When a car's underbody or a ship's hull begins to corrode, it usually ends up junked. New protective coatings developed at the University of Illinois heal over their own scratches with no external intervention, protecting the underlying metal. The self-healing elements, enclosed in microcapsules that rip open when the coating is scratched, are compatible with a wide range of paints and protective coatings. The coatings, being marketed by Autonomic Materials of Champaign, IL, may be on the market in as soon as four months...Continue

IBM has seen the future of computing and it may not involve silicon. Instead the company has been looking at graphene, the single atom-thick sheets of carbon that has materials scientists entranced by its dazzling array of amazing properties...Continue

Earlier this week, the humble computer mouse celebrated its 40th birthday. While surprisingly little has changed since Doug Engelbart, an engineer at Stanford Research Institute, in Palo Alto, CA, first demonstrated the mouse to a skeptical crowd in San Francisco, we may have already seen a few glimpses of the future of computer interfaces. If so, over the next few years, the future of the computer interface will likely revolve around touch...Continue

Scientists are developing new ways to selectively boost gene expression in the brain, in the hope of treating psychiatric and neurological disease. A growing pool of evidence shows that compounds that target this mechanism can improve learning and memory in rodents. But existing drugs, which were not developed for this purpose, are relatively weak and unselective, and their long-term safety is not yet clear...Full

The innate intelligence of ants is helping Australian-based scientists develop prosthetic limbs that respond to brain signals in groundbreaking research that could change the lives of amputees...Continue

A group of scientists at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has fabricated a working computer chip that is almost completely clear -- the first of its kind. The new technology, called transparent resistive random access memory (TRRAM), is described in this week's issue of the journal Applied Physics Letters....Continue

An American soldier is hit by enemy fire in Iraq. A Humvee speeds him to a field hospital just outside the combat area. He looks up groggily to see a robot peering down at him...Continue

"LG Electronics announced today that it has independently developed the first handset (user equipment) modem chip based on 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE)technology standards. The modem chip can theoretically support wireless download speeds of 100Mbps (megabits per second) and upload speeds of 50Mbps. This represents a significant step toward creating a market-ready 4G phone..." Continue

A new design allows this robot to either jump or roll over obstacles. Because it can cope with rocky surfaces, it could be ideal for space exploration.
via www.newscientist.com

"Rather than infer that nanotechnology is safe, members of the public who learn about this novel science tend to become sharply polarized along cultural lines, according to a study conducted by the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School in collaboration with the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies. The report is published online in the journal Nature Nanotechnology..."Continue

"IN 1965, a year before the first pocket calculator was invented, a young physicist from Silicon Valley, Gordon Moore, made a daring prediction. He claimed that the number of components squeezed onto a single silicon chip would double about every two years. And double, and double and continue to double. If he had been right, the best silicon chips today would contain an unbelievable 100 million single components...Continue

Visions of the Future: The Biotech Revolution. 2nd part of 3 part miniseries on the BBC hosted by Michio Kaku. In this new three-part series, leading theoretical physicist and futurist Dr Michio Kaku explores the cutting edge science of today, tomorrow, and beyond. He argues that humankind is at a turning point in history. In this century, we are going to make the historic transition from the 'Age of Discovery' to the 'Age of Mastery', a period in which we will move from being passive observers of nature to its active choreographers. This will give us not only unparalleled possibilities but also great responsibilities. Genetics and biotechnology promise a future of unprecedented health and longevity: DNA screening could prevent many diseases, gene therapy could cure them and, thanks to lab-grown organs, the human body could be repaired as easily as a car, with spare parts readily available. Ultimately, the ageing process itself could be slowed down or even halted. But what impact will this have on who we are and how we will live? And, with our mastery of the genome, will the human race end up in a world divided by genetic apartheid?