How to Become the Engineers of Our Own Evolution

The "transhumanist" movement says better technology will enable you to replace more and more body parts—even your brain

The reports regularly come in from around the world: U.S. engineers unveil a prototype bionic eye, Swedish surgeons replace a man’s cancerous trachea with a body part grown in a lab, and a British woman augments her sense of touch by implanting self-made magnetic sensors in her fingertips.

Adherents of “transhumanism”—a movement that seeks to transform Homo sapiens through tools like gene manipulation, “smart drugs” and nanomedicine—hail such developments as evidence that we are becoming the engineers of our own evolution. Enhanced humans might inject themselves with artificial, oxygen-carrying blood cells, enabling them to sprint for 15 minutes straight. They could live long enough to taste a slice of their own 250th birthday cake. Or they might abandon their bodies entirely, translating the neurons of their brains into a digital consciousness.

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/How-to-Become-the-Engineers-of-Our-Own-Evolution.html

When Death Becomes Optional

When Death Becomes Optional | World Future Society: "The year is 2032. You have just celebrated your 80th birthday and you have some tough decisions ahead. You can either keep repairing your current body or move into a new one."

Mysterious Objects at the Edge of the Electromagnetic Spectrum

NASA's Fermi Gamma-Ray Telescope is finding hundreds of new objects at the very edge of the electromagnetic spectrum. Many of them have one thing in common: Astronomers have no idea what they are.

Futurist: We'll someday accept computers as human

Futurist: We'll someday accept computers as human - CNN.com: "Austin, Texas (CNN) -- Any author or filmmaker seeking ideas for a sci-fi yarn about the implications of artificial intelligence -- good or bad -- would be smart to talk to Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil, the acclaimed inventor and futurist, believes that humans and technology are blurring -- note the smartphone appendages in almost everyone's hand -- and will eventually merge. "We are a human-machine civilization. Everybody has been enhanced with computer technology," he told a capacity crowd of more than 3,000 tech-savvy listeners Monday at the South by Southwest Interactive conference. "They're really part of who we are."

What We Have Here Is A Failure To Replicate

What We Have Here Is A Failure To Replicate: "Scientific research is difficult to do well, and people are flawed and biased. As Carl Sagan noted, science is not just an ideal abstraction, but is very much a human endeavor, and as such is messy and imperfect. Nature itself is random and quirky and doesn’t always cooperate with our desires to penetrate its secrets."

The gadgets of 2025: Frog unveils vision of the future

EXCLUSIVE: The gadgets of 2025: Frog unveils vision of the future | Fox News: "For three days, FoxNews.com met with Frog, the global design and innovation firm in San Francisco that helped shape the original Mac computers and many of the most popular gadgets we use. Here are the concepts for the future that Frog developed after "frogthink" with their most brilliant brains."

Man Looking for Cat Finds Buried 'UFO'

Man Looking for Cat Finds Buried 'UFO' : Discovery News: "An Austrian farmer finds a round hole in his field and assumes it's made by extraterrestrials."

Is Jupiter Evil?

Is Jupiter Evil? : Discovery News: "The gas giant is widely regarded as Earth's protector -- but this may only be half of the story."

Navy Opens 'Hunger Games' Arena for Military Robots

Navy Opens 'Hunger Games' Arena for Military Robots : Discovery News: "Man-made survival games are being built to challenge robots."

U.S. accelerating cyberweapon research

U.S. accelerating cyberweapon research - The Washington Post: "The Pentagon is accelerating efforts to develop a new generation of cyberweapons capable of disrupting enemy military networks even when those networks are not connected to the Internet, according to current and former U.S. officials."

Global Intelligence & Information Grid Goes Online: DI2E framework aims for streamlined intelligence sharing

Global Intelligence & Information Grid Goes Online: DI2E framework aims for streamlined intelligence sharing | StratRisks: "If everything goes according to plan, sometime in the next few years the Defense Department and intelligence community members will begin reaping the benefits of a common cross-agency environment that’s designed to help users access and use a wide range of essential intelligence resources."

Sweden moving towards cashless economy

Sweden moving towards cashless economy - CBS News: "(AP) STOCKHOLM - Sweden was the first European country to introduce bank notes in 1661. Now it's come farther than most on the path toward getting rid of them."

President Obama signs Executive Order allowing for control over all US resources

President Obama signs Executive Order allowing for control over all US resources - National Finance Examiner | Examiner.com: "On March 16th, President Obama signed a new Executive Order which expands upon a prior order issued in 1950 for Disaster Preparedness, and gives the office of the President complete control over all the resources in the United States in times of war or emergency.

The National Defense Resources Preparedness order gives the Executive Branch the power to control and allocate energy, production, transportation, food, and even water resources by decree under the auspices of national defense and national security.  The order is not limited to wartime implementation, as one of the order's functions includes the command and control of resources in peacetime determinations."

World News - Honeybee die-offs linked to insecticide, study says

World News - Honeybee die-offs linked to insecticide, study says: "A newly published study draws a stronger link between mass die-offs of honeybees and an insecticide widely used on corn."

'Atomic bomb' asteroid will definitely miss us this time ... but it comes back every year

Watch out for 2012: Luckily, the asteroid is just doing a fly-by this time...

An asteroid with the destructive power of an H-bomb is scheduled to sweep past the Earth at a distance closer than commercial satellites.

Asteroid 2012 DA14 circles the Earth once a year - and when it flies by next February, it will be just 24,000km away.

Luckily, it is not going to hit us this time round - but be warned that this is just one of just 500,000 rocks circling in a close orbit.

Scientists say there is no chance of an impact in 2013, but such a possibility cannot be ruled out during the asteroid's yearly approach .

If it did enter the Earth's atmosphere and explode, the force would be enough to destroy an area the size of Greater London.

The asteroid was spotted last month by a team operating from the La Sagra Sky Survey observatory near Granada in Spain. The observatory uses automated telescopes to track small asteroids and comets.

2012 DA14 was discovered after the astronomers decided to search areas of the sky where asteroids are not usually seen.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2115943/Atomic-bomb-Asteroid-2012-DA14-visits-Earth-annually-miss-time--maybe-time-after.html

Glow in the dark sushi made from genetically modified fish becomes the latest food craze to hit America

Sushi that glows in the dark has become the latest must try food craze across America.

Inspired by genetically modified fish first bred for scientific research, a video showing how to make the glowing sushi has become a huge hit online.

The recipes use glofish, a brand of genetically modified (GM) fluorescent zebrafish sold by Yorktown Technologies, which are available to buy in pet shops.

Lights: The modified fish were originally bred to help detect environmental pollutants

The modified fish were originally bred to help detect environmental pollutants.

By adding a natural fluorescence gene to the fish, scientists planned to create fish that glowed when rivers became contaminated.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2116218/Glow-dark-sushi-genetically-modified-fish-latest-food-craze-America.html

Prometheus - Official FULL Trailer

Stanford researchers create exotic electrons that may lead to new materials, devices

Stanford researchers create exotic electrons that may lead to new materials, devices: "The handcrafted, honeycomb-shaped structures were inspired by graphene, a pure form of carbon widely heralded for its potential in future electronics."

Spies could use your TV to snoop on you

Spies could use your TV to snoop on you | The Japan News.Net: "Spies could now snoop on you through your TV, dispensing with the necessity of planting bugs in your room, according to CIA director David Petraeus.

The CIA says it will be able to 'read' these devices via the internet - and perhaps even via radio waves from outside the home, Petraeus added.

Everything from remote controls to clock radios can now be controlled via apps - and chip company ARM recently unveiled low-powered, cheaper chips which will be used in everything from fridges and ovens to doorbells, according to the Daily Mail.

Petraeus said that web-connected gadgets will transform the art of spying - allowing spies to monitor people automatically without planting bugs, breaking and entering or even donning a tuxedo to infiltrate a dinner party."

Video from Chile stirs up UFO buzz

Is this truly the video that UFO skeptics have been dreading? Actually, a compilation of 17-month-old video clips from a Chilean military air show is stirring up predictable responses from both sides of the UFO debate, but no dread.

For those who are inclined to believe that some unidentified flying objects exhibit characteristics beyond what our technology seems capable of, the El Bosque case could represent the latest, greatest evidence for flying saucers.

"This is a very, very unusual case, and I'm hoping that this case will help move forward the recognition that there really is something here that's worthy of further study. ... It has the possibility of being a breakthrough case," said investigative journalist Leslie Kean, the author of the book "UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record."

Read More: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/15/10704801-video-from-chile-stirs-up-ufo-buzz