Science of the Future
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Artificial consent: Unproven AI making key decisions about patients health care without their knowledge
At a growing number of prominent hospitals and clinics around the country, clinicians are turning to AI-powered decision support tools ...
Geopolitics of the future: AI autonomous fighting robots could spark a news arms race
Abishur Prakash, geopolitical futurist for the Center for Innovating the Future, discussed the potential scenarios that could unfold in the ...
Viewpoint: AI trolls try to undermine innovation by grossly exaggerating risks
[A]n open letter, signed by various scientists and researchers [warns] EU policymakers to beware of calls for “weakening regulation and ...
Lab-made breast milk could ‘spell trouble’ for $45-billion infant formula industry
It won’t be easy to cell-culture breast milk in the lab. But early results are promising enough to spell trouble ...
Teaching AI to think ethically
[M]athematicians have developed a model that can help businesses spot when commercial AI systems might make shady choices in the ...
Can science reverse physical aging? It can—in mice
Even though the average life-expectancy for humans continues to rise, living longer is often associated with age-related health issues. Now, ...
Why haven’t we been contacted by alien civilizations? Maybe because most have extinguished themselves, as we likely will
For some reason, civilization is not a self-perpetuating state of affairs on this planet. And perhaps not on other planets, ...
Space-thriving bacteria hold key to quickly and cheaply producing innovative polio vaccine
[Molecular biologist Mike] Daly has been investigating ways to apply the lessons learned from this bacteria’s unique radiation resistance to ...
How can we better expose ‘silent’ war crimes? Thousands of human rights violations identified through crowdsourced evidence
By some estimates, [a coalition between Saudi Arabia and eight other Sunni Arab states has] carried out over 20,000 air ...
How to keep virtual reality from taking over real life
American R&B star John Legend is doing a major live show on Thursday June 25 to promote his new album, ...
Concerned about ‘fake news’? It could get a lot worse with AI
Fake news has certainly become a widespread and insidious problem, and in a year when we’re dealing with both a ...
Extraterrestrial alert: 737 places where aliens might be hiding
The Exotica Catalog was put together by researchers from Breakthrough Listen, a decade-long program seeking to find signs of intelligent ...
GMO skeptics are also likely to reject nano food technologies that could enhance flavor and nutrition, survey shows
Scientists at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH) have ...
Why space travel demands a well-stocked cosmic pharmacy
In space, no one can hear you sneeze. But if an astronaut does catch the flu, it can be a ...
Bioprinting human ears inside living mice—all without a single surgical cut
Tissue engineering just got wilder and weirder. Using nothing but light and bioink, scientists were able to directly print a ...
Scanning the horizon for the next decade’s biotech breakthroughs, including tools to fight the next pandemic
In 2017 we published the results of a ‘horizon scan’ that looked at emerging issues in bioengineering (Wintle et al., ...
How supercomputing is taking on the COVID-19 pandemic
In “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams, the haughty supercomputer Deep Thought is asked whether he can ...
Supercomputers take first steps toward replacing human clinical drug trials
We are seeing the beginnings of a profound paradigm shift in health technology. AI simulations have the potential to test ...
‘Spectacularly unimpressive’: Neural network AI asked to judge human personalities through photos
[If] personality traits have a significant genetic contribution (which seems clear) then we can ask – to what extent do ...
The human brain may not be such a great model for designing artificial intelligence
[M]ost artificial neural networks are decidedly un-brainlike, in part because they learn using mathematical tricks that would be difficult, if ...
‘Trial by fire’: How COVID-19 is changing the biotech industry’s relationship with artificial intelligence
AI is currently being used by many companies to identify and screen existing drugs that could be repurposed to treat ...
‘AI in archeology’ pinpointing new excavation sites at an ‘unimaginable’ pace
Archaeologists have uncovered scores of long-abandoned settlements along coastal Madagascar that reveal environmental connections to modern-day communities. They have detected ...
If we want to go to Mars, we’ll need to figure out how to feed our astronauts. Synthetic biology can help.
Revolutionary food production and closed-loop biomanufacturing could transform human space travel and address the growing food crisis on Earth ...
What’s holding up gene therapy? Making drugs on a large scale
As interest in gene therapy grows, manufacturers face physical, biological, and engineering challenges to developing and producing drugs on a ...
From bioterror to bioerror: Who’s afraid of biohacking?
In March, amateur scientists in Sydney announced they had created a COVID-19 test kit that is simpler, faster, and cheaper ...
Is climate change dampening our ability to fight the coronavirus and other diseases?
Scientists have long known that the rise in average global temperatures is expanding the geographical presence of vector-borne diseases such ...
Can Google’s medical AI improve our medical system? Laboratory results and real life offer different answers
[A] study from Google Health—the first to look at the impact of a deep-learning tool in real clinical settings—reveals that ...
Do rising carbon dioxide levels dampen our ability to think and make decisions?
As the 21st century progresses, rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations will cause urban and indoor levels of the gas ...
