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When it comes to intelligence, we need a better benchmark than our brains. Celeste Biever reports

Savants have phenomenal talents in music, art and mathematics, but are their gifts within everyone's reach?

We like to think of the periodic table as immutable. It isn't – atoms don't always weigh the same, says Celeste Biever

Snapped from a flying motorcycle in Pomerania, the winter wonderlands fire up the imagination because it's not clear what is natural

The race is on to add propulsion to small CubeSats, which would give them the freedom to do serious science and many things their bigger siblings cannot

Real organisms are giving us the materials to build lifelike robots that gradually become more intelligent

ITER, the fusion reactor that promises to set humanity on a path toward limitless energy through nuclear fusion, is taking shape

A virtual robot has acquired a cognitive wrinkle common in people – further evidence that computers need bodies if they're ever going to think like us

A software bot inspired by a popular theory of human consciousness takes the same time as humans to complete simple awareness tasks raising the question of whether machines could ever have subjective experiences

The advent of a World Wide Web for robots will let automatons learn from each other's experiences – a first step towards them working in the real world

iRobot CEO Colin Angle envisions a future when household robots are commonplace and talks about having bomb-disposal robots on hand for the World Cup in Rio

A robot that tricks its opponent in a game of hide and seek is a step towards machines that can intuit our thoughts, intentions and feelings

Turning brain activity into a conversational tool, researchers speak to patients previously thought to be unconscious

We could all unleash extraordinary mental abilities by getting inside the mind of autistic savants, says Daniel Tammet

The games master famed for creating SimCity and The Sims has now released Spore, based on the concept of evolution. Celeste Biever asked him about the hugely-hyped new game

ISPs have worken up to the value of the data and are selilng it on to advertiser who use it to individually tailor ads, often without customers' knowledge

There are few limits to what a pet can be taught in the virtual world, as long as it has someone to copy. The resulting could be more exciting video game characters

Finding bugs in software is big money – but what if the hackers are offering more than the good guys?

The web has levelled the playing field for people with autism, giving them a bigger, broader audience

Artificial ways of restoring body function are challenging ideas of what it means to be “normal”

Counting the dead in war zones is what epidemiologist Gilbert Burnham and his team do for a living. But last year when they said 600,000-plus Iraqis had been killed in the war, the US, UK and Iraqi governments furiously attacked their figures for being far too high — though it turns out that UK experts agree with Burnham. Celeste Biever caught up with him recently

Software developers face a culture shock as they grapple with the next generation of microprocessors

Robots are gaining the ability to engage us emotionally, giving them a much broader range of uses

Churches are embracing the net to find new recruits and bring congregations together all over the world

Skin and bladders are easy to grow in the lab, but how do you keep a heart or liver supplied with oxygen?

Wendy Hall breaks the mould of the typical computer scientist. Celeste Biever met her in Boston as she launched a major new transatlantic research venture alongside fellow web visionaries

In an electronic ballot, secret codes and torn-up voting slips could be the best guardians of democracy

In investigating the potential of quantum computers, MIT computer scientist Peter Shor created an algorithm that could unravel our data encryption online

Slime mould, a clever stuff is featured. It finds the quickest path between food and has even shown signs of having memory despite not having a brain. Ella Gale at the University of the West England in Bristol UK placed slime mould on a forest of 64 microelectrodes along with some oat flakes.

Artificial intelligence researcher Ben Goertzel wants to create robots far more intelligent than humans.

An old MRI machine used by a Nobel laureate has been revamped to probe the exotic elements made in exploding stars

L'Oreal-UNESCO For Women In Science award-winner Pratibha Gai reveals how her microscopy innovation is allowing us greater control over chemical reactions

Applying human psychology to a robot can help them understand how to work work alongside us, and make our lives easier

The SpaceX founder says he'd like to “die on Mars”. Why the obsession with going to the Red Planet?

A robot that begins just speaking nonsense can produce real words by interacting with a teacher – just like a human child

A computer model of a brain has taught itself to estimate the number of objects in an image without counting them, much like humans are able to do