 50 nanometers, making them ideal for cancer therapy.
Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists have found that nonlinear resonant effects allow terahertz (THz) waves to unzip double-stranded DNA, creating bubbles in the double strand that could significantly interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication.
THz scanners are beginning to be installed in airports and hospitals.
A muscle-sensing system that can remotely control devices such as games and multi-touch surfaces has been developed by researchers at Microsoft, the University of Washington, and the University of Toronto.
They system uses electromyography (EMG) sensors to detect muscle signals from the arm skin's surface, allowing researchers to build a gesture recognition library.
Audi, Nissan, and Pioneer are working on dashboard robotic devices that are sensitive to a driver's moods, behavior, and habits and can offer reminders (such as failure to buckle a seat belt) and information (such as GPS-based route suggestions).
University of Wyoming scientists have identified the genes potentially involved in the glycoprotein-based ultra-strong glue that spiders use to trap their prey, raising the hope that similar substances could one day be synthezised to produce surgical adhesives.
The 40 authors make the scientific case that a biological "bailout" could be on the way, and that human aging can be different in the future than it is today. Based on the future therapeutic potential of biogerontology, their paradigm-breaking proposals include sirtuin-modulating pills, new concepts for attacking cardiovascular disease and cancer, mitochondrial rejuvenation, stem cell therapies and regeneration, tissue reconstruction, telomere maintenance, prevention of immunosenescence, extracellular rejuvenation, artificial DNA repair, and full deployment of nanotechnology.
The chapters range from Chapter 1, Bridges to Life by Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman to Chapter 23, Comprehensive Nanorobotic Control of Human Morbidity and Aging by Robert A. Freitas, Jr.
"The Great Recession of 2008 and 2009 could be ... the event that shocks us into a new vision of ourselves, our past, our future, our mission, and our destiny... or the prelude to a long decline, the beginning of the Chinese Century," says Howard Bloom, author of the forthcoming book, The Genius of the Beast: A Radical re-Vision of Capitalism.
The outcome depends on our serotonin neurochemistry, which causes us to react to success with confidence and dignity or to failure with depression, he points out.
"If America can find its next big goal and aim for it, if America can see its next way of climbing to the heights, if America can shift its perception from decline to the peaks that lay ahead of us, to the next big challenge, if we can lift ourselves with all our might, we can enjoy the bio-boost that surges through winning crayfish and lizards. We can see obstacles as challenges and difficulties as opportunities. And we can make massive contributions to humanity. But if we insist that we've reached the end of our run and that it's all downhill from here, down is where we will go. Our internal chemistry will make it so."
A superconductor made from a layer of copper oxide material less than a nanometer thick, developed by Brookhaven National Labs, suggests a new possible route to faster electroniccomponents.
Researchers at Georgia Tech have made dye-sensitized solar cells with a much higher effective surface area by wrapping the cells around optical fibers.
These fiber solar cells are six times more efficient than a zinc oxide solar cell with the same surface area, and if they can be built using cheap polymer fibers, they shouldn't be significantly more expensive to make.
In 1974, Kurzweil was the principal developer of the world's first omni-font OCR, and in 1984, he created the world's first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition technology.
"His vision and sense for how fast technology was progressing led to products that were usually not only first to market, but were commercially successful, and have assisted the handicapped, advanced the arts, and stimulated the imagination of countless other technologists and entrepreneurs. His work is a stellar example of the achievements that The Economist's Innovation Awards are intended to recognize and encourage."
"I am deeply honored to receive this recognition," said Kurzweil, Founder, Kurzweil Computer Products (now Nuance), currently CEO, Kurzweil Technologies, Inc. "In my work in optical character recognition and speech recognition, my goal was to provide new modalities for the transmission of humanknowledge. As an inventor, I quickly realized that timing was critical to success, so I sought to develop models of how informationtechnology evolves. With these projections, we can use our imaginations to envision inventions of the future, and I have tried to do that in my books and web sites such as KurzweilAI.net."
Stanford University School of Medicine. researchers have devised a way to efficiently coax human embryonic stem cells to become human germ cells -- the precursors of egg and sperm cells -- in the laboratory.
Unlike previous research, which yielded primarily immature germ cells, the cells in this study functioned well enough to generate sperm cells.
A camera sensor able to film action at 1 million frames per second to detect one-microsecond neuron signals has been developed by Delft University of Technologyresearchers.
The device uses an array of single-photon detectors, each connected to a stopwatch with 100-picosecond accuracy.
Neuroscientists can now use "neural decoding" to recreate moving images that volunteers are viewing, read memories and future plans, diagnose eating disorders, and detect which of two nouns a subject is thinking of, all at rates well above chance.
Rockefeller University researchers have found that chronic disruption of one of the most basic circadian (daily) rhythms -- the day/night cycle -- leads to weight gain, impulsivity, slower thinking, and other physiological and behavioral changes in mice, similar to those observed in people who experience shift work or jet lag.
Researchers from the University of California, San Diego have developed the "Whole Brain Catalog," a repository for data gathered about the mousebrain.
Petman, a bipedal bot that walks on two legs and can recover from a push (using the same balancing technology that allows BigDog to recover from a kick) has been developed by Boston Dynamics.
A gesture-based system using electrodes attached to a person's forearm that read electrical activity from different arm muscles to allow for hands-free, gestural interaction have been developed by researchers at Microsoft, the University of Washington in Seattle, and the University of Toronto.
A University of Pennsylvania research team has found a molecular pathway in the brain that is the cause of cognitive impairment due to sleep deprivation.
The impairment may however be reversible by reducing the concentration of a specific enzyme that builds up in the hippocampus of the brain, they found.
Brain pleasure centers became progressively less responsive in rats fed a diet of high-fat, high-calorie food, a new study by the Scripps Research Institute has found.
As the changes occurred, the rats developed compulsive overeating habits and became obese. The overeating continued even when it meant the rats had to endure an unpleasant consequence (a mild foot shock) in order to consume the food.
