The SpikerBox essentially consists of a microprocessor, a speaker, and two neural probes (also known as metal needles). Everything is powered by a single 9-volt battery.

Users start by grabbing a handy invertebrate, such as a cockroach or cricket, and briefly dunking it in ice water to anesthetize it. They then carefully cut off one of its legs, which Marzullo and Gage assure us will grow back. Next, that leg is placed on a surface such as a cork board. One probe is then stuck into the base of the leg, to serve as a ground, while the other is placed higher up and serves as a recording electrode.

As soon as the device is turned on, users will be able to hear a popping sound over its speaker. That sound is the neurons firing in the still-living leg. Scientifically-curious types can then poke at the leg, to hear how the neural activity increases when it’s touched. Other experiments (some of which involve whole live crickets or earthworms) include observing how neurons are affected by hot and cold temperatures, neuroactive chemicals, or an external electrical signal. Instructions are available on the company website.

Additionally, the device can be hooked up to an iOS or Android device running a custom app, providing users with a visual display of the neural activity.

Shown off by Microsoft’s chief research officer Rick Rashid at TechFest 2012, the technology preserves the speakers timbre, accent, and intonation while translating between 26 languages supported by Microsoft speech. While it leaves a trace of digitized robot voice on some syllables (you can hear some samples via the Extremetech link below), it does a remarkably good job of maintaining the speaker’s own nuances of speech while swapping in the proper words and conjugations.

The process isn’t exactly instantaneous, at least not from a full stop. The software needs to spend about an hour with each party learning the particulars of that person’s individual speech characteristics. But once the software is acclimated, it can translate more or less in real time. The idea is that one day in the not too distant future, we will be able to train our phones just once in the styles of our speech and then use the software to speak over the phone with anyone, regardless of whether we share a language, in real time.

In other translation-on-my-smartphone news, researchers at the University of Aberdeen are developing an application that uses the camera on a laptop or mobile device to translate sign language directly into text. The idea is to extend an understanding of sign language to the vast majority of people who aren’t fluent, and in the process increase the opportunities for conversation between those with hearing disabilities and the world around them. The team hopes to have the technology available as a product by 2013.

A race car model no larger than a grain of sand, created using the new high-speed two-photon lithography process

The printer uses an existing process called "two-photon lithography," and utilizes a special type of liquid resin. That resin contains molecules which cause the liquid around them to harden into a polymer, once they’re exposed to laser light. In order to be activated, however, they must absorb two photons of that light at once. The only place where the beam is intense enough for that to happen is right at its center. This allows for great precision in the printing process, as only the very middle of the beam is the "active" part.

Additionally, unlike traditional 3D printing, two-photon lithography allows for solid material to be created anywhere within the depth of the liquid resin – it isn’t limited to simply adding to a surface layer of hardened material.

Along with the resin, another one of the keys to the Vienna printer’s peppy performance is a high-speed motorized mirror system, that directs the beam of the laser within that resin. Because the mirrors are constantly in motion throughout the printing process, their acceleration and deceleration times have been minimized as much as possible, in order that more of their time can be spent on the actual creation of the object.

"The printing speed [of two-photon lithography] used to be measured in millimeters per second," said Prof. Jürgen Stampfl. "Our device can do five meters in one second."

As can be seen in the video below, the printer is currently pretty darn good at building things such as tiny race car models – it can make one that’s a mere 285 micrometers long in just four minutes. A bio-compatible resin is currently in the works, however, which could hopefully be used to build micro-scaffolding for a patient’s living cells to grow into, in the creation of biological tissues.

Toshiba Vegetable Recognizer

The device comes with a large database of items it can recognize, even from a distance. It can be trained with additional items when necessary.

Earthquake Levitation System

The levitation system is the brainchild of a company called Air Danshin Systems Inc., which the Japanese-culture-and-art site Spoon & Tamago says roughly translates to “anti-seismic.” It was founded in 2005 but has caught on after the March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake.

It consists of a sensor network, an air compressor and an artificial second foundation beneath the home’s bottom level and just above the ground. An earthquake-sensitive motion sensor recognizes when the earth is unstable, and an air compressor activates within half a second to fill the space between the building and the ground. It can lift a structure 1.2 inches off the ground, according to a report in DigitalTrends.

While the earth moves, the levitating home would stay still, protected by the air cushion. Apparently 88 homes in Japan already had this home-airbag system as of last summer.

There’s even a video demonstration below — seems like it works pretty well. (Why didn’t they let the old guy sit in the comfortable chair?)

The whole thing seems like a good idea, if slightly impractical — it would not be easy to lift a home off the ground and install this second artificial foundation. But then again, it would be better to install this rather than let the earth move your house for you.

We knew this day was coming, but I certainly didn’t suspect it’d be so soon. Never again will you have to wonder Where is the closest Pizza Hut? or What make of car is that? or Don’t I know her from somewhere? Ubiquitous smartphones have already given us the ability to swiftly look up information with only a moderate disruption. Smartglasses completely remove the mediating step of pausing to wonder and ponder and research: data is simply there, an inseparable part of your visible world.

Overlay Google Maps onto the real world, and navigation becomes effortless. Overlay reviews and menus onto restaurant storefronts as you pass them; overlay nutritional data onto your plate as you eat; overlay purchasing info if you particularly admire your co-worker’s new shoes; overlay translations of foreign signage, breaking news, hilarious kittens romping at your feet.

As smartglasses become popular, the world will start to seem naked and inaccessible without a glossy data layer on everything.As smartglasses become popular, the world will start to seem naked and inaccessible without a glossy data layer on everything. Everyday activities, maneuvering through the physical world, socializing, working, learning, will all be increasingly eased by the use of glasses; increasingly, until these activities start to feel almost impossible without the glasses. Who’s going to have patience to laboriously explain facts to a non-data-overlaid person? Give you my business card? Point you in the direction of Fifth Avenue? I don’t even remember how to spell my name! Where are your Googles?

Will businesses see the need for physical signs and billboards? Will municipalities bother to maintain physical street signs and traffic signals? Will smartglasses make the university lecturer’s blackboard and salesman’s PowerPoint obsolete as well?

What comes after that? With everyone wearing glasses (or, at this point in the future, contact lenses or implants), individual appearance becomes as malleable on the street as it is now on the Internet. You can overlay your real body with a digitally altered one, saving money on subtle nose surgery or just completely living life as a furry avatar.

What, though, will it take to get us to that tipping point, when head-up augmented reality suddenly shifts from a novelty to a ubiquity? Wearing cumbersome goggles on your face as you proceed through your day is a bit more of an intrusion than I for one am ready for. Sony’s 3DTV goggles are impressive and designed only to be worn in the comfort of your couch, and still I have yet to meet someone who owns a pair. The gear will have to be small and easy to integrate with your basic life processes. Perhaps AR windshields in our cars will become common first, before we put them on our faces.

But, however it comes — the fully mediated future has begun.

The goal is to democratize sequencing and eliminate the still-heady costs associated with genetic analysis, making DNA and protein sequencing as commonplace as an exam with a tongue depressor.

Oxford Nanopore Technologies Ltd. uses a proprietary nanopore detection system to seek out and study molecules. Nanopores are organic molecules with a hole in them, embedded in a polymer membrane. The membrane’s electrical field allows individual strands of DNA to pass through the nanopores, and the disruption in current through the nanopore can be analyzed and matched to base pairs.

The company uses this setup in two configurations: the GridION system, which consists of nodes filled with disposable test cartridges containing multiple nanopores, and the MinION, designed for portable analysis of single molecules.

Each GridION node and cartridge is initially designed to deliver tens of gigabytes of data every 24 hours. Initially, the company intends to make 2,000-nanopore cartridges, but has plans for a 20-node installation using an 8,000-nanopore configuration. The latter would be expected to deliver a complete human genome in 15 minutes, the company says.

MinION is much smaller and can sequence up to 150 million base pairs in six hours. It uses blood, plasma and serum for sample analysis, like other lab tests, and it doesn’t need polymerase chain reaction amplification techniques to work. It will be on sale for $900 later this year, according to the company.

With technology like this, fast, sub-$1,000 genome sequencing could become commonplace.

The Beam Brush will monitor a person’s dental hygiene using sensors that sync with an app, which will then track that data and offer incentives to improve their brushing habits. It may seem odd to equip something as simple as a toothbrush with Bluetooth features, but when the average person spends only 46 seconds out of the dentist-recommended two minutes brushing their teeth, a little technology might go a long way. Sensors in the Beam Brush are activated by contact with the mouth, which syncs with a timer in the app to time how long a user actually spends brushing their teeth. The app will also track this over a period of time, so people can share the results with their dentist and see if they need to improve their habits.

Later versions of the app will detect how long a person scrubs different areas of their mouth as well, and play music while they brush. Beam Technologies is also planning to add some social elements and game-like achievements to reward users for their good dental habits. It should be a useful tool in particular for parents who want to make sure their children are brushing their teeth correctly.

Remove works by initially taking a burst of shots in succession. By comparing those shots with one another, it is then able to identify which objects are stationary (the scenery, and/or your posing subject) and which ones are moving (those dang people). It then highlights the moving objects on a preview screen, and allows you to select which ones to remove. The end product is a composite photo, with the offending humans taken out.

Although a certain unwanted person may be blocking the background in one shot, that same bit of background will be visible in another shot – this little fact allows the app to fill in the background when it removes the person. Needless to say, Remove can’t help you with bystanders who are standing still … perhaps if it had a feature that used your device’s speaker to yell "Hey buddy, get out my shot!"

The app is presently still in the prototype stage, but a full version should be ready for a demonstration later this month, at the 2012 Mobile World Conference in Barcelona. It is reminiscent of a system being developed at the University of California, San Diego, that is able to remove pedestrians from Google Street View images.

Simply put, the technology opens the door to augmented reality systems that don’t require some kind of bulky, virtual-reality-headset-from-the-‘90s peripheral visor or helmet. Instead, Innovega’s tech relies on images protected on a normal-looking set of specs and a pair of nanotechnology-infused contact lenses that provide megapixel clarity of that up-close imagery while still allowing the eye to focus on the world beyond.

At least, so goes the company’s CES pitch, which you can judge for yourself below. We haven’t tested the product, so we can’t really speak to its awesomeness. But DARPA can. The Pentagon’s blue-sky research wing announced yesterday that Innovega has developed for the agency a new breed of contact lenses that allow “a wearer to view virtual and augmented reality images without the need for bulky apparatus” and that allow users to focus on both faraway objects and images placed very close to the eye.

For DARPA’s part, Innovega is working as part of the Soldier Centric Imaging via Computational Cameras (SCENICC) program, which aims to eliminate the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capability gap at the individual soldier level. Read: AR setups that plug individual soldiers right into drone feeds and other intel streams while still allowing them to maintain their peripheral vision and situational awareness. Meanwhile that could lead to more immersive 3-D television and gaming experiences for the rest of us. More tech detail via the video below.