MIT neuroscientist Sebastian Seung believes mapping of of the human brain’s 100 billion neurons can be done — one cubic millimeter of brain tissue at a time. Even more than our genome, our connectome shapes who we are, says Seung, who outlines his vision for connectome research in a new book, Connectome. “Clearly genes are [...]

The biggest change to Wolfram|Alpha since its launch nearly three years ago will be our next release, and we wanted you to be aware that it’s coming, says the Wolfram Alpha blog. “We’re not going to let you know the details just yet, but what you’re going to find is a dramatic enhancement of functionality. [...]

Within a few years, people in remote villages in the developing world may be able to make their own solar panels, at low cost, using otherwise worthless agricultural waste as their raw material. That’s the vision of MIT researcher Andreas Mershin. He says the process has been simplified to the point that virtually any lab [...]

IBM’s Watson is having its biggest impact by pulling in new customers for existing business products as IBM persuades them to organize their data into formats that an AI like Watson can better understand. IBM has created a slogan, “Ready for Watson,” to help sell its products that way. At the heart of Watson is a [...]

Are you depressed, checking e-mail and Facebook, or home alone ruminating for hours? Cheer up. Scientists are inventing  web-based, mobile and virtual technologies to treat depression and other mood disorders at a new National Institutes of Health-funded Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine center. In the works: a virtual human therapist to prevent depression, a medicine bottle that reminds you [...]

The Rice University-based open-education platform Connexions today unveiled a bold plan to shake up the $4 billion college textbook industry by providing free online publisher-quality textbooks for five of the country’s most-attended college courses. The OpenStax College textbook initiative, which is funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, [...]

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute in California and the Technion — Israel Institute of Technology — have developed a “biological computer” made entirely from biomolecules that is capable of deciphering images encrypted on DNA chips. This is the first experimental demonstration of a molecular cryptosystem for images based on DNA computing. When suitable software [...]

A new augmented reality unit developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) could provide just-in-time medical expertise to astronauts, using a head-mounted display for 3D guidance in diagnosing problems or even performing surgery. The Computer Assisted Medical Diagnosis and Surgery System, CAMDASS, is a wearable augmented-reality prototype. Augmented reality merges actual and virtual reality by precisely [...]

Internet users and government officials in many European countries have been protesting an anti-Internet piracy and intellectual property treaty known as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) with increasing volume. ACTA would establish a framework for fighting copyright infringement across international borders, be it physical or digital. Opponents of ACTA say it is too far-reaching, and [...]

A field-effect transistor that may make graphene the next silicon has been developed by a University of Manchester team led by Nobel laureates Professor Andre Geim and Professor Konstantin Novoselov. One of many potential applications of graphene is its use as the basic material for computer chips instead of silicon. This potential has alerted the attention of major chip [...]

A revolutionary new magnetic recording technology that will allow information to be processed hundreds of times faster than by current hard drive technology has been developed by an international team of scientists led by the University of York’s Department of Physics. The method uses an ultrashort heat pulse to switch magnetic polarity, eliminating the need to apply an external [...]

Since the first information in December, we have learned more about Google’s glasses, says 9to5 Google. It looks something like Oakley Thumps, but with a camera and voice input/output, according to a tipster. But the heads up display (for projecting information) is only for one eye and on the side. Perhaps something similar to this: This clip [...]

Stanford University engineers have demonstrated a promising new nanowire welding technique to create electrically conductive meshes made of metal nanowires. The research promises to lead to exceptional electrical throughput, low cost and easy processing for new generations of touch-screens, video displays, light-emitting diodes, and thin-film solar cells. In processing, these delicate meshes must be heated or pressed to unite [...]

“We’d like to introduce Solve for X, an experiment to encourage individuals and groups to undertake “moonshot” technology projects to solve global problems,” says Google’s new Solve for X forum in a low-key announcement on Google+. It continues: Solve for X is a place where people can go to hear and discuss radical technology ideas for [...]

With the official launch of the iRobot Warrior, a large wheeled robot with a hefty mechanical arm, military robots just got significantly larger and more adaptable. The robot can climb stairs and cover rough terrain, and perform tasks ranging from the delicate (opening car doors) to the destructive (smashing car windows) with its two-meter-long mechanical arm, and [...]

For Kansas City, Mo. student Clara Lazen, 10, a classroom assignment turned into a scientific finding: a new molecule, and her first mention in a scientific journal. Lazen randomly arranged a unique combination of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon atoms. Responding to a request by the teacher, Kenneth Boehr, Humboldt State University chemistry professor Robert Zoellner, a [...]

Russian scientists have drilled into the vast, dark and never-before-touched Lake Vostok 2.2 miles below the surface of Antarctica, according to a source quoted Monday by Ria Novosti, a state-run Russian news agency. The subglacial lake, the world’s third-largest lake by volume, is 20 million years old and could be contaminated by the kerosene, Freon and other materials being used [...]

The European Southern Observatory (Eso) has linked up its four telescopes of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory to form a virtual mirror of 130m (424ft) in diameter that will give scientists a much more detailed look at the Universe. The process that links separate telescopes together is known as interferometry. Besides creating [...]

More than two months after authorities shut down a massive Internet traffic hijacking scheme, the malicious software that powered the criminal network is still running on computers at half of the Fortune 500 companies, and on PCs at nearly 50 percent of all federal government agencies, new research shows, Krebs on Security reports. The malware, [...]

Source: XKCD