Scientists at IBM’s (IBM) Almaden research center have built the biggest artificial brain ever–a cell-by-cell simulation of the human visual cortex: 1.6 billion virtual neurons connected by 9 trillion synapses. This computer simulation, as large as a cat’s brain, blows away the previous record–a simulated rat’s brain with 55 million neurons–built by the same team two years ago.

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When Astro Boy debuted as a Japanese manga comic almost 50 years ago, people had an out-of-this world notion of what the future would look like. The animated movie, out Oct. 23, reflects that retrofuturistic worldview, where humans exist side-by-side with androids and take hovercars to work. But the movie is not entirely faithful to the comic or the anime series. “I took some liberties with the story,” says director David Bowers.

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Once considered oddities, multiarmed tools are becoming mainstays of hospital operating rooms. The industry trailblazer in the human–robot medical team is the da Vinci HD Surgical System, a multiarmed assistant that is directly controlled by a surgeon who sits at a nearby console. The system, made by Intuitive Surgical of Sunnyvale, Calif., has been steadily adopted by hospitals performing urology, gynecology and cardiology operations since the HD’s introduction in 2006.

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A slate of new Hollywood science-fiction films share a common vision: In the future, we will become a race of puppet masters. As expected, Hollywood’s take on brain puppetry isn’t exactly true to the current research. But the shortcuts taken by filmmakers highlight the promise, and the challenges, central to the bizarre new discipline of mind over matter.

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Apple (AAPL) introduced its latest iPhone, the 3GS yesterday. The new phone will be priced at $199 for 16 GB and $299 for 32 GB (with a new, two year AT&T contract), and its most visible new feature is that its new, 3.0-megapixel camera can focus and take video, a first for the iPhone.

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The Force, it appears, may be with us sooner than expected. A study in the journal Nature this spring all but confirmed the latest evolution in the hard-charging, heady field of cybernetics: Monkeys can control machines with their brains. In the experiment, conducted by neuroscientists at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, a pair of macaque monkeys with electrodes implanted in their brains were able to quickly learn how to operate a robot arm as though it were their own, successfully feeding themselves more than half the time.

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Gaming’s goodwill processor—the one inside the PlayStation 3—has proved once again that it’s around for more than just kicking butt in Grand Theft Auto. Researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico have used microprocessors developed for the PS3 to power the fastest supercomputer on earth, the Roadrunner.

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Whether it’s a rifle erupting with high-speed plasma (a Halo favorite), another magnetic proximity mine blowing up whomever dares run over it (a GoldenEye staple) or some other as-yet-uninvented gun spewing more neon-colored energy, the virtual arsenals of video games have been thoroughly picked apart, overplayed and underestimated. The weapons selection in multiplayer-oriented shooters is particularly familiar, as the 16 years since the original Doom (the first game to feature head-to-head, first-person death matches) have seen a modernization of munitions types and tactics: Assault rifles do less damage—but fire faster—than sniper rifles; rocket launchers fire even less frequently but deliver all-encompassing “splash damage” … yada yada yada. If you’re a gamer, this is all incredibly well-known (and boring). And while that may be exactly the point to the geeks actually making the games, it’s a surprisingly delicate operation to make fake guns as down-to-earth as they are downright fun, as prescient as they are powerful.

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Next February, somewhere in America, someone out there is going to flip on his tube for some “Law & Order: SVU” and see nothing but fuzz. He’ll probably grapple with his rabbit ears and pound the side of his aging CRT, but no amount of cajoling will bring back Ice-T’s interrogation room or Richard Belzer’s last unfunny stand. That’s because on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2009, the FCC will repossess the analog spectrum from the major television broadcasters and the networks will go all-digital.

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Search is dead. Or at least that’s the opinion of one tuned-in venture capitalist I’ve been getting to know this year. We were recently discussing the drawn-out Microsoft-Yahoo-Google showdown and its larger implications when my fellow futurist issued his bold statement as a sort of summary dismissal of the whole multibillion-dollar battle. In his opinion, Silicon Valley’s Big Three are fighting over the scraps of the last decade of innovation while there’s a sea change taking place in the way people use the Internet–one that may leave the Web’s biggest players holding all the cards to a game nobody wants to buy into anymore.

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In real life, people rarely want to get into a firefight. But in many video games, particularly military-themed first-person shooters (FPS) like the just-released Rainbow Six Vegas 2, you can’t wait to step into the line of fire. After all, you’re an elite commando, and there’s no way not to fight–no button to press to call your nervous wreck of a wife or go hang out with the kids. It doesn’t matter how many bullets you take while gunning down whole platoons of terrorists and mercenaries, because this is red-blooded escapism at its geekiest. So shut up and start shooting, guys.

But unlike sci-fi FPS games such as Halo or Doom, military shooters have a tradition of so-called realism. Most of the in-game weapons are available now–or at least loosely based on designs that could eventually reach the likes of Iraq and Afghanistan. In other words, as optimistic as game developers might be about a high-tech replacement for the M-16 assault rifle, there are no plasma rifles or rail guns in your arsenal. … So as this successful genre continues to deliver best-selling titles, will increasingly powerful PCs and game consoles allow military shooters to become more realistic than ever?

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When analog television broadcasting goes dark in the United States on Feb. 17, 2009, and the huge analog transmitters of more than 1,600 broadcast stations are turned off, what will happen to those radio frequencies formerly used for analog TV? Well, for UHF channels 60 to 69, the future will be decided starting this week, as the Federal Communications Commission begins to auction that reclaimed bandwidth, bringing at least $10 billion into the treasury from auction winners and possibly allowing a dramatic expansion of wireless spectrum for cellular voice and data communication. Or maybe not, since it is just as likely these frequencies will be bought by incumbent wireless providers who may choose to simply let the channels go unused so as not to threaten their existing businesses.

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