Rat cells grown onto microscopic silicon chips worked as tiny robots, perhaps a first step towards a self-assembling device.
Scientists at the University of Florida made a living 'brain' by extracting 25,000 neurons from a rat's brain and culturing them inside a glass dish. The scientists were able to train the 'brain' to control the plane in the simulator and to react to conditions of the plane.
A research team at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry has merged computer chips with living tissue. This almost unnoticed event, published in a dry scientific paper and reported in the small print of The Washington Post last month, is as momentous an event as the first organ transplant or the first cloned animal. It opens up the possibility of using computer technology to supplement human intelligence, rather than replace it
British Telecom researchers are studying bacterial colonies to help develop communication networks that will self-organise and self-configure.