Powered by Blood

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!"

Comments

Newest diet fad?

[groove10]

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.

Re:some interesting applications

[BrynM]

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.

Re:Rusty Glucose

[groove10]

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.

Actual application...

[FingerDemon]

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.

Re:The Matrix is just a movie

[dustman]

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?

Re:Two cows

[BarryHaworth]

More to the point, cows (and other animals) will most likely be the first widespread application of this technology. My cat already has an ID chip, but that is completely passive. With a blood battery behind it, I could add a GPS tracker and transmitter, thereby answering the question: what *does* that cat get up to during the day?

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.

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