Ann Reardon is probably the last person whose content you'd expect to be banned from YouTube. A former Australian youth worker and a mother of three, she's been teaching millions of loyal subscribers how to bake since 2011. But the removal email was referring to a video that was not Reardon's typical sugar-paste fare. Since 2018, Reardon has used her platform to warn viewers about dangerous new "craft hacks" that are sweeping YouTube, tackling unsafe activities such as poaching eggs in a microwave, bleaching strawberries, and using a Coke can and a flame to pop popcorn. The most serious is "fractal wood burning", which involves shooting a high-voltage electrical current across dampened wood to burn a twisting, turning branch-like pattern in its surface. The practice has killed at least 33 people since 2016.

Pocket-size ultrasound devices that cost 50 times less than the machines in hospitals (and connect to your phone). These are just some of the innovations now transforming medicine at a remarkable pace. No one can predict the future, but it can at least be glimpsed in the dozen inventions and concepts below. Like the people behind them, they stand at the vanguard of health care. Neither exhaustive nor exclusive, the list is, rather, representative of the recasting of public health and medical science likely to come in the 2020s.

Even small changes in your surroundings could indicate danger. Imagine a robot could detect those changes, and a warning could immediately alert you through a display in your eyeglasses. That is what U.S. Army scientists are developing with sensors, robots, real-time change detection and augmented reality wearables. Army researchers demonstrated in a real-world environment the first human-robot team in which the robot detects physical changes in 3D and shares that information with a human in real-time through augmented reality, who is then able to evaluate the information received and decide follow-on action. "This could let robots inform their Soldier teammates of changes in the environment that might be overlooked by or not perceptible to the Soldier, giving them increased situational awareness and offset from potential adversaries," said Dr. Christopher Reardon, a researcher at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's Army Research Laboratory.

These days it seems that nearly every product and startup boasts some kind of A.I. capability, but when it comes to advancing this domain beyond simplistic machine learning technologists at MIT Technology Review's Future Compute conference say these A.I. will need to be more human than not. When discussing A.I. during the conference's first day on December 2nd, speakers focused on two distinct paths for this technology: more human-like A.I.'s as well as more computer-like humans. This dual approach was presented as a potential future for human-machine symbiosis. But what exactly does that all mean, and is it even a good thing? A research Scientist from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Catherine Schuman began the conversation by presenting her work on neuromorphic computing.

It can be a bit difficult to wrap your brain around what exactly neural interface startup Ctrl-labs is doing with technology. That's ironic, given that Ctrl-labs wants to let your brain directly use technology by translating mental intent into action. We caught up with Ctrl-labs CEO Thomas Reardon at Web Summit 2019 earlier this month to understand exactly how the brain-machine interface works. Founded in 2015, Ctrl-labs is a New York-based startup developing a wristband that translates musculoneural signals into machine-interpretable commands. But not for long -- Facebook acquired Ctrl-labs in September 2019. The acquisition hasn't closed yet, so Reardon has not spoken to anyone at the social media giant since signing the agreement. He was, however, eager to tell us more about the neural interface technology so we could glean why Facebook (and the tech industry at large) is interested. In short, Ctrl-labs wants us to interact with technology not via a mouse, a keyboard, a touchscreen, our voice, or any other input we've adopted. Reardon and his team expect that in a few years we will be able to use individual neurons -- not thoughts -- to directly control technology. Reardon has said many times that his company is tackling the "mother of all machine learning problems."

Pocket-size ultrasound devices that cost 50 times less than the machines in hospitals (and connect to your phone). These are just some of the innovations now transforming medicine at a remarkable pace. No one can predict the future, but it can at least be glimpsed in the dozen inventions and concepts below. Like the people behind them, they stand at the vanguard of health care. Neither exhaustive nor exclusive, the list is, rather, representative of the recasting of public health and medical science likely to come in the 2020s.

Pocket-size ultrasound devices that cost 50 times less than the machines in hospitals (and connect to your phone). These are just some of the innovations now transforming medicine at a remarkable pace. No one can predict the future, but it can at least be glimpsed in the dozen inventions and concepts below. Like the people behind them, they stand at the vanguard of health care. Neither exhaustive nor exclusive, the list is, rather, representative of the recasting of public health and medical science likely to come in the 2020s.

Thomas Reardon puts a terrycloth stretch band with microchips and electrodes woven into the fabric--a steampunk version of jewelry--on each of his forearms. "This demo is a mind fuck," says Reardon, who prefers to be called by his surname only. He sits down at a computer keyboard, fires up his monitor, and begins typing. After a few lines of text, he pushes the keyboard away, exposing the white surface of a conference table in the midtown Manhattan headquarters of his startup. Only this time he is typing on…nothing. Yet the result is the same: The words he taps out appear on the monitor. Steven Levy is Backchannel's founder and Editor in Chief.

Lauren Hayes, a 27-year-old model and entrepreneur, is famous at the automation software company IPsoft. At a recent conference the company hosted in New York, suited c-level executives stopped her in the hallway to take photos. An executive at one of the largest insurance companies in the United States told her that 65,000 of his employees loved her. And during his keynote presentation, the CEO of IPsoft, Chetan Dube, called Hayes on stage to guest star in a faux game show. Her opponent was Amelia, who is also the reason for her contextual fame.

Some people are famous only among fans of a particular sport, a specific age group, or their hometown locals. Lauren Hayes, a 27-year-old model and entrepreneur, is famous at the automation software company IPsoft. At a recent conference the company hosted in New York, suited c-level executives stopped her in the hallway to take photos. An executive at one of the largest insurance companies in the United States told her that 65,000 of his employees loved her. And during his keynote presentation, the CEO of IPsoft, Chetan Dube, called Hayes on stage to guest star in a faux game show.