"In my own life I resented the time, money, and effort the purchase, preparation, consumption, and clean-up of food was consuming. [...] I hypothesized that the body doesn't need food itself, merely the chemicals and elements it contains. So, I resolved to embark on an experiment. What if I consumed only the raw ingredients the body uses for energy? Would I be healthier or do we need all the othe... More

The advance, described in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, could lead to smarter prosthetics or resilient personal electronics that repair themselves. In the last decade, there have been major advances in synthetic skin, says Zhenan Bao, the study’s principal investigator and a chemical engineering professor at Stanford University, but even the most effective self-healing materials had major d... More

An ultrathin electrode spun from a single carbon fiber can record neurons in living animals.

The physical merging of humans and technology is coming closer to reality at Harvard, where scientists report having successfully embedded bioengineered human tissue cells into networks of nanoscale silicon wires. Using a process that's similar to etching microchips, lattices of wires were created and combined with tiny electrodes to create a mesh that could be folded or rolled into various shapes.... More

Replacing invasive, irreversible chip implants, genes, and stem cells, simple chemical could one day allow the more than one million normally blind nerve cells in the eye to see

"In addition to the NASA mission pages here's a decent list of links showing where you can view the Mars Curiosity Landing online or at an event. Does anyone have recommendations for other sources of coverage on August 6?"

By PETER SINGER and AGATA SAGAN Last October, in Foshan, China, a 2-year-old girl was run over by a van. The driver did not stop. Over the next seven minutes, more than a dozen people walked or bicycled past the injured child. A second truck ran over her. Eventually, a woman pulled her to the side, and her mother arrived. The child died in a hospital. The entire scene was captured on video and c... More

The future of automotive safety is coming this summer to the U.S.: Cars that to talk to each other and warn drivers of impending collisions.

by Drew Halley August 11th, 2010 | Comments (32) Gene patenting is coming under ethical and legal scrutiny Here’s a disconcerting thought: for the past thirty years, genes have been patentable. And we’re not just talking genetically modified corn – your genes, pretty much as they exist in your body, can and have been patented. The US government reports over three million gene patent ap... More

In Praise of Soft Rationality and Rational Spirituality Giulio Prisco Giulio Prisco Turing Church Posted: May 5, 2012 I cultivate the excellent habit of rationality and consider it as a very useful tool. But rationality is indeed a tool (a useful means to achieve a desired result), and not an end in itself. Far from being the enemies of science, religion and spirituality often drive sc... More

The Telegraph | He is regarded as the most famous atheist in the world but last night Professor Richard Dawkins admitted he could not be sure that God does not exist.He told the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, that he preferred to call himself an agnostic rather than an atheist. The two men were taking part in a public “dialogue” at Oxford University at the end of a week which has ... More

Singularity University: meet the people who are building our futureTake top thinkers from Silicon Valley and science, mix them with scientists, innovators and philanthro-capitalists, and you've got the Singularity University – on a mission to seek technological solutions to the world's great challenges Share 3749 Comments (124) Carole Cadwalladr The Observer, Sunday 29 April 2012 Arti... More

Biomedicine A First Step Toward a Prosthesis for Memory A neural implant helps rats with short-term recall. Thursday, June 23, 2011 By Lauren Gravitz Audio » Researchers have developed the first memory prosthetic device—a neural implant that, in rats, restored lost brain function and improved short-term memory retention. While human testing is still a distant goal, the implant prov... More

Plant rights are rights that plants may be entitled to. Such issues are often raised in connection with discussions about animal rights or biocentrism. On the question of whether animal rights can be extended to plants, philosopher Tom Regan argues that animals acquire rights due to being aware, what he calls "subjects-of-a-life". He argues that this does not apply to plants, and that even if pl... More

US doctors have carried out what they say is the most extensive face transplant ever performed. The operation at the University of Maryland gave Richard Norris a new face, including jaw, teeth and tongue. The 37-year-old has lived as a recluse for 15 years after being severely injured in a gun accident, and wore a mask whenever he went outside. The surgery was funded by the US Navy, which ... More

Declaration of Rights for Cetaceans: Whales and Dolphins Based on the principle of the equal treatment of all persons; Recognizing that scientific research gives us deeper insights into the complexities of cetacean minds, societies and cultures; Noting that the progressive development of international law manifests an entitlement to life by cetaceans; We affirm that all cetaceans as persons h... More

By increasing the rational faculties of animals, and by giving them the tools to better manage themselves and their environment, they stand to gain everything that we have come to value as a species. Humanity’s relationship with animals has varied drastically over the millennia. Animals were once (and some still are) our predators, contributing directly to the course of human evolution. The... More

Humans have always used drugs, but current level of drug abuse could indicate a bigger problem that we’re driving people into addiction. What’s the connection between the increase in chronic diseases, mental illness and drug addiction in our society today? On this edition, Dr. Gabor Maté talks about the relationship between mind and body health – and what the rise of capitalism has done to d... More

If crystals exist in spatial dimensions, then they ought to exist in the dimension of time too, says Nobel prize-winning physicist KFC 02/16/2012

Today the two main experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, submitted the results of their latest analysis. The new papers (see article for references) boost the case for December's announcement of a possible Higgs signal. Physicists working on the In the case of the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment, have been able to look at another possible kind of... More

The Chinese Singularity By: Ben Goertzel Published: January 4, 2010 Dr. Hugo de Garis, the father of evolvable hardware and a redoubtable AI researcher, moved to China several years ago, and is now leading the Artificial Brain Lab at Xiamen University. He is convinced a Singularity in the vein of Vinge and Kurzweil is likely to occur later this century — and that China is the most likely p... More

A century ago, one of the world’s first hackers used Morse code insults to disrupt a public demo of Marconi's wireless telegraph

In a seminar held at CERN today, the ATLAS and CMS experiments presented the status of their searches for the Standard Model Higgs boson. Their results are based on the analysis of considerably more data than those presented at the summer conferences, sufficient to make significant progress in the search for the Higgs boson, but not enough to make any conclusive statement on the existence or non-ex... More

Originally published in 2005 with the launch of The Singularity is Near. Ray Kurzweil answers some questions concerning the singularity.

A list of all Singularity Summits talks and links.