Aging Reversed in Mice

Including new growth of the brain and testes, improved fertility, and the return of a lost cognitive function

Where Military Robots Now Stand

A catalog of what actually exists.

The Sexual Identity Discussion and Radical Evolution

It says here: "The queer cyborg has developed in opposition to rigid masculine/ feminine doctrines to create hybrid genders: part alien, landscape, sea turtle, pencil holder, the cosmology of our identity extending deeper into the rays of the phantasmagorical World Wide Web. But with radical evolution comes the threat of market takeover.

Stem Cells From Your Own Fat Heal Hearts

The cascade of organs repaired with the patient's own stem cells begins.

The Future of Genetic Information and Health

Sequencing the genome has not produced practical health results as fast as initially hoped. But at Yale recently, Lee Hood, president of the Seattle-based Institute for Systems Biology, gave a vision of the coming decade in which dramatic price drops in the study of proteins, genes and other pieces of the cell's machinery opens the way to "P4 medicine" -- predictive, preventative, personalized and participatory.

Enhancing Minds -- Or Clouding Them

The Air Force’s 711th Human Performance Wing (this is the first Joel hears of them) is inviting research proposals in a six-year, $49 million neuroscience and biotechnology effort. One suggestion is to use “external stimulant technology to enable the airman to maintain focus on aerospace tasks and to receive and process greater amounts of operationally relevant information.”

Fashion Moves Toward the Radically Evolved

According to the Financial Times: "Part of the reason for the prevalence of the hourglass shape is surgical: the extreme body reconstruction many women have been undergoing, with breast and bottom augmentation, alongside hours of Pilates and yoga, has created a figure as contrived and Barbie-like as bullet bras and waist cinchers (or “waspies”) did 60 years ago.

Fem Bot Pop Star

Check out the video of this robot girl singer/dancer. A generation of young males living in their parents' basement may never be the same.

State of the Art Battle Medicine

In Afghanistan, medevac choppers save wounded soldiers with a fascinating mix of advanced technology like powdered porcelain that advances clotting, and devices nearly as old as war such as tourniquets.

Boobs Take the Lead

In the drive to commercialize stem cells that enhance, heal, or rebuild injured or damaged organs, if you're looking for a mass market, it turns out there is one obvious place to start.

Now All the Machines Implanted in Your Body Can Talk to Your Phone

Your pacemaker, your defibrillator, even your brain's electroencephalograph can report how your organs are doing and instantly tell you -- and your doctor -- if something is going wrong. Your body becomes a wireless network.

Evidence That Groups Can Create Collective Intelligence

And the more women in the group, the higher the group's collective IQ, reports our friend Tom Malone of MIT, in this stunning report in Science.

Voice Recognition Finally Hits the Big Time

Now *this* is a killer app. The end of keyboards. Voice to text and voice to command finally seems to work, and is commercially available from Google. On your phone. In dozens of ways. Check out the video. Oh, and btw, you no longer need to be literate.

Telescopic Vision, For Real

The FDA has approved the first telescopes implantable into the eye.

Decoding the Genetic Secrets of Radical Life Extension

New genetic discoveries predict with 77 percent accuracy whether someone can live to be at least 100. These people seem to have genetic traits that protect them from disease. Ninety percent of centenarians are disability-free at the average age of 93. These findings could lead to treatments that might help extend life spans, the researchers say.

Environmentalism as Religion

Joel's piece in The New Atlantis looks at environmentalism as the latest and most successful religion.

A Bittersweet Tale of First Sound

The first eight minutes of the June 25, 2010 edition of "This American Life" is devoted to the tale of Scott Krepel, who was born deaf and as a kid got cochlear implants that allowed him to hear for the first time. He thought sound was marvelous at first, but his brain never really figured out how to handle it, so he abandoned them after five years. Some poignant stuff.

Cat With Bionic Legs

For the first time in human history, developing technologies are aimed inwards, at our minds, our bodies ... and occasionally our pets, after they’re woken from their naps by a combine harvester.

What Synthetic Life Means

Joel has been getting a lot of questions about the meaning of Craig Venter's accomplishment, creating self-replicating life, more or less. Joel's been responding -- this is like the creation of the laser. Who knew that the most important application would turn out to be music playing?

A Robot That Eats Its Way Across the Landscape

This robot is designed to be self-sufficient for long periods, eating 150 pounds of vegetation, wood, leaves, what have you, as fuel, per hundred miles. Wonder what a flock of these will do to a forest. Or a desert. Or a garden.