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Copying Antler-Structure Means Better Prosthetics
tygerstripes writes "The BBC reports that a breakthrough in prosthetic technology will allow titanium to be grafted directly to the bone and then protrude from the skin without risking infection. Research by the Centre for Bio-Medical Engineering, UCL and Stanmore Implants looks into the way that the structure and porosity of deers' antlers prevents infection from entering the break in the skin. Early trials and a fairly gruesome picture show that by mimicking this they can successfully provide amputees with more comfortable, permanent prosthetics. Combined with bionic muscle and other recent developments, we may be very close to fully-integrated prosthetics."
He said that the technology could be widely used for thumb and forefingers in a few years, and upper and lower limb replacements using this method could be in place in five years.
And after it gets thru all the proper channels, approval stages, etc in the USA we're talking the year 2050 at the earliest.
...the titanium is shed after mating-season and has to be reattached.
So, when can I get my titanium claws?
P.S. Figure out how to do this with adamantium for authenticity.
P.P.S. You may have to create adamntium first.
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I can't wait for cyborgs to become a voting block, we'll have to have seperate sports leagues so they don't hurt us poor plain "biologics."
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How is this "insightful"? If this is all it takes for you to see evil, then it's no wonder you see everyone as evil. You need to seriously take a step back and breathe.
It's entirely possible that the reason they want to use people from the bombings of less than a year ago is that people who've been amputees already have artificial limbs and rather than make them go through the hassle of experimenting with something that may or may not work (artifical limbs are very expensive to customize, take a long time to make, and take an even longer time to fully adjust) they want to go with people who probably don't have artificial limbs yet.
I'm not saying I know what's going on, but there are a lot of reasons why this could have nothing to do with politics or evil and everything to do with getting the experiments and trials done as quickly as possible while causing the minimal amount of pain and discomfort to everyone involved.
Until you have any idea why they are making this decision - why jump to conlusions?
-stormin
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Well I'm sure they were deliberately supressing research on this just to fuck with the people who've been missing limbs for years. And of course you can easily twist those words to make it seem like only victims of that attack will be given access to the technology.
Or it could be that the bombing was just a recent, widely known event that can be used to stir emotions and pique interest in the research. Average Joe loses a leg because he didn't use jack stands while working on his car? Sad, but it doesn't compare to dozens of people killed and hundreds injured in a terrorist attack. Maybe something like that just sticks into the researcher's minds and becomes more of a motivation? Or maybe he was personally effected by it?
=Smidge=
What the deuce?
Half man, half machine.
Why with that technology, I could escape these wretched harridans!
Go, cyborg!
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that picture is gruseome?
Wow, the submitter must have the constitution of a nervous gerbil.
I think that picture is pretty frickin cool, and want to see more. Anyone have more links to examples of this?
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The integration of Prosthetics w/o infection is a kinda holy grail of prosthetics, Now we will beable to make dataports that are merged witht he skin with ease. Also the ability to say make a prosthetic hand that uses the existing muscle in the forearm for movement and have it installed full time!!! Most prostetics have to be taken off at night tio give the skin some time to rest due to irritation and whatnot, now they can left on 24/7 and designed to be move like natural human body parts. Merge a little more robotics tech and in several more years primitive versions of "Ghost in the Shell" type cyborgs may become closer to reality.
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It's also possible they want to try things out with people who have fresh amputations, who's bodies aren't neccesarily completely healed yet, as they'd have to cut into tissue to fuse the new implants. I'm by no means a specialist about prosthetics, but when you're wearing a cup-style device wouldn't the tissue between the joint and the cup get worn down?
Also, these people won't have already learnt skills related to their current prosthetics, so they won't be 'biased' as to how they work. Kinda like trying to re-teach someone a modern coding language after they've learnt basic.
That, and what the other poster said. These people are waiting without limbs now. People who've had issues for longer most likely already have them.
Great, I hope they get this to work because my doctor says I will probably need knee replacement surgery in about 10 years.
The concept that titanium fused with bone was discovered years ago when doctors thought "Hey lets use titanium cause its stronger then other materials and then went to remove it and found that the bone had fused with the titanium at a molecular level. In europe they have been doing this for years now but the FDA is slow to approve new technology and of course there is the problem with infection but what they don't tell you is that the risk of infection with a titanium graft that protrudes from the skin is more managable then the infection from the sores that develope where a traditional prosthetic is attached. Now it will be interesting when we replace fingers buy just puting a titanium piece in place of the bone and graft the muscle directly to it.
What I'm interested in is if there's already been a third kind of prosthetic movement control system invented.
My personal categorization of the different kinds of movement of prosthetic limbs:
1. On/off movement in any direction, like your limb was controlled by the digital joypad of a console.
2. Variable speed movement in any given direction, like your prosthetic limb was controlled by an analog joystick of a console.
3. Absolute positioning of your limb, like the new Nintendo Wii controller or a mouse.
Is there anything like my third category available? Together with this new grafting technology it would mean almost complete recovery for amputees.
I know that the human body doesn't track it's own limb positions in real-time, even in normal mammals, but human movement is still more like category 3 than the other two.
Is there something similar out already? I read an article about a guy who's arm prosthesis was directly attached to an arm nerve. Paraphrased: "I could move it as if it was real, I just had to think about moving my arm".
So any info on category 3 movement controls will be appreciated, interesting stuff.
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