"Facial recognition will be a growing source of friction because the companies that are building businesses around connecting the physical you to some form of online identity will, over time connect people to the online you that makes them the most revenue, rather than the online you that makes the most sense to you. A lot of this will happen in the background, but there it will have sufficient visibility to be annoying e.g. a picture of your face as a search parameter triggering an advertisement for a particular kind of product."

A warning to a generation

"You probably remember serial ports as the ancient nine-pin plugs you once used to hook up your mouse or joystick to your computer in the pre-USB dark ages. But tracking down devices that still use serial port connections isn’t so hard, it seems. In fact, according to H.D. Moore, any hacker can find–and tamper with–more than 100,000 of them over the Internet, including critical systems ranging from traffic lights to fuel pumps to building heating and cooling systems to retail point-of-sale devices."

Jan Chipchase: "On Friday I was invited into Google Labs New York and given the opportunity to try out Glass. I declined to put on a pair. Here's why."

"You are walking down the street with a friend. A shot is fired. The two of you duck behind the nearest cover and you pull out your smartphone. A map of the neighborhood pops up on its screen with a large red arrow pointing in the direction the shot came from."

“I have two iPhones, one for day and one for the night. When the day phone runs out, the night phone takes over. I never have to worry.” Bigend-Packerism. Some even more awful quotes therein. He should have been prevented from giving the interview.

video calling as "always-on, ambient, background presence." I love it when BERG do these breakdowns.

Rachel Armstrong at our Eindhoven thing. She is brilliant.

"Imagine a cell phone charger that recharges your phone remotely without even knowing where it is; a device that targets and destroys tumors, wherever they are in the body; or a security field that can disable electronics, even a listening device hiding in a prosthetic toe, without knowing where it is."

"How would you like to replace your water heater with a nuclear reactor? That's what Joseph Zawodny, a senior scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center, hopes to help bring about. It would tap the enormous power of the atom to provide hot water for your bath, warm air for your furnace system, and more than enough electricity to run your house and, of course, your electric car."

"An experimental device allowed the rats to "touch" infrared light - which is normally invisible to them."

"The world of domesticated, tiny AIs that Matt was talking about two years ago is what BERG is starting to explore, manufacture – and sell in every larger numbers."

PHOTON SIEVE

A giant shining dome of illuminated QR codes

"the new aerogel"

"A team of engineers at Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania has for the first time used "plasmonic cloaking" to create a device that can see without being seen - an invisible machine that detects light."

"Unfortunately, the lack of full data overlays also makes the headset less exciting. The type of display Google is now describing has been on the market for years"

"An international research breakthrough with bees means machines might soon be able to see almost as well as humans. The Australian and French research shows that honeybees use multiple rules to solve complex visual problems."

"In this context, teleportation is used to denote the exchange of information describing the states of two separate entities without having to move any actual information through the space between them."

"SWŸP--PRONOUNCED “SWIPE”--LETS USERS DRAG FILES FROM ONE DEVICE TO ANOTHER, JUST BY SWIPING THEIR FINGER. AND IT ISN’T JUST A COOL IDEA. IT’S REALITY."

"Claimed to be near invisible to radar and able to dominate any future battlefield, the F-35 will replace most of the air-combat aircraft in the inventories of the U.S. Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and at least nine foreign allies, and it will be in those inventories for the next 55 years. It's no secret, however, that the program -- the most expensive in American history -- is a calamity."

"An artificially excavated limestone pit in the south of France will soon host star-making technology, New Scientist reports. "If all goes well," the magazine explains, in a few year's time the pit will "rage with humanity's first self-sustaining fusion reaction, an artificial sun ten times hotter than the one that gives our planet life.""

solar cells thinner than a thread of spider silk that are flexible enough to be wrapped around a single human hair.

" Remote Sensing is a technology for sampling electromagnetic radiation comprising a signal emanating from its source target that is used to acquire and interpret non-contiguous geospatial data from which to extract information about features, objects, and classes on the Earth's land surface, oceans, and atmosphere (and, where applicable, on the exteriors of other bodies in the Solar System, or, in the broadest framework, celestial bodies such as stars and galaxies)."

"The stunningly innovative designs, which NASA calls "greener flying machines for the year 2025", are being developed by three firms under contract to the NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate's Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) Project."

"A recent McClatchy report revealed that it takes nearly 170 people to keep a single Predator drone in the air for 24 hours."

"Technologies change us, but we change the technologies, too. Technology is not an external force emerging from the very fabric of the universe (and, as you know, there are some Singularitypes out there who seriously believe that Moore’s Law is woven into the laws of nature); our technologies (plural, lower-case T) are cultural constructs. They are artifacts of our minds, our norms and values, our societies."

COMET HARPOON GUN

"The use of ultra-cold atoms leads to circuit elements that allow for the coherent flow of information and may be useful in connecting classical electronic devices and quantum computers." ATOMTRONICS!

Doctors in the Scottish city which pioneered the use of ultrasound to scan the body are now using it to heal broken bones.

In a world first, Osamu Hasegawa, associate professor at the Tokyo Insitute of Technology, has developed a system that allows robots to look around their environment and do research on the Internet, enabling them to "think" how best to solve a problem.

"It wasn't my arm but it was my brain, my thoughts. I was moving something," Hemmes says. "I don't have one single word to give you what I felt at that moment. That word doesn't exist."

"The 10cm (4in) sheet of smart transparency is driven by "ripple power"; waves of electrical current driving thin pockets of air from front to rear underneath."

"A Japanese company has developed a miniature version of Noah's ark in case Japan is hit by another massive earthquake and tsunami – a floating capsule that looks like a huge tennis ball."

"(PhysOrg.com) -- If typical black paint absorbs about 85% of incoming light, then a newly designed metamaterial that absorbs up to 99% of incoming light may be considered “darker than black." By taking advantage of the unique light-scattering properties of metamaterials, researchers have discovered that a hyperbolic metamaterial with a corrugated surface can have a very low reflectance, which could make it promising for high-efficiency solar cells, photodetectors, and radar stealth technology."

"This wearable antenna is able to send a signal to satellites using the Cospas-Sarsat worldwide search and rescue satellite system. It is made from highly flexible, lightweight material that is robust against water exposure and moist conditions, and resistant to wear and tear."

"Fireball - a prototype 500g throwable sensor “grenade” from Intel allows firemen to monitor temperature and levels of specific gases (ammonia, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide). The data is sent to a server in the fire engine, then sent back to the firefighters via smartphones or other devices."

"Materials scientists at the University of Washington have built a novel transistor that uses protons, creating a key piece for devices that can communicate directly with living things...Applications in the next decade or so, Rolandi said, would likely be for direct sensing of cells in a laboratory. The current prototype has a silicon base and could not be used in a human body. Longer term, however, a biocompatible version could be implanted directly in living things to monitor, or even control, certain biological processes directly."

Researchers have created the smallest electric motor ever devised.

"I’m fine with the usual engineer trope of saying something’s impossible, and then going away and doing it. I expect that; in fact, I’ve even grown to look forward to that happening on a project, as confirmation that what I’m trying to do is far enough out the difficulty curve to be interesting. What I do not get is why some people seemed so offended by what we were trying to do with PERRY that they’d invest time and energy in trying to convince us it wasn’t worth the effort."

Ravens are now being upgraded to use a communications system that provides enough bandwidth for 40 of them to fly in the same area, instead of the current four. This digital upgrade also turns the drones into networked devices that can communicate with other robots and systems. 

By day 28, the patient had recovered from the tumor lysis syndrome – and his blood and marrow showed no evidence of leukemia.

The algorithm works like a computerized sleuth, taking pieces of information such as phone calls, emails, or credit card interactions and reducing them to a set of random variables for further analysis.

Requests for cellphone debugging exams ($150), in which phones are examined for tracking devices and software, are up, as are sales of Spy Shops’ $1,800 cellphones, equipped with built-in scramblers to prevent conversations from being monitored.

"a prosthetic chip that uses electrodes to enhance and expand their memory abilities. The chip is capable of storing neural signals, basically functioning as an electronic memory"

"Mr. Harms, who is currently a design engineering student at the Royal College of Art in London, has designed the NutriSmart system. The system is based on edible RFID tags that will tell you more about your food then you ever wanted to know."

"Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST), a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) programme designed to spot people who are intending to commit a terrorist act, has in the past few months completed its first round of field tests at an undisclosed location in the northeast, Nature has learned."

A new biomaterial designed for repairing damaged human tissue doesn’t wrinkle up when it is stretched. The invention from nanoengineers at the University of California, San Diego marks a significant breakthrough in tissue engineering because it more closely mimics the properties of native human tissue.

"an interactive projector that instantly transforms any flat surface into a touch screen. It frees multimedia content from the confines of the small screen, allowing users to interact with that content just as they do on their hand held devices – using multi-touch technology."

"University of Oregon researcher Richard Taylor is on a quest to grow flowers that will help people who've lost their sight, such as those suffering from macular degeneration, to see again."

"The ’guardian angels’ will be inconspicuous, intelligent and self-sufficient devices designed to help people in daily life. They include sensors that help small children or people in need of care in complicated life situations. Sensors on and in the body measure different bodily functions, process the data and transfer it to mobile devices via corresponding communication channels. These tiny electronic guardian angels should help elderly or handicapped people retain their independence – even if their mental or physical faculties are in decline. However, the guardian angels are also to act as sensors for the environment, to recognise environmental hazards at an early stage, for instance..."

"Looking like something straight from a 1950’s science fiction magazine, the stealthy Phantom Ray unmanned airborne system (UAS) successfully completed its first flight on April 27, 2011 at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California."

In his talk at this year's Conference on Lasers and Electro Optics (CLEO: 2011, May 1 - 6 in Baltimore), Fischer will describe the first-ever demonstration of a three-dimensional invisibility cloak that works for visible light—red light at a wavelength of 700 nm—independent of its polarization (orientation). Previous cloaks required longer wavelength light, such as microwaves or infrared, or required the light to have a single, specific polarization.

"...every connected computer, phone, and game console already serves as a computing cloud’s eye, ear, and tentacle."

"...they connected a powerful electrical amplifier to a wand-like probe and used the device to shoot beams of electricity at an open flame more than a foot high. Almost instantly, the flame was snuffed out. Much to their fascination, it worked time and again."

"Researchers from North Carolina State University have investigated the viability of a technique called "spincasting" for creating thin films of nanoparticles on an underlying substrate – an important step in the creation of materials with a variety of uses, from optics to electronics."

"Could electronic components made from human blood be the key to creating cyborg interfaces? Circuitry that links human tissues and nerve cells directly to an electronic device, such as a robotic limb or artificial eye might one day be possible thanks to the development of biological components."

"Conventional methods use electronic devices to convert data into signals that are stored as binary code. This latest device uses a tiny mechanical arm to translate the data into electrical signals."

"Estrogen receptor (ER) proteins play a major role in controlling the transcription of genetic information from DNA to messenger RNA in cells. Understanding how ER proteins interact with specific DNA regulatory sequences may shed new light on important physiological processes in the body, such as cell growth and differentiation, as well as the development and progression of breast cancer. Guo-Jun Zhang at the A*STAR Institute of Microelectronics and co-workers have now developed a detector that uses silicon nanowires (SiNWs) to evaluate these interactions."

"Scientists today claimed one of the milestones in the drive for sustainable energy — development of the first practical artificial leaf. Speaking here at the 241st National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, they described an advanced solar cell the size of a poker card that mimics the process, called photosynthesis, that green plants use to convert sunlight and water into energy."

"The science similar to the type used in airport body scanners could soon be used to detect everything from defects in aerospace vehicles or concrete bridges to skin cancer, thanks to researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology."

THE ANTI-LASER

"NoteSlate is low cost tablet device with true one colour display, real paper look design, long life battery (180h !), together with very handy usage and very simple and helpful interface for pen and paper. This easy, compact and portable gadget is used anywhere you want to make any notes, drafts, sketches, any ideas for future reference. Paper for everyone! Write a note and check it later, save it, or delete it. Maybe send it after. Just one colour is enough to express the basics. Keep your life simple. You will love it. For $99." Five space dollars says this thing will never be made. Shame.

"Using a common metal most famously found in self-cleaning ovens, Sossina Haile hopes to change our energy future. The metal is cerium oxide—or ceria—and it is the centerpiece of a promising new technology developed by Haile and her colleagues that concentrates solar energy and uses it to efficiently convert carbon dioxide and water into fuels."

"Around 450 BC, the ancient Greek island of Rhodes was so well known for its robots that the poet Pindar wrote..."

"Build a synthesizer in a new way using needle and thread instead of soldering iron and fabric instead of circuit boards. Syntjuntan is an ensemble of female composers, musicians and instrument builders and they will give a workshop where you literally stitch together a synth using needle and thread!"