UCLA neuroscientists have for the first time made a direct recording of mirror neurons in the human brain. The researchers found that the neurons fired or showed their greatest activity both when the individual performed a task and when they observed a task. (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news190307792.html)

A new computer-based technique is exploring uncharted territory in the fruit fly brain with cell-by-cell detail that can be built into networks for a detailed look at how the estimated 100,000 neurons work together. Research may ultimately lead to a complete master plan of the entire fly brain (Hanchuan Peng) (Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/58235/title/Mapping_the_fruit_fly_brain)

A new experimental ultrasensitive imaging technique developed by Purdue University scientists that uses a pulsed laser and tiny metallic "nanocages" might enable both the early detection and treatment of cancer and other diseases. The new imaging approach uses a phenomenon called "three-photon luminescence," which provides higher contrast and brighter images than conventional fluorescence imaging methods. Purdue University Normally, three-photon luminescence is too dim to be used for imaging. However, the presence of gold and silver nanoparticles enhances the brightness, overcoming this obstacle. The ultrafast laser also is thought to possibly play a role by causing "third harmonic generation," which increases the brightness. (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news190308607.html)

A new interface from Microsoft Research, called Manual Deskterity, attempts to combine the strengths of touch interaction with the precision of a pen. (Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/25038/?a=f)

The Wearable Agri Robot (for aging Japanese farmers), the ReWalk (for lower-limb-mobility-impaired adults), the HAL-5 robot suit (boosts strength by ten times), and Biotime's recent reversal of the aging of human cells (they restored the length of the telomeres in cells back to an embryonic state) are among the emerging technologies targeted to the elderly. (Source: http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/04/exoskeletons-and-other-technology-to.html)

Researchers from around the world are gathering this week in San Jose, Calif., for the largest conference on psychedelic science held in the United States in four decades. They plan to discuss studies of psilocybin and other psychedelics for treating depression in cancer patients, obsessive-compulsive disorder, end-of-life anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and addiction to drugs or alcohol. (Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/science/12psychedelics.html)

MIT researchers have used a modified virus called M13 as a kind of biological scaffold to allow self-assembly of nanoscale components that mimic artificial photosynthesis to split water and make oxygen. The researchers hope to find a similar biologically based system to perform the other half of the process, the production of hydrogen fuel. (Source: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/belcher-water-0412.html)

The 8th European conference on Computing And Philosophy - ECAP 2010, Technische Universitat, Munich, Germany has issued a call for papers on Technological Singularity & Acceleration Studies, with a submission deadline for extended abstracts of May 7, 2010. "We invite submissions describing systematic attempts at understanding the likelihood and nature of these projections. In particular, we welcome papers critically analyzing the following issues from a philosophical, computational, mathematical, scientific and ethical standpoints: * Claims about and evidence to acceleration * The nature of an intelligence explosion and its possible outcomes * The nature of the Technological Singularity and its outcome * Safe and unsafe artificial general intelligence and preventative measures * Technological forecasts of computing phenomena and their projected impact * Critical analysis of past and future technological forecasts * Beyond the 'event horizon' of the Technological Singularity * The prospects of transhuman breakthroughs and likely timeframes" More information: ECAP 2010 Website. (Source: )

The maiden test flight of the first ultra-lightweight experimental solar plane, the Solar Impulse, lifted off at a military airport in the Swiss countryside Wednesday. The plane, designed by a Swiss team headed by Bertrand Piccard, has wings as wide as a Boeing 747. Equipped with 12,000 solar cells, 880 pounds of lithium batteries and four 10 horsepower electric motors, the plane weighs about 3,500 pounds. Piccard has set his next goal as flying the solar plane around the world in 2012. The main objective is to demonstrate that renewable energy has arrived, and is ready to replace fossil fuel. (Source: http://technorati.com/technology/article/solar-powered-plane-solar-impulse-has/)

Researchers at Southeast University in Nanjing, China have designed a metamaterial that not only makes an object invisible, but also generates one or more virtual images in its place. Because it doesn't simply display the background environment to a viewer, this kind of optical device could have applications that go beyond a normal invisibility cloak. (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news189418826.html)

EXPO21XX has created an online exhibition to showcase projects underway in more than 100 university robotics labs from around the world. (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news189868063.html)

Intel Corp. has introduced software that analyzes functional MRI scans to determine what parts of a person's brain are being activated as he or she thinks, demonstrating 90 percent accuracy in guesses about which of two words a person was thinking about. (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news189919411.html)

Piezoelectric nanoscale sensors that are self-powered by biomechanical motion (such as body movements) can now produce 2.4 volts, Georgia Tech scientist Zhong Lin Wang reports. They could be useful for detecting molecular signs of disease in the blood, minute amounts of poisonous gases in the air, and trace contaminants in food -- batteries not required. (Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/22118/)

Hewlett-Packard scientists plan today to report advances in the design of memristors, a new class of devices capable of replacing transistors, using a vast three-dimensional array, which allows for ultradense computing devices. HP now has working 3-nanometer memristors that can switch on and off in about a nanosecond. HP says it could have a competitor to flash memory in three years that would have a capacity of 20 gigabytes a square centimeter. Memristor-based systems also hold out the prospect of fashioning analog computing systems that function like biological synapses in brains. (Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/science/08chips.html)

Brain imaging of people undergoing deep brain stimulation* (DBS) to treat depression is revealing the mechanism behind the effects of DBS, which seems to tune an array of brain regions, not just the area around the electrode, according to researcher Helen Mayberg of Emory University. Ultimately, the specificity of optogenetics (in which individual neurons are turned off and on with pulses of light) might allow researchers to make far more subtle changes to brain networks. * Applying rapid pulses of weak current via electrodes to specific brain locations (Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627553.600-electrical-engineering-fixes-brains-circuit-board.html)

Could our universe be located within the interior of a wormhole that itself is part of a black hole that lies within a much larger universe? Einstein-Rosen bridges like the one visualized above have never been observed in nature, but they provide theoretical physicists and cosmologists with solutions in general relativity by combining models of black holes and white holes. Such a scenario in which the universe is born from inside a wormhole (also called an Einstein-Rosen Bridge) is suggested in a paper from Indiana University theoretical physicist Nikodem Poplawski in Physics Letters B. A white hole is connected to a black hole by an Einstein-Rosen bridge and is hypothetically the time reversal of a black hole. Poplawski's paper suggests that all astrophysical black holes, not just Schwarzschild and Einstein-Rosen black holes, may have Einstein-Rosen bridges, each with a new universe inside that formed simultaneously with the black hole. This model in isotropic coordinates of the universe as a black hole could also explain the origin of cosmic inflation, Poplawski theorizes. More info: Indiana University News (Source: )

A group of US scientists has developed an acoustic lens made of a metamaterial that can focus acoustic waves with greater energy than ever before possible to produce "sound bullets" that could find many uses, including effective, nonintrusive sonic scalpels for destroying tumors or kidney stones. It could also be used to produce near photo-quality images of the inside of the body, but without the radiation risks of X-rays. (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news189837358.html)

University of Florida researchers have developed a smart pill with a tiny antenna and microchip that could signal when it has made it into a patient's stomach, reporting to a cell phone or computer that they patient has taken the medicine. This is the latest of several high-tech pill-reporting efforts to improve patient adherence and provide accurate reporting. (Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/25002/)

John Doerr and partners at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers have increased the size of the iFund (for iPad apps) and see the iPad (and other tablets) enabling users to interact "fluidly on full and fast screens with vast information stored locally. And that will start a third renaissance of software. "It's time to move beyond spreadsheets and word processors, beyond web sites limited by browsers… to interactive, connected applications with incredible simplicity, speed, and fluidity. "Bill Joy says the key to more performance is lower power. Over the next decade he sees 3 times better batteries, and 10 times lower power chips. So we should be able to run, for the same price, 30 times as much application... [and] storage." "What's important is the new ways tablet computers will be used. They won't just be reactive, responding to commands. They'll also be proactive. "They will be much more than personal computers. They'll be interpersonal surfaces and services. Working seamlessly, unobtrusively, and comfortably in the spaces between us, between you and me and others." (Source: )

Research project trying to create artificial consciousness include the Intelligent Distribution Agent (IDA), built in 2003 by Stan Franklin at the University of Memphis in Tennessee, which assigns sailors in the US navy to new jobs when they finish a tour of duty; and a humanoid robot developed by Owen Holland's team at the University of Sussex, UK, based on the assumption that robot with a body that is very close to a human's will develop more human-like cognition. (Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627542.000-picking-our-brains-can-we-make-a-conscious-machine.html)