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The world's first interactive paper computer is set to revolutionize the world of interactive computing. "this is the future. everything is going to look and feel like this within five years," says creator roel vertegaal, the director of queen's university human media lab,. "this computer looks, feels and operates like a small sheet of interactive paper. you interact with it by bending it into a cell phone, flipping the corner to turn pages, or writing on it with a pen.

As an undergraduate student majoring in chemistry and biochemistry, I spent a lot of money on science textbooks. When classes ended, I kept all of my books instead of selling them back for pennies on the dollar. I thought that I would be able to use those books as references in graduate school and beyond. Sadly, I never cracked open most of them again, and now they're too outdated to sell. 

The biggest question for would-be cyborgs is: How are you going to power all those brain implants? And now it looks like some MIT engineers may have stumbled upon the answer. They have developed a fuel cell that can run on your brain's own glucose - a breakthrough that could result in powerful neural prosthetics that could restore and control a number of bodily functions.

The Misconception: You make rational decisions based on the future value of objects, investments and experiences. The Truth: Your decisions are tainted by the emotional investments you accumulate, and the more you invest in something the harder it becomes to abandon it.

The Coming Crisis In Organizing Work Bollier reports that Roundtable attendees shared a growing concern that there is an unacknowledged crisis brewing in the workforce and the way it's organized. "My sense is that there is a constant move toward globalization, outsourcing and the 'freeagent nation', said attendee Dwayne Spradlin of InnoCentive, Inc. "People are engaging the workplace in a very different way. I think over the next five years we're going to see a massive shift in demographics among young people and how they engage their organizations. In general, companies are wholly unprepared for what's about to come."

An insight into games, the gaming industry and it's present and future. 

People who were told to "cut down" a sequoia redwood in a 3-D forest were less likely to waste paper later, says  Stanford University graduate student Sun Joo Ahn, whose doctoral dissertation outlines the findings. "We found that virtual reality can change how people behave."

A new type of hologram harnesses a quantum effect and uses ordinary light to make 3-D still images. Future 3-D displays based on this technology would have no need for 3-D glasses or special screens.

This episode of Futures in biotech looks at brain implants that help humans achieve more. Symbiosis of man and machine

Fascinating insight into the findings of research into the human microbiome.  the idea that microbes can both hurt and heal us. that future medicine will work on improving the ratio of microbes instead of wiping them out completely. 

Lab investigating the networks in biological systems. Heard interview of mark gerstein on futures in biotech 83 explaining networks in protein bioinformatics

A fascinating talk on how the mind learns and stores memory, and also shares some of his most recent findings.

another reason to be educational in this economic climate in the US

A newly developed software tool will make detecting abnormalities in cell and tissue samples faster, more accurate, and more consistent.

A talk exploring the idea that cancer is related to injury of some sort. Cancer cells may arise to fix the injury but the the process goes wrong. Muscle cells cover 50% of the body yet almost never get cancer. Why? Eva takes us through her findings from investigating these links. 

Since Seth Priebatsch's keynote at this year's SXSW, excitement about adding a "game layer" to the world - liberating games from their traditional place on a computer screen and imposing game-like, social and situational constraints onto the real world (largely through mobile apps) - has positively erupted. There's been considerable interest from businesses across industries, educators, social innovators and techies alike.