Slashdot Mirror
Human Blood For Electrical Power
burner writes "A Japanese research team has developed a fuel cell that runs on blood without using toxic substances, opening the way for use in artificial hearts and other organs. The biological fuel cell uses glucose with a non-toxic substance used to draw electrons from glucose. So where should I have my laptop power port installed?"
Its interesting, but unless you can use multiple cells or something there is not enough power to run any kind of pump. Afaik one of the major issues with any kind of artificial heart is it kills some of the cells as it pumps. Still this kind of technology is definitely interesting, and who knows what might be possible in the long term.
Didn't slashdot report on this last year? Japanese researchers, check; using blood for energy, check...seems like a dupe, yeah.
;)
In any case, 0.2 milliwatts isn't exactly that much power: the AbiCor artificial heart documentation mentions that it consumes several watts from its external battery pack, a far cry from what this provides.
Though, I can imagine a beowulf cluster of these.
Since the electron mediator is based on Vitamin K3, which exists in human bodies, it excels in safety and could in the future generate power from blood as an implant-type fuel cell)
Though a bit distant, it might become possible to *fabricate* parts of bodies(not alone heart), that can be *powered* when implanted.
hilarious
bubblegum crisis.
2 fembots powered by blood comes to earth in one episode of the OVA series. one of them is damaged so it cant replenish her blood by herself, so the other fembots rides the city in a heavy batle suit stealing blood for the partner.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Uh. Just for the record, Ireland simply isn't a vast field of grass. It's got a very varied landscape including large fields of grass in places, but it's called "the emerald isle" because of (astonishingly) diverse and abundant plant life, not monotonous and abundant plant life.
If you leave a tract of land alone for decades in Ireland, it typically reverts to lush forest interspersed with grassy clearings except in some mountainous areas (where it will become a peat bog) and coastal areas (where it will become wildflower meadow with fascinating "natural bonsai" dwarf trees). Some forested areas, if large enough, develop microclimates - i.e. Ireland might become a sort of "cold rainforest" if left to its own devices.
Now, many poor Irish emigrants to the americas came from the west of Ireland, which indeed has
emerald fields of grass, but other bits of Ireland look quite different (but still very, very green!)
The Steppes (Russia/Ukraine) are where you want to go for vast plains of grass.
When Morpheus said they believe the Matrix uses people as a power source for the machines, I thought "Lisa! In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!", but on their web site I found a more coherant explanation, written by Neil Gaiman.
Unfortunatly, they discarded the better writer's explanation and went ahead with their sillyness in the sequels. But you can still read the short story (it's on the first DVD, too).
You can't take the sky from me...