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Anonymous Coward writes "Bringing us one step closer to becoming centrally-controlled meatbots, Japanese scientists have developed a device that produces power from the glucose in human blood. Theoretically, this technology (aka "Dracucell") could produce 100W of power. Of course, it can't produce that much power in practice since your body stupidly wastes glucose in maintaining homeostasis. The scientists propose that this devices could be used to power implanted devices. Now how many of you Slashdotters would it take to power my laptop? I'll buy the cola!"
You talk about intelligence, and being as smart as humans.
When you talk about intelligence, you are really refering to _human_ intellegence.
Do you not understand that what is considered to be intelligent behaviour is relative to your environment.
Do you understard that it would be very stupid for
- a cow in its native environment to behave as if its a hippopotamus.
- a human in its native environment to behave as if it were a bird.
- a computer in its native environment to behave as if it were a human.
Why would a computer think like a human, its not a human. It doesnt have a human body, or a human mind, neither does a cow, a bird or a monkey, but it doesnt mean they dont possess intellegence.
We shouldnt be so arrogant to only percieve inteligence as behaviour that mimicks ours.
If we fully understood the human brain, if we could predict behaviour based on the brains current knowledge and its environmental stimulus then would you still consider humans to be inteligent ?
Any technology sufficiently advanced appears like magic, thats what our brain is.
Just because we are masters of our computers doesnt mean computers are incapable of intellegence.
Just because we dont understand our brain doesnt mean it has a magic quality, a soul.
1. Have some sort of actual device sticking out of the body. This is bad, because it breaches the skin, our natural defensive screen, and such things tend to become very easily infected.
2. Surgery to replace cells. Again, any surgery at all is going to be both expensive and risk prone.
More recently, a third option has become available: having fully implanted power system that can be recharged wirelessly, via em radiation of some kind (you can google for it). This is a big gain, because it allows devices that are more power hungry while still maintaining the benefits of not breaching the skin and not needing frequent operations. But it still requires people to remember and have access to the appropriate charging device consistantly. If for any reason some one forgets or can't recharge, the device may shut down, sometimes with fatal results. So having a way to remove one more step for powering these things should really help improve the quality of life for a lot of people today.
Of course, personally I find this to be a very exciting development for future things as well. When we get to the point of having more optional implants, for things like boosting hearing or vision, a way to power them will be necessary, and if the power requirements are low, then this system would be perfect. Ultimately, widespread adoption of anything, from an OS to a vehicle, is all about making it as easy and intuitive for end users as possible. There is a lot of interesting stuff going on for advanced things like brain-computer interfaces, and people who are interested should look around, as the state of the art has advanced a great deal in the past 5 years. Here are a few links for the curious, and much more can be found with google, of course:
Graz University of Technology
Standford/DVA Neural Interface Project
Beyond the Big Barrier(lighter, intro type stuff)
News Group:
sci.med.psychobiology
This one has some more actual research, as well as a lot more links and citations.
DAMN YOU, HOMEOSTASIS!!!! You ruin all my hopes and dreams!
Actually the reaction you describe is not very efficient and only gives a net gain of 2 ATP ( adenosine tri phosphate)per glucose molecule which the bodies tissues use for energy.
Glucose + 2 ADP + 2 NAD+ + 2 Pi -----> 2 Pyruvate + 2 ATP + 2 NADH + 2 H+
Most of the bodies energy is generated by the Krebs ( Citric Acid ) cycle in the mitochondria which generates much more ATP. The glucose-6-phosphate gets converted to pyruvate and enters the krebs cycle. show here This give a net gain of 30 moles atp per 2 moles of pyruvate.
Incidently if you have sugar by products in your urine you should see your doc as you might have diabetes.
Glycolysis is anaerobic (does not use oxygen, but produces harmful byproducts like lactic acid) and isn't what these scientists are doing.
Your body produces the bulk of its energy by converting glucose to ATP by a process known as chemiosmosis (electron transport). It takes advantage of the loosly-bound electrons in glucose, and at one point during the reaction the electrons flow along the inner membranes of your cells' mitochondria.
The process the researchers have come up with probably uses the same effect to produce a current. The waste product? Urine. The same thing you'd produce if you metabolized the glucose yourself.
No, but that's what it ultimately turns into before entering your bloodstream.
of all the things to binge on, why the fuck would you want to eat potato salad?
For crying out loud, it was the first REALLY starchy thing that came to mind.
GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Liquid cooling - one of the uses of blood is to regulate temperature.
It's a complex cooling system, move blood near surface to cool (ever get flushed when you run?) and use evaporative cooling, sweat, to boost the effect.
The advantage is that the cooling system is already installed.
There was an extensive article on this in the Feb 2003 issue of Scientific American. Very interesting stuff. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00073FC E-F36F-1E19-8B3B809EC588EEDF&pageNumber=1&catI D=2
"If it can run on glucose it probably can run on fructose/sucrose/lactose "
Probably not. Your body doesn't burn fructose specifically, it converts it to glucose first. Sucrose is a fructose molecule + a glucose molecule, so it'd have to be broken apart and the fructose converted. Your body does this all automatically, but then the point is moot, since it can (technically) run off starch as well, starch just being a polysacharide of glucose.
So in your body = okay, dumping the nanomachines into a vat of fructose wouldn't work.
Most importantly, the whole laptop thing is a joke, this is not intended to power a laptop people. If used inside the human body, this would be to power nanomachiens (almost no power drain) and medical implants (which don't draw huge amounts of power either).
Little Brother, watching the watchers
The process the researchers have come up with probably uses the same effect to produce a current. The waste product? Urine. The same thing you'd produce if you metabolized the glucose yourself.
The primary waste product of cellular respiration is carbon dioxide, not urine. Urine consists of everything else that your body discards (mostly urea from the breakdown of amino acids).