December 2011
132 posts
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New anti-HIV agents more potent, less toxic →
Researchers have discovered chemical compounds that could lead to HIV treatments that are 10 to 2,000 times more potent than drugs now on the market.
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European robots helping to perform safer, quicker... →
EU-funded researchers from Germany, Italy, Israel and the UK have achieved a breakthrough development in robotic neurosurgery. The ROBOCAST project, has developed a new type of robot that gives two important advantages to surgeons: 13 degrees (types) of movement, compared to the four available to human hands during minimally invasive surgery, and “haptic feedback” the physical cues...
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November 2011
108 posts
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Civilian use of tiny drones may soon fly in U.S. →
Drone aircraft, best known for their role in hunting and destroying terrorist hideouts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, may be coming soon to the skies near you. Police agencies want drones for air support to find runaway criminals. Utility companies expect they can help monitor oil, gas and water pipelines. Farmers believe drones could aid in spraying crops with pesticides.
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“If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.”
– Frank Lloyd Wright
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Smart phone power consumption cut by more than 70... →
Researchers at Aalto University in Finland have designed a network proxy that can cut the power consumption of 3G smart phones up to 74 percent. This device enhances performance and significantly reduces power usage by serving as a middleman for mobile devices to connect to the Internet and handling the majority of the data transfer for the smart phone. Historically, the high energy requirements...
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Bacterial Lamp Can Eat Your Sewage and Light Up... →
As the world — and its landfills and water treatment plants — get more and more crowded, future houses will have to cut down on their waste. Or they could just repurpose it. For instance, they could use household sludge to feed bioluminescent bacteria to light up a room. It’s so simple! Really!
This bioluminescent lamp is part of Philips’ Microbial Home concept, a self-sufficient closed-loop...
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Cancer drug sticks to RNA like glue →
A common cancer drug binds quickly and firmly to RNA, a finding that has the potential to open new targets for drug delivery with fewer toxic side effects, a new study shows.
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Robotic Guards Will Soon Patrol South Korean... →
The possibility of robot workers raises a certain type of futurey allure combined with a sense of danger — in a variety of settings, they could help humans work better and faster, but they could also replace us, or worse, maim us. So how are we supposed to feel about the news of a new troupe of robot prison guards? It’s awesome. And terrifying.
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Insect cyborgs may become first responders: Search... →
Research conducted at the University of Michigan College of Engineering may lead to the use of insects to monitor hazardous situations before sending in humans.
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WatchAt TEDxBerlin, Fabian Hemmert demos one future of the mobile phone — a shape-shifting and weight-shifting handset that “displays” information nonvisually, offering a delightfully intuitive way to communicate.
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EPFL robots will soon appear in school classrooms →
Creating an original pedagogical tool to get students interested in technology and robotics: this is the challenge that was undertaken by a group of the researchers led by Fancesco Mondada, in EPFL’s Robotics Systems Laboratory. In collaboration with the University of Art and Design Lausanne (ECAL), they developed Thymio II, a little programmable white robot, jam-packed with sensors and LEDs,...
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“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”
– Albert Einstein
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To self-diagnose, spit on an iPhone →
Handheld gadgets could one day diagnose infections at the push of a button by using the supersensitive touchscreens in today’s smartphones. Many believe that in the future collecting samples of saliva, urine or blood could be performed using a cheap, USB-stick-sized throwaway device called a lab-on-a-chip. The user would inject a droplet of the fluid in the chip, and micropumps inside it...
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YaCy - The Peer to Peer Search Engine →
YaCy is a free search engine that anyone can use to build a search portal for their intranet or to help search the public internet. When contributing to the world-wide peer network, the scale of YaCy is limited only by the number of users in the world and can index billions of web pages. It is fully decentralized, all users of the search engine network are equal, the network does not store user...
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WatchA soft robot that can crawl across surfaces and under obstacles has been created by a Cambridge, Massachusetts based team.
Led by chemist George Whitesides of Harvard University, the team’s robot eschews the hard joints, hydraulics and motors of current robot technology in favour of low pressure air.
Inspired by starfish, squid and worms, their squishy four-armed creation lacks any kind of...
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New lightning-fast, efficient nanoscale data... →
A new nanoscale light-based device developed at Stanford’s School of Engineering transmits data at ultrafast rates while using thousands of times less energy than current technologies. The nanophotonic device is a major step forward for on-chip data transmission, the researchers say.
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Singularitarian's New Look
As some of you may notice we have changed our theme to something more up-to-date. Our previous theme was not visible in theme editor to tweak any longer so it was time to move on. Like the new look?
We’ve also enabled commenting, +1, and to Tweet the story so hope everyone enjoys!
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Turing Church Online Workshop 2 →
The Turing Church Online Workshop 2 will be held on Sunday, December 11, 2011, with a format similar to the Turing Church Online Workshop 1 on November 20, 2010.
The Workshop will explore transhumanist spirituality and “Religion 2.0″, the convergence of science and religion, highly imaginative future science and technologies for resurrection, emerging science and technologies for immortality,...
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Microsoft Study Shows That Homes and Offices Could... →
As the temperature drops and utility bills begin to soar, researchers at Microsoft have come up with a new heat source to warm homes and offices up - data servers. These machines produce an incredible amount of heat – and it requires extra energy to cool them down – so why not use all of that warmth to keep people nice and toasty in the colder months? That’s exactly what Microsoft Research is...
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Rebuilding the brain’s circuitry →
Neuron transplants have repaired brain circuitry and substantially normalized function in mice with a brain disorder, an advance indicating that key areas of the mammalian brain are more reparable than was widely believed.
Collaborators from Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Harvard Medical School (HMS) transplanted normally...
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Graphene-based inkjet printing allows for faster... →
University of Cambridge engineers have created inkjet printer inks based on graphene, allowing for high-performance flexible, transparent electronics devices.
Printing on flexible substrates allows electronics devices to be placed on curved surfaces, but current materials used in printer inks have low mobility (how quickly an electron or hole can move), so their performance is limited.
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WatchWhat controls aging? Biochemist Cynthia Kenyon has found a simple genetic mutation that can double the lifespan of a simple worm, C. elegans. The lessons from that discovery, and others, are pointing to how we might one day significantly extend youthful human life
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Tiny Magnets Could Clear Diseases from the Blood →
Researchers in Zurich, Switzerland, are developing nanomagnets that could someday strip potentially harmful substances from the blood. The technology might be used to treat people suffering from drug intoxication, bloodstream infections, and certain cancers.
The project involves magnetized nanoparticles that are coated with carbon and studded with antibodies specific to the molecules the...
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“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the...”
– Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
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Palantir, the War on Terror's Secret Weapon →
In October, a foreign national named Mike Fikri purchased a one-way plane ticket from Cairo to Miami, where he rented a condo. Over the previous few weeks, he’d made a number of large withdrawals from a Russian bank account and placed repeated calls to a few people in Syria. More recently, he rented a truck, drove to Orlando, and visited Walt Disney World by himself. As numerous security videos...
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WatchWant to hook up things to the Web? Maybe you want to get a tweet when your laundry’s done, or get an email when the basement floods while you’re on vacation. Even if you’re good with electronics and programming, these are involved projects. Instead of worrying about wiring or networking code, you can focus on your idea.
Twine is the simplest possible way to get the objects in...
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Singularitarianisms Now on Google+ →
Come follow our new page on Google+
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Brand New Asian Cities: Are made-from-scratch... →
Two years ago, 35 miles southwest of Seoul, developer Stan Gale cut the ribbon on the world’s newest city—a man-made isthmus in the Yellow Sea named Songdo International Business District. In 2001, the chairman of New York-based Gale International had pledged to borrow $35 billion to build a city the size of downtown Boston, modeled on Paris, Venice, and Manhattan, complete with a 100-acre...
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With Siri Technology Finds It's Voice →
After a month of using Siri, the new voice-controlled “personal assistant” available on the iPhone 4S, I’ve decided it may be time to add voice control to the list of paradigm-shifting ways to interact with a computer—right behind the mouse, keyboard and, more recently, touch gestures. While voice control remains far from perfect, the ease of use and instant results Siri delivers may be just...
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Chew hormone gum, lose weight? →
Fighting weight gain may one day be as easy as chewing a stick of gum after meals, according to new research.
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Rats help Colombia sniff out deadly landmines →
In a laboratory on the grounds of a police-guarded complex, 11 white-furred rats wait their turn to impress trainers and perhaps receive a bit of sugar as reward.
The rodents could play an important role in making conflict-wracked Colombia safer. They are in the final stages of a training program to find landmines that kill or injure hundreds of people each year in Colombia.
The government...
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Mobile ‘Rootkit’ Maker Tries to Silence Critical... →
A data-logging software company is seeking to squash an Android developer’s critical research into its software that is secretly installed on millions of phones, but Trevor Eckhart is refusing to publicly apologize for his research and remove the company’s training manuals from his website.
Though the software is installed on millions of Android, BlackBerry and Nokia phones, Carrier IQ was...
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Kinect-Powered Robot Lets You Clean Up Your House... →
Yaskawa’s SmartPal VII is perhaps not the friendliest looking (or most modern looking) mobile manipulation robot. It may also not be the smartest, but that’s okay, since it’s designed to be teleoperated, relying entirely on you to provide the brains.
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WatchArnold Schwarzenegger, your contact lenses are calling. Researchers at the University of Washington have successfully built and tested what may be the first-everTerminator-style heads-up display contact lens. For now, the lens displays only a single, well-focused pixel and the wireless power is only enough to give the appearance of constant illumination, but this is the first step toward,...
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Tumor-specific pathway identified →
A research team led by UT Southwestern Medical Center scientists has identified an atypical metabolic pathway unique to some tumors, possibly providing a future target for drugs that could reduce or halt the spread of cancer.
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The Most Capable Robot Geologist Ever Built Now... →
Planetary scientists sometimes joke that we know more about Mars than we do about the moon. NASA first landed a spacecraft on the surface of the fourth planet during the U.S. Bicentennial, five years before the first space shuttle ever lifted off. And we’ve learned plenty in the intervening 35 years: Viking 1 and 2 analyzed Mars rocks, Spirit and Opportunity found evidence of ancient water, and...
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New projection shows global food demand doubling... →
Global food demand could double by 2050, according to a new projection reported this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The analysis also shows that the world faces major environmental challenges unless agricultural practices change.
Scientists David Tilman and Jason Hill of the University of Minnesota (UMN) and colleagues found that producing the amount...
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NASA Develops New Game-Changing Technology →
Two NASA California centers have been selected to develop new space-aged technologies that could be game-changers in the way we look at planets from above and how we safely transport robots or humans through space and bring them safely back to Earth.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., will use advanced compound semiconductor materials to develop new technologies for the...
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A first step towards Minority Report ads from... →
Inwindow Outdoor is testing several prototype digital “Experience Stations” in malls and hotel lobbies that combine several interactive technologies — including motion capture, large touch screens, and NFC readers (to buy tickets or unlock deals in local stores) — to create immersive experiences in physical locations, similar to the scene in Minority Report where Tom Cruise is walking through a...
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Carbon nanotube forest camouflages 3-D objects →
Carbon nanotubes, tiny cylinders composed of one-atom-thick carbon lattices, have gained fame as one of the strongest materials known to science. Now a group of researchers from the University of Michigan is taking advantage of another one of carbon nanotubes’ unique properties, the low refractive index of low-density aligned nanotubes, to demonstrate a new application: making 3-D objects...
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Why Aren’t More Wealthy People Funding Aging... →
Aubrey de Grey is a biomedical gerontologist based in Cambridge, England. He is editor-in-chief of the academic journal Rejuvenation Research, author of The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging (1999) and co-author of Ending Aging (2007).
As Chief Science Officer of the SENS Foundation, Aubrey has been interviewed by numerous media sources in the US and Europe, including an in-depth 60...
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Bionic ear inventor Prof Graeme Clark honoured... →
HIS bionic ear has given the gift of hearing to hundreds of thousands in the past three decades, but Prof Graeme Clark still considers it a work in progress.
The Australian scientist is preparing to start work on making major improvements to the cochlear implant.
The 76-year-old, who admits to a “genetic inability to retire”, revealed his plans as he prepared to accept...
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New class of small molecules discovered through... →
Inspired by natural products, scientists on the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have created a new class of small molecules with the potential to serve as a rich foundation for drug discovery.
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Fetus donates stem cells to heal mother's heart →
Why wait to be born to develop a healing hand? Mouse fetuses will give up stem cells to repair their mother’s heart. The discovery could explain why half the women who develop heart weakness during or just after pregnancy recover spontaneously.
Hina Chaudhry of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City mated normal female mice with males genetically engineered to produce a...
