Kevin Warwick wired his nervous system into the Internet and his wife; now he's out to become one with The Matrix

Self-Styled Cyborg Dreams of Outwitting Superintelligent Machines

One thousand men's urine is another scientist's latest discovery.

"Very broadly speaking, the southern Chinese are the healthiest and the people in southern Texas are least healthy."

See also, Gut reaction (subscription required for full text):

Thousands of frozen urine samples have yielded new information about the diversity of human metabolism across the globe — about who eats what, and how their unique internal microorganisms handle the input.

‘Genome-wide association studies’ can link specific gene variants with diseases and predictors of disease, such as blood pressure and weight.

Here's how metabolism varies between populations

The name René Descartes will forever be entwined with our hopes and fears about the technological project. While it was Francis Bacon who originated the idea of conquering nature for the sake of relieving man’s estate, it was Descartes who told us we might truly become “like masters and possessors of nature”; Descartes who gave us the mathematical physics that has proven to be the indispensable instrument of modern science; and Descartes who foresaw that the ultimate instrument of the Baconian project would have to be medicine, since health is the primary good of life and the foundation of all other goods. The technological project was from the start biotechnological—in intent if not in realized practice—and it is hard not to think of today’s “transhumanists” when we read Descartes’ quasi-promise that technology might spare us even the “enfeeblement of old age.”

But the mastery and possession of nature is not the only, perhaps not even the deepest, theme of Descartes’ thought. We find in Descartes, and especially in his epoch-making Discourse on Method, a reflectiveness about what it means to be human and about the political conditions of his own activity that far outstrips the reflections we find in the contemporary heirs of his rhetoric, or indeed even what Descartes claims to learn from his own science. No mere scientist could have written the Discourse on Method or could help us understand the full depth of its complex message—and particularly its political and social message.

Masters and Possessors of Nature

The curator and the mathematician discuss fractals, architecture, and the death of Euclid.

Seed: Paola Antonelli and Benoit Mandelbrot

AT a time of economic belt-tightening, might cheap science from low-wage countries help keep American innovators humming?

How Scientific Gains Abroad Pay Off in the US

A growing revolution in imaging is making it possible for biologists to watch small-scale events as they unfold in living cells and tissues.

New technologies—more sophisticated imaging techniques, fluorescent molecules that act as beacons of light in the cell, and the computing power to gather and stitch together multiple images and create videos from high-powered microscopes—make it possible to harness one of light’s key advantages: gentleness. Unlike higher-resolution techniques, light microscopes can image biological structures without killing them or chemically fixing them. At Harvard, the resurgence of light microscopy is making it possible to see structures and events that have never before been seen in the context of living cells and organisms. New discoveries are emerging at many scales of life, from the activation of a single gene in DNA to the development of disease in an organ.

Shedding Light on Life

A journey through the mangrove forest of Bengal.

The Natural World: Tigerland

Even the idlest stroll through Cambridge, England, calls to mind a pantheon of great scientific minds, but none is greater than Isaac Newton, who revolutionized the world of “natural philosophy” while the rest of England was paralyzed by the plague. Reading an enlightening new biography by Peter Ackroyd, Christopher Hitchens learns that Newton probably didn’t get bonked on the head by an apple—but he did have some pretty funny ideas about sex, gold, and religion.

Flaws of Gravity

The next time you come face to face with a dog wagging its tail, you can make a quick determination on whether to reach out and pet it or step back in deference: check the tail-wag bias. If the wagging tail leans to the dog’s right, you’re safe; if the tail leans to the dog’s left, don’t move.

Wag the Dog

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Freeman Dyson, the distinguished scientist, writer and futurist will present a series of three lectures for the public on April 14, 16 and 17 in room 59 of the Sloane Physics Laboratory, 217 Prospect Street. Each lecture will begin at 4 p.m. and all interested persons are invited to attend.

Three Myths in the Public Perception of Science