Science of the Future
Below is the complete archive of related articles sorted by date.
Will weed-killing robots replace controversial herbicides on the farm?
Weeds are the bane of a farmer’s existence—the “most important of all crop pests,” as one scientist put it. They ...
Could we be designing babies from a menu of genetic options in 2045?
The year is 2045. The genomes of four billion humans have been sequenced, creating a huge pool of genetic information ...
Why we lose when Hollywood distorts CRISPR gene editing in the name of entertainment
Adding misinformation to a climate of fear and distrust plants more seeds of suspicion in the public mind ...
Can genetic engineering save the world’s coral reefs from climate change?
The relentless rise of global temperatures is imperiling coral reefs around the world. Just 75 kilometers offshore from the research ...
Viewpoint: AI may boost our diagnostic abilities, but it’s not ready to replace human doctors
I read a recent article in Nature Medicine about new inroads in deploying artificial intelligence (AI) in pediatrics. In the article, researchers ...
Podcast: Jamie Metzl’s ‘Hacking Darwin’—The end of sex and humanity’s genetically engineered future
Imagine a world in which would-be parents no longer have sex but conceive children with the assistance of embryo selection ...
Frozen in time: You can be cryogenically preserved, but will you ever be revived?
Preservation technologies promise the ability to suspend life for decades or even centuries. That would come with all sorts of ...
NASA twins study highlights key risks for long-term space travel: Cosmic rays and microgravity
When NASA reported preliminary observations about the famous “twin astronaut” study a year ago, the media rushed in, reporting the ...
First 3D heart printed with human tissue could mark key step toward transplantable organs
Scientists in Israel unveiled a 3D print of a heart with human tissue and vessels on Monday [April 15, 2019], ...
Why Microsoft wants to design a system that stores data in DNA
DNA is emerging as an ultra-compact way of storing it all, and now researchers supported by Microsoft have created the first ...
Podcast: ‘Artificial womb’ raises awkward ethical questions about abortion, child welfare and health freedom
Biotechnology is fundamentally changing food and medicine. Thanks to genetic engineering, for example, we have access vitamin-fortified GMO crops, plentiful ...
No longer science fiction: Brain-to-brain interfaces can transmit thoughts
It’s not sci-fi, it’s not mind control, but a real world attempt at telepathy ...
We have so much genomic data—we need AI to help us grapple with it
Genomics is set to become the biggest source of data on the planet, overtaking the current leading heavyweights – astronomy, ...
How ‘smart toilets’ and other technologies could help detect cancer before it’s too late
I believe we should be more aggressively pursuing precision health: ways to prevent disease and, when that isn’t possible, intercept and ...
Infrared vision? We’ve now given it to mice and humans could be next
[Researchers Tian Xue and Gang Han] modified the vision of mice such that they were able to see near-infrared light ...
3 ways artificial intelligence could enhance medical care and help us live longer
When it comes to the future of healthcare, perhaps the only technology more powerful than CRISPR is artificial intelligence. ...
‘Human-controlled rat cyborgs’ are real
Scientists have created human-controlled rat cyborgs. Lest you think this is some media sensationalism at work, here’s the actual title ...
‘Genome profiling’—not gene editing—could offer easiest path to smarter babies
For the foreseeable future, editing embryos to enhance IQ is a sci-fi fantasy. A different approach aimed at enhancing IQ ...
Video: Tomorrow’s crops could be grown indoors, without soil or pesticides
As the world's population grows and climate change accelerates, farmers are increasingly turning to biotechnology, engineering and data science to ...
Artificial intelligence could have a future diagnosing sick children, study says
With the money and time that visits to the ER and urgent care soak up, the chance to revisit old-fashioned ...
Brain implants could soon join fight against severe depression
With powerful computational methods, scientists have recently zeroed in on some key features of depressed brains. Those hallmarks include certain ...
Rethinking cancer care: Home-based treatments may be right around the corner
Imagine having cancer and being told that most of your treatment will happen in your home instead of a high-tech ...
Gene drives reach their next frontier: Mammals
Tiny snippets of engineered DNA, gene drives are nuclear-grade powerhouses that utterly destroy the rules of inheritance. Rather than the classic ...
China is growing crops on the moon in preparation for its proposed lunar base
There’s cotton growing on the far side of the moon—the first time plants have sprouted there. On January 3, a ...
7 ways biotechnology could change our lives in 2019
[Editor's note: Key researchers and scientists were asked for their thoughts on 2019.] Gene editing, food innovation, and synthetic biology ...
How a single amoeba could ‘change the face of computing forever’
A group of researchers from Tokyo’s Keio University set out to use an amoeba to solve the Traveling Salesman Problem, a famous ...
New ‘nanotweezers’ can pull material from living cells without causing harm
Scientists at the Imperial College London have revealed their creation of a set of nanotweezers that can work on the ...
