Dr Anna Middleton is an Ethics Researcher and Registered Genetic Counsellor, based at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. She leads the ethics component of the Deciphering Developmental Disorders study, a collaborative project involving WTSI and the 23 National Health Service Regional Clinical Genetics Services in the UK. This project involves searching for the genetic cause of developmental disorders, using array-CGH, SNP genotyping and exome sequencing, in ~12,000 children in the UK who currently have no genetic diagnosis. One of the issues raised by this, and many other research projects, is what should happen to ‘incidental’ findings, i.e. potentially interesting results from genomic analyses that are not directly related to the condition under study. Here Anna discusses the research she is conducting on this topic as part of the DDD study, and provides a link to the DDD Genomethics survey where you can share your own views (I should also disclose here that both Caroline and I also work on the DDD study).[KIM]
Knowmads, Infocology of the future
Swimming through the blood stream: Stanford engineers create wireless, self-propelled medical device
For 50 years, scientists searched for the secret to making tiny implantable devices that could travel through the bloodstream. Engineers at Stanford have demonstrated just such a device. 
It may be difficult to imagine a world where human beings are even more connected than we are now. Yet the reality is that when it comes to connectivity, we’re barely scratching the surface in terms of where we’ll be in the future. Many anticipate that this growth will be largely driven by mobile-connected devices like smart phones and tablets. To understand the scope of where we are heading with mobile computing, consider this data from a recent Cisco report: The number of mobile-connected devices will exceed the world’s population in 2012There will be over 10 billion mobile-connected devices in 2016Monthly global mobile-data traffic will surpass 10 exabytes per month in 2016Over 100 million smart-phone users will each consume more than 1 GB of data per month in 2012Global mobile-data traffic will increase eighteenfold between now and 2016Mobile-network connection speeds will increase ninefold by 2016Two-thirds of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video by 2016 
The cosmologist Lawrence Krauss joins a chorus of scientists trying to explain how the universe could be born from, if not nothing, something close to it.
Why is there something, rather than nothing at all?It is, perhaps, the mystery of last resort. Scientists may be at least theoretically able to trace every last galaxy back to a bump in the Big Bang, to complete the entire quantum roll call of particles and forces. But the question of why there was a Big Bang or any quantum particles at all was presumed to lie safely out of scientific bounds, in the realms of philosophy or religion. Now even that assumption is no longer safe, as exemplified by a new book by the cosmologist Lawrence M. Krauss. In it he joins a chorus of physicists and cosmologists who have been pushing into sacred ground, proclaiming more and more loudly in the last few years that science can explain how something — namely our star-spangled cosmos — could be born from, if not nothing, something very close to it. God, they argue, is not part of the equation. A growing world population, mixed with the threat of climate change and mounting financial problems, has prompted University of British Columbia researchers to measure the overall "health" of 152 countries around the world. 
Scientists have developed a new kind of tiny motor - which they term a "microrocket" - that can propel itself through acidic environments, such as the human stomach, without any external energy source, opening the way to a variety of medical and industrial applications. Their report in the Journal of the American Chemical Society describes the microrockets traveling at virtual warp speed for such devices. A human moving at the same speed would have to run at a clip of 400 miles per hour. 
An app designed to help blind people send text messages could have many uses for fully-sighted people too, researchers say. 
What if "getting old" wasn't really "getting old?" What if aging—at least the physical deteriorations that accompany it—was something that could be prevented? 
The space elevator will be built about 50 years after everyone stops laughing," said science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, a long time ago. [...] The idea of a space elevator dates back to the late 19th century, when Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky proposed a free-standing structure that would essentially act as a really long elevator, connecting Earth to a platform in geostationary orbit (some 35,000km) in space. [...] Via Mariusz Leś 
After 3.8 billion years and a lot of trial and error, animals have become astoundingly good at a variety of tasks. Via Sakis Koukouvis 
Ancient peoples around the world seem to have designed their sacred spaces not only for ceremonial sights, but for ceremonial sounds as well, archaeologists say. 
Yesterday, Nevada became the first state to approve regulations that permit self-driving cars. Since the legislation process began last June, Nevada officials worked with insurance companies, car manufacturers, law enforcement and testing professionals to develop rules mainly aimed at safety, according to PC magazine. The regulations spell out procedures for testing the vehicles now and requirements for use by residents in the future. The robocars in the testing phase will have red license plates. Cars that have been approved for use by Nevada residents will sport green plates. The person in the car is considered the operator (and two people will be in testing-phase cars at all times). TechCrunch notes that as of right now, while people cannot operate the car drunk, they are allowed to text and make phone calls. 
In Western cultures, nature is a cosmological, primal ordering force and a terrestrial condition that exists in the absence of human beings. Both meanings are freely implied in everyday conversation. We distinguish ourselves from the natural world by manipulating our environment through technology. In What Technology Wants, Kevin Kelly proposes that technology behaves as a form of meta-nature, which has greater potential for cultural change than the evolutionary powers of the organic world alone. With the advent of ‘living technologies’ [2], which possess some of the properties of living systems but are not ‘truly’ alive, a new understanding of our relationship to the natural and designed world is imminent. This change in perspective is encapsulated in Koert Van Mensvoort’s term ‘next nature’, which implies thinking ‘ecologically’, rather than ‘mechanically’. The implications of next nature are profound, and will shape our appreciation of humanity and influence the world around us.
Intelligence -- what does it really mean? In the 1800s, it meant that you were good at memorizing things, and today intelligence is measured through IQ tests where the average score for humans is 100. |
Abuse of the environment has created an 'absolutely unprecedented' emergency, say Blue Planet prizewinners... Celebrated scientists and development thinkers today warn that civilisation is faced with a perfect storm of ecological and social problems driven by overpopulation, overconsumption and environmentally malign technologies. In the face of an "absolutely unprecedented emergency", say the 18 past winners of the Blue Planet prize – the unofficial Nobel for the environment – society has "no choice but to take dramatic action to avert a collapse of civilisation. Either we will change our ways and build an entirely new kind of global society, or they will be changed for us". The stark assessment of the current global outlook by the group, who include Sir Bob Watson, the government's chief scientific adviser on environmental issues, US climate scientist James Hansen, Prof José Goldemberg, Brazil's secretary of environment during the Rio Earth summit in 1992, and Stanford University Prof Paul Ehrlich, is published today on the 40th anniversary of the foundation of the UN environment programme (Unep). The paper, which was commissioned by Unep, will feed into the Rio +20 earth summit conference in June. 
We message on Facebook but in-person I'm awkward and you're shy. When our Twitter conversation went from @ messages to direct messages, you seemed more reserved and I felt more open to speak my mind. 
In Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think, Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler explain how 3-D printing and infinite computing will change everything.
..While early machines were simple and slow, today’s versions are quick and nimble and able to print an exceptionally wide range of materials: plastic, glass, steel, even titanium. Industrial designers use 3-D printers to make everything from lampshades and eyeglasses to custom-fitted prosthetic limbs. Hobbyists are producing functioning robots and flying autonomous aircraft. Biotechnology firms are experimenting with the 3-D printing of organs, while inventor Behrokh Khoshnevis, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California, has developed a large-scale 3-D printer that extrudes concrete for building ultra-low-cost multiroom housing in the developing world. The technology is also poised to leave our world. A Singularity University spinoff, Made in Space, has demonstrated a 3-D printer that works in zero gravity, so astronauts aboard the International Space Station can print spare parts whenever the need arises.
"The internet, as a living being which is part human, should have rights of its own."...
From understanding the internet as a life form that is in part human, it follows that the internet itself has rights. These rights must be created from scratch, thinking simultaneously in terms of the rights of metal, code, and flesh. With this framework we can start building an enduring barrier to permanently deter surreptitious attacks on the life in the network, such as those used by the SOPA mob.
What would this barrier look like? Perhaps as a multinational treaty, a multi-stakeholder organism, and a declaration of the "Rights of the Internet", following the example of Bolivia's 2011 breakthrough declaration of rights of the environment.
Through this framework, for example, we can understand the DMCA, which mandates the atrophy of media players, as legislation that violates the rights of hardware. SOPA and PIPA, which attempted to kidnap for ransom the already imperfect DNS (Domain Name Service) protocol, as being in violation of the rights of code. ACTA, detached from democratic process under the veil of "trade agreement" negotiations, and created by powerful nations to lock in their domination over the rest of the world, is in this sense in dual violation of the rights of flesh (ie humanity). Via P2P Foundation, Sepp Hasslberger 
The smallest transistor ever built has been created using a single phosphorous atom by an international team of researchers at the University of New South Wales, Purdue University and the University of Melbourne.The latest Intel chip, the “Sandy Bridge,” uses a manufacturing process to place 2.3 billion transistors 32 nanometers apart. A single phosphorus atom, by comparison, is just 0.1 nanometers across, which would significantly reduce the size of processors made using this technique, although it may be many years before single-atom processors are manufactured. “To me, this is the physical limit of Moore’s Law,” Gerhard Klimeck, who directed the Purdue group that ran the simulations, claims. “We can’t make it smaller than this.” According to University of New South Wales Prof. Michelle Simmons, “We made a single-atom transistor roughly 8 to 10 years ahead of where the industry’s going to be,” consistent with Moore’s law, in 2020. 
A North Carolina State University chemist has found a way to give DNA-based computing better control over logic operations. Why are humans moral? Patricia Churchland, author of "Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality," is here to explain how humans evolved to be moral beings. How did we go from the attachment and bonding between parent and child to the sophisticated moral landscape we have today? Churchland believes a big part of the answer is in the evolution of the mammalian brain. Via Sakis Koukouvis 
There has been discussion lately that the computers that make up the internet could spontaneously become intelligent and conscious with predictably dark consequences.There is a sense of foreboding, but little attempt at more detailed analysis as to whether it could actually happen. Simple calculations relying on existing knowledge show that it is far more likely that the first example of a non-neuronal intelligence will happen in a specifically built supercomputer rather than just happen by chance from the internet. As a consequence, the behaviour of such an intelligence if it did arise would initially be observed in a much more controlled environment. Here are the reasons why the current internet is not capable of coming alive in this way, and why it will happen in a custom built environment first: 
The patient’s task was to control the activity of single neurons. There are several 100 billion neurons in the human brain. How can the patient begin to know which neuron needs to increase in activity to complete the task? The researchers left this part up to the patients, letting them explore strategies until amazingly, they succeeded. Via Sakis Koukouvis 
Our ability to "upgrade" the bodies of soldiers through drugs, implants, and exoskeletons may be upending the ethical norms of war as we've understood them.
If we can engineer a soldier who can resist torture, would it still be wrong to torture this person with the usual methods? Starvation and sleep deprivation won't affect a super-soldier who doesn't need to sleep or eat. Beatings and electric shocks won't break someone who can't feel pain or fear like we do. This isn't a comic-book story, but plausible scenarios based on actual military projects today. In the next generation, our warfighters may be able to eat grass,communicate telepathically,resist stress, climb walls like a lizard, and much more. Impossible? We only need to look at nature for proofs of concept. For instance, dolphins don't sleep (or they'd drown); Alaskan sled-dogs can run for days without rest or food; bats navigate with echolocation; and goats will eat pretty much anything. Find out how they work, and maybe we can replicate that in humans. 
Mass Effect is epic. It's the product of the best parts of Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica and more with a protagonist who could be the love-child of Picard, Skywalker, and Starbuck. It's one of the most important pieces of science fiction narrative of our generation. Mass Effect goes so far beyond other fictional universes in ways that you may not have yet realized. It is cosmic in scope and scale. Via Mariusz Leś 
US scientists say they have taken a step towards microchips being implanted under a patient's skin to control the release of drugs. The futuristic idea that microchips could be implanted under a patient's skin to control the release of drugs has taken another step forward. US scientists have been testing just such a device on women with the bone-wasting disease osteoporosis. The chip was inserted in their waist and activated by remote control. A clinical trial, reported in Science Translational Medicine, showed the chip could administer the correct doses and that there were no side effects. |
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