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Brain, bodily awareness, and the emergence of a conscious self: these entities and their relations are explored by Germanphilosopher and cognitive scientist Metzinger. Extensively working with neuroscientists he has come to the conclusion that, in fact, there is no such thing as a "self" -- that a "self" is simply the content of a model created by our brain - part of a virtual reality we create for ourselves. But if the self is not "real," he asks, why and how did it evolve? How does the brain construct the self? In a series of fascinating virtual reality experiments, Metzinger and his colleagues have attempted to create so-called "out-of-body experiences" in the lab, in order to explore these questions. As a philosopher, he offers a discussion of many of the latest results in robotics, neuroscience, dream and meditation research, and argues that the brain is much more powerful than we have ever imagined. He shows us, for example, that we now have the first machines that have developed an inner image of their own body -- and actually use this model to create intelligent behavior. In addition, studies exploring the connections between phantom limbs and the brain have shown us that even people born without arms or legs sometimes experience a sensation that they do in fact have limbs that are not there. Experiments like the "rubber-hand illusion" demonstrate how we can experience a fake hand as part of our self and even feel a sensation of touch on the phantom hand form the basis and testing ground for the idea that what we have called the "self" in the past is just the content of a transparent self-model in our brains. Now, as new ways of manipulating the conscious mind-brain appear on the scene, it will soon become possible to alter our subjective reality in an unprecedented manner. The cultural consequences of this, Metzinger claims, may be immense: we will need a new approach to ethics, and we will be forced to think about ourselves in a fundamentally new way. At

Scientists have created a never-before seen type of exotic matter that is thought to have been present at the earliest stages of the universe, right after the Big Bang. The new matter is a particularly weird form of antimatter, which is like a mirror-image of regular matter. Every normal particle is thought to have an antimatter partner, and if the two come into contact, they annihilate. The recent feat of matter-tinkering was accomplished by smashing charged gold atoms at each other at super-high speeds in a particle accelerator called the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y.

It's not quite Cyclops, the sci-fi superhero from the X-Men franchise whose eyes produce destructive blasts of light, but for the first time a laser has been created using a biological cell. The human kidney cell that was used to make the laser survived the experience. In future such "living lasers" might be created inside live animals, which could potentially allow internal tissues to be imaged in unprecedented detail. It's not the first unconventional laser. Other attempts include lasers made of Jell-O and powered by nuclear reactors (see box below). But how do you go about giving a living cell this bizarre ability? Typically, a laser consists of two mirrors on either side of a gain medium - a material whose structural properties allow it to amplify light. A source of energy such as a flash tube or electrical discharge excites the atoms in the gain medium, releasing photons. Normally, these would shoot out in random directions, as in the broad beam of a flashlight, but a laser uses mirrors on either end of the gain medium to create a directed beam. As photons bounce back and forth between the mirrors, repeatedly passing through the gain medium, they stimulate other atoms to release photons of exactly the same wavelength, phase and direction. Eventually, a concentrated single-frequency beam of light erupts through one of the mirrors as laser light.

"t turns out that all over the world there were people trying to do similar things - opening biohacker spaces. Three years later, this is a thriving global community. Each lab has a flavor of where it was created - people work together or alone, in big cities or small villages, they build things and take them apart, and do much, much more. The spirit is open. But what about the dark side? What about biosafety, biosecurity? The minute Genspace opened their doors, journalists called. And the only question they wanted to ask was, "Would this lab create the next Frankenstein?" The press was overestimating their capabilities - and underestimating their ethic"

The Community Robotics, Education and Technology Empowerment Lab (CREATE Lab) at Carnegie Mellon is our ongoing experiment in a new model for university-community relations.

A giant asteroid smashing into Earth is the only plausible explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs, a global scientific team said on Thursday, hoping to settle a row that has divided experts for decades. A panel of 41 scientists from across the world reviewed 20 years' worth of research to try to confirm the cause of the so-called Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) extinction, which created a "hellish environment" around 65 million years ago and wiped out more than half of all species on the planet. Scientific opinion was split over whether the extinction was caused by an asteroid or by volcanic activity in the Deccan Traps in what is now India, where there were a series of super volcanic eruptions that lasted around 1.5 million years. The new study, conducted by scientists from Europe, the United States, Mexico, Canada and Japan and published in the journal Science, found that a 15-kilometre (9 miles) wide asteroid slamming into Earth at Chicxulub in what is now Mexico was the culprit. "We now have great confidence that an asteroid was the cause of the KT extinction. This triggered large-scale fires, earthquakes measuring more than 10 on the Richter scale, and continental landslides, which created tsunamis," said Joanna Morgan of Imperial College London, a co-author of the review.

As we continue to carry around items that insist on requiring electricity to work, portable-even wearable-energy-generating systems are looking very attractive. A group of researchers has recently looked into the use of piezoelectric materials, which generate an electric field or potential when placed under mechanical stress. By placing these materials on a rubbery or flexible surface, they created a material that can generate the highest rate of energy conversion reported for similar systems. While these are still far from the market, the metrics of the flexible piezoelectrics so far are very promising.

Theodore Berger and his team at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering's Department of Biomedical Engineering have developed a neural prosthesis for rats that is able to restore their ability to form long-term memories after they had been pharmacologically blocked. In a dramatic demonstration, Berger blocked the ability to rats to form long-term memories by using pharmacological agents to disrupt the neural circuitry that communicates between two subregions of the hippocampus, CA1 and CA3, which interact to create long-term memory, prior research has shown. The rats were unable to remember which lever to pull to gain a reward, or could only remember for 5-10 seconds, when previously they could remember for a long period of time. The researchers then developed an artificial hippocampal system that could duplicate the pattern of interaction between CA3-CA1 interactions. Long-term memory capability returned to the pharmacologically blocked rats when the team activated the electronic device programmed to duplicate the memory-encoding function. The researchers went on to show that if a prosthetic device and its associated electrodes were implanted in animals with a normal, functioning hippocampus, the device could actually strengthen the memory being generated internally in the brain and enhance the memory capability of normal rats. "These integrated experimental modeling studies show for the first time that with sufficient information about the neural coding of memories, a neural prosthesis capable of real-time identification and manipulation of the encoding process can restore and even enhance cognitive mnemonic processes," says the paper. Next steps, according to Berger and Deadwyler, will be attempts to duplicate the rat results in primates (monkeys), with the aim of eventually creating prostheses that might help human victims of Alzheimer's disease, stroke, or injury recover function. Ref.: "A Cortical Neural Prosthesis for Restoring and Enhancing

Fats in foods like potato chips and french fries make them nearly irresistible because they trigger natural marijuana-like chemicals in the body called endocannabinoids, researchers at the University of California, Irvine, have found. The researchers discovered that when rats tasted something fatty, cells in their upper gut started producing endocannabinoids, while sugars and proteins did not have this effect. How fats create, like, a buzz It starts on the tongue, where fats in food generate a signal that travels first to your brain, and then through a nerve bundle called the vagus to your intestines. There, the signal stimulates the production of endocannabinoids, which initiates a surge in cell signaling that prompts you to totally pig out - probably by initiating the release of digestive chemicals linked to hunger and satiety that compel us to eat more. And that leads to obesity, diabetes and cancer, the researchers said. But they suggest it might be possible to curb this process by obstructing endocannabinoid activity: for example, by using drugs that "clog" cannabinoid receptors. The trick: bypassing the brain to avoid creating anxiety and depression (which happens when endocannabinoid signaling is blocked in the brain). I'm guessing McDonald's won't be adding that drug to their fries. Ref.: Daniele Piomelli, et al., An endocannabinoid signal in the gut controls dietary fat intake, PNAS, 2011; in press

The Open Data Institute is catalysing the evolution of open data culture to create economic, environmental, and social value. It helps unlock supply, generates demand, creates and disseminates knowledge to address local and global issues.

I have shared step-by-step guide on how to create blogs on WordPress and blogger on this blog. If you have not yet started blogging by making a blog, then first you create your blog.

"A team of scientists at Oxford University have printed - yes, printed - what could be the predecessors to usable synthetic human tissue. The researchers released a paper called A Tissue-Like Material, announcing that they created their own version of a 3D printer, saying the current ones on the market couldn't print what they were after, according to PhsyOrg. And what were they after? A protein sack of water that can mold itself into different shapes and perform similar functions to human cells. After developing the printer, the team was able to print out a series of droplets that formed a network of human-like cells that could act like nerves and send electrical signals across the network."

Ai Research is a leading artificial intelligence research project. At Ai, we're creating a new form of life. Our expanding web site is an essential part of the emerging global discussion about artificial intelligence. On this website, we showcase the state of the art in pattern-matching conversational machines, demonstrated by Alan, and in reinforcement learning algorithms, demonstrated by HAL. Use our forums, original papers, online labs, demos and links to explore what's happening both at Ai (the project) and in AI (the field).

Using super-high pressures similar to those found deep in the Earth or on a giant planet, Washington State University researchers have created a compact, never-before-seen material capable of storing vast amounts of energy.

Exposure to even a dim night-time light may cause physical changes in the brain linked to depression, according to an Ohio State University hamster study.

Researchers at Biodesign Institute have revved the engine of biological evolution to unheard of speed, creating completely new proteins in an infinitesimal fraction of the time it took nature to do the same thing.

Under just the right conditions-which involve an ultra-high-intensity laser beam and a two-mile-long particle accelerator-it could be possible to create something out of nothing, according to University of Michigan researchers.

Synote makes multimedia resources such as video and audio easier to access, search, manage, and exploit. Learners, teachers and other users can create notes, bookmarks, tags, links, images and text captions synchronised to any part of a recording, such as a lecture. Imagine how difficult it would be to use a textbook if it had no contents page, index or page numbers. Synote actually provides the way to find or associate notes with a particular part of a recording,i.e. the media fragments.

LAWA will federate distributed FIRE facilities with the rich Web repository of the European Archive, to create a Virtual Web Observatory and use Web data analytics as a use case study to validate our design. The outcome of our work will enable Internet-scale analysis of data, and bring the content aspect of the Internet on the roadmap of Future Internet Research. In four work packages we will extend the open-source Hadoop software by novel methods for wide-area data access, distributed storage and indexing, scalable data aggregation and data analysis along the time dimension, and automatic classification of Web contents.