Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes "German neuroscientists made a breakthrough in 'age-related cognitive decline', a common condition that often begins in one's late 40s (especially declarative memory — the ability to recall facts and experiences). Their new study identifies a genetic 'switch' for the cluster of learning and memory genes that cause memory impairment in aging mice. By injecting an enzyme, the team 'flipped' the switch to its on position for older mice, giving them the memory and learning performance they'd enjoyed when they were young. Now the team ultimately hopes to recover seemingly lost long-term memory in human patients." The video, which explains the gene flipping mechanism, is worth a watch (2:18).

destinyland writes "'We have mimicked how neurons behave in the brain,' announces an international research team from Japan and Michigan Tech. They've built an 'evolutionary circuit' in a molecular computer that evolves to solve complex problems, and the molecular computer also exhibits brain-like massive parallel processing. 'The neat part is, approximately 300 molecules talk with each other at a time during information processing,' says physicist Ranjit Pati of Michigan Tech. When viewed with a scanning tunneling microscope, the evolving patterns bear an uncanny resemblance to the human brain as seen by a Functional MRI. Using the electrically charged tip of a tunneling microscope, they've individually set molecules to a desired state, essentially writing data to the system. And while conventional computers are typically built using two-state (0, 1) transistors, the molecular layer is built using a hexagonal molecule, and can switch among four conducting states — 0, 1, 2 and 3, suggesting it may ultimately have more AI potential than quantum computing."

destinyland writes "MIT researchers have developed a method of splitting a water molecule by emulating the way blue-green algae separates oxygen from hydrogen. One chemistry professor called it 'an extremely clever piece of work' that addresses 'the nanoscale organization of the components.' Using sunlight rather than electricity to make hydrogen from water could greatly improve the efficiency of the process. The hydrogen can be stored for generating electricity or burned as fuel for cars. The project is being led by the winner of a 2004 MacArthur Foundation genius grant, who uses genetically engineered viruses as templates for nanoscale electronic components. 'Suddenly, I wondered, what if we could assemble materials like the abalone does — but not be limited to one element?'" Here is the press release from MIT; the research paper is available only to subscribers of Nature Nanotechnology (or those willing to part with $18).

destinyland writes "NWU professor Chad Mirkin discusses his company's new 'lab-on-a-chip' technology — the ability to automatically treat a blood sample with chemicals on a microchip, quickly detecting markers for diseases and other anomalies. The quick 'bio-barcode' test creates the possibility of a medical diagnostic system in every home, since it offers greater sensitivity than current tests with simpler instruments and at lower costs. This is not a futuristic technology; four tests already have received FDA clearances, so 'They're here.... It's in hospitals around the country. Really, what we are waiting for is just an increasing menu [of tests]... It will scale rapidly.'" Reader Trintech sent word of a similar chip developed by Fraunhofer reseachers, writing, "The core element of this new chip is a disposable cartridge made of plastic which can be fitted with various types of sensors. To perform an assay, the doctor only has to place the relevant substances (reagents, etc.) into the cartridge and the test then takes place automatically. It is the researchers' hope that, by using this chip, medical patients will be able to get their lab results in a matter of minutes instead of days."

destinyland writes "Dr. Jane McGonigal of the RAND Corporation's Institute for the Future has created a game described as 'a crash course in changing the world.' Developed for the World Bank's 'capacity development' branch, EVOKE has already gathered more than 10,000 potential solutions from participants, including executives from Procter & Gamble and Kraft. '[Dr. McGonigal] takes threats to human existence — global food shortage, fuel wars, pandemic, refugee crisis, and upended democracy — and asks the gaming public to collaborate on how to avoid these all too possible futures.' And by completing its 10 missions, you too can become a World Bank Institute certified EVOKE social innovator. (The game designer's web site lays out her ambitious philosophy. 'Reality is broken,' but 'game designers can fix it.')"

An anonymous reader writes "The CEO of Unity discusses 'gamification' — applying game design and technology to real-world applications beyond 'gamespace.' The military is using game design theory for some training programs — not just 'the 3-D, realistic, virtual world experiences, but also the built-in use of frustration and reward.' (And similar training packages were adopted by Unilever, the giant corporation which owns Ben & Jerry's ice cream.) Medical professionals have licensed a 'Google Earth for the human body,' and game design is also being used to build tax software. ('It has to be the most boring field, but I mean that's the point. You can make it slightly challenging and give people little reasons to play these tax tools — beyond, you know, not going to prison!') While some companies conduct team-building exercises using Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, others use game technology to standardize their in-house employee training programs. The interviewer adds, 'I know I'd feel better about job training if it felt more like killing zombies.'"

destinyland writes "One in 12 men suffers from colorblindness, though '[t]he good news here is that these folks are simply missing a patch of DNA ... which is just the kind of challenge this Millennium is made for. Enter science.' But NPR's Moira Gunn (from Biotech Nation) now asks a provocative question. Is it wrong to cure colorblindness? She reports on an experiment that used a virus to introduce corrective DNA into colorblind monkeys. ('It took 20 weeks, but eventually the monkeys started distinguishing between red and green.') Then she asks, could it be viewed differently? 'Are we trying to 'normalize' humans to a threshold of experience?'"

An anonymous reader writes "Not yet, but it could. German artificial intelligence researchers are combining JavaScript with eye-tracking hardware to create 'text 2.0,' which 'infers user intentions.' Unimportant words also fade out while you're skimming the text, and a bookmark automatically appears if you glance away. It can pronounce the words you're reading, and reading certain words can trigger the appearance of footnotes or even translations, biographies, definitions, and sound effects or animations, almost like the truly interactive books in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. 'With the help of an eye tracker, Text 2.0 follows your progress and presents effects just in time,' the researchers explain in a video. Meanwhile, DFKI has already created a free 'Processing Easy Eye Tracker plugin' (or PEEP) to manipulate windows with what they call 'gaze-controlled tab expose,' while there's speculation similar technology may be adopted by Apple. Apple has already purchased Tobii's eye-tracking hardware, and 'Whether these are for internal research only or for a future product, Apple is characteristically not saying.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Professor Andy Miah notes there's already international government policies taking hold on outer space — and a need for new ethical guidelines. 'For instance, what obligations do we owe to the various life forms we send there, or those we might discover? Can we develop a more considerate approach to colonizing outer space than we were able to achieve for various sectors of Earth?' And what rights do astronauts have? 'Could our inevitable public surveillance of their behavior become too much of an infringement on their personal privacy?' But more importantly, professor Miah notes that 'the goods of space exploration far exceed the symbolic value,' pointing out that 'A vast amount of research and development derives from space exploration ... For example, the United Kingdom's 2007 Space Policy inquiry indicated that the creation of space products contributes two to three times their value in GDP.'"

An anonymous reader writes "An Intel-owned development team can now render CGI-quality graphics in real time. 'Their video clips show artists pulling together 3D elements like a jigsaw puzzle (see for example this video starting at about 3:38), making movie-level CG look as easy as following a recipe.' They hope that the simplicity of 'Project Offset' could ultimately give them the edge in the race to produce real-time graphics engines for games."

destinyland writes "21 AI experts have predicted the date for four artificial intelligence milestones. Seven predict AIs will achieve Nobel prize-winning performance within 20 years, while five predict that will be accompanied by superhuman intelligence. (The other milestones are passing a 3rd grade-level test, and passing a Turing test.) One also predicted that in 30 years, 'virtually all the intellectual work that is done by trained human beings ... can be done by computers for pennies an hour,' adding that AI 'is likely to eliminate almost all of today's decently paying jobs.' The experts also estimated the probability that an AI passing a Turing test would result in an outcome that's bad for humanity ... and four estimated that probability was greater than 60% — regardless of whether the developer was private, military, or even open source."

destinyland notes a microbiology professor describing "Immunity on Demand" (or "Immunity 2.0") and wonders whether we could genetically engineer all the antibodies we need. "...there's a good chance this system, or something like it, will actually be in place within decades. Caltech scientists have already engineered stem cells into B cells that produce HIV-fighting antibodies — and an NIH researcher engineered T cells that recognize tumors which has already had promising clinical trials again skin cancer. Our best hope may be to cut out the middleman. Rather than merely hoping that the vaccine will indirectly lead to the antibody an individual needs, imagine if we could genetically engineer these antibodies and make them available as needed?"

The first X-Prize was about reaching space. Now, reader destinyland writes "This time it's inner space, as Peter Diamandis holds a workshop at MIT discussing a $10 million X-Prize for building a brain-computer interface. This article includes video of Ray Kurzweil's 36-minute presentation, 'Merging the Human Brain with Its Creations,' and MIT synthetic neuroscientist Ed Boyden also made a presentation, followed by discussion groups about Input/Output, Control, Sensory, and Learning. Besides the ability to communicate by thought, the article argues, a Brain-Computer Interface X Prize 'will reward nothing less than a team that provides vision to the blind, new bodies to disabled people, and perhaps even a geographical 'sixth sense' akin to a GPS iPhone app in the brain.'"

destinyland writes "How exactly would the military fight a cyber war? In August 2009, the U.S. Air Force activated its new cyberspace combat unit, the 24th Air Force, to 'provide combat-ready forces trained and equipped to conduct sustained cyber operations.' It's commanded by former Minuteman missile and satellite-jamming specialist Major General Richard Webber. (And under his command are two wings, the 688th Information Operations Wing and the 67th Network Warfare Wing, plus a combat communications units.) Meanwhile, to counter the threat of cyber warfare, DARPA is still deploying the National Cyber Range, a test bed of networked computers to test countermeasures against 'cyberwar.' (According to one report, it provides 'a virtual network world — to be populated by mirror computers and inhabited by myriad software sim-people "replicants," and used as a firing range in which to develop the art of cyber warfare.') The Obama administration has even added a military cybersecurity coordinator to the National Security team."

destinyland writes "AI researcher Jurgen Schmidhuber says his main scientific ambition 'is to build an optimal scientist, then retire.' The Cognitive Robotics professor has worked on problems including artificial ants and even robots that are taught how to tie shoelaces using reinforcement learning, but he believes algorithms can be written that allow the programming of curiosity itself. 'Curiosity is the desire to create or discover more non-random, non-arbitrary, regular data that is novel and surprising...' He's already created art using algorithmic information theory, and can describe the simple algorithmic principle that underlies subjective beauty, creativity, and curiosity itself. And he ultimately addresses the possibility that the entire Universe, including everyone in it, is in principle computable by a completely deterministic computer program."

destinyland writes "This article profiles a growing movement — DIY biology — that's made possible in part by open source tools. Using programs like BioPerl and BioPython, DIY biologists write their own code (computer and genetic), designing their own biological systems and altering the genome. A protein-folding simulator, Folding@home, is now the most powerful distributed computing cluster in the world, and as the movement evolves, cooperatives are also springing up where hobbyists pool resources and create 'hacker spaces' to reduce costs and share knowledge. 'As the shift to open source software continues, computational biology will become even more accessible, and even more powerful,' this article argues — while intellectual property and other bureaucracies continue to hobble traditional forms of research."

destinyland writes "A New York professor has built a two-armed nanorobotic device with the ability to place specific atoms and molecules where scientists want them. The nano-scopic device is just 150 x 50 x 8 nanometers in size — over a million could fit inside a single red blood cell. But because of its size, it's able to build nanoscale structures and machines — including a nanoscale walking biped and even sequence-dependent molecular switch arrays!"

destinyland writes "A Stanford professor argues that gaming worlds can keep workers engaged, and advocates elements of World of Warcraft or Second Life to hone workplace skills like teamwork, leadership, and data analysis. An IBM report also argues games like World of Warcraft teach leadership and that 'there is no reason to think the same cannot be done in corporate settings of various sizes.' The professor even suggests putting online gaming experiences into your resume. ('There's just so much that gets done [in a virtual world] that's just right on target with what happens in real business.') And Google's CEO also claims that multiplayer gaming also provides good career training, especially for technology careers. 'Everything in the future online is going to look like a multiplayer game. If I were 15 years old, that's what I would be doing right now... It teaches players to build a network, to use interactive skills and thinking.'"

destinyland writes "An A.I. researcher lists the Top 5 Technology Panics of 2009 — along with the corresponding reality. There's exploding iPods, the uproar over 'bombing' the moon, and even a flesh-eating robot. But in each case, he supplies some much-needed perspective. 'These incidents are incredibly rare ... the rocket stage weighs around two tons, while the Moon weighs in at a 73,477,000,000,000,000,000 tons... and desecration of the dead is against the laws of war — and plant matter is a much better fuel source anyway.'"

destinyland writes "There is a current mass market for 'cognitive enhancement' products — and arguments about the black market potential for neurostim. 'The same neurostim device that uses electric impulses from a brain implant to treat people with Parkinson's Disease can be tweaked by a few millimeters and pulse rates to make cocaine addicts feel like they are high all the time... Mix the glamour of surgical self-improvement with the geekiness of high-tech gadget fetishism and you have a niche cosmetic neurostim market waiting to be tapped...'"

destinyland writes "This article asks, 'Why bother to type a document using a keyboard when you can write it by simply thinking about the letters?' A brain wave study presented at the 2009 annual meeting of the American Epilepsy Society shows that people with electrodes in their brains can 'type' using just their minds. The study involved electrocorticography — a sheet of electrodes laid directly on the surface of the brain after a surgical incision into the skull. ('We were able to consistently predict the desired letters for our patients at or near 100 percent accuracy,' explains one Mayo clinic neurologist.) And besides typing, there's new brain wave applications that can now turn brain waves into music and even Twitter status updates — by thought alone."

destinyland writes "'We already see a future in which the humble contact lens becomes a real platform, like the iPhone is today,' argues researcher Babak Parvis, 'with lots of developers contributing their ideas and inventions.' He provides an update on the contact lens with transparent circuitry that's being developed at the University of Washington. (Its components will eventually include hundreds of LEDs which form images in front of the eye such as charts and photographs). They've already developed a lens-with-LED prototype that's powered by 330 microwatts of wireless radio-frequency power, and believe the lenses could also be used as biosensors to deliver body chemistry readings (including blood sugar levels). But 'What we've done so far barely hints at what will soon be possible with this technology,' says Dr. Parviz."

destinyland writes "Sunday night saw a reading of the William Gibson's classic cyberpunk novel featuring porn star Sasha Grey at a New York art museum, along with sculpture-props simulating virtual reality. Artist Brody Condon promised to combine 'Gibson's 1980s dystopian techno-fetishism with early twentieth-century abstraction,' but the editor of H+ magazine challenges that description. 'In a 1993 interview, Gibson himself told me: "I think my world looks dystopian if you're a middle class white guy doing reasonably well in 1993... There are so many places in the world today that are so much crappier than anything I'm writing about."' And earlier this month William Gibson shared his response to a blog post about the event. 'Gol' dang! It's news to me!'"

destinyland writes "A science writer discovered it's possible to finance your cryogenic preservation using life insurance — and then leave a huge death benefit to your future thawed self. From the article, 'Most in the middle class, if they seriously want it, can afford it now. So by taking the right steps, you can look forward to waking up one bright future morning from cryopreservation the proud owner of a bank account brimming with money!' There's one important caveat: some insist that money 'will have no meaning in a future dominated by advanced molecular manufacturing or other engines of mega-abundance.'"

destinyland writes "A Vermont city once proposed a one-mile dome over its 7,000 residents. (They paid $4 million a year in heating bills, and HUD seriously considered funding their proposal.) The city's architectural concept included supporting the Dome with air pressure slightly above atmospheric pressure. (Buckminster Fuller warned their biggest challenge would be keeping it from floating away...) There would be no more heating bills, fly-fishing all year, and no more snow shoveling. And to this day, the former city planner insists that 'Economically it's a slam dunk.'"

destinyland writes "Scientists have engineered a more intelligent rat, with three times the memory length of today's smartest rats. Reseachers bred transgenic over-expression of the NR2B gene, which increased communication between the rat's memory synapses. Activating a crucial brain receptor for just a fraction of a second longer produces a dramatic effect on memory, as proven by the rat's longer memories of the path through a maze."

destinyland writes "A key component of a $10 billion nuclear fusion plant is vintage 2002 Indonesian coconut-shell charcoal. After a 20-year search, German researchers discovered that the coconut-shell charcoal is the best medium for 'adsorbing' waste byproducts sucked out of the thermonuclear reactor's vacuum chamber. In what will be the first fusion power facility that's commercially viable, magnetic fields will heat hydrogen isotopes to over 150 million degrees Centigrade. (Essentially, the super-hot plasma creates artificial stars.) As the article points out, 'It's not quite a Starship warp drive, but it does harness the power of the sun.'"

destinyland writes "Researchers simulated evolution with multiple generations of food-seeking robots in a new study of artificial swarm intelligence. 'Under some conditions, sophisticated communication evolved,' says one researcher. And in a more recent study, the swarms of bots didn't just evolve cooperative strategies — they also evolved the ability to deceive. ('Forget zombies,' joked one commenter. 'This is the real threat.') 'The study of artificial swarm intelligence provides insight into the nature of intelligence in general, and offers an interesting perspective on the nature of Darwinian selection, competition, and cooperation.' And there's also some cool video of the bots in action."

destinyland writes "Professor Athena Andreadis answers the question, 'Why Our Brains Will Never Live in the Matrix,' contrasting "mind uploading" predictions with 'the major stumbling block to personal immortality' — namely, that our biological software is inseparable from our hardware. There's practical problems. ('After electrochemical activity ceases in the brain, neuronal integrity deteriorates in a matter of seconds.') But she also argues that what we call 'the mind' is also an artifact of a specific brain, and copying it 'is an excellent way to leave a detailed memorial or a clone-like descendant, but not to become immortal.'"

destinyland writes "There's a new experiment from the British researchers who created a robot controlled by cultured rat neurons. They're now using a line of human brain neurons to control robots. The neurons are placed onto a multi-electrode dish that registers the neurons' electric signals. 'Every time the robot nears an object, the electrodes generate signals to stimulate the brain. In response, the brain's output is used to drive the wheels of the robot left and right so that it avoids hitting objects. The robot has no additional control from a human or a computer — its sole means of control is from its own brain.'"

destinyland writes "Scientists from the University of Chicago and the US Department of Energy have developed the first nanoparticles that seek out and destroy GMB brain cancer cells. Nanoparticles killed up to 80% of the brain cancer cells after just five minutes of exposure to white light, showing the promise of nanomedicine — highly-specific intervention at the molecular scale. Because nanomedicine could repair brain cells or damaged nerve and muscle tissue, the NIH has established eight Nanomedicine Development Centers around the country for their Nanomedicine Roadmap Initiative. Researchers have also used gold nanospheres to search out and 'cook' skin cancer cells with light — 'It's basically like putting a cancer cell in hot water and boiling it to death,' says one researcher. And the NIH Roadmap ultimately predicts 'novel tiny sensors ... that search for, and destroy, infectious agents.'"

destinyland writes "In 'My New Sense Organ,' a science writer tests 'a new sense' — the ability to always know true north — by strapping a circuit board to her ankle. It's connected to an electronic compass and an ankle band with eight skin buzzers. The result? 'I had wrong assumptions I didn't know about ... I returned home to Washington DC to find that, far worse than my old haunt San Francisco, my mental map of DC swapped north for west. I started getting more lost than ever as the two spatial concepts of DC did battle in my head.' The device also detects 'the specific places where infrastructure interferes with the earth's magnetic fields.'

destinyland writes "Cyberdyne has started renting their exoskeleton body suits in Japan. The mind-controlled wearable machine increases strength and endurance, and rents for $2,300 a month. (Sensors on the skin detect traces of nerve signals from the brain, synchronizing the power suit's movements with the user's own limbs.) New video shows the suits in use on the streets of Tokyo, and the concept may be catching on. DARPA now has a program called Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation 'to develop devices and machines that will increase the speed, strength and endurance of soldiers in combat environments.'"

destinyland writes "Next year SpaceX will perform resupply missions for the International Space Station after the Space Shuttle is grounded, as part of a $3.5 billion NASA resupply contract. 'The fledgling space industry is reminiscent of the early days of the personal computer,' notes one technology reporter, 'when a number of established vendors and startups reversed-engineered Microsoft's DOS and manufactured PCs using the Intel 8080 chip set. We're likely to see a similar industry shakeout in the private space vehicle market segment in the coming decades.'"

destinyland writes "How much would you use technology to change yourself if humanity faced extinction? In this interview, the two creators behind Eclipse Phase explain their bizarre role-playing game, which 'expands the transhuman conversation.' All the characters can be identical clones, and when you switch bodies, it affects your core characteristics while damaging your sanity. But its spookiest concept is close to reality today: the idea of universal surveillance in which 'everything is networked and equipped with sensors and all meshed together.'"

destinyland writes "A new pogo stick jumps nine feet using legs developed for running robots. (It replaces the stick's spring with a fiber-reinforced 'bow' that was developed at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics institute.) One scientist even suggests robots could use its 'BowGo' technology in the low-gravity environment of the moon. 'Hopping many meters above ground level, the robot would have an excellent view of the terrain.'"

destinyland writes "NASA's LCross mission will now test whether the moon's hydrogen and oxygen deposits could be converted into air, water, and even fuel. A dramatic crash by the rocket's upper stage will blast 200 tons of moon rock up 10 kilometers from a dark crater — where its constitution can be measured by LCross's instruments. (NASA predicts 'a number of different ways that we'll be able to create water from whatever form of lunar hydrogen we find' on the moon, noting recent missions have already confirmed the presence of oxygen in moon rocks, while the sun delivers a constant stream of hydrogen.) Carrying water to the moon costs $100,000 a kilogram, so these experiments could be a crucial step to getting more people on the moon."

destinyland writes "Can we imprint the circuitry of the human brain onto a silicon chip? It requires a computational capacity of 36.8 petaflops — a thousand trillion floating point operations per second — but a team of European scientists has already simulated 200,000 neurons linked up by 50 million synaptic connections. And their brain-chip is scaleable, with plans to create a superchip mimicking 1 billion neurons and 10 trillion synapses. Unfortunately, the human brain has 22 billion neurons and 220 trillion synapses. Just remember Ray Kurzweil's argument: once a machine can achieve a human level of intelligence — it can also exceed it."

destinyland writes "After 13 years, the creator of the Noble Ape cognitive simulation says he's learned two things about artificial intelligence. 'Survival is a far better metric of intelligence than replicating human intelligence,' and "There are a number of examples of vastly more intelligent systems (in terms of survival) than human intelligence." Both Apple and Intel have used his simulation as a processor metric, but now Tom Barbalet argues its insights could be broadly applied to real life. His examples of durable non-human systems? The legal system, the health care system, and even the internet, where individual humans are simply the 'passive maintaining agents,' and the systems can't be conquered without a human onslaught that's several magnitudes larger."

destinyland writes "MIT's Media Lab is building 'a game that designs its own AI agents by observing the behavior of humans.' Their ultimate goal? 'Collective AI-driven agents that can interact and converse with humans without requiring programming or specialists to hand-craft behavior and dialogue.' With a similar project underway by a University of California professor, we may soon see radically different games that can 'react with human-like adaptability to whatever situation they're thrust into.'"

destinyland writes "UCLA researchers made a startling discovery: genetic alterations enable mice to convert fat into carbon dioxide. Mammals digest fats differently than bacteria — so researchers introduced bacteria genes into mouse livers, and 'the excess fat was literally released into thin air.' (One researcher calls it 'an unconventional idea which we borrowed from plants and bacteria.') The research potentially could help treat serious medical conditions including diabetes, heart disease — and of course, obesity."

destinyland writes "Vint Cerf performed an hour-long Q&A at NASA for their 'Singularity University' (which is partially funded by Google ). A question about Twitter led Cerf to imagine even more useful micro-applications using the wireless internet and cell phones, including real-time health data and checking your location against a map of known biohazards and disease outbreaks. 'These systems have applications which I think we will discover over time,' Cerf says, adding 'For me, the exciting thing to just anticipate, are the new ideas for using these instruments.' Also speaking were Ray Kurzweil and nanotechnology expert Ray Merkle. (Read an interview with SU co-founder Peter Diamandis in the new issue of H+ magazine)."

destinyland writes "Vint Cerf performed an hour-long Q&A at NASA for their 'Singularity University' (which is partially funded by Google ). A question about Twitter led Cerf to imagine even more useful micro-applications using the wireless internet and cell phones, including real-time health data and checking your location against a map of known biohazards and disease outbreaks. 'These systems have applications which I think we will discover over time,' Cerf says, adding 'For me, the exciting thing to just anticipate, are the new ideas for using these instruments.' Also speaking were Ray Kurzweil and nanotechnology expert Ray Merkle. (Read an interview with SU co-founder Peter Diamandis in the new issue of H+ magazine)."

destinyland writes "Vint Cerf performed an hour-long Q&A at NASA for their 'Singularity University' (which is partially funded by Google ). A question about Twitter led Cerf to imagine even more useful micro-applications using the wireless internet and cell phones, including real-time health data and checking your location against a map of known biohazards and disease outbreaks. 'These systems have applications which I think we will discover over time,' Cerf says, adding 'For me, the exciting thing to just anticipate, are the new ideas for using these instruments.' Also speaking were Ray Kurzweil and nanotechnology expert Ray Merkle. (Read an interview with SU co-founder Peter Diamandis in the new issue of H+ magazine)."

destinyland writes "Vint Cerf performed an hour-long Q&A at NASA for their 'Singularity University' (which is partially funded by Google ). A question about Twitter led Cerf to imagine even more useful micro-applications using the wireless internet and cell phones, including real-time health data and checking your location against a map of known biohazards and disease outbreaks. 'These systems have applications which I think we will discover over time,' Cerf says, adding 'For me, the exciting thing to just anticipate, are the new ideas for using these instruments.' Also speaking were Ray Kurzweil and nanotechnology expert Ray Merkle. (Read an interview with SU co-founder Peter Diamandis in the new issue of H+ magazine)."

destinyland writes "'We're going to have to do extensive robotic exploration,' says the director of NASA's Ames Research Center, suggesting nanotechnology to build self-replicating robots on Mars. Genetically engineering extraction and construction microbes could 'grow' electrical components, and eventually convert carbon dioxide on Mars into oxygen. 'If we really want to settle Mars, and we don't want to have to carry millions of tons of equipment with us to duplicate the way we live on Earth, these technologies will be key.' This interview with Peter Worden, the director of NASA's Ames Research Center, was just featured in the summer issue of H+ magazine, and he also argues that robots will be necessary to first survey Mars for underground microbes and protect the unique Martian biosphere, since it may contain clues about earth's own first life forms. In fact, given the water and carbon that's been discovered on Mars, the possibility of underground microbes is still considered real, and Worden argues that Mars 'may already be supporting life.'"

destinyland writes "'We're going to have to do extensive robotic exploration,' says the director of NASA's Ames Research Center, suggesting nanotechnology to build self-replicating robots on Mars. Genetically engineering extraction and construction microbes could 'grow' electrical components, and eventually convert carbon dioxide on Mars into oxygen. 'If we really want to settle Mars, and we don't want to have to carry millions of tons of equipment with us to duplicate the way we live on Earth, these technologies will be key.' This interview with Peter Worden, the director of NASA's Ames Research Center, was just featured in the summer issue of H+ magazine, and he also argues that robots will be necessary to first survey Mars for underground microbes and protect the unique Martian biosphere, since it may contain clues about earth's own first life forms. In fact, given the water and carbon that's been discovered on Mars, the possibility of underground microbes is still considered real, and Worden argues that Mars 'may already be supporting life.'"

destinyland writes "A Stanford researcher has spliced light-sensitive algae genes into human brain cells to fire neurons when activated by a laser. Light is shined through an implanted fiber optic cable (blue light on, yellow light off), and the procedure can target very specific deep brain structures too fragile for most surgery. 'Once the researcher attaches the other end of the cable to a laser, he or she has absolute and flawless control over that group of neurons.' Science writer Quinn Norton cites it as a first attempt at 'building useful handles on the very things that make us ourselves.'"

destinyland writes "A Stanford researcher has spliced light-sensitive algae genes into human brain cells to fire neurons when activated by a laser. Light is shined through an implanted fiber optic cable (blue light on, yellow light off), and the procedure can target very specific deep brain structures too fragile for most surgery. 'Once the researcher attaches the other end of the cable to a laser, he or she has absolute and flawless control over that group of neurons.' Science writer Quinn Norton cites it as a first attempt at 'building useful handles on the very things that make us ourselves.'"

destinyland writes "Christine Peterson coined the term 'open source.' Now she's proposing the same collaborative sharing approach to sensing technology 'to improve both security and the environment, while preserving — even strengthening — privacy, freedom, and civil liberties...' The Open Source Sensing initiative welcomes individuals and organizations, and warns that 'We have a short window of opportunity for guiding this technology to protect both our security *and* our privacy.' Peterson says that in the long term, 'open source defensive technologies will likely be the only ones capable of keeping up with rapidly-advancing offensive technologies, just as open source software is faster at addressing computer viruses today.' And the EFF's Brad Templeton warns that 'Cheap, ubiquitous sensing has the potential to turn the worlds of privacy and civil rights upside-down... It's not enough for governments to watch people; people have to watch governments.' His solution? 'Learning from the bottom-up approaches of the open source community.'