Science of the Future
We have 4 ways to search for alien life. Where should we focus our resources?
There are, right now, four ways to search for alien life, ranging from the most passive to the most active ...
Trends that will shape the 2020s: Psychedelics as medicine, diagnostic cell phone apps and AI prediction of disease outbreaks
Clearly, a lot can happen in a decade—but innovation has to start somewhere. Based on what’s breaking through now, here ...
Targeting super bacteria with artificial intelligence yields ‘powerful’ discovery
We’re now facing the emergence of strains of super bacteria resistant to one or more antibiotics and an aging arsenal ...
Viewpoint: My daughter taught me that ‘broken’ genes shouldn’t always be fixed
Ruthie is a vibrant teenager. She will never learn how to drive and or read normal-sized print without assistive technology, ...
‘Expanding the capabilities of the human body’: Russian biohackers turn to implants, supplements and extreme exercise
Gripping a scalpel, Vladislav Zaitsev makes an incision in the fold of skin between his client's thumb and index finger ...
This robotic face will wince if you hit it. How does it process pain?
Sensors embedded in soft, artificial skin that can detect both a gentle touch and a painful thump have been hooked ...
Viewpoint: Artificial intelligence ‘without guard rails’ is growing global threat
Technology is bestowing wonderful opportunities and benefits to the world, but the acceleration of development, and lack of global regulatory ...
Can artificial intelligence diagnose diseases? Promising apps in development but kinks remain
An algorithm that can spot cause and effect could supercharge medical AI. The technique, inspired by quantum cryptography, would allow ...
Viewpoint: AI has one glaring weakness in health care: There’s no human touch
It might be that, as physicians who work in a public health care system that relies on fax machines, carbon ...
Would artificial wombs liberate women from the ‘blood, sweat and tears’ of pregnancy?
By lifting the burden of reproduction, artificial wombs might liberate women ...
‘More than human’: How neural implants, robotics and artificial intelligence are redefining who we are
Advances in human enhancement make cyborgs a future possibility ...
‘Politics and war’: Why life on other planets would look a lot like our own
If other beings do populate the universe, what are they doing out there? Are the possible inhabitants of Teegarden b, ...
‘My entire goal is to basically age in reverse’: How biohackers are attempting to engineer longer lives
When day breaks, they go out in their yard and face the rising sun — Thaddeus [Owen] in shorts and ...
Human hibernation eyed as solution for severe trauma, weight loss and deep-space travel
A small group of scientists is taking human hibernation extremely seriously. They are studying the basic mechanisms with an eye ...
Video: In 40 years, babies could be made in the lab from skin cells
The "birds and the bees" as we know them are changing. A new process called in vitro gametogenesis (IVG) is ...
‘Living, self-healing xenobots’ made from frog stem cells could lead to new drug delivery system
They’re perfect strangers: biological entities that, up until this point, had no business being together. And yet, [microbiologist Michael] Levin ...
Video: Building a bionic prosthetic leg that ‘thinks for itself’
It’s no question that researchers, doctors, and engineers want to design more effective robotic limbs that can help paralyzed and ...
Rapid-diagnosing AI makes brain cancer operations ‘safer and more effective than ever before’
Expert human pathologists typically require around 30 minutes to diagnose brain tumors from tissue samples extracted during surgery. A new ...
‘Chilling’ solution to Fermi paradox: Are intelligent life forms destined to destroy themselves?
If we compress the history of the universe into a single year, Earth and our solar system formed around Labor ...
‘Almost no limit’: Synthetic biology has turned the stuff of science fiction into the stuff of science
Synthetic biology, or the application of engineering principles to the design of life, presents world-changing prospects. Could components of a ...
Fighting climate change by reprogramming yeast, bacteria to feast on carbon dioxide
An organism easily adapted to different environments and ready to consume any compound would be a valuable tool ...
GMOs, biosensors and biopreservation: Tools that can fight global hunger by reducing food spoilage
We're feeding an ever-increasing number of people. Getting the rest of the way by 2030 will require every innovation we ...
We can’t embrace machine learning in healthcare without ‘serious vetting’ of the underlying data
Given that machine learning in the health domain can have a direct impact on people’s lives, broad claims emerging from ...
Finding a new home: Humanity’s survival could depend on a 1,000-year space journey to Proxima b
Located in the triple-star Alpha Centauri solar system, Proxima b has a mass 1.3 times that of Earth and a ...
3D-printed plastic bunny contains its own blueprint coded in synthetic DNA
The kumquat-sized bunny, cute as it may be, isn’t a toy or a good luck charm. But if you cut ...
‘Proteomic clock’ could measure our true biological age through a blood test
A few hundred of the thousands of proteins circulating in our blood turn out to be a fairly accurate forecaster ...
Does AI represent our best bet for extending human lives?
Co-founder and CEO [of Insilico Medicine] Alex Zhavoronkov said he believes there is no greater goal in healthcare today—or, really, ...