Co.DESIGN takes us through the centuries-long evolution of computing interfaces from mechanical programming to punch cards to GUIs to touch and voice commands. The next step? Natural body gestures.
The Human Connectome Project, a five-year endeavor to link brain connectivity to human behavior, has released a set of high-quality imaging and behavioral data to the scientific community.
Duke University neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis has linked two rat brains via wireless implants, improving their ability to solve problems. Cool, can I have one that does Wikipedia?
The term “nanotechnology” has been bandied about so much over the last few decades that even the researcher who popularized the term is the first to point out that it’s lost its original meaning.
Our favorite futurists over at io9 give an in-depth description of the Kardashev Scale, a framework for classifying intelligent civilizations based on their total power consumption. This coarse grained measure should apply to any civilization anywhere in the universe, regardless of the obvious unknowns in extraterrestrial biology and sociology.
Oh yeah, Earthlings haven't even really acheived Type I...yet.
Designer David McCandless has whipped up a stunning infographic that helps visualize the most common causes of death in the 20th century.
International program intended to develop the capabilities for travel to another solar system has a 100-year time horizon.
Robots are evoking some deep economic anxiety these days. They’re routinely mastering human tasks -- driving cars, trading securities, diagnosing diseases - - that not long ago appeared permanently beyond their capabilities. And as automated technology advances at an exponential rate, more and more jobs, in more and more fields, will be done by intelligent machines in the very near future.
China will send three astronauts to its orbiting space station this summer in a mission that's part of preparations to establish an even larger permanent presence above Earth.
Greg Satell outlines the algorithms we use to make our computers seem as smart as we are.
In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Raimund Herzog and colleagues at Yale University used magnetic resonance spectroscopy to measure the concentrations and enrichment of different energy substrates and their metabolites in a rat model of recurrent hypoglycemia.
Transcript If you think programming a clock radio is hard, try reprogramming life itself. That's the goal of Drew Endy, a synthetic biologist at Stanford University. Endy has been working with a laboratory strain of E. coli bacteria. He sees the microbes as more than just single-cell organisms. They're little computers.
Georgia Institute of Technology and Purdue University researchers have developed efficient solar cells using natural substrates derived from plants such as trees. By fabricating them on cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) substrates, the solar cells can be quickly recycled in water at the end of their lifecycle. The technology is published in the open-access journal Scientific Reports.
Science: Quantum computer could tackle prime number mysteryElectronicsWeekly.comA million-dollar puzzle relating to prime numbers could be tackled using only a mid-sized quantum computer. There is a race to find ever bigger primes, but no way to predict when the next one will pop up.
As computer manufacturers cram ever more processing power onto tiny chips, they face a growing problem. The connections between electronic components that measure just a few billionths of a meter across allow electrons to leak, which reduces the quality of the signal they carry, wastes energy and causes devices to overheat.
This is a graphic representation of a 3-D atomic resolution screw dislocation in a platinum nanoparticle.
Robot butlers that tidy your house or cook you a meal have long been the dream of science-fiction writers and artificial intelligence researchers alike.
Lund University researchers have succeeded in rejuvenating the blood of mice by reversing, or reprogramming, the stem cells that produce blood.
Robots are being used more widely than expected in a variety of sectors, and the trend is likely to continue with robotics becoming as ubiquitous as computer technology over the next 15 years.
If Popular Mechanics is talking about Space Elevators, we should already have them.
A 70-pound "cheetah" robot designed by MIT researchers may soon outpace its animal counterparts in running efficiency: In treadmill tests, the researchers have found that the robot —about the size and weight of an actual cheetah—wastes very little energy as it trots continuously for up to an hour and a half at 5 mph.
The flip of a single molecular switch helps create the mature neuronal connections that allow the brain to bridge the gap between adolescent impressionability and adult stability.
The human brain can learn to treat relevant prosthetics as a substitute for a non-working body part, according to research published March 6 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Mariella Pazzaglia and colleagues from Sapienza University and IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia of Rome in Italy, supported by the International Foundation for Research in Paraplegie.
Researchers explain the goals and structure of a new brain-mapping project. A proposed effort to map brain activity on a large scale, expected to be announced by the White House later this month, could help neuroscientists understand the origins of cognition, perception, and other phenomena.
Chris Guidry is a software engineer, futurist, and proud father of 4 children in the first generation to live forever.
Full profile
