Yearly Archives: 2009

Augmented Human Reality Unveiled by MIT Researchers

Imagine looking at a someone and instantly being fed a visual and auditory stream of information about them, such as their email address, education,...

Stem Cell Therapy Must Continue In Spite of Cancer Setback

The first known report of a brain tumor resulting directly from neural stem cell therapy was published yesterday.  The report is a fresh reality...

Gene Therapy Trial To Fight HIV Shows Promise

A trial to test the safety and effectiveness of gene therapy to cure or alleviate HIV in patients has seen promising results according to...

Can They Really Transplant An Entire Hand? Yes Indeed!

Did you know that for ten years now it has been possible to transplant a donated hand (or a pair of them) to a...

Bionic Arm Controlled By Patient’s Own Thoughts

Last year we reported about the latest efforts to create the next generation in prosthetic arms.  Without a doubt the most exciting feature being...

The Quest For Human Level Artificial Intelligence: AGI-09 and Ben Goertzel

The second conference on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is set to convene in Arlington, Virginia on March 6-9, 2009.  The conference stands uniquely as...

First FDA Cardiac Adult Stem Cell Trial Underway, Rest of World Already Doing It!

Today we learn that a team of University of Louisville doctors at Jewish Hospital will soon perform the first phase one FDA-approved clinical trial...

Researchers Develop “Brain-Controlled” Wheelchair Robotic Arm

Researchers at USF have created a wheelchair with a robotic arm that is operated by capturing the user's brain waves and converting them into...

Immaculate: The Prosthetic Arm With Style

   From Endgaget and Playmedesign we learn that Masters student at AHO Hans Alexander Huseklepp, has a novel design, dubbed the Immaculate that opens our...

Complete Genomics – New Information About the Hottest Company in Genetic Sequencing

Daniel MacArthur has once again delivered some of the best information on the net about Complete Genomics, the company that is lighting a fire...

A Few Awesome Humanoid Robot Videos

We recently came across several awesome humanoid robot videos that we have brought together into this one single post.  Most of these videos are...

Gene Therapy Cures Fatal Bubble Boy Disease

Gene therapy marked another successful milestone last week when it was used to completely cure eight of 10 children who had potentially fatal "bubble...

Complete Genomics Stuns Genomics Community, Confirms Industry Shattering Capability

Daniel MacArthur at Genetic Future has just completed his post covering the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology (AGBT) conference, where an intense battle is...

Videos Reveal the Technology of Invisibility

There has been a great deal of talk lately about cloaks and coatings that can make things invisible: Scientific American: Light Bent the Wrong Way Scientific...

Singularity University Officially Launches At NASA Ames

A shockwave passed through the singularity community today with the public launch of Singularity University at the NASA Ames campus in Silicon Valley.  Singularity...

Genetically Modified Humans: Children With Three Parents

Nick Lane from New Scientest wrote an interesting article about genetically modified humans that opens as follows: "CHILDREN with three parents might sound like monstrous...

Who’s Who in the Singularity

As part of its special report on the singularity last year, IEEE Spectrum published a Who's Who in the Singularity poster documenting the major...

Army’s Cyborg Beetle Takes Flight

Technology review has one of the better reports about the army's success in creating a remote controlled cyborg beetle in collaboration with the University...

Stanford Creates World’s Smallest Writing, Less Than a Nanometer

"Stanford researchers have reclaimed bragging rights for creating the world's smallest writing, a distinction the University first gained in 1985 and lost in 1990." Thus...

Fracture Putty – Bioactive Nano Scaffold Could Revolutionize Bone Healing

In June 2008 DARPA solicited proposals from interested institutions to participate in a project to develop fracture putty: A dynamic putty which, when packed in/around...

Geron CEO Speaks About the Promise of Stem Cell Therapy, Great Damage Done By Bush Presidency

We just uncovered this awesome 3 minute video of Geron CEO Thomas Okarma explaining the promise of stem cell therapy as well as the...

FDA OKs 1st Embryonic Stem Cell Trial for Geron, Stock Skyrockets

The first clinical human trial using embryonic stem cells as a medical treatment in the United States has been approved by the U.S. Food...

Wired For War: The Rise of Robotic Armies

P.W. Singer just launched his latest book titled Wired For War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century. This looks to be...

The Onion: Are We Giving Robots Too Much Power?

Need a good laugh?  The onion has a funny spoof about computers taking over the world below:

10 Forecasts for 2009 and Beyond

Each year since 1985, the editors of The Futurist have collected their most thought-provoking ideas and forecasts into an annual Outlook report.  The Outlook...
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Mind Reading Revisited

Just recently we posted about a story in which researchers from Carnegie Mellon were able to read people's actual thoughts with a machine.  The...

Motorized Nanobot To Swim Through Human Arteries?

The media is abuzz with the announcement of a 250 micrometer motor that could someday be used to power tiny robots that swim through...

Genetic Mutation Found in 1% of Population Almost Guarantees Onset of Heart Disease

The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute today published a press release presenting the discovery of a gene mutation in roughly 1% of the world population...

Silicon Valley’s Transhumanist Movement Uncovered

David Gelles from The Futurist has written a very detailed piece that describes Silicon Valley as the epicenter of a worldwide transhumanist movement.  Gelles'...

16 Amazing Robot Videos

Robot innovation continued its relentless advances during 2008. In this post we would like to showcase some of our favorite robots and robot videos...

Jeff Hawkins: Recreating Human Intelligence

If you are at all interested in artificial intelligence and understanding how the human brain works then following the work of Jeff Hawkins (pictured...

Monkey’s Thoughts Control Robot Halfway Across the World

The New York Times today reports on an awesome experiment in which thoughts were extracted from a monkey in the US and used to...

IBM Research Creates 3D Microscope With 100 Million Times Finer Resolution Than Current MRI

IBM Research issued a major press release today announcing the creation of a microscope that can determine the 3-Dimensional structure of large molecules, bacteria,...

Top 10 Countries By Robot Density

Just stumbled on this cool tidbit from ieee spectrum.  Not sure how reliable these numbers are (what metric is used to classify something as...

Captivating Review of the Emerging Field of Nanotechnology

Canada's Globemail has an article titled "Science of tiny raises big hopes, big fears" written by Dean Bennet that gives a captivating view of the...

A Review of the Best Robots of 2008

Robot innovation continued its relentless advances during 2008. In this post we would like to showcase some of our favorite robots and robot videos...

Another Step in the March Towards Designer Babies

The Herald and other major outlets are reporting that the "UK's first genetically selected baby has been born." This sensational claim is misleading since the...

Vision Restored to Blind Patients in Gene Therapy Breakthrough

The emerging field of gene therapy took a huge leap forward in 2008 when vision was substantially restored to several blind patients. The patients in...

Reading People’s Actual Thoughts With a Machine

60 Minutes just ran an excellent segment on how fMRI is being used by the Brain Image Analysis Research Group at Carnegie Mellon and...

Nanoscale Levitation – Repulsive Casimir Force Verified

The cover story of the Jan 8, 2009 Nature journal states that “the experimental verification that a bizarre quantum effect — the Casimir force...

Star Trek Replicator? Barrier Between Physical and Digital Worlds Fading

You know that replicator from Star Trek that was able to make food and other items seemingly out of thin air?  Well, such a...

Real Life Transformer Robot

Just found this awesome short video of a transformer robot from Japan.  There are several transformer robot videos out there, but I think this...

Solar Power Game-Changer: Near Perfect Absorption of Sunlight, From All Angles

A huge leap has been made in the creation of high efficiency, cost effective solar power with the announcement of the world's first material...

FIRST Robotics 2009 Competition Kickoff

Over the weekend the 18th annual FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) was officially launched.  This competition challenges and inspires high school student teams to build...

Artificial Retina Brings Sight Back to the Blind

Wow!  Physorg.com reports that an artificial retina has achieved real success in bringing limited sight to the blind.  The Department of Energy estimates that...

Amateurs Are Trying Genetic Engineering At Home

Marcus Wohlsen from the Associated Press came out with an article on December 26, 2008 describing the emergence of do it yourself genetic engineers...
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