The Singularity

In a medical breakthrough, South Korean doctors have successfully implanted an artificial trachea into a toddler who had been born without the windpipe.

Ahh, Google Glass. Even before the masses have had a chance to get a good look at you in the wild, tech enthusiasts are enamored with you, speculating about all that you can do and how society won't be the same after your arrival. The lucky few who've welcomed you into their lives seem to gush about your awesomeness and become overnight evangelists, even though all your potential has yet to be fully realized.

Ever wondered what it was like to be a parcel? No? Silly you. Ruben van der Vleuten thinks you should know.

While prosthetic limbs continue to improve, tactile feedback is one feature that many are keen to incorporate into the prosthetics but it remains a very difficult technology to develop. But now scientists have developed a new device so packed with sensors it is about as sensitive as human skin. Just [...]

As a young biologist in Africa, Alan Savory helped set aside national park lands. His organization removed indigenous “hunting, drum-beating people” to protect animals. However, burgeoning herds of elephants were soon identified as causing desertification by overgrazing. Savory theorized as much in a paper and sent it to his peers for review. Other scientists corroborated the report and the government killed 400,000 elephants. Instead of improving, desertification worsened.

Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones can be controlled by touch, gesture, eye movement—and your mind. Well, not exactly. Not yet. Not even close. Perhaps half in the name of science, half in the name of publicity, Samsung’s teamed up with Roozbeh Jafari—University of Texas, Dallas assistant professor and expert in wearable computing—to translate thoughts into common computing tasks using an electroencephalogram (EEG) cap.

In October 2004, Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites claimed the $10 million Ansari X Prize when their spacecraft SpaceShipOne achieved suborbital flight—the first private organization to do so. Now, eight and a half years later, the commercial version of SpaceShipOne, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, achieved supersonic speeds after its pilots successfully fired the rockets at 47,000 feet. The video speaks for itself.

There’s nothing like a well-conceived picture to drive a point home. You know the point, right? Sure you do. (Hint: It's in the title.) Shall we run through these items? (I don’t know if I can ID them all perfectly—feel free to leave details/corrections/reminiscences in the comments!) Far right first. Easy. That’s a top-of-the-line Walkman. You could take it with you running, which accounts for the sporty lemon yellow hue. (It plays cassette tapes, kids.)

Through this two-way communication tele-intensivists can aid local intensivists by helping to enforce the patient’s daily goals, review their performance with them and respond to alarms if, as if often the case, the local doctor has been called away.

A new report from the International Energy Agency shows that, despite the rapid spread of renewable technologies, the energy produced today is just as “dirty” as it was 20 years ago.

What would Dr. Evil do with a supercomputer, a giant laser, and a 30-meter deformable mirror? Hold the planet for ransom, of course. The billion-dollar Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) project, on the other hand, will assemble these components into a state-of-the-art optical telescope on the lip of a giant volcano and peer into the depths of space and time. (Astronomers. No ambition.)

The US stock market is approaching a record high—having finally regained all it lost in the 2008 bear market. It would be cause for celebration, if it didn’t feel so out of touch with the “main street” reality of elevated unemployment. As a recent New York Times headline read, “recovery in the US is lifting profits, but not adding jobs.” The NYT goes on to blame the divide between rising corporate profits, recovering stocks, and stubborn unemployment on technology—or more specifically automation and robots.

If you’re not willing to send electrical shocks through your brain – “mild” as they might be – to become smarter, here’s a much gentler option: play sounds while you sleep.

Scientists have made strides recently in coming up with ways to detect autism earlier in children. But a recent study suggests it might be possible to diagnose the disorder right at the moment of birth. The telltale signs, they found, can be seen by analyzing the placenta.

[READY] Despite Spread Of Renewable Energy, World Still As Dependent On Carbon [READY] Fossil Fuel Energy Still As Strong After 20 Years, Despite Spread Of Renewable Energy [READY] Report Says World Dependence On Fossil Fuels Despite Spread Of Renewable Energy With all the news about record-breaking wind farms, record-breaking solar [...]

“I firmly believe that this is something that’s going to revolutionize our society. With this technology we have a lot of tools that can solve a lot of humanity’s problems. We’re limited only by our imagination.”

Proponents of natural gas, or methane in its purest form, say it is cleaner than coal and oil, lacks the PR problems and toxic waste byproducts of nuclear, and more efficiently produces electricity than sustainable sources. It is abundant and, in recent years, cheap. Is natural gas the future of energy production, a risky stop-gap measure to energy independence and cleaner energy, or simply overhyped?

Great things are afoot in the Singularity Hub Membership Program, and all signs point to even more growth in a community thriving more than ever before. What makes us so confident of the future? Because we’re passionate about the membership program and making it the best it can be. We’re [...]

In what’s being called a medical first, doctors were able to keep a liver functioning outside the body and then transplant it into a patient.

What’s going on with PCs? According to data provider IDC, worldwide PC shipments (laptops and desktops) declined -14% in the first quarter of 2013 compared to the first quarter of 2012. It’s the worst 12-month decline since IDC began covering the market in 1994, the fourth consecutive such drop, and almost twice the predicted -7.7%. Another data provider, Gartner, is sketching a similarly stark PC forecast in 2013, predicting a -7.6% decline in PC shipments this year.

What started as an atypical request by the FBI to gather evidence from the public quickly morphed into a much uglier digital witch hunt, one where the crowd’s fears, prejudices, and suspicions were given credence, while guilt and innocence were doled out based on shreds of circumstantial evidence. In the four days, three hours, and nine minutes between the detonation of the first bomb and the Boston Police Department tweeting that the final suspect had been captured, a new approach for conducting crowdsourced investigations was established.

The weightlessness of space makes it a unique place to conduct experiments that can’t be done on Earth, like growing perfect protein crystals, finding out how rat memory changes in zero G, and finding out what happens when you ring out a soaked washcloth.

Coming up with an answer that’s satisfactory to the researchers, doctors and patients who have a stake in the case is turning out to be as knotty as the genome itself.

A new technique, developed by a scientist who’d already contributed an extraordinary tool to neuroscience, literally allows scientists to peer directly into the brain by making it transparent.

We often hear of robots forcing humans to learn new skills—but Willow Garage spinoff, Industrial Perception, Inc., (IPI) wants to do just the opposite. IPI is in the business of training robots for the real world. Step one: Give them eyes. Step two: Teach them to understand what they’re seeing. Step three: Do something about it.

Noodle peelers should probably start looking for other things to do around the kitchen – there’s just no competing with these robots.

Google Glass is fast becoming the most hyped, anticipated, controversial technology trial of the year. You heard it here first—although I’m sure you didn’t—Google will ship the first trial pairs of Google Glass in the next few days. Google’s Glass Explorer program enrolled 2,000 pre-early adopters who will pay $1,500 to beta test the firm’s wearable computer, iron out the kinks, and get the PR ball rolling.

Though consumers have demanded a better way to secure their phones besides passwords, they may have had the answer all along without even knowing it: their body parts. Biometric identification will almost certainty become available within the next few years, and three options will become standard: a fingerprint scanner built into the screen, facial recognition powered by high-definition cameras, and voice recognition based off a large collection of user vocal samples.

German manufacturing firm Festo recently resurrected a Paleozoic dragonfly. No, we’re not talking de-extinction or synthetic biology—this baby’s robotic. But at 70 cm (27 in) by 48 cm (19 in), Festo’s BionicOpter robot dragonfly is a futuristic flying machine with more than a touch of the prehistoric in it.

Singularity University’s FutureMed continues to be a hot ticket. Following the successful (and sold out) February program, the organizers of FutureMed have announced a second program in November 2013. The more intimate annual gathering at NASA Moffet Field isn’t going away. But Daniel Kraft, FutureMed’s Executive Director, told Singularity Hub, “We had five times as many people apply as we had spots in the traditional program. So we thought we’d expand FutureMed to a larger venue.”