We knew amazing things would be coming out of TED this year, the only question was "How amazing?" Anthony Atala of the Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine produced a fresh kidney on stage at the TED conference.

"It's like baking a cake," Atala said.

Atala uses 3D scanners to capture an image of the kidney that needs replacing.  Then, using a tissue sample for the patient the size of a postage stamp, the organ "printer" builds a replacement kidney layer-by-layer.

A college student at TED named Luke Massella, received one of Atala's "printed" kidneys when he was only 10 years-old.

"This surgery saved my life and made me who I am today."

As many techno-philes are aware, the TED conference is currently underway this week in Long Beach, California. While we're awaiting the latest batch of inspiring TED videos, Google has given attendees a treat...the opportunity to ride in a self-driving Prius.  

Google declared back in the October 2010 that their stated goal was to free up human productivity by eliminating their need to drive. In addition, they hope to take crucial steps towards a fully-implemented automated driving system that would increase safety by leaps and bounds. Obviously, being a drunk matters not at all if your car does the driving all by itself.

One of the unique aspects of Google's automated car project is that it isn't funded or incentivized by DARPA or any other agency.  This is Google acting on its own. 

Here are some of the latest videos released.  In the video, Google emphasizes that ...

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The World Future Society is carrying a great article about the near future of 3D printing. For those still unfamiliar with the idea, 3D printers basically turn your private home into a mini-factory, allowing you to "print" any objects you wish, as long as you have the design and basic materials.

3D printing has been available over the last decade, but recently new 3D can now work with metals, not just plastics anymore.  In Europe, they already "print" airplane parts by fusing titanium powder with lasers.  Dentists now have the ability to "print" a crown custom fitted to each patient. 

Literally, anything can be made.  MIT's Peter Schmitt has even printed a grandfather clock that actually works.  3D printers are estimated to drop in costs 80% in the next five years.  If I remember currently, they debuted at $50,000, now you can find them today at $10,000 ...

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Right on the heels of my previous post about mind-body connections, I got e-mailed this inspiring article by CNN.

We all know THE KING'S SPEECH is a fabulous movie. What we didn't know was that David Seidler, who won an Academy Award for best original screenplay, suffered the same cancer as King George VI did.  

However, David Seidler survived. How did he do it? I pasted a long quite below, but its worth it.

"I know it sounds awfully Southern California and woo-woo," he admits when he describes the visualization techniques he used when his bladder cancer was diagnosed nearly six years ago. "But that's what happened."

Seidler says when he found out his cancer had returned, he visualized a "lovely, clean healthy bladder" for two weeks, and the cancer disappeared. He's been cancer-free for more than five years.

"When I was first diagnosed in ...

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Don't mind me, Ladies. I'm just trying to maintain a healthy heart. German researchers studied 500 men over the course of 5 years. Half were told to avoid staring at women's breasts, the other half told to stare.

The result? The men who stared had healthier hearts, lower blood pressure and lower resting heart rates. The German researchers recommend that all men should stare at breasts for 10 minutes a day.

I don't think it's the breasts in all honesty. The article dovetails nicely with other research that in essence says emotionally feeling good promotes better health.

Oh you Germans, what have ye unleashed??

Study: Staring at breasts increases heart health: MyFoxBOSTON.com

Police working with the Michigan State University have developed a forensics program that matches an artist's hand-drawn facial sketch with the actual mug shot of a wanted perpetrator. The program compared over 10,000 sketches to mug shots and boasted a 45% success rate in finding the real person.

A grad student on the project Brendan Klare comments:

"We're dealing with the worst of the worst here...Police sketch artists aren't called in because someone stole a pack of gum. A lot of time is spent generating these facial sketches so it only makes sense that they are matched with the available technology to catch these criminals."

A 45% success rate is actually very huge and promises to revolutionize police work if implemented nationwide. The MSU team plans to field the system within a year.

This is an old news story back in 2010, but I ran across it today and it seemed like a nice thing to remember.

Neuroscientists at the Stanford School of Medicine have linked the euphoria and well-being associated with new love relationships to an activation of the reward system in the human brain. This activation was found to significantly reduce pain in 15 test subjects, who had recently entered a romantic relationship within the previous 9 months. Simply viewing pictures of the person they loved was enough to "significantly" reduce pain, opening the possibility of non-drug treatments for chronic pain by finding ways to stimulate the rewards center of the brain.

These findings seem to dovetail nicely with the recent conclusions published by British and German scientists that belief was a requirement for pain killers to even work. Clearly, we need vast amounts of more research into the ability of ...

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Japanese engineers have created a doll-shaped smartphone for all consumers who wish to be seen speaking to a tiny person. Dubbed the "Elfoid", the phone is a collaboration between Osaka University and mobile telephone operator NTT DoCoMo.

The creep factor doesn't just end with appearances. The Elfoid will wiggle and boast human skin style texture, and be able to mimic gestures of the person on the other end.

Alas, any one excited by this moving, gesturing, vibrating, androgynous phone doll must wait about 5 years before it gets to market. The creators need more time to build in image and voice recognition functions.

I can see the B-movie happening now...ROBOT PHONE DEMONS 4: THE DISCONNECTION

New research from Tel Aviv University in Israel has found that common ingredients in Indian curry, namely Turmeric, can strongly enhance the anti-inflammatory drugs used to fight colon cancer.

The active ingredient within Turmeric, called Curcumin, was found not only to enhance the effectiveness of anti-cancer drugs, but it also reduces toxic side effects because of the lower doses needed to treat colon cancer patients, side effects that include heart attacks and strokes.

Since chronic inflammation can cause several of the cancers related to the digestive system, the Curcumin/Turmeric alone can aid prevention when added to food.

University of Arizona researchers are working with the Department of Homeland Security on an Automated Virtual Agent for Truth Assessments in Real-Time...which is their torturous way to use the acronym AVATAR to describe their system.  

Avatar's job will simply be to detect lies by scanning your facial features.  In particular, the machine will detect eye dilation and eye movement, two signs of lying.  A microphone will listen to what you say, but also how you say it.  The new machine currently is undergoing tests.  

We at Logic-Cool are airport security skeptics in light of the highly invasive procedures now in place. TSA has yet to announce the successful prevention of any terrorist attacks, nor have they ever arrested a single terrorist in all the years of its operation. They have reported success in finding smuggled drugs.

Ladies and gentemen, I present Avatar:

The U.S. Marine Corps has requested that Taser International of Scottsdale, Arizona develop a "taser grenade" that can be fired from a M32 six-shot grenade launcher and incapacitate targets out to range of 100 meters for 30 seconds. 

Civilian taser products only incapacitate targets for 5 secs.  Naturally, the military needs the 30 second window in order to close the distance with an enemy in a hundred meter dash. However, the shock duration of the new taser grenade can be extended to several minutes, which I honestly think will have to be the case.

If tests are successful, the U.S. military will fast-track the new weapon into Afghanistan.

The M-32 is already an incredibly fearsome battlefield weapon, able to fire 6 grenades in under 3 seconds...and some grenade rounds can be shot over 440 yards, hitting a target more than four football fields away.

In a story worthy of Indiana Jones, a team of German archaeologists have finally decoded the ancient "Dresden Codex", a Mayan book originating from the 11th century. The team, led by Mayan expert Joachim Rittsteig, used  the new information to pinpoint the theoretical location of the Mayan capital of Atlan, submerged under Lake Izabal, the largest lake in Guatemala. The city was destroyed by an earthquake in 666 BC. Lost along with the city were 2,156 gold tablets upon which the ancient civilization recorded their laws.

Joachim Rittsteig has dedicated most of his life to translating the codex and we wish him the best of luck. The Dresden Codex contains most of what we know today of the lost Mayan civilization. The last chapter describes the apocalypse which it says will take place December 12th, 2012.

Dr. Guojun Liu of Queen's University in Canada has discovered that using nano-technology to keep a car engine lubricated reduced friction by 55% more than what is currently achievable by the market.  This should have the effect of greatly extending engine life, not just in cars, but also in a wide variety of engines and industrial machinery. Dr. Liu has recently won the Captain Alfred E. Hunt Memorial Award for his discovery.

As I mentioned in an earlier article, nano-particles seem to be enjoying a wide wave of technology throughout our civilization, benefiting much all industries across the board.  You can read more about what nano-particles are doing here, here, here, and here.

A review of 160 different studies found a striking correlation between a positive state of mind and overall health and longevity. In fact, the connection between happiness and health/longeveity was found to be even stronger than trying to link health to obesity. 

This isn't any surprise.  A few years ago I had to deal with anxiety-related health issues which led me to honestly believe that 99% of all diseases are actually caused by chronic, long-term stress over many, many years.  As your basic high school Health Ed. class taught, stress activates "fight or flight" and shuts down your body's natural regenerative abilities. 

Logic-Cool also posted another article here describing how belief was actually a near-mandatory requirement for pain-killers to even work at all.

These latest results are published in Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, which is one of two official journals run by the International Association ...

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The amount of innovation-related news is overwhelming today, so time for another compilation of human advancement.

1) Israeli researchers create a nasal spray vaccine that protects against Alzheimer's disease and strokes.

2) Stanford scientists discover potential treatments for lethal brain tumors in children, a field which had stagnated for 35 years.

3) Smartphones now allowing impoverished global communities to receive video tutorials to create products and avoid diseases from Western universities. View samples here and here.

4) Virgin Galactic announces its first commercial contracts to send researchers into space.

5) Researchers fuse human stem cells from fat into rat heart cells, growing tissue that beats, promising a breakthrough in human heart regeneration.

6) Scientists genetically engineer blood cells in 6 patients to resist HIV, opening possibilities for a full gene therapy cure for AIDS.

7) U.S. Air Force flies the Joint Strike Fighter F-35 for the first time.

Researchers at Fudan University in Shanghai have designed a working tractor beam. Alas, it only works on the nano-scale, so you won't be seeing the USS Enterprise pulling in shuttle crafts anytime soon. Instead, their work has the most immediate application in photonic circuitry where the tractor beam will allow for interesting manipulations within a circuit.

You can see their full research paper here.

An overwhelming amount of tech news was released today in various media. The first that caught my eye was two independent research teams have found ways to cause cancer cells to commit suicide. 

At Queen's University in Belfast, Dr. Helen McCarthy successfully packaged genes into nano-particles, which then directly transported the gene into breast cancer cells. The gene is iNOS and forces cancer cells to produce toxic nitric oxide which accumulate and self-destruct the breast cancer. Her technique leaves no negative side effects. Dr. McCarthy expects to begin human trials within 5 years. Her next step will be figuring out how to turn the nano-particles into a dried powder that can easily be transported through the health industry and then reconstituted for treatment in patients. 

And then, halfway around the world, a team of researchers at Wayne University in Michigan have developed a "personalized" therapy by which naturally occurring ...

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Readers might remember back in February 2001 when the world watched in horror as Islamic religious fanatics dynamited two colossal Buddha statues that had stood for over 15 centuries. Known as the Buddhas of Bamiyan, the statues originally were seen by the Taliban as a source of tourist income until a campaign by hardline clerics led to their destruction.

Since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, researchers from Europe and Japan have poured into the region, scouring for as many of the statue fragments as possible, some weighing up to 2 tons each. In theory, they now believe they can reassemble the smaller Buddha, which had stood 38 meters tall. All that stands in the way, of course, is money and local politics/culture. Another possibility they're considering is transporting the pieces to Germany for reconstruction.

While the destruction of these ancient statues was truly tragic, there have been ...

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For the first time ever, four different spacecraft from four different countries are docked with the International Space Station all at the same time. The vehicles include the Discovery from the USA, the Kounotori 2 from Japan, the Russian space freighter Progress 41 and finally the EU's ATV-2 Johannes Kepler.

The ISS is an ongoing $100 billion dollar project being constructed by 15 cooperating countries, including the United States, since 1998. The space station currently is the largest man-made structure in space, often visible to the naked eye on clear nights and boasts the length of an entire football field. It currently houses 6 crew members and supplies a living space equivalent to a Boeing 747 jumbo jet.

I'm a bit late noticing this development, but better late than never. The U.S. military's premiere research agency DARPA wants two new kinds of robots: one that can run faster than the fastest humans and another one agile.  Wired has a good article as well.

The winner of the contract is Boston Dynamic, a spin-off company from MIT that began building robots that can maneuver like animals.  They will base the first robot off a cheetah and the second will be humanoid.

The CHEETAH will not only be able to chase down human targets, but will be a rescue "animal" as well...able to turn sharp corners, highly uneven landscapes and even potentially running into burning buildings to rescue people caught in a fire.