Biotech & Synthetic Biology

In 2006 the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) asked America’s scientists to submit “innovative proposals to develop technology to create insect-cyborgs.” The Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (HI-MEMS) program, also known as the cybug program, was a proposal from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to encourage the …

The Internet-of-Things is an emerging revolution in the ICT sector under which there is shift from an “Internet used for interconnecting end-user devices” to an “Internet used for interconnecting physical objects that communicate with each other and/or with humans in order to offer a given service”. This includes everything from …

“It was in the oceans that life first evolved and where complex animals have thrived for over 600 million years. Marine animals survive in environments as diverse as tropical coral reefs, polar ice-capped oceans, and the lightless abyssal depths,” says Frank E. Fish from West Chester University and Donna M. …

Neuro- or Biohybrid systems are systems formed by at least one biological component – i.e. already existing in living systems – and at least one artificial – newly engineered – component. Biological and artificial components are not independent but are passing information either in one or both directions, thereby forming …

The life of a plant that we depend on for food, clean air, and materials are challenged by myriad threats, natural and man-made including Viruses, pests, fungi, herbicides, drought, pollution, salinity, flooding, and frost. These rapid or unexpected emergence of these threats put human food security at risk and could …

DARPA has launched a new surveillance program which plans to use genetically engineered plant as battlefield surveillance sensors. DARPA’s new Advanced Plant Technologies (APT) program looks to seemingly simple plants as the next generation of intelligence gatherers. Traditional sensors are not always optimal for  obtaining timely, accurate information as national security …

By 2020, brain diseases will account for 20 percent of the global burden of disease, according to the World Health Organization. Military service members are particularly susceptible to PTSD as a reaction to the traumas of war. PTSD is a condition in which individuals feel anxiety and panic when reminded …

New era has arrived when people  use only their thoughts to control not only themselves, but the world around them. Every action our body performs begins with a thought, and with every thought comes an electrical signal. The electrical signals can be received by the Brain-Computer Interface (BCI), which can electroencephalograph …

Neural interfaces currently approved for human use squeeze a tremendous amount of information through just 100 channels, with each channel aggregating signals from tens of thousands of neurons at a time. The result is noisy and imprecise.  DARPA announced NESD in January 2016 with aim to develop to  develop an implantable …