Researchers are creating an artificial womb to improve care for extremely premature babies — and remarkable animal testing suggests the first-of-its-kind watery incubation so closely mimics mom that it just might work. Today, premature infants weighing as little as a pound are hooked to ventilators and other machines inside incubators. Children's Hospital of Philadelphia is aiming for a gentler solution, to give the tiniest preemies a few more weeks cocooned in a womb-like en

My take on global warming, without going into greenhouse gases being at the root of the issue, is simply stating the obvious: If you cut down all the trees, it is going to get hotter. When I was a little girl growing up in South Florida the temperature always dipped into the high 20's in January. Sure enough it got hotter; when was a teenager it only got into the 30's. By the time I was in my thirties it got into the low 50's and now it rarely dips below 70. I would like to d

Anjan Contractor’s 3D food printer might evoke visions of the “replicator” popularized in Star Trek, from which Captain Picard was constantly interrupting himself to order tea. And indeed Contractor’s company, Systems & Materials Research Corporation, just got a six month, $125,000 grant from NASA to create a prototype of his universal food synthesizer. But Contractor, a mechanical engineer with a background in 3D printing, envisions a much more mundane—and ultimately more im

It may sound like sci-fi, but hundreds of Australians are turning themselves into super-humans who can unlock doors, turn on lights and log into computers with a wave of the hand. Shanti Korporaal, from Sydney, is at the center of the phenomenon after having two implants inserted under her skin. Now she can get into work and her car without carrying a card or keys, and says her ultimate goal is to completely do away with her wallet and cards. “You could set up your life so yo

Transhumanism is a movement whose goal is transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. Transhumanist thinkers study the potential benefits and dangers of emerging technologies that could overcome fundamental human limitations, as well as study the ethical matters involved in developing and using such technologies. They predict that human beings may eventually be a

Maybe you haven’t heard about RFID. The acronym RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification. The technology was first used by manufacturers to convey information to retailers and keep track of shipping and inventory on their products in the late 1990’s. Manufactures have embedded them in ordinary consumer items such as clothing, warehouse pallets and packaging on many items. And like the name says, they just use simple radio waves to transmit the data and therefore the wav

Right to travel. Cf. Commerce; Consumer goods; Conveyance; Free and innocent passage; Locomotion; Motor vehicle; Terry stops; Traffic; Magna Carta, Article 42: It shall be lawful to any person, for the future, to go out of our kingdom, and to return, safely and securely, by land or by water, saving his allegiance to us, unless it be in time of war, for some short space, for the common good of the kingdom: excepting prisoners and outlaws, according to the laws of the land, and

The National Security Agency’s spying tactics are being intensely scrutinized following the recent leaks of secret documents. However, the NSA isn't the only US government agency using controversial surveillance methods. Monitoring citizens' cell phones without their knowledge is a booming business. From Arizona to California, Florida to Texas, state and federal authorities have been quietly investing millions of dollars acquiring clandestine mobile phone surveillance equipme

Once the central bankers took away the power of the US Treasury to print money and replaced it with a consortium of private banks, we were doomed. They’ve replaced gold as the primary means of international trade between governments and central banks, replacing it with a global system controlled by the International Monetary Fund which created a system of 'Special Drawing Rights’ based on a basket of international currencies linked together and homogenized under a single unit

Tesla eat your heart out, the Germans have created an electrical car powered by salt water. It has four electric engines and is FAST with some pretty sweet fuel economy for a sports car. Leave the Bugatti at home and stop by the beach to refuel. “The car is powered by the electrolyte flow cell power system, which is a part of the NanoFlowcell technology. The system works in a similar way to a hydrogen fuel cell, except for the fact that salt water is used for storing power.