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Anthony Atala is not only growing new organs, he's printing them; sometimes even directly on the patient. Although still heavily under clinical study, he's already successfully implanted an "artificial" bladder; and that was 10 years ago.

Engineers at the Honda Research Institute (HRI) of Japan have developed the world's first Brain Machine Interface (BMI) technology. It couples the use of electroencephalography (EEG) and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), to enable control of a robot by human thought alone. That's right, no physical movements of any kind are required.



Read more from the full publication by HRI.

Evernote is a tool to capture, synchronize, and find all the stuff that you come across with your digital technology. Whether it's a small selection of a news article, a ticket to a recent concert, or a business card you want to remember for later. The greatest feature of Evernote is the ability to search text within images. You read right. You can even take a picture of a handwritten note, and Evernote will be able to pick it out, and allow you to search for it. See this short clip to see it in action:

I've been using iTunes for a while now, and until lately I haven't wanted to use it for more than just updating my iPod. Recently though, Apple has added a number of additions that are making me like it more and more.

iTunes DJ

The last update to iTunes, I believe 8.1, included a couple new features that everyone should check out. If you don't already know about the Genius playlist, you really need to play with it. It is Pandora for your home library. Pick a song, and a playlist is made automatically filled with similar music. Genius also scans your library and will find recommendations for new music based on what you have. The first new update is the replacement of the "Party Shuffle" playlist generator with the new and improved "iTunes DJ". The iTunes DJ allows you to select a song, or set of songs, and iTunes will magically create a playlist of songs that are similar. The coolest part is you can have others with iPods or iPhones to request songs to the iTunes DJ. Here's what Apple had to say about it:

Requesting and voting on songs
While you’re playing an iTunes DJ mix, you can use the Remote application on your iPhone or iPod touch to request songs. You can also allow guests to request songs to play, and to vote for songs. Songs that are voted for play sooner.

iTunes Widgets

The next couple of features you should know about, are not new to iTunes, but are new to me, and have to do with sharing your tastes. Apple released a set of "widgets" that allow you to extend your publishing capabilities by adding a little flare of flash to your website. The first of the two widgets is called My iTunes. It is a " simple, self-updating add-on for your web page, social networking profile, or blog. Use My iTunes to share your top reviews, favorite artists, and new music, movies, and TV shows from the iTunes Store with anyone who visits your site." The second widget is iMix. iMix allows you to create playlists, both with your library, and songs you may not already have, but like, from the iTunes store. You can then display your iMix on your blog, social networking profile, or website just by clicking “Publish to the Web” on any iMix page. iTunes builds the code for you, and creates a feed of your iMix.

iTunes U

Download Free Educational Content

Find lectures, language lessons, audiobooks, and podcasts and download them for free. iTunes U is available to everyone, whether you’re a student or not.

Browse Distinguished Institutions

Explore over 75,000 educational audio and video files from top universities, famous museums, PBS stations, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn on the Go

iTunes U audio and video files are called tracks. Download tracks one at a time. Or subscribe to an ongoing course or series so your tracks download as soon as they’re available. iTunes creates a folder with the provider’s name and places your tracks inside. Connect your iPod or iPhone to sync your tracks for on-the-go education. Or watch video lectures on your TV with Apple TV.

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Looks like a lot of work. But I see this as a soon-to-be feature in most new cars.

Check out around 4:45. The music sequencer is crazy.

Associate professor in MIT's Program in Media Arts and Sciences, and founder and director of the Media Lab's Fluid Interfaces group, Pattie Mae, showcases the latest high-tech personal device that literally "senses" objects in it's environment. Both capable of recognizing objects, as well as providing additional details about what it sees. Crazy. The device is primarily developed by a Research Assistant and PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab, Pranav Mistry.

New York Time's technology columnist and Emmy Award-winning tech correspondent for CBS News displays a couple cool things you can do with your cell phone these days. Google Voice (via former Grand Central), looks very promising. I'm on their mailing list. So should you. You also should NEVER pay for 411 services again. Google provides a free 800 number: (800) 466-4411. They will connect you for free.

The most important thing, maybe not to Nasa, but certainly its' astronauts, is the availability of water in space. To solve this problem, Nasa engineers have developed some wonderful methods to retain every ounce of water possible from the surrounding environment. This includes everything from gathering surplus moisture in the air to even extracting it from urine. These new methods of water recycling show some promise for possible house-based water plants.

Read more from Nasa's website >>

I find the strangest things sometimes. Apparently National Geographic did a special a while back on the world's first head transplant. It was performed on a monkey. Doing some research you'll find there have been other such experiments with other animals. Something about this that reminds me of Shakespeare's Hamlet...

Current electrical power generation plants currently use nuclear energy to create copious amounts of steam that in turn motivate turbines to generate our electricity. Seems kind of ridiculous to use a nuclear reactor to create steam right? Well, thankfully, Liviu Popa-Simil, former Los Alamos National Laboratory nuclear engineer and founder of private research and development company LAVM and Claudiu Muntele, of Alabama's A&M University, feel that transforming the actual radiation into electricity is a little more practical; not to mention more efficient. Read more from the full article.

It is interesting reading about the advances and enhancements that have been made to this thing we call life. Only in the past century have we truly begun to understand the functions of our dimensions; and only recently have we been capable of altering and adding to these functions. We've reached a point in science where we are to decide on the ultimate fate of its direction and synergy with technology. We are either to alter our existing biology, or we are to engineer new biological structures. Solutions for these directions are already being researched and developed. The evolution and expansion of nanotechnology has provided for an interface to access these solutions and propel us into a future, like always, we thought would never come.

This past year, Engineers in Japan have created the first nano-CPU at only 10 nanometers in length capable of dynamic receptor-based computation. In other words, computation based on the cellular interaction of engineered neurons. Shortly these CPUs will be networked to create Neuronets equivalent to the human brain, with the exception being that each computerized neuron will contain a mini-CPU of its own capable of processing instructions, and eventually thinking for itself. R&D labs across the world are forming new means of interacting with the atoms of our composition.Chemical brains are capable of controlling nanobots(cellular robots) to perform functions that only living things used to be capable of performing. As stated in the article, "the molecular device - just two billionths of a metre across - was able to control eight of the microscopic machines simultaneously in a test."

Reading and writing DNA becomes the next big topic of future technology structures. Studies are being undertaken, in an effort to map the ocean's biodiversity, to accomplish this very task. A brief overview of the project is given in the following video from TED:

These studies involving the decoding of genomes has taken vast leaps in progress. Juan Rodreguez speaks in the following TED video describing the next steps of decoding the future with Genomics. This fascinating video divulges into the depths of genomic research and development projects that are bringing some of these futuristic ideas to fruition.

Well now that we have a solid foundation underway for genomic classification, engineering, and assembly, what would some of the technological applications look like? Well one example would most obviously be within the medical field. Imagine being capable of regenerating limbs much like that of a Gecko. Impossible? Well Alan Russell, Director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine speaks in this TED presentation on the work of his research in the regenerative medicine field, and the direction of the applications their findings are bringing about.

The future is best propagated through knowledge and innovation. However, at what point does innovation overcome knowledge, and at what cost is this path hindered? In this phenomenal TED speach, Juan Enriquez describes how all hydrocarbons are really just compressed sunlight, and how we might soon be able to use this fact to not only start growing our own energy, but even using light as a source of food.

All of this information and technology leads us to believe that we are heading toward an age of agelessness, where we forever create worlds and realms that are more than virtual. To some It may appear as if our innovation is destined to outlast the very civilization that built it. I will leave you with one last TED talk by Aubrey Degrey on why we age, and how we can avoid it. In his fast paced speech, Mr. Degrey outlines a possible future for an ageless society.

Facinating. Isn't it?

First cars that run on water, then temperature sensitive color morphing materials, now fuel-free energy generation using just magnets. A wonderful bunch those Aussies are.

One thing comes into mind when reading this article: if a two year old gets a hold of one of these, they just might stop asking their parents, "...and what's that!?"

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/22/evolution_robotics/

Just think of it as a hand-held price scanner, interactive encyclopedia, and once the world's police get their hands on one: portable facial recognition.

Isn't technology wonderful?

I remember reading an article back when GPS had first started appearing in cell phones on a large scale, and MIT had done a study to see if they could predict people's movement simply by using their cell phones as tracking devices. They restricted the study to the campus and the results turned out to be remarkably accurate. Anyways, I was jogging the Oracle's memory (surfing the internet that is), and came across the after effect of this study: Nathan Eagle leading a team of the Human Dynamics Group at MIT Media Labs creating something they coin "Reality Mining." Below you may find a brief synopsis from their website:

Research Design and Methodology
The Reality Mining research project has three aims: developing technology and algorithms for sensing, modeling, and changing human behavior. The sensing component is accomplished with mobile phone applications that capture data on users' location, proximity, communication and device usage behavior. The models are being generated using data from an ongoing study consisting of one hundred human subjects over the course of eight months and representing approximately 500,000 hours (~60 years) of human behavior. Seventy of the users are at the MIT Media Laboratory, while the remaining thirty are incoming students at the MIT Sloan business school adjacent to the laboratory. For the final aim, we develop algorithms for generating theoretically improved social network topologies and methods to implement these changes in a real social network through proximity-based notifications.