A US patent has been awarded for a tiny wireless gripper that can manipulate microscopic objects such as proteins and genetic components, a step towards nanoscale robots that can do such things as clean your arteries and eradicate tumors.
The US Patent and Trademark Office awarded the “Wireless Techniques for Microactivation” patent to Technology Innovations of [...]

A senior US government official has laid out detailed plans for the timing and form of US government issued biometric passports.
Frank Moss, deputy assistant secretary for Passport Services, presented his organisation’s plans to evolve to a new, more secure “intelligent document” from today’s paper-based passports at the Smart Card Alliance’s Government Conference and Expo [...]

With the supply of IP addresses expected to run out by 2005 due to the popularity explosion of the Internet and the expectation that everything from your phone to your washing machine will soon have its own IP address, Alex Lightman, CEO of Charmed Technology and chairman of last month’s North American IPv6 Global Summit [...]

With so many hotels now promoting high-speed Internet access, you might think downloading e-mail messages in your room would be as easy as ordering a cheeseburger from room service — and twice as quick.
But analysts and business travelers offer something of a reality check on the message of faster connectivity that is being pushed by [...]

The world’s first human tongue transplant has been successfully carried out by doctors in Austria.
Surgeons at Vienna’s General Hospital carried out the 14-hour operation on a 42-year-old patient on Saturday. The patient had a malignant tumour in his mouth that meant his tongue had to be removed. The patient is doing well, confirmed the doctors [...]