Stretchy Wires to Create Artificial Nerves

Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers from the Johns Hopkins University have built electronic circuits which exhibit a rubbery behavior. The flexible circuits, built by using gold springs, can stretch like rubber. And Nature says that these stretchy wires can be used to create artificial nerves bending inside our bodies or wearable electronics. 'Wiring like this could be woven into stretchy sports clothing and used to connect up sensors that monitor athletic performance. Rubbery electrodes made from biocompatible materials might be attached to a beating heart and used to sense impending problems.' This overview contains more details and references about these flexible wires."

Comments

How long until...

[PornMaster]

...they're putting them into condoms to build up a database for "virtual sex"?

Re:How long until...

[WormholeFiend]

it wouldnt surprise me if the pr0n industry serves as a test-bed for this new technology, as it did with previous others.

the parent said 'condoms'... but I thought 'dildos'.

not that I know anything about using those devices. they are, as some say, 'not my bag'.
--

Re:How long until...

[WormholeFiend]

"What did you expect, with a name like that?"

well, something different than with a name like "anonymous coward".

Wormhole Fiend is the nic I used when I played Subspace, due to my habit of orbiting the wormhole and putting a high number of bombs in orbit around it, mostly in Chaos Zone.

Since most people there call me "Wormy" for short, that's what I use now.
-

Excellent idea

[BigBadBri]

Now I can make the electro-stimulation Condom!

Thrills for you and for her - with the optional audio input, you too cam throb to the music of lurrrve gods such as Barry White or Motorhead!

Re:Excellent idea

[musingmelpomene]

audio input? Perhaps you're thinking of the Audi-Oh! vibrator (vaguely NSFW).

Re:Excellent idea

[The I Shing]

Oh, c'mon, we could have condoms that bestow immortality on the women we use them with, and we still ain't gettin' any.

The best we can hope for is sell those condoms to guys with waistbands under 48 inches and use the money to buy porn.

Re:Excellent idea

[Jupiter9]

No thanks, my girlfriend adds enough stimulation.

Re:Excellent idea

[Wun Hung Lo]

I think I read that book when I was younger - "Tom Swift and His Electric Pecker"

Re:Excellent idea

[Mixel]

Relevant quote from the article for parent: "If they are not stretched beyond breaking point, the researchers estimate that the wires should be able to withstand several thousand cycles of extension and contraction"

Rubbery Behavior

[superpulpsicle]

As soon as they said Rubbery Behavior, I am thinking of this ultra advanced underwear.

What a change since the medievil days when knights used to wear potato-sack-material like underwear.

Re:Rubbery Behavior

[whittrash]

Now you can finally make a data port that connects directly to a person. You can theoretically send and receive neural signals which can interact and control a machine...or perhaps the other way around. If you think I full of crap, check out this link. Join the Army and you too can be a cyborg!

Re:Rubbery Behavior

[drinkypoo]

They succeeded in growing nervous system tissue on a connected silicon chip a long time ago, I pretty much figured that was the last step and since then people have been making direct connections. Did you hear about the grid of PV (photovoltaic) cells with electrodes going right into the retina that they've been implanting in the eyes of people made sightless by retina damage? The test units were only 16 elements in a 4x4 grid but it's an analog signal into the eye, it's only monochrome but that's enough to (for example) see a doorway. The vision system is truly amazing in what it can adapt to, and what it will put up with. It is a shame that we don't see a little bit of the lower-frequency light but I'm sure there's a good reason for it. Or there was, once.

Just imagine having some MEMS-built array implanted in your eye, which could be turned on and off with a remote, that would let your eyes pick up infrared? It would only work well at night because otherwise it would probably be too much of a signal for your nerves to adequately cope with, although I guess you could probably adapt to that to some degree. Or better yet, nanobuilt (Anyone not see that coming? Sorry.)

Re:Rubbery Behavior

[whittrash]

Here is a mind bender, if you could see into the infrared spectrum with machine augmentation, what color would it be? There must be colors that have not yet been imagined.

Use in sports?

[bad enema]

"Wiring like this could be woven into stretchy sports clothing and used to connect up sensors that monitor athletic performance."

With the tight restriction on performance enhancing drugs in the Olympics and now mainstream sports, how will this possibly be allowed?

And even if it was legalized, how much stretching can the body take before succumbing to injury?

Re:Use in sports?

[PhilippeT]

Ummm how about we use this to monitor all the athleets to see if any are using "performance enhancing drugs". it's a monitoring not enhancing thing

Re:Use in sports?

[WaterTroll]

It's not really a drug that artificially enhances performance I don't think. I guess perhaps it's a more accurate way of doing things like monitoring heartbeat, getting the best workout and such. Athletes such as divers use machines to measure lung capacity and gradually work on how long they can hold their breath (to be brief). I think this opens the field up to even more precise measuring overall. And it could also be used as a safety tool for patients in therapy.

Re:Use in sports?

[bad enema]

You would assume that these sensors would be used to only "monitor" athletic performance. But admittingly without RTFA I read it as "artificial nerves inside the body" that can stretch and so on. So what does this mean, you can artifically elongate your arm for a slam dunk, or if you're a goalie, do the splits to make a five-hole save? I see "groin injury" written all over that latter case.

Re:Use in sports?

[WormholeFiend]

make you wonder if that new full body suit by Speedo that reduces drag is going to be allowed in competition...
-

Re:Use in sports?

[Short Circuit]

I see new hope for Christopher Reeves.

How long until they manage to replace portions of the spine with wire? I'm not talking about splicing into old, damaged nerves. Instead, I'm thinking that muscles could be stimulated simply by placing probes in some portion of the brain. You'd have to learn to use the new circuit, but it still shows promise. I suspect the biggest challange will be providing some sort of sensory feedback so that the concious brain can deal with issues that the subconcious brain would normally deal with. (acid buildup, muscle strain, etc.)

On a side note, it's really fortunate that so much information is passed through the bloodstream. Things like hormones considerably reduce the amount of information that has to be passed through a nerve.

Re:Use in sports?

[datababe72]

Er, your nerves aren't what is keeping you from doing the splits, except in that they are what is relaying the pain caused by attempting to stretch your tendons and/or muscles beyond their threshold.

IF this technology turns out to have a medical use, it would most likely be to replace damage nerves.

I don't really see a use for performance enhancement in athletes. Even if there is, there are far easier and less detectable ways for athletes to enhance their performance. What they do right now is get a chemist to synthesize them a new steroid that evades the current testing, but still mimics the effects of natural steroids. Unless we come up with a much more general way of testing for steroids, I suspect this avenue will continue to work for quite some time.

However, as others have said... if they can make this work, it would be a new way to treat people who have nerve damamge.

Re:Use in sports?

[dustmote]

How does that even make sense? This is about sensors that can be woven into fabric so you can monitor performance and determine how someone can improve, not about making things that stretch the human body. There's nothing illegally "performance enhancing" about observing someone's technique and commenting on how they could improve it, and this is just a better method of doing that. Sheesh.

Prior art

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps the bendy straw people should sue.

Whoa...

[Bluesman]

"The wires can stretch to over half their original length."

Is it me, or does this violate some law of grammar, physics, or both?

Re:Whoa...

[avendesora]

Doesn't violate those laws, just streches them out a bit :-)

Re:Whoa...

[Dun Malg]

it's just plain bad grammer i hope that or the words "one and a" half "times" were left out.

Or perhaps they left out one word:
"The wires can stretch over half again their original length."
It's just bad writing no matter how you look at it.

Re:Whoa...

[SEWilco]

"The wires can stretch to over half their original length."

Maybe they have to stretch while bending to over half.

There does seem to be a grammar malfunction someplace.

Re:Whoa...

[MC_Cancer_Pants]

and technically they said "to over half of their original length" so it could be that they stretch to 1 mm longer than their original size, as that is still within the bounds of "over half of the original length." Then again, they could just as easily be saying that it stretches 12 parsecs. My guess is that they meant 1.5x their original length, though.

Eliminate the "to" and it makes sense...sorta.

[bad enema]

"The wires can stretch over half their original length."

IC

[Raptorman2k]

I wonder if this could help patients with I.C. It's rather painful and if the "new nerves" can be made to ignore certain impulses...that'd be very beneficial. Very intriguing, anyway

Excersize control?

[toygeek]

Excersize control: imagine your DVD playing the workout tape, and a machine monitoring your muscles as you work out. The DVD says "You need to work harder on your abs, the muscles aren't working hard enough". THAT would be cool. I know I could use it.

Re:Excersize control?

[SlipJig]

Well, at the YMCA where I work out, all the machines are on a FitLinxx network. The machines have sensors on them that can tell how fast you're lifting, how much weight, etc., and based on information you've previously entered, will give you feedback as you're working out. For example, it will tell you to slow down and lift more evenly if you're jerking the weight.

Not that it's as cool as a direct nerve implant, but from what I've seen it does the job pretty well...

Re:Excersize control?

[MC_Cancer_Pants]

Excercize movies that respond to your activity. I can imagine it now...

"What the fuck are you doing?! you're just sitting there, the only muscles being excercised are your right arm and your... oh dear"

Reporters can use over half their minds!

[Zarf]

Caption from Graphic:The wires can stretch to over half their original length.

Elsewhere, cars were noticed to speed up to over half their original speed! Proof readers were able to increase their accuracy to over half their original accuracy! I increased my IQ to over half it's original size!

Amazing..

[Anonymous Coward]

Science discovery: Springs are spring-like, also some metal conducts electricity. Quick someone grab a patent!

Re:Amazing..

[RGautier]

Better yet, someone grab a patent attorney (around the neck and shake till dead).
Disclaimer: I'm only kidding.

Polymer confusion

[manganese4]

As another example of the article being poorly put together: The article states "The usual way to make stretchable conductors is to embed metal particles in a rubbery polymer. But the particles tend to separate when the material is stretched, causing the electrical conductivity to plummet."

But the research in the end use a polymer which I assume would have to be rubbery in order to strech with the spring.
" Instead of fashioning the gold wires into helical springs, however, they gave them a flat, oscillating shape, like a meandering river, since this is easier to make. They manufactured them by electroplating gold onto a sheet of silver, surrounding the wires with polymer and then stripping the silver away."

Admittedly metal particles and metal wires are slightly different but a wire is simply a structure made up of particles.

Re:Polymer confusion

[Keighvin]

This is an inaccurate breakdown of semantics; the intent with the use of "particles" here is to mean independent non-bonded portions of the material which have to remain in physical contact with one another for the charge to be propagated, whereas a "wire" is a single contiguous covalent bond.

I already have battery powered thermals....

[innerweb]

Now, I can have real power suits to go with them.... 8-)

InnerWeb

Just like andro?

[bad enema]

Like all "nutritional supplements" the andro drug that Mark McGuire (apologize ahead of time for spelling) was banned from most sports when he was using it (and now is banned in baseball).

Athletes will use whatever technology is available to enhance their performance, regardless of what the intention of that technology really was. And with the money they make, you don't think they can pay off a sleazy surgeon to give them an added touch of flexibility?

Re:Just like andro?

[WaterTroll]

Not all athletes are out there to make tons of money and use drugs as a shortcut to better performance. A long term athlete makes a long term commitment in persuing an ultimate goal (ie, succeeding in Olympics, world competition). People had different views of, for example, anabolic steroids in the 70s than they do now. A lot of risks were not immediately apparent. However, I believe you're making an overgeneralization concerning the difference between someone that just wants to boost performance at whacking at a baseball for dollars and another who wants to commit several years of training to achieve a substantial goal in performance such as marathon running. There is a difference.

A step ahead

[GillBates0]

I, for one, am waiting for the day when we will not require hardware to be made from metals and other hard substances.

Most devices/machines today depend heavily on a motors/engines/circuits that are not usually flexible and need to maintain a rigid structure. Sure, we try to cover/encapsulate these devices in a pleasing exterior (car bodies, plastic casings etc) in order to protect the hardware and us from the dangerous interiors.

Imagine cars made up of soft cushiony/rubbery material, which bounces back to absorb a collision...the metal body can dent in and absorb the force of the impact, but it works only against collisions against other cars/hard objects -- not against collisions with humans/animals and other "soft" substances.

Ofcourse, we could have a soft covering for cars, made of a cushiony substance, but the problem has been embedding circuits/machinery in the soft exteriors, because they tend to bend and damage the interiors.

Nature has found the perfect way to create organs/pumps/filters/wires which are made out of soft tissue, and is malleable enough to survive severe tension/distortion and bending.

Here's to hoping that one day we will be able to create soft fuzzy machines which won't be so hard on our water-bag bodies.

Re:A step ahead

[SEWilco]

I, for one, am waiting for the day when we will not require hardware to be made from metals and other hard substances.

Hard waiting for that.

Imagine cars made up of soft cushiony/rubbery material, which bounces back to absorb a collision...the metal body can dent in and absorb the force of the impact, but it works only against collisions against other cars/hard objects -- not against collisions with humans/animals and other "soft" substances.

So collisions with humans will properly make the human bounce, dent in, and absorb the force of the impact.

Nature has found the perfect way to create organs/pumps/filters/wires which are made out of soft tissue, and is malleable enough to survive severe tension/distortion and bending. Smile when you say that.
Then look at your smile lines and consider how much severe tension/distortion and bending your "vital organs" can survive.

Re:A step ahead

[drinkypoo]

Saying that nature has found the perfect way is both touching and incorrect. Nature has found evolution, which is something you can find simply because it's a sort of law (it would be amusing to discover tomorrow that we are all full of tiny intelligent subatomic life forms which are in the active process of redesigning us to fit their needs or something) and which requires extremely long time scales and dramatic climatic events to do any serious work. Intelligence allows us to carry out deliberate functional design. Much of our design work is simply mimicking what nature has done, but by putting things together in combinations that ma nature might never have found, but there is also that which is based on science, on learning the behaviors of matter and energy, and the reasons why they behave a certain way, and approaching a design, well, more or less intelligently.

You're quite right that we are wasteful of energy, however. A car is an excellent example because they are a ubiquitous example of wasting energy. A really highly efficient internal combustion engine is maybe 50% efficient, for very large diesels which are very well designed. A really efficient internal gasoline-powered combustion engine in a car might be 30% efficient. Then the driveline loses 10 to 30% more on top of that. Not to mention that except in the case of hybrid and electric vehicles, energy used to go up a hill is lost going up the hill, you don't get any of it back when you come down. (A really good electric motor/generator is around 85% efficient, though there is some loss at the road, and to heat.) Hell just having big grippy tires on your car means you're wasting power turning kinetic energy into heat through friction and compression, that's why having narrow tires with relatively high pressure is good for your gas mileage.

Now one of the ways in which we mimic nature these days is through the use of "genetic" algorithms, where the computer invents (psuedo)random values within a set of predefined limits, and then uses a fitness function (the hard part) to rank the design based on, well, whatever you write the fitness function to detect, say rigidity and deflection under certain forces, including the static acceleration of gravity, and the weight of specified masses, intersection with other objects, overall size and weight, and so on. That of course is for a physical object. You could grow anything this way, including software. Does it compile? Does it run? What does it do with these things? As you can guess, the more complicated the thing is, the more complicated the fitness functions get and thus it takes longer to test the item, and of course the longer it takes to generate new iterations, because somehow in all of this you will have to do an analysis of your data and determine which direction to go, what to keep, and what to discard. In other words, evolution is a hard thing to do in software. The world is complicated, I don't think that's news.

Anyhow, coming back around to the point, we tend to seize a thing and run with it until it doesn't work any more. Cars have been filling our needs ("our?" - "we" in this case is the set of people with disposable income) for some time and through the exploitation of some people and some natural resources we've been using them, and will continue to use them, until something else becomes cheaper, because we're living in a capitalistic society and that's the way things work. This is a time of opportunity for alternative transportation schemes because the value of automobiles is being reduced through the high petrol prices. The longer they stay up, the more TDI models VW is going to sell, the more Hybrids Toyota is going to sell (Toyota announced some time ago that they were going to offer everything as a hybrid before long) and generally the further we will get from the inefficient vehicles we have now - but they'll still be cars.

I'd love to have some legged running-machine like the landstriders in the dark crystal, made all out of composites and flexible surfaces, that cou

Re:A step ahead

[Becquerel]

I like your idea, but i'm not sure the analogy holds together. Taking the most important 3 organs for life in your body, the lungs, heart and brain. They are all enclosed in and protected by a very strong,rigid and fairly brittle material.

Re:A step ahead

[Admiral Burrito]

Imagine cars made up of soft cushiony/rubbery material, which bounces back to absorb a collision...

Nerf Motor Co. ?

Re:A step ahead

[woztheproblem]

"Not to mention that except in the case of hybrid and electric vehicles, energy used to go up a hill is lost going up the hill, you don't get any of it back when you come down."

Of course you do. You either coast or press the accelerator more lightly.

Re:A step ahead

[drinkypoo]

Well, I misspoke. Obviously you get some of it back, because you've gained potential energy by moving up the hill, but given that there will always be loss due to friction, and on the way back down the hill you will be wasting energy by turning it into heat in the brake system.

Re:A step ahead

[bar-agent]

on the way back down the hill you will be wasting energy by turning it into heat in the brake system

Only if you brake. :)

Re:A step ahead

[drinkypoo]

If you don't (assuming a hill worth mentioning in the first place) you will either A> waste energy as heat and in the process of deforming several structures whose shape you would like to maintain, not to mention their topology, which is subject to change in the event of certain abrupt and unscheduled stops, B> you will be spending it generating heat in the engine and drivetrain through compression, optionally venting it to the outside as in the case of the jacobs engine brake but in any event dissipating some of it through the engine's cooling system, or C> convert it to heat and ablation in the vehicle's tires through friction, which you're doing all the time anyway.

Can I have my cookie now?

Re:A step ahead

[bar-agent]

I'll take door #C. And you get a Thin Mint!

Finally!

[sbma44]

Wires that bend! Great job on the breakthrough, guys.

Seriously though, this sounds fine for integrating electronics into fabrics, but the "artificial nerve" idea conjures images on Christopher Reeve leaping up and tap dancing. This invention doesn't sound like it has any therapeutic uses that a normal wire doesn't. Perhaps users of vagus nerve stimulators or other devices requiring in vivo wiring could be a little more physically vigorous without worrying about things pulling or breaking... but I have my doubts about even that.

Re:Finally!

[mazarin5]

Don't you mean Christopher Walken? :)

If my Slinky taught me anything . . .

[93,000]

One kink and it's trash can city.

Re:If my Slinky taught me anything . . .

[VistaBoy]

You mean the city dump?

Re:Um...

[WaterTroll]

artifical muscles? yikes, that'd be rather complex. it's always easier in theory than in practice.

Re:The way to a better dance pad!

[stephenisu]

OT but... Get a hard pad, or a RedOctane 2.0 I weigh 240lbs, and that RedOctane keeps taking a beating without fail on 9 footers.

Advance BION research?

[bcolflesh]

This might be the breakthrough the BION folks could use to advance their research.

Oh, yay. Finally we can get rid of all that gold.

[Punk Walrus]

The flexible circuits, built by using gold springs...

Wow. Just what we needed. Yet another use for Gold. You know, it being so damn plentiful and all. I was just saying to myself, as I threw away another gold can of soda, "I sure how they find a use for this stuff, because if not, Gold doesn't oxidize or break down very easily, and it will burst our landfills if we don't start a recycling program!" Maybe all those out-of-work gold miners can finally feel useful again, and not be he butt of environmentalist hate.

Why don't they ever find a great new way to use garbage?

Re:Oh, yay. Finally we can get rid of all that gol

[bad enema]

I would guess it's because garbage just ain't as purty as gold is.

Gold hmm..

[OlivierB]

Of course they couldn't be made out of anything else than Gold could they?

I do realise Gold has special properties such as conductivity and hypoallergenic properties, but come on!

Re:Gold hmm..

[SB9876]

The reason that you see gold being used for this kind of stuff is that it's easy to work with. If you try and electroplate copper, you've got to worry about various oxides forming and all sorts of other junk. This can be prevented through careful control of your electroplating conditions. However, in the sort of rapid prototyping conditions that these researchers are working in, it's much simpler to just use gold and not worry about it.

Wow...

[Xepherys2]

I'm feeling like I could be the 6 trillion dollar man any year now... between this, powered exoskeletal legs, BrainGate computer hacker upgrades, and health-enhancing contact lenses, I'll be a super sapper in no time. I wonder how much of this my beloved US Army has actually looked into.

Potential Privacy Issue

[myownkidney]

There are lots of applications that can be imagined. "We joke about making electrical devices that you can throw against a wall: instead of breaking they would bounce back at you", says Chen. "But we have no idea if that is possible."

Maximum points for humour. Now for my rant:

This creates serious privacy issues. One day the US government will make it law for every US citizen to wear clothes made out of these bendy wires, working as sensors. This way the government can monitor your every action.

Re:Potential Privacy Issue

[Xepherys2]

Hmm, I could see this as a BIG thing for social studies, however. Sure, from a required standpoint it's horrible, but it'd never fly. From a science standpoint.

I'd love to see experiments done where volunteers wear clothing (shoes, hats, socks, pants, underwear, shirts) with this type of thing embedded to collect data. This could be SO useful...

* Wear and tear points in clothing. Wear do different clothing styles rub against someone, potentially uncomfortably, depending on the body shape and size.

* hot/cold comfort... Where does the wearer get hotter, colder based on wear of certain overcoats, garments and standard clothing

* posture studies... how do people really sit, stand, skip and run? once again, by body shape, age, race, culture, locale

* interaction studies... check for nervousness and pulse rate and the like based on social interaction. This could be done with wires and straps and such, but those things also impose tehmselves on wearers. THis could be done "on the sly" like the driving studies about how much people pay attention, when they THINK it's about seeing how they react to traffic and road conditions. (can't find a link... if someone knows of one, post it... interesting read).

I'm sure there are many other ideas out there for such things in the study of human nature. This is a tpoic that gets overlooked far too often.

Re:Potential Privacy Issue

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

One day the US government will make it law for every US citizen to wear clothes made out of these bendy wires, working as sensors. This way the government can monitor your every action.

Ah, that makes me happy not to be a US citizen. Living in Europe has saved me from all those tirany things the US has invented over the last few years. Like the DMCA and...oh wait...

Re:Potential Privacy Issue

[MC_Cancer_Pants]

One day the US government will make it law for every US citizen to wear clothes made out of these bendy wires, working as sensors. This way the government can monitor your every action.

to quote the church of the subgenius' latest show:

"Why would the government need to monitor us? There aren't monitoring devices in your TV, they don't need them, they know exactly what you're doing, you're sitting there watching your TV. Why bother reading what you're thinking when it's so much easier to control it through the media?"

Re:Um...

[ajlitt]

We've had them for many years. It's called NiTiNOL. Nitinol is a metal alloy that, when used in wires, constricts when current is passed through it (heating phase) and stretches when it is idle (cooling phase). This is also the same material that those bend-proof wire glasses frames are made of. See http://www.dynalloy.com/AboutNitinol.html for just one manufacturer's info page.

Re:like going to a auto shop

[Anonymous Coward]

Now we will have to go to a certified mechanic to get our bodies checked out.

That's basically what doctors are. Human mechanics.

Soon we will have doctors hooking us up to machines to see what wrong.

Like EKGs, for example?

Douchebag.

that isn't how it works

[blair1q]

are they going to coat them in extensible insulator, too?

and every crush-injury will destroy them

these guys need ome more requirements analysis

Great

[An-Unnecessarily-Lon]

How long till I have to upgrade/patch the OS on my underwear?

Re:Great

[jeffy210]

How long till I have to upgrade/patch the OS on my underwear?

If you have to patch your underwear, it's already too late.

Re:Oh, yay. Finally we can get rid of all that gol

[shadowbolt]

... or as electrically conductive.

Extra-durable nerves

[Woogiemonger]

Maybe they can develop nerves strong enough to let me survive my mother asking for computer help.

Not ready for the real world

[gunnk]

From the article:

"the researchers estimate that the wires should be able to withstand several thousand cycles of extension and contraction."

That's no where NEAR what would be needed for any of the applications they mention. For example, at 70 beats per minute your heart beats 100,800 times per day. Assuming each step a runner takes covers 3 feet (very approximate here), then a "cycle" (back to starting configuration) is 6 ft. That's 880 "cycles" per mile. A single 6 mile run is therefore over 5000 cycles.

Several thousand "cycles of extension and contraction" is not even close to enough for any real world app. Who wants to have that internal heart monitor replaced several times each day? How about that high-tech single use "smart" sweatshirt?

These will need to be in the 100's of thousands to millions of cycles for their lifespan before they have any real utility.

Re:Not ready for the real world

[SB9876]

The expected lifetime of these wires will be heavily dependent upon the total strain they encounter in the duty cycle. Basically, it depends upon whether the deformation of the gold is in the elastic or plastic portion of the deformation curve.

Small deformations just cause the atoms in the gold (or any other material) to get closer or further apart. This is elastic deformation and can be done about infinity + 1 times before the metal breaks. eg: you can slightly flex a paper clip until doomsday and it is largely unaffected.

Larger deformations actually cause the atoms to start moving around, changing places in the atomic lattice structure to accomodate the strain. This is primarily accomplished by the movement of defects and dislocations through the material. This is plastic deformation and each plastic deformation lowers the lifetime of the material. eg: if you take a paper clip and start seriously bending it, in a few cycles, the part you're bending breaks off.

I have no idea what the threshhold is between plastic and elastic deformation in these wires is but it should be possible to design devices where the flex wires are in the elastic deformation regime most of the time. Eg: a smart shirt would have flex wires designed to be in the elastic regime when you're skipping around, swinging your arms, whistling show tunes. However, when you trip over a comatose mime and fall into an open storm serwer, the wires would be plastically deformed but won't break like conventional electrodes would in the same situation. Thus giving us essential data to force passage of the mime prevention act of 2008.

You've forgotten something...

[mynameis (mother ...]

This creates serious privacy issues. One day the US government will make it law for every US citizen to wear clothes made out of these bendy wires, working as sensors. This way the government can monitor your every action.

And then they can monitor what stimulates you, and know all of your perversions!

I think perhaps you are forgetting one thing: Now your tinfoil hat can be stylish, comfortable, and stealthy enough for you to leave your house!

Crap, on second thought, this makes it even worse on the rest of us...

:)

Imagine your nerves doing the same thing

[ianscot]

A big share of what personal trainers do is help clients understand how to "get at" areas -- how the burn should feel if you're working your lateral obliques or whatever.

But, you know, it's you who feels that burn, brought to you by the human nervous system. And I'm not sure you wouldn't need the trainer to help you attach the wires from your DVD to your abs... So where's the gain?

Seriously, maybe you'd like to interact with a fit young man or woman from the gym rather than the Magnavox repair guy? I know I could use that.

Muscle Wire

[crapnutassneck]

Sounds related to "Muscle Wire" special wires used in a field of robotics called "BEAM" to cause movement without motors. Basically they are wires made of different metals fused together so that they react to electrical charge by contracting. Some really cool insect bots made from them can be found here: http://www.solarbotics.net/bestiary/2502_walker_2m ot_gal.html Muscle Wire: Muscle Wires are thin, highly processed strands of a nickel-titanium alloy called Nitinol - a type of Shape Memory Alloy that can assume radically different forms or "phases" at distinct temperatures. However, when conducting an electric current, the wire heats and changes to a much harder form that returns to the "unstretched" shape - the wire shortens in length with a usable amount of force.

Sounds like inferior cephalopod nerves to me

[ianscot]

Your nervier (brainier) mullosks have amazing nerve fibers. They get used for experiments all the time because they're just huge, big enough to place electrodes in the axons and measure voltage changes.

Guess flexible wiring is more pleasant to be strapped into than a squid or a cuttlefish, though I doubt it'd be as fast. Cephalopods have very fast nervous systems, they're lightning quick partly as a result.

Re:Sounds like inferior cephalopod nerves to me

[SB9876]

Actually, cephalopod nerves aren't that amazing. They're no faster that than the nerves in your body. It's just that cephalopods never developed myelinated nerves. Myselin insulates the nerve and allows for much faster signal propogation. The large size of cephalopod nerves is simply an alternate way to get higher transmission speeds.

Either way, nerves only transmit at a few hundred miles an hour. Even assuming these flex wires aren't as conductive as a bulk gold wire, you're still looking at a transmission speed at a significant fraction of c.

Silicon and metal wiring operates at speeds millions of times higher than biological nervous systems.

Re:Sounds like inferior cephalopod nerves to me

[nfabl]

Actually the top transmission speed is ~100m/s. Thats for the phattest, most heavily mylenated nerves. Thin, unmylenated nerves (like the ones for pain sensation) are like 0.5 to 2 metres a second.

You can demonstrate that by putting your hand on a hotplate. Everyone try it.

Another thing you should consider when talking about nerve speeds is that synaptic transmission is far from instantaneous too. 0.5milliseconds at its fastest i believe.

Re:Um...

[ThePretender]

I thought we had things like beer, cocaine, methamphetamines, etc that provided those artificial muscles?

Brilliant! And on the patent app, call it...!

[bbc22405]

It's the cord from a telephone handset.
Now why didn't they think of that decades ago?
Oh, wait, they did.
Nevermind.

Yeah, yeah, I know. It's FLAT. So maybe they've reinvented ramen noodles?

Re:The way to a better dance pad!

[SEWilco]

RedOctane keeps taking a beating without fail on 9 footers.

No problem, I only have 2 feet.

yeah.. anyone else..

[Cynikal]

Anyone else horrified by the thought of this? i mean the first thing i thought of was the jack to my headphones, how every pair maybe lasts 2 weeks before either channel starts going out, or gets huge static.

just happily walking down the street someday with your new artificial leg, and all of a sudden the "nerves" give out and you take a face dive.. or in the case of the static, you could have the physical equivalent to tourettes; standing in line at the bank when all of a sudden your arm goes and punches the guy in front of you in the back of the head, and then yourself in the face a few times.. gives a new meaning to frayed nerves..

most metals just dont last long with a large amount of torsion. (for lack of a better word)

Wired And Ready To Go!

[SEWilco]

I'm feeling so wired today.

Useful for electronics too

[Bones3D_mac]

This kind of thing could be used to create more resilient ribbon cables than we have now. If these things can tolerate repeated 180 degree bends and being pinch off at weird angles frequently over a long period of time, laptop designers may have finally met their new best friend!

Dude, 20 times thinner than a human hair!

[chadjg]

Really, these new springy wires are small. If you are planning to build a condom with one of these things, give up. You're going to neeed a lot more than Robo-Rubber to thrill her.

Leave the clothes alone

[geekpuppySEA]

WHY is it, that the first real-world reference used when there's any kind of biotech advance is that it's going to be WEARABLE?

The last thing I want geeks designing is my clothes. I'm not fond of the short-sleeve-polo-with-company-logo, okay!

About clothing with this

[hazzey]

To all of those who responded with something about putting this technology in clothes: What is to stop this from happening now? for the most part clothing doesn't stretch as much as these wires do. The technology is here today for wiring up your clothes, just not for processing it in the fabric. Maybe before you think of wild uses for new technology, you should think about current ways that it could already be done.

Re:About clothing with this

[MC_Cancer_Pants]

I'm currently doing just that. I've wired a school uniform sweater with an ipod and wires running to a small speaker in the end of one sleeve and a little volume control in the other hand. Right now I'm having a friend sew the shirt collar and tie onto it and put elastic on the collar and then line it with a t-shirt material so it can come on and off like a t-shirt. I hope to next add an easily extendable earbud/microphone that's jacked into my cell-phone. bluetooth would be nice, so I wouldn't have to juggle my phone around any time I want to check /. from my laptop.

My final mod, I believe will be a simple RNG circuit and about 20 LEDs to look impressive (joke). Maybe if I get a better job i'll be able to put a wifi PDA in it somewhere and set up a few scripts to do specific tasks (send all jobs in queue on my person to a printer, close the garage door when I leave, open it when I come home etc.) I'm not sure how many other people have taken under projects like this, I'm pretty much just doing it for the fun of it.

I can see it now....

[warlockgs]

"Boy, you've got some nerve!" "You like it? I just had it grafted in this morning"

Pacemakers

[tsa]

Also nice for connecting pacemakers to hearts and other serious stuff! Less worries about breaking cables.

Actual nerve replacement?

[macdaddy]

Can this be used to replace a damaged nerve? I dislocated my shoulder many years ago in wrestling. I tore one of my Rhomboid muscles (Major or Minor, I forget which) and stretched one of the Brachial Plexus nerves (the one that went to my right hand). The doctor said I damn near severed the nerve, which wouldn't have been good. He said a repeat of the injury, even a minor repeat, would most likely sever the nerve for good so he ended my wrestling career then and there. Damn. If these new stretchy nerves can be used internally, well that would be a damn good thing. Brachial Plexus nerve damage is a common type of damage done by typical childbirth if the baby's shoulder gets hung up during delivery.

good thing that their webserver doesnt have these.

[ShadowRage]

or else that webserver would be screaming in pain right now.

Street Samurai

[Prometheus Bob]

So...when can I get my ocular implants that allow me to see infra-red? =D

Temperature-control sportswear?

[netcrusher88]

No doubt someone here reads Popular Science. Now, does anyone remember the P2 suit concept a while ago? Sportswear that would use piezoelectric and Peltier effect devices (hence P2) to recharge and control body temperature. Even built-in vital signs monitors or MP3 players. Why couldn't these devices be used in those? Just imagine, out snowboarding(or skiing, just snowsports) and your body suit automatically keeps you warm - or cools you off - using power generated by movement, vibration, and the occasional fall. I want one... Forget the condoms, who's going to buy them at $20 a piece anyway?