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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!"
Want to burn calories while sitting in front of your computer at work? How about shedding those extra pounds while powering your TV at the same time?
This way people will get an increased metabolism (since some of your sugars are being converted into energy for non-local entities), and they will be able to reduce the number of batteries and other power sources needed.
Just wait till the come out with some nano-bots that run off this process and will scrub the plaque off your arterial walls. That would be the killer app.
MMORPG fan-boy? Prove your worth
We can't program a soul yet. Talk to a man 200 years ago and see if he would belive that flying is a regular thing for us.
"For years, I struggled with reality... but I'm happy to say I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
My sister could probably kiss you for that diabetes idea! That would let her do a lot of things, like hike Europe, without having to worry about her glucose meter running out of batteries somehwere remote or whether she could get more insulin should the need arise (I'm not sure if the storage idea would work though, as insulin can be complex to store/reproduce). I realize that she may never see it in that much of a normal use during her lifetime, but the idea that it could work would certainly ease her worry about passing it on to offspring. It will certainly give her some hope for other diabetics.
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I'm not a biochemist either, but this website shows the basic Glycolysis reactions and their output.
Basically, in this process Glucose + ATP is broken down into glucose-6-phosphate + ADP, giving off a net reaction of energy.
Without knowing the the reactions in the process that Dr. Eda et. al. have developed, I can only guess that the oxidized glucose will combine with the some other ions (such as a phosphate) and become waste products just liek any other in the body. I'm not really sure what happens to the glucose-6-phosphatea after Glycolysis.
MMORPG fan-boy? Prove your worth
Well, all the Matrix jokes aside, this does have some potentially excellent applications. I remember the first time I heard someone talking about pacemakers and how the batteries in them wear out. I asked the obvious question, "How do they replace them?"
It involves surgery. YIKES! Granted, it is probably minor surgery compared to getting the thing put in there to begin with, but knowing it was powered by your own blood would surely be a welcome change to these folks.
I mean if you think replacing the battery on your motherboard is a pain, think of doing it on an outpatient basis.
"Contrarily the lookaside buffer might not be the panacea... "
There was an interesting article on genetic algorithms in popular science or popular mechanics a few years ago (circa 1998 or so I think).
Anyway, the specific application being developed was designing an FPGA circuit to detect whether or not a tone (of a specific frequency) was being played. Genetic algorithms were being used to "evolve" circuit designs on a computer, then upload them to the FPGA.
It ended up being the case that the final design used far less gates than any human could reasonably design. And, none of the human EE's could understand how it was done at first.
After analysis, it was shown that the evolved design was using subtle interplay between different parts, and that analog effects from gates next to each other were affecting the results, etc... - all things that an engineer would not consider. (In fact, not even a good thing to consider because it wouldn't work on other FPGAs, even of the same model number, because of the subtleties of the analog interaction).
But, the point is that the problem was solved by a computer program, in a much more efficient (and certainly, "creative" and "outside the box") way than humans would.
Also, note that the humans couldn't understand at first (and took quite some time to understand) a relatively uncomplex system (a few handfuls of logic gates)...
If we assemble systems with orders of magnitude more complexity (millions of gates), operating in similiar ways, there is no way a human will understand it. At this point, it will "come up with" solutions to problems, and there will be no way for a human to understand how it is coming up with these.
At that point, how could you argue that the systems (computer vs human mind) were different, or that one were better than the other, if they were each solving obscure problems, and we didn't understand either?
Could be used as a source of energy for implantable pacemakers and defibrillators, with the battery as a backup.
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You are arguing that the brain is more than the sum of its synapses. This is one of the core questions in the fields of psychology and AI, and is being pursued by the top minds in each field. We will probably not know the answer until we can simulate the human brain and see what happens.
To back up your argument, you should probably know what the soul is and how it interacts with the physical brain, otherwise how can you say it's not a behavior of the brain?
Scientists at Matsushita's Nanotechnology Research Laboratory in Japan are developing a power generator that uses blood to produce electricity. It emulates the process the body uses to convert food into energy. The scientists say the "bio-nano" generator could be used to run devices embedded in the body, or sugar-fed robots. Dr. Kazuo Eda, who heads the research, says bio-nano fuel cells are the next step for researchers after generators powered by hydrogen, natural gas and methanol. Hmmm... robots that use humans as batteries -- can The Matrix be far behind? ;)
...and it probably could be used on things other than blood, right? Does that mean that you could actually run a laptop on a can of cola? In all seriousness, if the technology gets more efficient (by a lot) this might have some interesting implications for cheap fuel cells.
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Because he can fit a lot of it in his stomach, due to its density. I don't like potato salad, but I know that eating pasta or meatloaf until your stomach is full feels a lot more filling than say, crescent rolls. And no I'm not fat. According to this my bmi is 18.8.
I don't think so. A relative of mine has just had a pacemaker fitted, and replacement of the device is required every time the Li battery goes flat. You couldn't use induction to charge a pacemaker, because the electronics don't react well to strong magnetic fields, which is a problem if those same electronics have the job of making sure your heart beats at the correct rate (or at all).
Induction is, however, used to communicate with and program the device, since the fields are weak enough not to cause a problem.
With cows or other large animals, larger devices with more power would be possible. Perhaps a device to summon the cows for round up, or give them a shock if they stray out of bounds.
I am a Statistician. One false move and you are a Statistic
I am a Statistician. One false move and you are a Statistic
I wonder if this device can purposely "waste" the glucose in the blood to control the blood sugar level? It could help those who are diabetic. Imagine no more need to "control" the blood sugar level, but just eating as much sugar as you want and let the machine lower the blood sugar to the proper level.
:P
I also wonder if it'd be possible to use the same technique to make a person thinner?
Yep high school. The class was quite insulting. That was sophomore year. I had chemistry for the next two years, and that teacher was the best teacher I've ever had and the class was challenging. I scored a 4 on the AP chem exam after that, which was high enough that I didn't have to take a year of chem in college that I otherwise would have. And I was not a good student in that class. I rarely read the material. His excellent lectures and labs and problems were enough. His tests were far harder than the AP exam.
My biology teacher did not respect us. She put up overheads of notes and insisted we copy them all down. I tried telling her that I don't need to because I've never looked at them and never had below a 95% in her class, but she wouldn't hear any of that.
My chem teacher was the opposite of patronizing. He really respected us, and he pushed us a lot. He managed to use excellent analogies that let us understand without simplifying or glossing things over. He didn't sugarcoat anything. Far from it. In fact, he frequently would yell things like "The bomb hits friday, and you're all gonna be shrapnel" in reference to an upcoming test, and that that light we think we see at the end of the tunnel is a train. Not that he was cruel or would leave anyone behind, he would ALWAYS help you if you came in and had read the material but didn't understand, and if the whole class was unprepared, he would delay tests. He made chemistry hard, fun and extremely interesting. The public school system needs more teachers like him.
I read the article but I don't know what power levels they achieved: "only very low power levels".
But current implants are designed to last a couple of years on the provided batteries. So they can't use very much power.
My 1980 watch used 0.35 microwatts. The battery lasted around a year. I expect implants to use around that level of power (0.5 to 2 times the power, with a 1x to 4x larger battery).... So if the device can be made to provide around that level of power, an implant might not require the operation to replace the battery every 2-3 years.
On the other hand, the electrodes doing the electron exchange with the glucose might not last that long.... That would defeat the whole idea...
Roger.
a relatively uncomplex system (a few handfuls of logic gates)
I wouldn't call that an "uncomplex system", an FPGA usually has several million gates, and complexity is added by the analog effects ! Still, it is WAY less complex than a human brain (with billions of neurons, each of them being connected to thousands of others with somewhat analog connections)
Would this be another way to manage blood sugar for diabetics?
-soup (GNUrd, Speaker to Machines) "Laugh at yourself- Why should everyone else have all the fun?" -Romanchek's 6th Ru
But that's not how it's actually done: the battery and electronics forrm a single unit, with the only leads being the ones connecting the pacemaker to the heart itself. I'm not medically trained, but I guess there'd be two reasons for this. Firstly, there's not a lot of room in the body for lots of components spaced out all over the place, and not many convenient sites to put things; case-modding to give yourself more room is not an option. Currently, pacemakers are installed under a local anaesthetic through a small incision in the chest; your solution would likely require a more difficult procedure
Secondly, there's always the risk that the pacemaker leads could be dislodged through even normal body movement: patients are instructed not to engage in certain activities (not lifting their arm on the pacemaker's side of the body above the chest, just to name one). Having another wire connecting a string of components just compounds that problem.
I don't know why they used the idiotic plot device of the Matrix using people as human batteries. It would've been far more believable if they had the plot be that the Matrix was using the extra processing power of people's brains (whether there really is any extra or not in reality) for its own purposes. It would let people use just enough to live in the Matrix and take the rest. Sort of a giant SETI@home type system. Disconnect enough people and you'd have the Matrix singing "Daisy" before long. Plus you could have little story extras like explaining that inspiration and visions in people are actually due to "bad connections" in their heads (and possibly important loopholes into the system?) and that dreams are Matrix background noise.
Maybe the idea of people not using all of their brains would be too realistic.
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I wish I had the money to patent these ideas. Instead I will disclose them so the whole world can use them if no one already filed a patent.
This is the cure for diabetes(sp?) as its an insulin replacement. It can keep the bloodstream below a certain glucose level with the greatest of ease, just burning off power doing something dumb (or useful, it doesn't matter). Just implant a device or series of devices that detect gluecose levels, and the device(s) stays idle or working in a low power mode until levels reach a certain level, then they burn off that excess gluecose until the blood is reduced to an optimal level. This is probably controlled by a slightly more complicated algorithm, but this should get the idea out.
It also is a GREAT and I do mean GREAT wieght loss aid. It can use up excess energy that the body takes in sending the body into ketosis, thereby getting the Atkins type diet, while eating whatever you want. There is also studies that show if you eat at "starvation" levels your whole life (when ketosis should be happening rather constantly) you increase your lifespan by 20% or more. Therefore, this is also an anti-aging device while being a near perfect diet.
The diet application does not require going into ketosis. It could just use much of the gluecose, thereby making it as if the person ate a smaller meal.
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This should be improved to use fats and lactose etc from the blood as well. I dont mind driving a small car powered by myself which is powered by Burger King. You get to eat all you can and you get to lose weight while speeding. I think I'll start a trucking company.
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