It’s a good news day for fans of brain-machine interface technologies. Not only are DARPA funding a project to use machines to boost the speed at which operators can scan visual images (which will probably come as a great relief to the people employed to vet the photos uploaded to social network sites), but the full details of the systems that allow a man who is paralysed from the neck down to interact with his computer (and meatspace, via a robotic arm) have been published in the journal Nature. So, when do I get my datajack?

Space tourism is one of the growing new industries at the moment, what with there being plenty of room for new product ideas and innovatory techniques. It looks like it won’t be all that long before people can pay for a trip into orbit, but then what? If heading straight back to Earth to clean the vomit off your flight-suit doesn’t appeal, maybe you can stay for a few days in an inflatable space-hotel, developed from the prototype being launched from Siberia this week.

Solar energy doesn’t have to be used to heat things up – it can be harnessed for cooling things down, too. A group of researchers are working on the ‘Active Building Envelope’, a thin-film technology that would attach both solar cells and heat pumps to virtually any surface, which they hope could eventually make traditional air-con and heating systems totally obsolete.

Populations are on the move, as the recent clamourings over immigration demonstrate. And it’s a trend that’s set to continue, as climate change and the depletion of natural resources start rendering some regions impossible to inhabit. The Center for Climate Systems Research has produced a predictive map to show how population densities will have changed by 2025, and some of the results are quite unexpected.

Technology Review takes a break from reviewing technology, and has a crack at science fiction instead. Without too much hyperbole, they accurately sum up Vernor Vinge’s ‘Rainbows End’ and place it in context – although carefully skating around the intended implications of the ‘secure hardware environment’ idea, and what it represents metaphorically. If you have any love for science fiction whatsoever, you really need to read this book.