No, no, not THAT mind reader, silly! Ushering a possible "Minority Report" age to our lives, a brain-scan technique developed by neuroscientists now can help pattern a person's thoughts in their brain before they act. Something like thinking about someone and then hearing the phone ring a few seconds after...

How do they do it exactly? Well, it revolves around the principle that the brain generates certain thought patterns whenever it sends signals to the rest of the body or thinks. It is also believed that a thought is formed right before it becomes action, which is called intention.

Predicting, or reading, intention, is what functional magnetic imaging resonance does. Well, actually it is used to scan the brain for thought patterns in periods before the targeted thought occurs or while it is occurring. Coupled with software that spots subtle differences in brain activity, the method predicts a person's intention with a 70% accuracy.

So you can be sure 70% of the time, you know what your date is going to do (hurray?). While it isn't anything precognitive (precognition is knowing the future before it happens), it does make us think about the ethical ramifications of it's uses. No one likes a telepathic Big Brother...well, not yet.

Barbara Sahakian, a professor of neuro-psychology at Cambridge University, said that a neuroethics society was formed following the rapid advances in neuroscience. It was to monitor and single out the impact of each research being conducted in the field. She said:

Do we want...a 'Minority Report' society where we're preventing crimes that might not happen? A lot of neuroscientists in the field are very cautious and say we can't talk about reading individuals' minds, and right now that is very true, but we're moving ahead so rapidly, it's not going to be that long before we will be able to tell whether someone's making up a story, or whether someone intended to do a crime with a certain degree of certainty.

Professor Colin Blakemore, a neuroscientist and director of the Medical Research Council, said that people shouldn't go overboard about the power of these techniques at the moment, but what others can be absolutely sure of is that the developments will continue to roll out. By then they will have more ability to probe people's intentions, minds, background thoughts, hopes and emotions.

The method is now being looked into, so it can be made to discern between an actual intention and just a passing thought.

Twenty years from now, your entire life can be chronicled in a high resolution video recorded in a tiny device the size of a sugar cube. No kidding! Some people call it "human black boxes" that serve as repository of medical, financial, and whatever digital records you've accumulated over the years. While this may be the ultimate evidence of technological advancement, it could bring fear and paranoia to the next level come 2026.

Researchers urged government and society leaders to talk about the implications of "huge increases in computing power" as well as the growing obsession to the collection of information on individuals.

Cliff Lynch, director of Coalition for Networked Information, believes that the changes would give the State further power to interfere in the affairs of individuals. It seems Big Brother would get too close for comfort.

  

King Of The Hill character Dale Gribble would probably have a thing or two to say about this one. Scientists at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland have developed nanocomputers that can perform basic logic operations. These tiny computers use a technique called molecular computational identification (MCID), which can function as ID tags for nanoscale machinery.

This development grew out of research on molecules that work like silicon logic gates. The molecules use the presence of a chemical, or chemical compound as inputs, while giving off light as output, allowing the devices to communicate using binary and Boolean terms. Operators such as "YES," "NOT", "NOR" and "AND" would be indicated depending on whether these logic gates light up, according to the chemicals present. Molecular computation could eventually allow for billions of calculations to occur simultaneously in a test tube.

These molecular ID tags are similar to the "radio frequency identification" (RFID) tags found on silicon chips, which broadcast a unique ID when they receive input. The smallest are just 0.3 millimetres to a side. This is too large for the type of applications for Prasanna de Silva and his colleagues hope to use these microscopic marvels, which require that tags be attracted to individual cells.

Eventually, the ID process will be automated. Molecular combinations would simply be read off like "numbers from a license plate," as de Silva says.

"What really makes the numbers go through the roof is combining operations," de Silva says. Combinations of logical functions can create large numbers of unique tags by giving each one a different output. Bathing them in the various input chemicals that would display answers in the form of fluorescence.

These tags have tremendous implications medical research, allowing medical professionals to tag and identify individual cells.  They promise to be useful for nanotechnologists in keeping track of large numbers of tiny nanostructures. No doubt, Big Brother and his corporate cronies have their own ideas for this as well...maybe Hank Hill's paranoid friend isn't so far off the mark.

Before all the Lance Basses of the world move to Moscow, the expedition is only simulated and totally earthbound. The “flight” - set to launch in the last quarter of 2007 -  will never leave the premises of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medical and Biological Research. The "ships" are actually five modules with a total space of 19,500 square feet (550 cubic meters), representing the Mars landing craft and base.

According Russia's Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) website, to make the cut, applicants must be between 25 and 50 years old. Doctors, engineers, biologist or computation instrument specialist gets extra points during the selection process. Unfortunately, being a former member of a boy band gets zero extra points. The announcement didn't specify the gender mix of five "winners."

The "Marsanauts" will spend 520 days with an option of extending it to 700 days. The trip to the red planet will take 250 days, one way. Throughout the mission, the crew would be communicating with 'mission control' via e-mail and video links for communications within the ship and with the landing module.

The pretend crew will have a five-day working week with weekends off and will be exposed to stress tests in the form of various simulated emergencies including onsite malfunctioning of equipment and systems. The simulation will study the effect of deep space mission on the crew’s health , test remote diagnosis and treatment via video-links, and organize crew activities and work to prevent any negative impacts prolonged spaceflight would have on human health.

One more thing, neither smoking nor alcohol will be allowed so Big Brother veterans need not apply.