With the release of the Oculus Rift in March 2016, the age of virtual reality (VR) truly began. VR tech had been generating buzz since the 1990s, but the Rift was the first high-end VR system to reach the consumer market, and early reviews confirmed that it delivered the kind of experience users had been hoping for.
Continue reading… “Neuroreality: the New reality is coming. And it’s a brain computer interface”
Small sensors or drug delivery devices could reside in the GI tract indefinitely
Continue reading… “Wireless power could enable ingestible electronics”
Medical scientist Hans Clevers thinks tests in lab-grown mini-organs could help make expensive drugs more cost-effective by identifying patients who are and aren’t likely to benefit.
Continue reading… “Organoids proposed to screen patients for high priced drugs”
The world we experience is not the real world. It’s a mental construction, filtered through our physical senses. Which raises the question: How would our world change if we had new and different senses? Could they expand our universe?
Continue reading… “Beyond the five senses”
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”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.