I need to spend more time looking for and reading this kind of article, and paying attention to the beneficial real world applications. Pretty cool stuff.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists who trained a monkey to move a mechanical arm using thought alone said on Tuesday that experiments in Parkinson’s disease patients show the technique may work in humans, too.
Electrodes implanted in the brains of Parkinson’s disease patients transmitted signals that might someday be used to operate remote devices, the team at Duke University Medical Center reported.
Unfortunately my first response was, “Great, first real world application will be we’ll have programmed monkey suicide bombers.”
***UPDATE*** included below is a picture of actual mind control experiment.
]]>< 
These science and medicine stories always appear in the back pages of the newspaper — yet, they often have great significance.
I remember reading a brief story about a mysterious “gay cancer” that appeared on something like page B12 of the L.A. Times almost 24 years ago and thinking “Wow! This could be something big.”
Being able to control machines through thought is HUGE. It will probably be the most significant accomplishment in this century.
I predict that in the near future it will be common for people to have brain implants that will allow them to open doors, turn on lights, drive vehicles, and communicate directly with computers.
This combined with nanotechnology will change the very nature of our existence — our actions will not be limited by our physical bodies.
In conversations about this with friends, some have suggested this will turn us into something like the Borg on Star Trek. But, if you think about it, why would we need Borg-like drones when machines will be controlled by our minds? The implants that will make this possible will eventually be nearly microscopic.
I am a regular reader of New Scientist: http://www.newscientist.com/ Check it out.
Here is another one that is simply amazing…
First robot moved by muscle power
By Anil Ananthaswamy
A silicon microrobot just half the width of a human hair has begun to crawl around in a Los Angeles lab, using legs powered by the pulsing of living heart muscle. It is the first time muscle tissue has been used to propel a micromachine.
This distinctly futuristic development could lead to muscle-based nerve stimulators that would allow paralysed people to breathe without the help of a ventilator. And NASA which is funding the research hopes swarms of crawling “musclebots” could one day help maintain spacecraft by plugging holes made by micrometeorites.
More…