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Cyborg Cells Sense Humidity
Gadgetizer writes "Mark Peplow over at Nature.com published this story on 'Cellborg Technology' yesterday: "Living bacteria have been incorporated into an electronic circuit to produce a sensitive humidity gauge. The device unites microbe and machine, taking advantage of the properties of both to make for a supersensitive sensor. "As far as we know, this is the first report of using microorganisms to make an electronic device," says Ravi Saraf, a chemist from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, who developed the 'cellborg' with his student Vikas Berry."
...how the original Borg came about. It all starts with harmless Cellborgs, then you link them to a massive interconnected network, and then they start thinking on their own. And then they take over.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
In the comics and movies, the cyborgs had super strength, could run fast, maybe shoot lasers out of their frickin' eyes, and so on.
Science fiction has failed us yet again. It's clear that the real cyborgs will simply have great skill at predicting the weather.
Go figure.
Saraf speculates that similar devices could one day be made that take greater advantage of living organisms, perhaps even using bacteria's energy systems to power electrical devices.
Now all we need is intelligent machines, a war, and a Neo.
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
I want to see them do it with a Chihuahua
Now at bookstores:
Quality-Control In Microbial Manufacturing
Chapter 1: Maintaining a dirty-room enivronment
Chapter 2: Preventing evolution
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
I for one, welcome our bacterial overlords.
Current humidity is 70 perce -- AH CHOO! -- 90 percent.
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
No one's ever come up with a way to gauge humidity before. This'll surely be more cost effective than all current alternatives.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
In any event, it does suggest an approach to more sensitive humidity detectors using gold-coated hydrophilic particles. Replacing the bacteria with some other polymer capsules could lead to a more repeatable sensor with ultra-high sensitivity.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
In the comics and movies, the cyborgs had super strength, could run fast, maybe shoot lasers out of their frickin' eyes, and so on.
Well, currently, even the best artificial limbs are a poor substitute for the genuine article. People get artificial limbs because they have lost their natural limbs, and have no other choice -- we do not hate or shun these people any more than we hate or shun people with any other disability. However, if artificial limbs become far superior to natural limbs, people will be able to choose whether they want their (perfectly healthy) natural limbs removed in favor of mechanical ones. At that point you will certainly have fear and loathing between the people who undergo the procedure (the superior beings) and the people who don't (the all-natural people).
I have a friend who would qualify as a "cyborg". He's hearing-impaired and has a Cochlear Implant. Social-wise, it's kind of a mixed bag. On one side of the coin, people in general are fascinated by the prospect of restoring hearing that was lost and the very idea of having a biological implant in his head. On the other side, however, the Deaf community generally shuns them as their equivalent of "tools of Satan."
I think that you're always going to have people that favor the "natural" over the man-made, even to the point where they're completely separated from society (think about how we talk about the Amish)
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
There are farms, Neo, vast farms where bacteria are grown, to turn a germ into... THIS. [HOLDS UP HUMIDITY SENSOR]
They are called 'immigrants'. The last names "Smith", "Jones", and "Gozales" are all immigrant last names as well. The first human residents of America (also immigrants) were names "Ogg" and "Igg". There weren't too many Europeans living here when they arrived.
I'm sure they probably felt the same angst that white Americans feel now when European settlers started invading their lands, taking all of the jobs and using all of the local services.
Chief Running Cloud probably had a strong election-year platform of immigration reform. It didn't work that well for him either.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
... they washed the chip with a solution of gold particles, each of which measured about 30 nanometres across and was covered with peptides to help it stick to the bacteria.
The resulting layer of gold nanoparticles bristling from each bacterium carries electrical currents through the device.
Pimp my Bacterium!
Whenever someone covers anything in gold I'd say it deserves the "Pimp My X" moniker.
Shouldn't it be:
;)
"Dupes for nerds. Stuff that repeats. Dupes for nerds."
Ok, I admit I didn't even check to see if it was really a dupe. But I couldn't miss the joke.
The filesystem is the package manager
This also marks the first time that a student and prof got equal billing when their research was announced. That's a more significant step than the sensor itself!
Let me know when cyborgs can sense *humility* - THAT would be impressive.
This is blatant exploitation of bacteria ;-) Nobody asked their permission, they have rights you know and if not they should...
You know, someday we're going to come to that crossroad... Then , it may not be bacteria we'll talking about but other lifeforms more dear to us.