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Nanobatteries Power Artificial Eyes
Roland Piquepaille writes "A new U.S. research center, the National Center for Design of Biomimetic Nanoconductors, has been opened to promote new ideas in the field of nanomedicine. For example, a team of researchers at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) is developing a nano-size battery to be implanted in the eye to power artificial retina. But this center will also design and build 'nanomedical devices based on natural and synthetic ion transporters -- proteins that control ion motion across the membranes of every living cell.'"
I wonder if this kind of technology will make it possible for people who have working nerves and brain center for sight, but whose eyes have been destroyed by illness or damage to the retina? Would macular degeneration, which according to http://www.macular.org/disease.html affects over 10 million Americans alone, be one of the blindnesses treatable by nanobatteries?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
What sort of damage, and of what severity, could occur if this battery were to leak?
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
So... uh, back to where you were.
... with Picture-in-Picture.
Yep, keep developing that high technology for my disabled countrymen, because sooner or later the technology will become common place and I'll finally be able to go get my retinas replaced. Why would I want to replace my healthy retinas with electronic ones? Well, for a start, I'm red/green color blind, and I don't think gene therapy is going to be available sooner than this stuff. Irrespective of that, when this technology is capable of delivering sharper images to my brain than the retinas I was born with what have I got to lose? Then there's the added benefit of interfacing my shiny new retinas with computer systems.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I'll take a set of the glowing blue LED eyes
short and simple answer is that the battery should be nearly harmless. If it breaks down it might be a bit of a drag on the local metabolism. And assuming that the protien isnt some sort of prion precursor (unlikely for a membrane protien) it should be safe.
Storm
Why not implant something like they use in self-winding watches?
If they're going to use nano-batteries, then we're talking mili-volts or less.
The mechanisms that power self-winding watches don't actually require that much movement to recharge themselves.
Just walking around a bit should give enough power to keep things running all day. And it doesn't need replacing.
Just my 2 pence. Feel free to tell me why it's a bad idea
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Only the rich will be able to afford this tech for the next 10-20 years.
After that, maybe the middle class will be able to afford it. In any event, it's not something the lower class would get.
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
In the case of breast enhancements, the body forms scar tissue around the silicone implants.
In the case of artifical hearts, the patients faces the serious risk of blood clotting. The blood clots can flow into the brain and cause a stroke.
Advances in science are great, but we've "just gotta know its limitations".
1. They haven't developed the eyes any further than otherwise reported some time ago.
2. The batteries don't exist yet, really.
3. The batteries that don't yet exist are being designed for artificial eyes that don't yet exist.
I'm all for this technology to mature -- I have two blind relatives and it seems likely that others in my family will also have problems as they age. The kinds of work they're doing should help them if it matures. This article, however, doesn't actually show much advancement other than a new lab is working on a new thing, that could power a new device -- when they all get it figured out.
I wish
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
If we could ignore for a moment the trolls and knuckle draggers who must comment on Susan Rempe's appearance, this advance will be important to those of us who are losing eyesight to RP or AMD.
Most of the current clinical trials for artificial retinas (http://www.optobionics.com/ excluded) rely on some sort of external component partially due to the lack of a sufficiently small, dense, permanent, biocompatible power source. This then requires some sort of link to the retinal surface, either via micro-lasers or implanted ultra-thin wires. As much as enjoy watching ST:TNG, I for one would happily trade the Geordi LaForge look for a strictly internal prosthetic.
To err is human. To arr is pirate.
Remember, though, that these artificial retinas will have some sort of computer control and some kind of programming. Lets sure hope that these things don't have a live-update feature for the software because that would mean a non-local connection. That'd lead to vulnerabilities. Just imagine your vision not only lagging and causing you pain, but it being used to carry out a spam attack. Lets hope M$ doesnt make any software for these things. I don't want to load "critical updates" into my eyes.
3. The batteries that don't yet exist are being designed for artificial eyes that don't yet exist.
/.) from last May's Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology meeting about six previously completely blind patients have successfully used the referenced retinas to detect light.
RTFA: "starting with an artificial retina that has already been developed at the Doheny Eye Institute at the University of Southern California".
And with a little research, you can find reports (here and here, and even on
Anm
Personally, I'm waiting for models with zoom and nightvision before I trade in my weak organic meatballs.
Tachikoma: "Mr. Bato! Where are you going?"
Bato: "I can't see a damn thing! All I see is this blue screen with some stupid message asking me to press enter."
Kusanagi: "Is that why you are in the ladies rest room?"
Aramaki: "What the hell are you all stand around and blathering about?!"
Kusanagi: "It's Bato. He's got the blue screen of death again."
Togusa: "Have you pressed CTRL-ALT-DEL?"
Saito: "What are you? Some kind of noobie? Run a diagonstic!"
Aramaki: "Go to the Start Menu!"
Tachikoma: "Call technical support!"
The other Tachikomas (pass through the hall): "What's going on?"
Tachikoma: "It's Mr. Bato! He can't see!"
Bato (bumps head against the wall accidently, then is embarrassed by the events that just occured): "If I don't show up for work tomarrow, don't call to wake me up."
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
The human heart creates a small amount of electricity when it beats, correct? (this is how the brain sends signals to the muscles and suchforth, yes?)
So, instead of making a super-small battery that still has to hold a huge charge, why not draw the excess electricity that would have been used for the eye (its excess because the eye is no longer there, which would be why you are getting an artificial one) and use that instead of a battery, or at the very least, send it to a small capacitator so it can charge enough to power your new techno-eye.
This does not solve the problem that the artificial eye would have to be SUPER power efficient, but the problem would be doubly so with a battery of limited life, however, when you use the heart as the power-source, the "battery life" is effectively unlimited for the lifetime of the device (your life, so if you die, it wouldnt need to stay powered, would it? unless you want a look inside a casket the hard way...)
OK, so my first thought, upon reading this...
The human body has been doing remarkably well at powering itself, without batteries, for millenia (with the one exception on Monday mornings).
Why do we need "nano" batteries? If we're down to the point of building things at an atomic level, shouldn't we be at the point where we a) build things with the same (or at least similar) efficiency as the body had in the first place and b) thus use the same power supply the part we're replacing used?
Whilst it's really cool we're building nano-batteries, it sounds more like a lab cashing in on the exciting buzz technology of the moment to solve a problem rather than looking at the problem that actually needs solving and finding the right solution for it.
It makes me wonder, did people 150 years ago try getting seed captial for equally ridiculous concepts involving the new buzz tech of steam? Actually, thinking about it, I know they did - and we laugh at the craziness of the inventors who anounced they were going to invent steam powered underpants or whatever back then. Makes me wonder how much the people of 150 years in the future will smack their heads and laugh at the ridiculous concepts for exploiting nano-tech we're coming up with now, when far more obvious solutions were staring us in the face.
Why Natalie Portman, naked and petrified, covered in Hot Grits of course!
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I'm still waiting for the rich to fund profound things like treatments for malaria
You seem to have the "rich" confused with "instant social panacea".
Trickle-down refers to the idea that the rich very, very rarely horde all of their money in a mattress to never, ever spend any of it. Even if a "rich" person were, for some reason, to save 100% of his wealth and subsist off of dirt and grubs, this wealth would still trickle down.
As I'm sure you already know, it is common for people - be they rich or poor - to save their money in a bank. It is from these savings that banks are able to provide loans - i.e., what allows the non-rich to buy houses, cars, and other things. Or, more importantly, what provides entrepreneuers with the initial investment they need to create the next Big Thing, like this new-fangled blindness-cure-thingy. In other words, banks make the wealth hording of the rich both productive and useful to society, and help wealth to "trickle down."
Effects are more obvious if we assume that the rich spend some of their money - if it was spent, someone had to have received it. In my experience, very rarely do the rich buy only from the rich, who in turn buy only from the rich, who in turn buy only from the rich, and so forth - they eat at expensive restaurants where the waiters are most likely not rich, buy expensive cars made by blue-collar workers, and generally like to flaunt their worldly posessions - all to the benefit of the middle-class workers who actually produce the posessions being flaunted. Wealth diffuses from high concentrations to low concentrations - or "trickles down."
Another related point is that just because someone has more doesn't automatically mean someone else has less - wealth creation isn't a zero-sum game. There isn't a fixed amount of cash in the world that we all have to divvy up - wealth is actually created when an entrepreneur assembles the factors of production (like auto parts) into a finished good (like an auto). Although the sum of the parts may be worth x, the auto is worth more than x, for an auto is far more useful to the average consumer than the individual auto parts.
Long answer made short - "trickle down" is not some mystical process by which the rich will cure malaria. It's an economic concept explaining the distribution of wealth.
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