The line separating human from machine got a bit fuzzier last month, when Google finalized two patents for smart contact lenses designed to alert people with diabetes to potentially dangerous dips in blood sugar levels. Around the same time, scientists at the University of Louisville helped three people with complete lower limb paralysis move their legs and feet by stimulating electronic devices they’d embedded in their spinal cords. And earlier this year, doctors implanted a chip in the brain of a man with complete paralysis that allowed him to move objects with his mind with the help of a prosthesis.

Fifteen years ago, the promise of gene therapy was dealt a stunning blow by the widely reported death of eighteen-year-old Jesse Gelsinger during a clinical trial. Researchers were attempting to cure Gelsinger and other patients suffering from a rare condition called ornithine transcarbamylase deficiency, which leaves people unable to process nitrogen in their blood—making protein-rich foods potentially deadly. To treat Gelsinger, scientists injected him with a virus engineered to include a functional version of the gene that was faulty in OTCD patients. But within 48 hours, Gelsinger’s condition dived dramatically; his body swelled, his skin and eyes yellowed, showing signs of liver damage, and his fever spiked dangerously high. Four days after injection, doctors found Gelsinger had no hope of recovery, and his family decided to take him off of life support.

Starting Monday, the 2013 Nobel Prize winners will be announced in a series of ceremonies over the course of the week. The Nobel Prize is longstanding in its prestige (and controversy). Here are a few lesser known facts: The Nobel Prize was started by Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. Nobel, a brilliant chemist, engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur amassed 355 patents (and quite a fortune) by the time he passed away in 1896. When the executors of his estate opened his will, they discovered that Nobel’s wish was for his wealth be used to create prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology and Medicine, Literature, and Peace. The awards were to go to individuals or organizations who in the preceding year had “conferred the greatest benefit to mankind” in these categories. Nobel’s wish took everyone by surprise, including his family and the institutions he designated to pick winners. The first prizes were not awarded until five years later, in 1901. That’s right, the founder of the Nobel Peace Prize was the inventor of an explosive. Nobel actually believed that in creating dynamite, he was bringing the world one step closer to peace. “When two armies of equal strength can annihilate each other …

A few years ago, the Museum of Science and Industry asked 1,304 Americans to name a science role model for kids. Heavyweights like Stephen Hawking and Jane Goodall barely registered. Call us biased but we believe scientists can be every bit as riveting and inspirational as entertainers and athletes. Kids just need more opportunities to meet big thinkers. That’s the idea behind the World Science Festival’s Pioneers in Science program, an interactive event that gives middle and high school students from around the world rare and intimate access to Nobel Laureates, presidential advisors, and other trailblazing scientists.

What do we mean when we say a machine thinks? Computers and robots have long been able to crunch impossibly large numbers and execute complex scripted tasks. However, now they’re winning game shows, teaching themselves how to walk, and even rediscovering calculus. But do they truly think? Can they ever learn to feel? And what would it mean for robots to have a soul? Man Made Minds: Living with Thinking Machines is an in-depth look at the emerging advances in artificial intelligence and the increasingly clever machines that stand to reshape our near future. David Ferrucci, a principle investigator at IBM’s T.J. Watson’s Research Center, takes us inside the mind of the supercomputer, and recent Jeopardy! champion, WATSON. Roboticist Hod Lipson shows us new robots that are able to perceive their environment and teach themselves abilities—such as proprioception—long assumed to be solely biological phenomena. Eric Horvitz presents the Medical Bayesian Kiosk, a revolutionary new system he’s developed to perform surprisingly human-like triage in understaffed hospitals. The entire panel wrestles with the notion of what it means for technology to “feel.” Watch the full program HERE!