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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
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.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
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?
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
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.
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.