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?"
Always wondered how the machines used people as power in the Matrix. This explains everything!
Sheesh Apple wants $100.00 for an iBook battery, but that's cheap compared to tapping a vein.
On the other hand, I suppose you can replace your blood for less, and in less time.
Virgins will be ritualistical sacrificed to power the laptops of the Profane!
We're totally bound to see Vampire robots!
-FweE-
Last time I checked, I run on blood, too...
The line between technology and the living is thinning.
MAKE YOUR TIME
Now all we need is a way to darken the sky.
Man, that seems awfully Matrix-y. I suppose it would be possible to power something nontrivial if you had enough people to do it...maybe prisons will no longer have electric bills eventually?
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.
Does this only work for B+?
The ideal way to use this would IMO be to use it thought magnetic induction. That way, the device can be completely subcutaneous. It could be placed on several places in the body. To power a lower power device, you would simply place one or both hands on it (Like you naturally rest your wrists on a laptop) , or grab it, depending on the style of the device. For devices needing more power, induction zones could be placed on the rear upper thighs, simply requiring you to sit on the power receptor. I suppose the area would suffice to transfer a quite significant amount of power, of course depending on the size of your butt. As an added advantage it would provide built-in heating in the aforementioned places.
-Lasse
Oh... and only females can have the power sockets. Yeah, maybe that'll motivate all of us geeks to go and find some girlfriends. We need the power source!
*SMACK*
Oh sorry, I was having a geek wetdream. Reality is a harsh mistress.
I know the poster was joking about the port... but such a concept is interesting, not for its laptop powering abilities... but for health and weight loss potential.
/.
Why go to the gym to work out and burn calories from when you can plug a small cord into your mid section that would enable the device to draw energy directly from your system... and when your blood was running low... fat stores would naturally be tapped.
Result? Losing weight while reading
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
I suspect that this technology could be part of a comprehensive weight loss strategy. Eat all you want, and burn the calories by powering gadgets! exciting :-)
Best news ever!
Extra power for my laptop, AND a way to burn of those pesky extra calories from those twinkies !!
Time travel is possible. We are quickly heading for 1984.
From reading the article, it seems like the substance used to draw electrons from glucose is a catalyst-type substance, therefore not depleting in the reaction and these could be useful for years without maintenance.
;)
If the substance was a reactant, Ghost in the shell -type high level maintenance would be taking it's first steps.
If the voltage was higher, AIs independent, energy resources low and Asimov's laws of robotics not in use, we could even see some Matrix-style battery usage
The poll's missing an option now.
"Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Study hard. Take over the world."
"We're totally bound to see Vampire robots!"
Met the ex-wife, have you?
Hypoglycemia would indeed be a concern. However, the possibilities are intriguing for Type 2 diabetics, who are usually insulin resistant and have way too much glucose in their blood. If a fuel cell can use up that extra glucose, they might actually be able to make a device that would monitor, record, and lower the blood glucose level to normal or thereabouts. Imagine, diabetics could actually wind up producing more power than they use...
"Where am I going, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
So if you suffer from Diabetes, too much Glucose in the blood stream not to worry.
Now you can eat your cake and ice cream and this little gizmo will take that extra glucose in the blood stream and make power (albeit small amounts) for you.
The major benefit of this would be to reduce the blood glucose levels without taking medication, the power generation would just be a cherry on top.
behold the iClot !
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
All 'where can I hook up my laptop', 'vampire, and 'matrix' jokes aside, this is really an amazing invention. If such a device was implantable, it could self-power a blood glucose monitoring device. Blood glucose too high? Run more blood through the fuel cell and burn up some glucose.
I would have worked that into something more poetic.
Perhaps
"Which is easier to carry? A spare battery for your apple, or a spare apple for a battery"
Someone update the poll with this latest option!
At that low power, Wouldn't it be just about right for a small tracking device? Implant it in the body and it would be self powered. It could also be used for punishment and "interogation" by attaching the cell to the right pain nerves.
I know this is scary, but how long until this is our "National ID Card."
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
The electrons don't just vanish.
:) ).
:)
If they did, the energy released would probably turn us into miniature suns the moment we turned one of these on.
It's more likely that the now unstable glucose molecules will break down into carbon dioxide and urea, consuming some oxygen in the process, much like it does when consumed by a normal cell. One presumes the spent potential from the electrons will result in the electrons returning to the blood stream.
And yeah, pushing this too hard would probably fairly easily kill the user, (read, a laptop at 60-100Watts? i doubt it. maybe a trickle charger for the battery
A well controlled system could easily result in an acceptable increase in energy consumption, which would result in weight loss, without actually exercising (also, not a good thing, since the muscles aren't going to develop, but the fat will be consumed, leaving the user with no way to keep warm). One presumes that anyone using a device like this would be on a strict high-glucose intake diet.
of course, this is conjecture, i've only done basic biology and chemistry
Andrew
they'll be actual blood-suckers.
I was wrong, glucose levels in the blood are lowered by eating onions. Onions act kinda like insulin... it lowers blood sugar levels by helping the glucose get to the cells. I forgot where I just read that, but i googled for it and it was the first link. google for glucose onions if you wish to verify.
Stop signs are only Suggestions
and the guy next to me stops working on his laptop and starts looking at me weird, I'm gonna freak.
It takes just a moment and an action to destroy. It takes some time and thought to create.
You can worry about that when laptops that consume only 2 milliwatts come around.
Do I have enough blood to boot Longhorn, or should I wait for the Service Pack?
Looks like slaughterhouses could make a killing (pun not intended) out of this.
Everyone should just buy a hummer.
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
This is very good. The Matrix was breakthru scifi, but this premise would have relieved the move of a rather dubious premise, using humans for their body heat.
As has been pointed out, cows would have been the better choice.
human != man
When one talks about the "ascent of man", it does not apply to males only. This is one of the idiosyncrasies of the English language - apologies to all the feminists reading. I suppose we can try and use "mankind" instead, but that doesn't change the nature of the word...
One good turn - gets all the covers.
Verify? Facts? On Slashdot?
Let's see if I can make a rough estimate, while rounding every number in sight:
/. editor mixing his own imagination with what is in the article.
- 5liter of blood
- to pump, say 40mm Hg=500mm H2o of overpressure is needed(diff between upper and lower pressure). I recall numbers like 120 over 80 when they measure your blood pressure.
- 50 beats per minute. if the heart is a big fist, say it pumps like 100ml per beat.
so 5liter per minute.
So say the heart pumps 5l blood per minute 50 cm higher up.
0.5m*5kg*(10m/s2)/(50 seconds)=0.5W
Now, when doing a big effort, i think beat volume can double(from memory), and speed can go *3(180), that'sa factor of 6. Blood pressure goes up a lot too, to 160Hg, but i don't know the difference between upper and lower pressure. Make that a factor 10 in all between hard work and rest.
So the heart produces 0.5 to 5 W. About.
Conclusion: at the moment, the idea of powering artificial hearts is just the
It be possible one day, I suppose.
Well now I really wonder if that wild estimate was any good, or did it just hit a good number because the mistakes cancelled out... Anyone?
Note: I'm not saying that the device would lower glucose levels by consuming glucose, but since it is powered by sugar, the current should be proportional to the amount of sugar. If blood sugar is high, the implant's signal is high, and the pump delivers more insulin. No real logic required. That's why it's such a good fit. And they say so in the article:
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
I'm only half kidding with this.
What if this power supply was connected to nothing but a resistor on a heat sink? Could this artificially raise my metabolic rate? Could simply removing glucose from the blood stream lead to weight loss?
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...
I don't think it's been ported yet, but perhaps you could compile Gentoo.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.