Eric Wollberg's interest in facilitating lucid dreams emerged while living in Jerusalem, reading lots of theology. "Abraham, Muhammad, Buddha, all those prophets received their prophetic wisdom in their dreams," the startup and tech investment alum told me recently. During some periods of his life, Wollberg too regularly experienced the sorts of dreams where he knew he was awake. He wondered whether there was a way to use emerging technology to have them on demand. Last February a hint came from, of all people, Grimes.

Hundreds of thousands human brain cells grown in a petri dish have found a new meaning in life – they spend the day playing the retro videogame Pong. Australian scientists at Cortical Labs taught the cells to play in just five minutes, which is faster than artificial intelligence (AI) that picks up the game after 90 minutes. The system, called'DishBrain,' is comprised of brain cells grown on top of microelectrode arrays that can both stimulate the cells. To teach the mini-brains Pong, the team used a single player version of the game and sent electrical signals to either the right or left of the array to indicate where the ball is. The brain would then fire off neurons to move the paddle back and forth according to the location of the ball. Hundreds of thousands human brain cells grown in a petri dish have found a new meaning in life – they spend the day playing the retro videogame Pong.

Scientists are continuing to tease out the mechanisms by which the Venus flytrap can tell when it has captured a tasty insect as prey as opposed to an inedible object (or just a false alarm). There is evidence that the carnivorous plant has something akin to a short-term "memory," and a team of Japanese scientists has found evidence that the mechanism for this memory lies in changes in calcium concentrations in its leaves, according to a recent paper published in the journal Nature Plants. This story originally appeared on Ars Technica, a trusted source for technology news, tech policy analysis, reviews, and more. Ars is owned by WIRED's parent company, Condé Nast. The Venus flytrap attracts its prey with a pleasing fruity scent. When the pressure becomes strong enough to bend those hairs, the plant will snap its leaves shut and trap the insect inside.

German scientists are training robots to 'feel' pain (engadget.com)

Johannes Kuehn and Professor Sami Haddadin from the Leibniz University of Hannover presented their work at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in Sweden last week. In the video below, you can see them demonstrating their "nervous robot-tissue model that is inspired by the human skin structure" on a robotic arm. The robotic nervous system classifies pain as light, moderate (such as strong collisions) or severe (anything that can damage the machine). "In the [light] pain class, such contacts occur that may harm the robot or prevent it from performing the task. The robot "feels" uncomfortable and shall smoothly retract until the contact event is over and return thereafter.