IEEE Spectrum: Biomedical

The Robot Insect Race

Pentagon Cyber-Insect Flies on Command

Electronic Health Records No Guarantee of Quality Health Care

Medical Problems at Veterans Administation Serve to Highlight Issue

Pandemic Flu Could Clog U.S. Rail Lines

A simulation by systems engineers shows rail network is sensitive to pandemic flu, but port system is more robust

Engineering the Future at IEEE

From left: Roy Want, Krishna Palem, Miguel Nicolelis, Dharmendra Modha, K.J. Ray Liu, Rangachar Kasturi, Katie Hall, IEEE Past President Lew Terman.

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IEEE Celebrates 125th Anniversary

Dream Jobs 09: Special Report

Building a solar-powered plane, creating stunning effects for Bollywood films, designing search-and-rescue robots--it's not just a job, it's engineering

Brain-wave Test Challenges Vegetative-State Diagnosis

Tests using an EEG have shown unexpected cortical functioning in vegetative patients

Of Two Minds

The back story

Rupturing The Nanotech Rapture

Atomic Architecture

By working with xenon and nickel at very low temperatures, an IBM scientist was the first to use a tiny needle to position individual atoms on a surface.

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Biological nanobots could repair and improve the human body, but they'll be more bio than bot

Economics Of The Singularity

Spot The Transition

After millennia of slow growth tied to rising population, the world economy took off. For the first time ever, output per capita rose above mere subsistence levels. It’s been rising ever since.

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Stuffed into skyscrapers by the billion, brainy bugbots will be the knowledge workers of the future

Waiting for the Rapture

Technological convergence will change our lives but won't make them indenfinitely long

Can Machines Be Conscious?

A BETTER TURING TEST

Shown this frame from the cult classic Repo Man [top], a conscious machine should be able to home in on the key elements [bottom]—a man with a gun, another man with raised arms, bottles on shelves—and conclude that it depicts a liquor-store robbery.

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Yes--and a new Turing test might prove it

The Consciousness Conundrum

Neocortical Column

of a rat, 2 millimeters high, as simulated on IBM’s Blue Gene supercomputer. The image above shows about 50 kinds of neurons; the image on the opposite page, around 100. A rat’s neocortex has 10 000 such columns; a human’s has millions.

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The wetware that gives rise to consciousness is far too complex to be replicated in a computer anytime soon

Reverse Engineering The Brain

Sliced Brains

Confocal microscopy imagery of fluorescently labeled neurons is one of the tools used to develop circuit diagrams of the fruit-fly brain.

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David Adler dreams of a Google map for the human brain

Singular Simplicity

The story of the Singularity is sweeping, dramatic, simple--and wrong

Signs of the Singularity

Hints of the singularity's approach can be found in the arguments of its critics

How to Talk Like a Salesman

Short answer: by learning to think like one

Engineering the Harvard Engineer

Renaissance Engineer

Venkatesh ”Venky” Narayanamurti has led Harvard's expansion in engineering.

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One man's determined quest to make Harvard a contender in engineering--after 372 years

Visualizing Electronic Health Records With "Google-Earth for the Body"

IBM researchers develop 3-D visualization tool for electronic health records

Nano particles Without Macroproblems

Quick and dirty advice for keeping nanotech clean

Double Helix Jeopardy

DNA databases help solve crimes but aid and abet racial discrimination