Invention

The collaboration of a Harvard bioengineer and an MIT aeronautical engineer has led to the development of a device that can detect as little as a single nanogram-size cancer cell in a blood sample.  This microfluidic device is essential for the earliest identification of a spreading cancer.

Did you know that our eye color fades as we age?  Well, it does, and that's another dirty trick nature pulls on us. But more, or just as, important as our dimming eye color, the same pigment reduces its eye protection features.  Here's a pair of sunglasses which can't restore the protection, but can substitute the protection, and you can get them without even having a prescription.

After the Tsunami that devasteted the coast of Japan, there's a lot of people in the field of robotics who have shifted their research in a different direction. Rescue workers put their lives in great danger every time they enter the field, and there's a lot of places they can't go, situations they can't be in: the risk is simply too great.

What if we could just send in a robot instead? 

A team of researchers from Delft University of Technology,  the Netherlands Defence Academy and TNO Defence, Security, and Safety are working on a little black box which can distinguish just how much of an emergency a caller has.  In other words, you call 911 to report that your house is on fire, and a 'trained' computer figures out how desperate you are.

We've all seen the studies- keyboards and cell phones generally contain more germs on their surface than a toilet seat. Kind of a disturbing statistic, if you think about it. I mean, we're putting our hands and faces on and against these things for what sometimes amounts to hours at a time. The potential number of illnesses you can pick up in this way is staggering, to say the least.  And the fact is, disinfectant wipes can only do so much. Sure, they get rid of bacteria, but...there's more than just bacteria lurking on our electronics.

A company called Virwall Systems believe it has the answer. 

It sounds like something out of the realms of science fiction, doesn't it? Turn on a computer with a thought. Drive a car using brainwaves. Control a prosthetic limb in the same way as you would an ordinary one. As technology advances further and further, we're coming ever closer to unlocking the secrets of the inner workings of the most advanced computer ever made- the human brain. 

This is just the start. 

If someone were to ask you to name the world's oldest computer, you'd probably mention The Babbage Engine, Konrad Zuse's Z3 or  The UK's Colossus.  If you were asked when humanity built the first computing device, your estimates wouldn't go higher than a few hundred years or so.

What if I told you that there exists a computer system that was operational almost two thousand years ago?