Yearly Archives: 2009

The QB1 Computer: No Mouse, No Keyboard. Just Gestures

The mouse and keyboard are fast becoming obsolete.  There are quite a few contenders in the ring vying to make it happen.  There’s an...

13 Year Old Girl Born With Disabilities Allowed to Sue Sperm Bank

Look in any court docket and there is sure to be a father-daughter lawsuit alleging some sort of negligent behavior by poor old Pops. ...

Man Receives First US Double Hand Transplant

Ten years ago, Jeff Kepner lost both his hands and feet to a bacterial infection. Today, he is recovering from the first US...

Advancements in Brain Control: Wheelchairs that Move by Thought

The seventies gave the world “soul power” and now the new millennium is moving on to brain-power. There has been a flurry of...

The Emotiv Headset – Gaming With Thoughts Alone

Mind control is coming to a home near you. Well, it’s not going to let you lull your neighbors into a trance, but it...

Robot See, Robot Do

You don't need to go through years of school and computer science classes to learn how to program robots. With the new Hawk robot...

Machine Pumps Dead Hearts for Surgery Practice (Video)

Got an experiment in mind? Looking for a lab rat?  Unless you're trying out a new grilled cheese recipe, humans won't be your first...

The Pocket Sized Robotic Scout: a Soldier’s New Best Friend

There are robots to do everything nowadays.  They move pallets, act as a butler and even scoop kitty poo, so it must come as...

The Robotic Litter Box Makes for Hearty Consumerism

Cat technology has never been this revolutionary (terrible, terrible pun… just read on) since the advent of the laser pointer and, before then, bubbles. ...

The Future of Sex: Androids, VR, and the Orgasm Button

Forget the Turing test. Imagine when a machine can not only convince us of their intelligence, but attract us with it. Bladerunner gave...

Braingate Frees Trapped Minds

It is a horrifying concept: being buried alive. Even more terrible is the prospect of living trapped in our own bodies, unable to move...

Now Recruiting: The Personal Genome Project

Everybody has a database: staffers, bankers, law enforcers and now geneticists, too.  The PGP is not a college fraternity (rush Lambda Lambda Lambda) but...

Posting Tweets with Brain Power

Tired of using thumbs to endlessly update Twitter on a cell phone?  Well, worry no longer about finger injuries from marathon tweeting: the University...

Thirsty Plants Can Now Use Microchip To Send Text Messages

In an effort to become more trim and efficient, everything in life has been given a miniature electronic brain. The car knows when its...

Intestinal Implants make Cyborgs out of Diabetics

Modern medicine may not have reached the level of the Bionic Woman, but intestinal implants are turning more and more diabetics into low-grade cyborgs....

A Clinical Cure for Blindness Using Stem Cells

Old age is bliss.  There’s a nest egg in the bank account and nothing needs to be done but spoil the grandchildren and watch...

The Lost Robot Saga Continues: Munich

You think that these robots would start investing in a GPS system. Recently, Singularity Hub covered the Tweenbot, a simple cardboard-wrapped automaton that was...

Just Like That, Sakhan Dosova No Longer World’s Oldest Person

Last month we wrote about Sakhan Dosova, a woman from Kazakhstan who created a sensation when it was revealed that she might be 130...

RiSE: The Robotic Wall Crawler

The robot invasion is nowhere close to over.  Singularity Hub has reported on a multitude of autonomous machines (the autonomous forklift, KIVA, Asimo) that...

Robot Overlords Battle For World Supremacy

Like so many epic robot battles, this one began in Tokyo, Japan. Pairs of robots stepped into a padded ring to fight, each vying...

Excited About The Wolfram Alpha Launch? Watch It On A Webcast – Seriously!

With the relentless barrage of Wolfram Alpha media coverage all over the net these days (including plenty here at the Hub), it is easy...

Enter the AlloSphere: a 360° Audiovisual Research Dome

"Data analysis." Sounds exciting, right? Most of us would sooner put out an eye than crunch some numbers. But what if you...

The Autonomous Forklift

Here at Singularity Hub, we are interested in the different types of robots capable of doing a normal person’s job.  We have discussed Honda’s...

Security Checks Reaching Towards Your Brain

When Descartes said "I think therefore I am" he probably didn't know that he was answering a security question. Using behavioral or physical characteristics...
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Genetically Engineered Puppies Glow In The Dark

Dog training is poised to become much more interesting.  In addition to the usual tricks (sit, lay down, heel, look adorable), “glow” may soon...

Smart Toilets: Doctors in Your Bathroom

To those unfamiliar with Japanese culture, certain trends may seem unusual: manga and anime, the love affair with robotics, tea ceremonies...computerized talking toilets. Yeah,...

Health Care’s Wireless Future: Vital Signs in Remote Real-time

When we have to act fast, today's technology puts critical real-time information right at our fingertips. Weather updates on your cell phone can...

Wolfram Alpha Official Launch May 18 – Check Out Their Datacenter (Video)

Is the new question answering service from Wolfram Alpha a big stud or a big dud?  According to a recent post from the Wolfram...

Where No Augmented Reality Has Gone Before!

Last week,  Singularity Hub gave you the low-down on Total Immersion's Augmented Reality. Well, hold on to your phasers Star Trek fans, because AR...

KIVA Robots Continue to Conquer Warehouses

Blue-collar robots don't really get the press they deserve. These dedicated, well designed, and efficient workers provide unparalleled improvements in almost every major industry....

Tweenbots – Depending on the Kindness of Strangers

Would you help a lost robot? Just picture a tiny, cardboard skinned automaton making its way down the streets of New York City, asking...

Viruses – Batteries Now Included

Microscopic workers of the world unite! There's a trend floating around laboratories: designing tiny mechanisms that can build other devices from the atomic level...

Biometrics Turns Your Ear Into Your Password

What is your mother's maiden name? What was your high school mascot? What town were you born in? Who cares! Pretty...

Reality – Now With Augmentation

Somewhere between the harshness of reality and the fantasy of virtual reality lies the domain of Augmented Reality (AR). The French company Total Immersion's...

Robots Take To The Stairs – This Is Just The Beginning

Robots can climb stairs, and they are doing it everywhere you look.  "No big deal" you say, but it really is a big deal. ...

Exponential Trends – What Are Your Favorites?

Over at Hacker News there was a discussion about our ebay genome story that I thought was cool enough to post below.  In the...

Company Uses Nanobots To Fight Cancer…But Its Not At All What You Thought It Would Be

Nanobots the size of living cells swimming around our bodies, doing our bidding to fight disease, make repairs, and augment our abilities?  Futurists and...

Is the University a Dying Breed? Technology and Education

Goodbye freshman seminars, beer-pong, student loans, and your cap and gown. Hello online coursework, digital textbooks, lecture mp3's, and a radically new form...

Virtual Neurons Acting Like the Real Thing – The Blue Brain Project

Creating a virtual model of the human brain is one thing. I do it all the time, doodling little cerebrums while I talk on...

Boom! Question Answering Engines Take Off. IBM Sets Sights On Jeopardy, Wolfram Alpha

Boom!  That is the sound skittering across the information industry landscape this week as IBM has suddenly stepped into the ring, proposing that its...
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Transcendent Man Wows At Tribeca Film Festival Premier

"Does God exist? Well, I would say, 'Not yet." --- Ray Kurzweil, Transcendent Man, 2009 It's not every documentary that predicts humanity will someday create...

Who is DIYbio.org?

If you're like me, Jurassic Park taught you two valuable lessons: genetic engineering has to be dangerous, and the coolest scientists are chaos obsessed...

Hub Exclusive – Interview With Transcendent Man Producer Barry Ptolemy (video)

This week Transcendent Man, a documentary about the life and vision of singularity evangelist Ray Kurzweil, is enjoying its world premier at the Tribeca...

Do It Yourself Biohacking

Ever wanted to play with your own genome? When you read about the latest genetic engineering tools do your fingers itch with anticipation? Do...

Ugolog Creates Surveillance Website To Watch Anyone, Anywhere

What if people all over the world randomly decided to setup motion detection webcams and then send feeds from these webcams to a single...

Video 2.0: Tiny Cameras Watching (Over) You

Are you being filmed right now? Are you sure? Or, more importantly: does that thought make you nervous? You might want to get used to...

Wolfram Alpha Sneak Preview At Harvard On Tuesday

Is Wolfram Alpha a game changer that will open an exciting new paradigm in our information society or will it be a big flop?...
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Donated Lungs Breathing Outside the Body (Video)

Pop quiz!  What's weirder than dead organs sitting around in glass jars?  Live organs moving around in glass domes. For patients with late-stage respiratory diseases,...

Tweetbomb – A Tweet To Shake The World

A simple message, less than 140 characters, is sent out to followers around the world and within hours, perhaps minutes,  more than 100 million...

Cyberdyne Ready to Mass Produce Cyborgs

Nothing transforms scientific gurus into excited SciFi geeks quicker than the mention of a robotic exoskeleton. Iron Man, RoboTECH, Exosquad, Starship Troopers (the book),...
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