I imagine a day, some time in the not too distant future when children and teenagers will be able to create their own genetically engineered machines, cure the diseases of the old and find new ways to build and extend the capabilities of humanity, moving from programming software to programing the physical world, through biology.

In the past, biology has been a backwater type of activity - a bunch of nerds in a lab. Now the sheer potential of biology to re-program our physical world is a new reality for everyone.

Biohackers want to tinker; do fun science; and, in the process, accelerate the pace of biotech innovation.

Since the beginning of civilization humans have altered our environment and its biology to allow our civilization to thrive - from domesticating plants and animals to building shelter and tools from living organisms.

Many of the alarmists on global warming, they've got a problem because the science doesn't back them up.

From an early age, I knew I would become a scientist. It may have been my brother Sam's doing. He interested me in the laws of falling bodies when I was ten and helped my father equip a basement chemistry lab for me when I was fifteen. I became skilled in the synthesis of selenium halides.

How in heaven's name can a nation with a $1 trillion surplus threaten so much scientific research so vital to its future?

I hold that the propositions embodied in natural science are not derived by any definite rule from the data of experience, and that they can neither be verified nor falsified by experience according to any definite rule.