Science of the Future

Neural networks are the crown jewel of the AI boom. They gorge on data and do things like transcribe speech ...

Is there a likely solution in sight for hunger? “I now say that the world has the technology—either available or well ...

Every patient is unique, and the art of medicine is the component of the practice that addresses such uniqueness with ...

Input-intensive crop monocultures and industrial-scale feedlots must be consigned to the past in order to put global food systems onto ...

Earlier this year, [Boston Dynamics founder Marc] Raibert said the company planned to start selling its SpotMini robot dogs in 2019, and ...

DNA can now predict your facial structure. What does that mean for personal privacy? ...

SETI enthusiasts have devised all sorts of complicated ways for us to find signs of alien life, but a new ...

[N]ot everyone is ready to welcome AI with open arms. In recent years, as computer scientists have pushed the boundaries ...

The basic unit of life is the cell; tiny, fatty, self-replicating bubbles that have adapted to fill almost every environment ...

A new green revolution is in the making. Farmers in India are now using social media to promote and advocate ...

Researchers at MIT have created a psychopath. They call him Norman. He’s a computer. Actually, that’s not really right. Though ...

[T]oday, ever-sophisticated robots are graduating from Disneyland-style animatronics into increasingly realistic, intelligent beings. Take the famous human replicas of Hiroshi Ishi­guro. Or the ...

Artificial intelligence will in time bring extraordinary benefits to medical science, clean-energy provision, environmental issues, and many other areas. But precisely ...

Over the last several years, Ginkgo [Bioworks] has developed an automated process for combining genetic parts that has made it ...

In 1998, while looking for topics for her Master’s thesis at the American University in Cairo, [Rana] el Kaliouby stumbled ...

Our existence here is proof enough that it can happen. We can imagine that if life comes to exist anywhere else ...

In a field of sugar beet in Switzerland, a solar-powered robot that looks like a table on wheels scans the ...

That the responsibility for preventing unintended pregnancy still lies almost exclusively with women remains one of the world’s great health ...

Though they look indistinguishable from the other cows on a dairy farm in Utah, three cyborg cows with implanted sensors ...

Lawmakers in the House of Representatives recently proposed legislation for NASA’s future that includes some intriguing language. The space agency, the bill recommends, ...

Contemporary humans do not deliberately kill the horseshoe crabs—as did previous centuries of farmers catching them for fertilizer or fishermen ...

Here are five of the most important questions that lie ahead for microbiome science. 1) What makes a gut microbiome ...

Crispr, the powerful gene-editing tool, is revolutionizing the speed and scope with which scientists can modify the DNA of organisms, including ...

Grinders are hackers, but the hardware they aim to hack is the human body. They are transhumanist in the most ...

With the stripes of a tiger, the body shape of a dog and the pouch of a kangaroo, the Australian ...

Controlling your gadgets by talking to them is so 2018. In the future, you won’t even have to move your ...

Synthetic biology has become the new frontier of genetic engineering, promising to radically change the way we make clothes, fragrances, ...