Dr. Mark Gasson from the University of Reading in the U.K. implanted a chip under the flesh of his hand. It allows him to open special doors and even keeps his cellphone locked down so only he can use it. What else does it let him do? Well, contract a virus only meant for computers. Before you start worrying that someone could up and hack you just as Gasson’s implant was compromised, don’t fret: we’re all safe. One day, however, the vulnerabilities that Gasson is exploring could very well be a real problem. “With the benefits of this type of technology come risks. We may [...]

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The “SixthSense for Search and Rescue” system by designer Dieter Amick is like a front-mounted laptop that would give rescue personnel access to maps and pertinent information with just a glance downward. Sounds awesome, but why’d he have to go and make it so fanny pack-ish? The idea behind SixthSense is that the better a rescue team’s communication and the more information they have, the more lives they can save. To that end, wearing a computer strapped to your torso makes sense (and, hey, it’s even got storage space for stuff like water and candy bars), letting [...]

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The BeBionic hand looks to be one of the most advanced artificial hands yet designed. It’s loaded up with “a fully integrated wireless chip [and] fully customizable functions to control speed, grip force, and grip patterns.” It’s able to be wrapped in a silicone skin that comes in 19 different skin tones, allowing it to blend in seamlessly with the rest of your body. And it’s set to be available for people next month. There are still a lot of questions, however. How does one control it? Via your feet, like many other “bionic” hands, or in a more natural [...]

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The SoundBite is a hearing aid for people who have single-sided deafness. Rather than amplifying sound like a traditional hearing aid, however, this one transmits it wirelessly to a unit attached to the wearer’s molar, sending vibrations through the teeth and jawbone. It’s a pretty interesting solution, and apparently is much better than the previous solutions for single-sided deafness. And since it doesn’t require surgery, it’s a completely non-invasive treatment. With clinical trials showing patients getting 80 to 100 percent of their hearing back, it should become the [...]

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Dr. Craig J. Venter just announced that he has created the world’s first synthetic life form. Before you start running for your lives, keep in mind that this life consists of DNA-like code inserted into a group of cells, not some monstrous dinosaur marauding across the planet. Venter generated a digital code in a computer, and it’s now somehow self-replicating as the genome in a group of living cells. The scary part? It’s not a single cell, but in a way, it’s a new species, “capable of logarithmic growth.” Just like in a science fiction movie, Dr. Venter says [...]

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Now you can listen to music while you’re whitening your teeth, thanks to the Beaming White Forever White Teeth Whitening Headset. Stretch your lips back into an insane, scary grin with its included cheek retractor, slather on a dollop of hydrogen peroxide gel, and flip on the 2.5 W blue LED light. You’ll get one-hour bleaching, and hey, you won’t be bored because you’ll have that headset on the whole time. Even though this kit costs only 40 bucks, buyer beware. First of all, the hydrogen peroxide gel included in the kit is a 16% solution, where (according to the Beaming [...]

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Thanks to work being done by a pair of researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratories in Tennessee, something as simple as a webcam could be diagnosing your eyes as well as a trained ophthalmologist. Before we get to that point, however, Ken Tobin, a scientist, and his partner Edward Chaum, an ophthalmologist, have a smaller stepping stone they want to clear. They’ve created a company called Automated Medical Diagnostics (or AMDx) with the aims of provided a nerve center of software for eye exams. Consider this: you go to the doctor because your eye is hurting. [...]

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Ten years and $30 million later, a World Health Organization (WHO) study looking into whether cellphones cause brain tumors concludes, uh, nothing. That’s right, after all that time and money spent, the 50 scientists conducting the study still can’t say for sure if cellphones want our brains or not. The weirdest thing about this latest study is that it showed that people with brain tumors had talked on cellphones less than those who were tumor-free. But that result was said to be flawed, because the healthy people who declined to take part in the study talked on their cellphones much [...]

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The iPad, laptops and computers are compelling, making you stay awake longer than you normally would. But sleep researchers say their bright bluish backlights look a lot like broad daylight, and that might be fooling your body clock into thinking it’s not time to sleep yet. A CNN report mentioned an app for Macs and PCs (but unfortunately, not for iPad yet) called F. lux that aims to solve this problem. It gradually reduces the amount of blue light in your screen’s backlight as dusk sets in, causing your screen to take on a weird-looking reddish tint. That’s supposed to help [...]

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In what could be considered the first steps toward something like Total Recall, researchers at the University of Barcelona in Spain are using virtual reality to study just how attached we are to our bodies, or, even more specifically, our visual gender. For instance, if you looked down right now and appeared to be a woman instead of a man — or vice versa — how would you react? That’s the situation 24 men in the study were faced with. In reality, nothing changed for the men save for the fact that they were wearing a VR headset. What they saw, differed depending on the subject. Some men [...]

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