... Maybe I should just rename my journal "Cyberpunk Watch" because these days, it seems like even the political links I'm posting have that cyberpunk edge. At any rate, I give you integrated circuits connected to neurons for the first time. If a brain jack or an complete integrated neural computer is ever going to happen, this is the first step

Broke your arm? Severed your optic nerve? You need a nano-pack! Courtesy of Scientific America, scientists have used nanotubes to successfully repair the optic nerve in hamsters. These nanotubes are actually promoting regeneration! Note that vision doesn't seem perfect, but holy cow - this is a marked improvement over the computerized attempts ( Read more... )

Scientists have developed a drug that may allow patients with spinal injuries to grow new nerves. Considering that Bush and the religious right seem determined to keep us from touching stem cells, this is especially good news.

Courtesy of New Scientist, researchers have modified an inkjet printer to produce functional brain cells.

Scientists at Columbia University have created the first artificially grown living heart tissue that can be grafted to a living heart. We're only a few orders of complexity away from growing new limbs and grafting them on.

More linkage. This time, it's about using algae to cleanse the air and create Biofuel.

I promise an extensive update soon. And by update, I mean an essay I've been tossing around in my head.

But in the meanwhile, I bring you yet another science/technology link: this one about the next step towards cyberbrains. Scientists in Florida have hooked a culture of rat brain-cells up to a flight sim and taught it to fly an F-22 jet.

Mammalian Regeneration (Ganked from Slashdot).

This is pretty amazing science. We're talking near-complete here, folks. Regeneration of missing limbs, complete with joints, as well as major organs, and things like the optic nerve! This is nobel-prize big.