For expecting parents, 24 weeks is an important milestone. It’s a little more than halfway through pregnancy, and it’s at this age that the fetus has at least a fighting chance of surviving outside its mother’s body. The odds of survival aren’t great—only about half of babies birthed at this age survive—but it’s possible.
Continue reading… “Scientists built an external womb to help premature infants survive”
This past summer, a plane went into a stomach-churning ascent and plunge 30,000 feet over the Gulf of Mexico. The goal was not thrill-seeking, but something more genuinely daring: for about 25 seconds at a time, the parabolic flight lifted the occupants into a state of simulated weightlessness, allowing a high-tech printer to spit out cardiac stem cells into a two-chambered, simplified structure of an infant’s heart.
Continue reading… “The factories of the future could float in space”
Right now, it prints proteins. In the far future, it could print human babies on Mars. Craig Venter and Elon Musk have even discussed how printed life could help terraform Mars.
Continue reading… “Craig Venter’s ‘digital-to-biological converter’ is based on real science”
Infertile mice have given birth to healthy pups after having their fertility restored with ovary implants made with a 3D printer.
Researchers created the synthetic ovaries by printing porous scaffolds from a gelatin ink and filling them with follicles, the tiny, fluid-holding sacs that contain immature egg cells.
Continue reading… “World’s first 3D-printed ovaries allow infertile mice to give birth”
Ray Kurzweil, Google’s director of engineering, is a well-known futurist who seems to have a penchant for accurate predictions. Most recently, he has again reiterated his prediction that the so-called technological singularity will happen by 2045. For Kurzweil, this doesn’t translate to an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenario courtesy of artificially intelligent (AI) machines. Rather, it means human beings will become powered by machines.
Continue reading… “Kurzweil: By 2030, Nanobots Will Flow Throughout Our Bodies”
Finger pricks, blood draws, and urine testing are miserable for just about everyone. But now researchers are working on a new concept to make testing for disease much easier. The project? A contact lens that would use the condition of the eyes to help spot illness.
Continue reading… “Bio-sensing contacts can monitor for signs of disease”
There’s a revolution happening in biology, and its name is CRISPR.
CRISPR (pronounced “crisper”) is a powerful technique for editing DNA. It has received an enormous amount of attention in the scientific and popular press, largely based on the promise of what this powerful gene editing technology will someday do.
Continue reading… “We’re beginning to see the medical revolution CRISPR had promised”
The ability to regenerate body parts has always been a fascinating prospect, inspiring characters like Wolverine who can instantly heal themselves and regrow body parts they’ve lost — and now regeneration has inspired scientific research.
Many species in the animal kingdom can regenerate: arthropods (like scorpions) can regrow appendages, some annelids (like worms) can regenerate from only a few segments of their body, echinoderms (like starfish) can both self-amputate and re-grow limbs, amphibians (like salamanders and newts) can regenerate a limb in as little as a month, and some reptiles can regenerate their tails.
Continue reading… “Regrowing our own body parts”
Perfumery is an intricate science that takes a lot of effort to get right. Many people don’t realize the amount of work that goes into perfecting that fragrance that we so willingly splash on in the morning. With the advancement in technology over the past two decades, chemists have been able to develop techniques that create an even larger array of scents and fragrances that people have never smelled before. For the first time ever, people can actually get personalized, unique scents to wear. How much that would actually cost, is a different matter.
After a semi-painless injection between the thumb and index finger, a microchip is implanted in another employee. A cyborg is now created, and this human/machine mashup runs off to buy a smoothie using his or her new sub-dermal implant.
If that sounds futuristic, it’s because we’re conditioned to this as a sort of science fiction trope: human gets implanted, its overlords are now in control. For a Swedish company, however, the practice of implanting microchips into its employees has become routine, popular even.
Continue reading… “A real-life company is implanting microchips in employees”
A team of researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have developed technology that allows them to control the movement of turtles using human thought.
Think of it as a real life — but significantly scaled down — application of the 2009 blockbuster Avatar concept where humans control the body of an alien by remotely transferring human consciousness into another biological body. The team uses a brain-computer interface (BCI) that helps translate brain waves into commands that guide or control the movement of the turtle.
Continue reading… “A New Brain-Interface Device Lets You Control Animals With Your Thoughts”
It can be impossible for humans to tell apart very similar colors. But, with a new pair of tetrachromatic glasses created by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, you can never again leave the house wearing two items of black clothing that don’t quite match.
These spectacles enhance the user’s existing color vision, affording them new power to discern more distinct shades. Once developed for practical applications, they could be used to spot camouflaged targets in the field or identify counterfeit money.
Continue reading… “These High-Tech Glasses Will Give You Superhuman Vision”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.