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POPSPentagon Developing Shape-Shifting 'Transformers' for Battlefield Way Cool stuff. The medical applications for this type of thing could be incredible. Granted that this is more material science than Tissue ReEngineering, but similar principles. Imagine the potential for transportation, where vehicles could expand or contract based on the need of the driver (small size for 1 person) or it's soccer night and a SUV size is needed, presto - all from the same block of "stuff". Sooo much postive stuff. So long as they don't turn into The Replicators as on Stargate SG-1 :-)
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POPSThe shape(s) of things to come more: An MIT group is building “self-folding origami” machines that “use specialized sheets of material with built-in actuators and data. These machines use cutting-edge mathematical theorems to fold themselves into virtually any three-dimensional object.” The Programmable Matter project is five months into its second phase, which is supposed to wind up early next Spring. When they’re done, the researchers ought to “assemble four or five three-dimensional solids of a specific size and shape from a set of building blocks.”
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POPSBrains! Brains!! As we increasingly move onward in our quest to better understand how we work, the human brain remains on the frontier of targets to look at. No longer are we satisfied with the homunculus seated in our cranium in grand Oz fashion. Nor does the pre-science religious concept of soul address the practical workings of the human mind.
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POPSphysicists discover important step for making light crystals a bose-einstein condensate is a collection of atoms cooled with laser light to a temp just above absolute zero-kelvin, -273 degrees Celsius, or -460 degrees Fahrenheit...the first BEC ever produced was 170 nanokelvin, or 170 billionths of a kelvin- researchers have since produced condensates as cold as 500 picokelvin - or 500 trillionths of a kelvin....there is quite a bit more at source....interesting-
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POPSUse semantic web to create a "personal assistant" Video explanation is clear. This is about AI and how to commercialize DARPA research. SIRI takes the theoretical ideas and tries to make commercializable products. 5-10 years, everyone will have a personal assistant.
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POPSBuilding a machine that can learn from experience There's another requirement: The finished cognitive computer should be as small as a the brain of a small mammal and use as little power as a 100-watt light bulb. It's a major challenge. But it's what our brains do every day. "Value systems or reward systems are important aspects," he said. "Learning is crucial because it needs to learn from experience just like we do." It won't be an easy task, says Tononi, a veteran of earlier efforts to create cognitive computers. Even the brains of the smallest mammals are quite impressive when you consider what tasks they perform with a relatively small volume and energy input. "I would be happy to create a mouse brain," Tononi says. "A mouse brain is quite remarkable. And from there, it shouldn't be too hard to scale up to a rat brain, and then a cat or monkey brain."
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POPSThe DARPA Submersible Aircraft The DARPA Submersible Aircraft research project is focused on making a a vehicle that can fly in the air and dive straight into the water, becoming a submarine.
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POPSDecoding the sense of smell In future work, the team plans to work with researchers worldwide, including MIT's Media Lab and Department of Biology, to develop a portable microfluidic device that can identify an array of different odors. Such a device could be used in medicine for the early diagnosis of certain diseases that produce distinctive odors, such as diabetes and lung, bladder and skin cancers, Zhang said. There are also a wide range of industrial applications for such a smell-based biosensing device, he said. One application i can think of is developing an antidote for smelly things, people etc.. :)
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