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US Tech Manufacturing Depends on 23 Rare Minerals—and Their Supply Is at Risk
A host of high-tech products rely on a small set of scarce minerals. New research suggests that 23 of these face worrying risks to...
AI Just Discovered a New Antibiotic to Kill the World’s Nastiest Bacteria
Penicillin, one of the greatest discoveries in the history of medicine, was a product of chance.
After returning from summer vacation in September 1928, bacteriologist...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through February 22)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
The Messy, Secretive Reality Behind OpenAI's Bid to Save the World
Karen Hao | MIT Technology Review
"The AI moonshot was founded in the spirit...
3D Printing of Body Parts Is Coming Fast—but Regulations Are Not Ready
In the last few years, the use of 3D printing has exploded in medicine. Engineers and medical professionals now routinely 3D print prosthetic hands...
Elon Musk’s Boring Company Finishes First Tunnel for 155mph Vegas Loop
Last month I attended the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas. I had a list of all the tech I wanted to see, talk...
Have Humans Evolved Beyond Nature—and Do We Even Need It?
Such is the extent of our dominion on Earth, that the answer to questions around whether we are still part of nature, and whether...
Scientists Jump-Started Consciousness in Monkeys by Pinpointing This Brain Region
In 1991, a devastating car crash left 32-year-old Munira Abdulla with severe brain injuries and in a deep coma. Doctors thought she had no...
This Breakthrough Just Got Us One Step Closer to a Quantum Internet
While quantum computing tends to garner all the headlines, quantum technology also has huge promise for the communication networks of the future. That’s why...
Could a USB-C Charger’s Chip Get You to the Moon? This Guy Did the...
Comparing today’s computers to their famous ancestors is a popular pastime.
As we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the moon landing last year, the Apollo...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through February 15)
3D PRINTING
3D Printers Are Finally Starting to Work More Like Star Trek's Replicators
Andrew Liszewski | Gizmodo
"...researchers from EPFL’s Laboratory of Applied Photonics Devices have developed...
How to Optimize Your Headspace on a Mission to Mars
Imagine being confined to a metal cell with a couple of other people and few amenities for months or even years. Maybe after that,...
This Is What an AI Said When Asked to Predict the Year Ahead
“What’s past is prologue.” So says the famed quote from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, alleging that we can look to what has already happened as...
How Advertising Will Get Way More Personal—and Then Vanish Completely
Today, less than two decades after the arrival of the internet, Google and Facebook together command more advertising dollars than all print media on the...
Neuromodulation Is the Secret Sauce for This Adaptive, Fast-Learning AI
As obstinate and frustrating as we are sometimes, humans in general are pretty flexible when it comes to learning—especially compared to AI.
Our ability to...
The Company That Wants to Fling Rockets Into Space With a Giant Centrifuge
The rapidly falling cost of getting into orbit has spurred a boom in the space industry as a host of new applications become economical....
Blind Woman Sees With New Implant, Plays Video Game Sent Straight to Her Brain
It’s been over a decade since artificial retinas first began helping the blind see. But for many people, whose blindness originates beyond the retina,...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through February 8)
GENE EDITING
CRISPR'd Cells Show Promise in First US Human Safety Trial
Megan Molteni | Wired
"The highly anticipated results showed that the procedure is both safe...
The Weirdest, Wildest Ways We’re Using Drones—and What’s Ahead
Drones haven’t made too many headlines over the past few months, but they came back with a vengeance this week and last, with all...
Work in the Age of Web 3.0
What is the future of work? Is our future one of ‘technological socialism’ (where technology is taking care of our needs)? Or will tomorrow's...
How AI Helped Predict the Coronavirus Outbreak Before It Happened
Coronavirus has been all over the news for the last couple weeks. A dedicated hospital sprang up in just eight days, the stock market...
Verily’s Bold New Project Aims to Predict Depression Using Your Phone
Depression is a shifting, amorphous beast that silently haunts millions. It’s also difficult to pinpoint.
Psychiatry has formulated well-tested questionnaires to diagnose depression. But these...
Could Photonic Chips Outpace the Fastest Supercomputers?
There's been a lot of talk about quantum computers being able to solve far more complex problems than conventional supercomputers. The authors of a...
Engineering Bugs, Resurrecting Species: The Wild World of Synthetic Biology for Conservation
Imagine a world where a mosquito bite is just an itchy annoyance. No malaria. No dengue fever.
Last month, scientists announced they had taken one...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through February 1)
COMPUTING
Alphabet Has a Second Secretive Quantum Computing Team
Tom Simonite | Wired
" small group of quantum researchers is not building its own quantum computing hardware. The...
7 Business Models Reshaping How We Work, Live, and Create Value
Some of the most potent innovation taking place today does not involve breakthrough technologies, but rather the creation of fundamentally new business models. For...
