The Human Cognome Project

The Human Cognome Project was an academic research venture to reverse engineer the human brain, paralleling in many ways the Human Genome Project and its success in deciphering the human genome. The HCP was a multidisciplinary undertaking, relevant to biology, neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and philosophy of mind. Funded and supported by scientific and corporate entrepreneurs and early transhumanist groups, the HCP developed the fundamentals of digitizi...

 Seeing History in the Spectrum of Light

As I strayed into the study of an eminent physicist, I observed hanging against the wall, framed like a choice engraving, several dingy, ribbon-like strips of, I knew not what... My curiosity was at once aroused. What were they? ... They might be shreds of mummy-wraps or bits of friable bark-cloth from the Pacific, ... [or] remnants from a grandmother's wedding dress... They were none of these... He explained that they were carefully-prepared photographs of portions of the Solar Spectrum. I s...

 Hen's Teeth

Some atavisms can be produced in the laboratory. The most amazing of these is that paragon of rarity, hen’s teeth. In 1980, E. J. Kollar and C. Fisher at the University of Connecticut combined the tissues of two species, grafting the tissue lining the mouth of a chicken embryo on top of tissue from the jaw of a developing mouse. Amazingly, the chicken tissue eventually produced tooth-like structures, some with distinct roots and crowns! Since the underlying mouse tissue alone could not prod...