Cyborg

Talk about thinking small: researchers at Harvard University have devised a new way to implant flexible bioelectronic devices in the embryos of frogs, mice, and lizards, enabling them to monitor brain activity as these creatures develop.

If you're going to try "tattooing" a microscopic animal, it would make sense to select one of the toughest creatures on the planet. That's what scientists have done with the tardigrade, and the tech they used may have some valuable applications.

If you want to gather climate-change data from the deep ocean, why not hitch a ride with an organism that's going down there anyways? That's the thinking which led to the creation of "biohybrid jellyfish" which pack two speed-boosting technologies.

Manipulating microbes has helped human civilization for millennia, since we started using yeast to make bread and booze. In a modern breakthrough, scientists have created semi-living “cyborg cells” that can survive in environments natural cells can’t.

Organ development has traditionally been tricky to study, thanks largely to the difficulty in getting sensors in there without damaging the organs. Now, researchers from Harvard have developed a way to create “cyborg organoids” by integrating nanoelectronics into cell cultures.

​Cyborg insects have been scuttling and buzzing around for years, but now, researchers from KAIST have scaled the idea up to a turtle. With their concept system, a human driver could use a brain-computer interface (BCI) to direct the turtle's movement just by thinking about it.

With Elon Musk advocating the need for humans to merge with machines and a transhumanist politician running for Governor in California, an intellectual movement that sat on the fringes throughout the 20th century is poised to hit the mainstream.

The dream of melding biological and man-made machinery is now a little more real with the announcement that Columbia Engineering researchers have successfully harnessed a chemical energy-producing biological process to power a solid state CMOS integrated circuit.

Why go to the trouble of designing tiny flying robots from scratch, when there are already ready-made insects that are about the right size? That's the thinking behind research being conducted at North Carolina State University, which is aimed at converting moths into "biobots."

MIT's "supernumerary robotic fingers" extend from either side of the user's dominant hand, and are attached to a device that's worn around the wrist. The idea behind them is that (among other things) they could allow users to perform tasks that usually require two hands, using only one.

For the first time, neuromuscular electrodes that enable a prosthetic arm and hand to be controlled by thought have been permanently implanted into the nerves and muscles of an amputee.

Scientists have created a system for steering live cockroaches by remote control.