Bird-feeders, hung in many a garden, can affect the way our feathered friends evolve, say scientists.

European birds called blackcaps follow a different “evolutionary path” if they spend the winter eating food put out for them in UK gardens.

The birds’ natural wintering ground is southern Spain, where they feed on the fruits that grow there.

» via BBC News

Mr Saffo, from San Francisco, says in the future people will be able to grow their own replacement organs, take specially tailored drugs, and use genetic research tools to alert them from any possible hereditary health dangers.

He adds that tomorrow’s world will be a fusion of biology and technology, where robots do the chores, cars drive themselves and artificial limbs are better than real ones.

Mr Saffo’s comments reflect claims by American scientist Ray Kurzweil who only a few months ago said immortality was only 20 years away due to the speed of advancements in nanotechnology.

But Mr Saffo says these improvements would only be affordable to the super-rich. And because of this, he says, advancements may lead to a divide between the classes and eventually could lead to the super-rich evolving into a different species entirely, leaving his not-so-rich counterpart behind.

Seen at The Telegraph

In this electronic age, new writing technologies seem to proliferate and evolve with alarming speed — but of course, people have been coming up with new ways to communicate their thoughts for as long as language has existed at all. Writing itself — writes Dennis Baron — was once the object of much suspicion; Plato wrote that it could attenuate human memory, since writing things down would obviate the need to memorize them. In his new book, A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution (Oxford University Press), Baron looks at the history of writing implements and communication technologies, and explores the digital revolution’s impact on how we write, how we learn, and how we connect with one another.

Seen at Inside Higher Ed