Thanks to the strange laws of quantum mechanics, quantum computers would be able to carry out certain computational tasks much faster than conventional computers. Among the most promising technologies for the construction of a quantum computer are systems of single atoms, confined in ion traps and manipulated with lasers.

Hybrid materials made of cardiac cells and carbon nanotubes might patch damaged hearts and provide muscle for robots made of living tissues.

When he was 17 years old, Zhao Bowen dropped out of Beijing’s most prestigious high school. Like many restless young people in China, he headed south to Shenzhen, the country’s factory capital, for a job. As a teenage science prodigy, however, he wasn’t bound for an assembly-line floor; instead, he was on his way to the world’s largest production center for DNA data. Now, a few years later, in a retrofitted shoe factory that is the headquarters of BGI-Shenzhen, the 21-year-old is orchestrating an effort to decipher the genetic makeup of some 2,000 people—more than 12 trillion DNA bases in all

Nanoscribe GmbH, a spin-off of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), has developed the world’s fastest 3D printer of micro- and nanostructures, the German company claims.

Cancer researchers have pinned down a molecule that can kick-start the body’s own tumour-destroying systems, triggering cell death in cancerous but not healthy tissue in mice.

Scientists hope that one day in the distant future, miniature, medically-savvy computers will roam our bodies, detecting early-stage diseases and treating them on the spot by releasing a suitable drug, without any outside help. To make this vision a reality, computers must be sufficiently small to fit into body cells. Moreover, they must be able to “talk” to various cellular systems. These challenges can be best addressed by creating computers based on biological molecules such as DNA or proteins. The idea is far from outrageous; after all, biological organisms are capable of receiving and processing information, and of responding accordingly, in a way that resembles a computer.

Researchers have developed software which could predict future events such as disease outbreak.

The prototype software uses a combination of archive material from the New York Times and data from other websites, including Wikipedia.

A team of Japanese scientists has built a tiny robot that is driven by a male silkworm moth to find a female moth’s seductive pheromone smell. The idea is to somehow engineer the same kind of natural mechanism the moth uses and translate that into a device or sensor that could help autonomous robots track hazardous smells or environmental poisons, for example.

3-D printers can produce gun parts, aircraft wings, food and a lot more, but this new 3-D printed product may be the craziest thing yet: human embryonic stem cells.

Using stem cells as the “ink” in a 3-D printer, researchers in Scotland hope to eventually build 3-D printed organs and tissues. A team at Heriot-Watt University used a specially designed valve-based technique to deposit whole, live cells onto a surface in a specific pattern.

When space shuttle Atlantis rolled to a stop in 2011, it did not mark, as some worried, the end of human spaceflight. Rather, as the extinction of the dinosaurs allowed early mammals to flourish, retiring the shuttle signals the opening of far grander opportunities for space exploration. Led by ambitious private companies, we are entering the early stages of the migration of our species away from Earth and our adaptation to entire new worlds. Mars is the stated goal of Elon Musk of PayPal fortune; polar explorers Tom and Tina Sjogren, who are designing a private venture to Mars; and Europe’s privately funded MarsOne project, which would establish a human colony by 2023. The colonization of space is beginning now.

British troops in Afghanistan are now using 10-centimeter-long 16-gram spy helicopters to survey Taliban firing spots. The UK Defense Ministry plans to buy 160 of the drones under a contract worth more than $31 million.

The remote-controlled PD-100 PRS aircraft, dubbed the Black Hornet, is produced by Norwegian designer Prox Dynamics. The drone is a traditional single-rotor helicopter, scaled down to the size of a toy. British troops use the drones for reconnaissance missions, sending them ahead to inspect enemy positions.

Over tea at her north London home, Aarathi Prasad is talking calmly, coolly, about reproduction. But not sex. Specifically not sex. Her subject is technologies that would take intercourse out of the reproductive equation, advances that could challenge everything we know about family and the relationship between men and women. Their potential is summed up in the final paragraphs of her new book, Like a Virgin: How Science is Redesigning the Rules of Sex.

Diamond-based quantum devices can now make nuclear magnetic resonance measurements on the molecular scale. Work by two independent groups will make it easier to find out the structure of single biological molecules such as proteins without destroying or freezing them.