Since last April, 19 cancer patients whose liver tumors hadn’t responded to chemotherapy have taken an experimental drug. Within weeks of the first dose, it appeared to work, by preventing tumors from making proteins they need to survive. The results are preliminary yet encouraging. With a slight redesign, the drug might work for hundreds of diseases, fulfilling the promise that wonder cures like... More

Raymond Kurzweil plans to release two new films about the singularity. Transcendent Man, in post-production (2009) and The Singularity is Near which is going to complete filming this summer and is scheduled to be released early 2009. In regards to Transcendent Man, Felicia Ptolemy wrote: "This film tells the story of Ray Kurzweil's early days as an inventor, including his influences, successes a... More

The turritopsis nutricula species of jellyfish may be the only animal in the world to have truly discovered the fountain of youth. Since it is capable of cycling from a mature adult stage to an immature polyp stage and back again, there may be no natural limit to its life span. Scientists say the hydrozoan jellyfish is the only known animal that can repeatedly turn back the hands of time and rev... More

New research in the FASEB Journal shows how combining photoacoustic tomography with gold nanobeacons allows researchers to see blood vessel formation in detail without a microscope. A new breakthrough in imaging technology using light and sound will allow health-care providers to see microscopic details inside the body. Access to this level of detail potentially eliminates the need for some invasi... More

Next time you hear some crickets chirping, listen a little bit closer: they could be sending email. The DARPA is already working on cyborg insects, but now the military wants them to be able to form their own ad-hoc wireless networks, using chirps: Insects will be equipped with embedded MEMS transceivers that pick up modulated calling sounds from nearby insects. Once the information in a call is... More

This week a group of leading technology vendors and users have formed the IP for Smart Objects (IPSO) Alliance, whose goal is promoting the Internet Protocol (IP) as the networking technology best suited for connecting sensor- and actuator-equipped or "smart" objects and delivering information gathered by those objects. Smart objects are objects in the physical world that - typically with the he... More

An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense "intuitive linear" view. So we won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century -- it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today's rate). The "returns," such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There's even exponential growth in ... More

Should Humans Welcome or Resist Becoming Posthuman? This was a key question debated at the 2003 World Transhumanist Association conference at Yale University by attendees, who met to lay the groundwork for a society that would admit as citizens and companions intelligent robots, cyborgs made from a free mixing of human and machine parts, and fully organic, genetically engineered people who aren't n... More

Amputees could regenerate limbs and organs thanks to scientists who have come close to discovering how salamanders grow back lost legs. The amphibians seem to form limbs from cells that partly remember how to make bone, muscle, or nerve tissue, researchers have found. But exactly how the Mexican salamanders - called 'axolotls' or 'water monsters' - do this is still a mystery, according to a r... More

Transhumanist Nick Bostrom wrote this letter from the perspective of a potential future self. Bostrom argues that nothing in the laws of nature indicate that posthuman forms and utopian society are impossible. The trick, he says, is to get from here to there without "burning our wings." "I am concerned that the pursuit of utopia could bring out the worst in you. Please take my message in ... More

Jill Price, has a condition called "hyperthymestic syndrome" -- the continuous, automatic and perfect recollection of the minutiae of every day life. Price claims to be able to remember virtually every detail of her life since the age of 14.

Revolutionary 1990 book by Raymond Kurzweil that foresaw many of the technical developments of the coming decade, chronicling the progress leading the way.

New observations made by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), currently circling the planet, have revealed evidence that vast regions of the southern highlands of Mars were altered by water in a variety of environments billions of years ago. Water is a key condition for life as we know it. Though there is no firm evidence that Mars has ever harbored life, knowing that the planet was once we... More

Materials scientists have been singing graphene's praises since it was first isolated in 2005. Now, for the first time, researchers have measured the intrinsic strength of graphene, and they've confirmed it to be the strongest material ever tested, providing good evidence that graphene transistors could take the heat in future ultrafast microprocessors. A sheet of graphene would be strong enough... More

Organic electronics interfacing seamlessly with our nerves could pave the way for prosthetic brains

If human-equivalent AI is possible, this is a huge, huge deal. It would basically mean that you could turn inanimate matter into intelligence. Say that it requires about 500 teraflops (Tflops), roughly equivalent to one of the fastest supercomputers today, to run a human-equivalent AI program. A really fast supercomputer costs about $100 million. As you may know, the cost of computing power tend... More

Milan Ćirković of the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade, and one of the world's leading authorities on astrobiology and the evolution of galaxies and baryonic dark matter, has outlined along with philosopher Robert Bradbury the six great mega-trajectories of the biological evolution on Earth: 1. From the origin of life to the ”Last Common Ancestor" 2. Prokaryote diversification 3. ... More

"Man-Computer Symbiosis" is a key speculative paper published in 1960 by psychologist/computer scientist J.C.R. Licklider, which envisions that mutually-interdependent, "living together", tightly-coupled human brains and computing machines would prove to complement each other's strengths to a high degree: "Man-computer symbiosis is a subclass of man-machine systems. There are many man-machine sy... More

Humans are evolving faster than ever before, picking up new genetic traits and talents that may help us survive a turbulent future.

In this paper, James Hughes sets out to defend human genetic engineering with a new bioethical approach, post-humanism, combined with a radical democratic political framework.

One of the biggest challenges facing brain-computer interface researchers today is the basic mechanics of the interface itself. The easiest and least invasive method is a set of electrodes -- a device known as an electroencephalograph (EEG) -- attached to the scalp. The electrodes can read brain signals. However, the skull blocks a lot of the electrical signal, and it distorts what does get through... More

Along with cellulose, the cyanobacteria developed by Professor R. Malcolm Brown Jr. and Dr. David Nobles Jr. secrete glucose and sucrose. These simple sugars are the major sources used to produce ethanol.

The “consensus” on man-made global warming may have received a mortal wound. Physics & Society, The journal of the 46,000-member American Physical Society, just published “Climate Sensitivity Revisited,” by Viscount Christopher Monckton. [...] Viscount Monckton contends that the climate alarmists have mistakenly pre-programmed their computer models with equations that overstate the ... More

Technological evolution is the name of a science and technology studies theory describing technology development, developed by Czech philosopher Radovan Richta.

Anthropologists recently conducted a fly-by over a tribal village in the Envira rain forest near the Brazilian-Peruvian border. It is strongly suspected that these Amerindians have never made contact with the modern world. Assuming this is not a hoax or error of some sort, the captured images are nothing short of incredible -- as if the anthropologists had traveled back in time, as George Dvorsk... More