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Monday March 4, 2013 Daily edition   News and Blog Headlines Mars may get hit by a comet in 2014 Atoms with quantum memory Detecting evidence for extraterrestrial life on dying stars Space race underway to create quantum satellite The Transhumanist Reader is first overview of transhumanist thought Cryopreservation — a chance for highly endangered mammals What is the Brain Activity Map? A Q&A with George Church Eyes see without a brain The brain-computer interface goes wireless The Google Glass feature no one is talking about DNA and amino-acid precursor molecules discovered in interstellar space The interspecies internet Latest News Mars may get hit by a comet in 2014 March 4, 2013   Mars may get hit by a comet called C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring), around Oct. 19, 2014, missing the planet by 37,000 km (23,000 miles), says Bad Astronomy Slate blogger Phil Plait. The nucleus size is not well known, but may be as small as 15 kilometers (9 miles) or as big as 50 km (30 miles). Even … more… Atoms with quantum memory March 4, 2013   Order tends towards disorder. This is also true for quantum states. Measurements at the Vienna University of Technology show that in quantum mechanics this transition can be quite different from what we experience in our daily lives. Ice cubes in a cocktail glass melt until an equilibrium state is reached in which the ice cubes … more… Detecting evidence for extraterrestrial life on dying stars March 4, 2013   Even dying stars could host planets with life — and if such life exists, we might be able to detect it within the next decade. This encouraging result comes from a new theoretical study of Earth-like planets orbiting white dwarf stars. Researchers found that oxygen in the atmosphere of a white dwarf’s planet could be … more… Space race underway to create quantum satellite March 4, 2013   In this month’s special edition of Physics World, focusing on quantum physics, Thomas Jennewein and Brendon Higgins from the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo, Canada, describe how a quantum space race is under way to create the world’s first global quantum-communication network. The field of quantum communication — the science of … more… The Transhumanist Reader is first overview of transhumanist thought March 4, 2013   The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future, edited by Max More and Natasha Vita-More, will be published April 29, 2013. It is the “first authoritative and comprehensive survey of the origins and current state of transhumanist thinking, according to the editors, and the anthology includes … more… Cryopreservation — a chance for highly endangered mammals March 4, 2013   Scientists of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) have successfully performed cryopreservation —  freezing and thawing oocytes (egg cells) from different cat species at minus 196 degrees Celsius. Successful cryopreservation of ovarian tissue of wild cats is a key element for the establishment of genome resource banks, an important tool for the … more… What is the Brain Activity Map? A Q&A with George Church March 4, 2013   Last summer, six scientists proposed a project they compared in scope and ambition to the Human Genome Project: to map the activity of the human brain. In February, news media reported that the Obama administration plans to move forward with that effort, known as the Brain Activity Map. One of those six scientists was George … more… Eyes see without a brain March 4, 2013   Transplanted eyes located far outside the head in  tadpoles can give them vision without a direct neural connection to the brain, biologists at Tufts University have found. The research sheds new light (literally) on one of the major questions in regenerative medicine, bioengineering, and sensory augmentation research. “Our research reveals the brain’s remarkable ability, or … more… The brain-computer interface goes wireless March 3, 2013   A team of neuroengineers at Brown University has developed a fully implantable and rechargeable wireless brain sensor capable of relaying real-time broadband signals from up to 100 neurons in freely moving subjects. Several copies of the novel low-power device, described in the open-access Journal of Neural Engineering, have been performing well in animal models for … more… The Google Glass feature no one is talking about March 3, 2013   “Google Glass might change your life, but not in the way you think. There’s something else Google Glass makes possible that no one — no one — has talked about yet, and so today I’m writing this blog post to describe it,” says Mark Hurst on Creative Good. “It’s lifebits, the ability to record video of … more… DNA and amino-acid precursor molecules discovered in interstellar space March 2, 2013   Researchers have discovered prebiotic (pre-life) molecules in interstellar space that may have formed on dusty ice grains floating between the stars. The molecules were detected in a giant cloud of gas some 25,000 light-years from Earth, near the center of our Milky Way Galaxy — specifically, the star-forming region Sagittarius(Sgr) B2(N), which is the richest … more… The interspecies internet March 2, 2013   At TED 2013 Thursday, Diana Reiss, Peter Gabriel, Neil Gershenfeld, and Vint Cerf launched the idea of the “interspecies internet.” Diana Reiss, a cognitive psychologist, has been been teaching dolphins to communicate through an underwater keyboard of symbols that correspond to whistles and playful activities. Through this keyboard, the dolphins learned to perform activities on demand, and … more… New EVENTS   World Ocean Power Summit 2013 Dates: Nov 6 – 7, 2013 Location: Edinburgh, United Kingdom more... Visit KurzweilAI.net You are currently subscribed to the KurzweilAI.net newsletter as *|EMAIL|* To unsubscribe, please click here. To change your email preferences, please click here. *|LIST:ADDRESS|*.