wired.com: Regina Lynn

It’s the ultimate revenge of the nerds as product developers use their big brains to create sex machines that kick pleasure into overdrive. In fact, the very nature of the sex “toy” is changing as a new generation of sex-positive engineers infiltrates the industry.

From the smooth, silent glide of the Monkey Rocker Tango to Le Chair’s ability to put two people into a dozen compromising positions, the new products and prototypes unveiled at this week’s Adult Novelty Expo straddle the line between toy (a passive, frivolous object) and machine (a substantial apparatus that inspires commitment and even emotional attachment).

Here are some of the most interesting. [ read more ]

discovermagazine.com: by Mark Anderson

Science’s weirdest realm may be responsible for photosynthesis, our sense of smell, and even consciousness itself.

Graham Fleming sits down at an L-shaped lab bench, occupying a footprint about the size of two parking spaces. Alongside him, a couple of off-the-shelf lasers spit out pulses of light just millionths of a billionth of a second long. After snaking through a jagged path of mirrors and lenses, these minus­cule flashes disappear into a smoky black box containing proteins from green sulfur bacteria, which ordinarily obtain their energy and nourishment from the sun. Inside the black box, optics manufactured to billionths-of-a-meter precision detect something extraordinary: Within the bacterial proteins, dancing electrons make seemingly impossible leaps and appear to inhabit multiple places at once. [ read more ]

msnbc.msn.com: Similar technology marketed as a way to control video games by thought

Vocal cords were overrated anyway. A new Army grant aims to create email or voice mail and send it by thought alone. No need to type an e-mail, dial a phone or even speak a word.

Known as synthetic telepathy, the technology is based on reading electrical activity in the brain using an electroencephalograph, or EEG. Similar technology is being marketed as a way to control video games by thought. [ read more ]

newscientist.com: Paul Marks

The latest request from the Pentagon jars the senses. At least, it did mine. They are looking for contractors to provide a “Multi-Robot Pursuit System” that will let packs of robots “search for and detect a non-cooperative human”.

One thing that really bugs defence chiefs is having their troops diverted from other duties to control robots. So having a pack of them controlled by one person makes logistical sense. But I’m concerned about where this technology will end up. [ read more ]

technologyreview.com: By Kristina Grifantini

A clever flute-playing robot can teach beginners and play in a band.

One of the more whimsical robots presented at BioRob 2008 in Arizona last week, was the latest version of the Waseda Flutist Robot, a robot musician first created in the 1990s. Jorge Solis, a researcher at Waseda University, in Japan, has been working on the robot since 2003, and he and other researchers recently made some important improvements, including adding more than 40 degrees of freedom to its body to make its flute playing more lifelike, and giving it the ability to recognize and interact with other human players. It’s given several performances already. [ read more ]

bloomberg.com: By Adam Satariano

asmanian salmon farmers are trying to breed a new species that can flourish in warmer ponds. Along the coast in Britain the National Trust, a charity, is moving electricity sockets halfway up the wall in several buildings to safeguard against flooding from the sea.

Preparing for global warming also demands government action because temperature increase is unavoidable and will affect everyone, European scientists said in a study published today by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. [ read more ]

newscientist.com: by Justin Mullins

Although security services the world over have used lie detectors to lock many people up over the years, they are not very reliable. However, a new way of scanning brain activity may change that.

The long-established polygraph test measures a person’s respiration rate, heart rate, and perspiration. The idea is to detecting anxiety associated with guilt or lying.

But simply being anxious – about, say, being interrogated – can produce similar signals, and some people may be able to learn to beat the test. By some accounts, the results from such tests are no more accurate than guesswork. [ read more ]

technologyreview.com: By Emily Singer

Compounds boost endurance and allow mice to run for substantially longer.

The elusive exercise pill just took a step closer to becoming a reality. Scientists have found that two compounds can boost endurance in mice by changing the metabolic properties of the animals’ muscle. One of the drugs appears to mimic some of the benefits of exercise even in sedentary mice. But the most dramatic benefit comes from combining one of the drugs with exercise, enabling mice to run 60 to 75 percent longer. [ read more ]

technologyreview.com: By Emily Singer

Jeff Lichtman hopes to elucidate brain development and disease with new technologies that illuminate the web of neural circuits.

Displayed on Jeff Lichtman’s computer screen in his office at Harvard University is what appears to be an elegant drawing of a tree. Thin multicolored lines snake upward in parallel, then branch out in twos and threes, their tips capped by tiny leaves. Lichtman is a neuroscientist, and the image is the first comprehensive wiring diagram of part of the mammalian nervous system. The lines denote axons, the long, hairlike extensions of nerve cells that transmit signals from one neuron to the next; the leaves are synapses, the connections that the axons make with other neurons or muscle cells. [ read more ]

wired.com: By Noah Shachtman

The Army has given a team of University of California researchers a $4 million grant to study the foundations of “synthetic telepathy.” But unlike old-school mind-melds, this seemingly psychic communication would be computer-mediated. The University of California, Irvine explains:

The brain-computer interface would use a noninvasive brain imaging technology like electroencephalography to let people communicate thoughts to each other. For example, a soldier would “think” a message to be transmitted and a computer-based speech recognition system would decode the EEG signals. The decoded thoughts, in essence translated brain waves, are transmitted using a system that points in the direction of the intended target. [ read more ]