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A Piezoelectric Pacemaker That Is Powered By Your Heartbeat
MrSeb writes "Engineers at the University of Michigan have created a pacemaker that is powered by the beating of your heart — no batteries required. The technology behind this new infinite-duration pacemaker is piezoelectricity. Piezoelectricity is is literally 'pressure electricity,' and it relates to certain materials that generate tiny amounts of electricity when deformed by an external force — which, in the case of the perpetual pacemaker, the vibrations in your chest as your heart pumps blood around your body. Piezoelectric devices generate very small amounts of power — on the order of tens of milliwatts — but it turns out that pacemakers require very little power. In testing, the researchers' energy harvester generated 10 times the required the power to keep a pacemaker firing. Currently, pacemakers are battery powered — and the battery generally need to be replaced every few years, which requires surgery. According M. Amin Karami, the lead researcher, 'Many of the patients are children who live with pacemakers for many years,' he said. 'You can imagine how many operations they are spared if this new technology is implemented.' This piezoelectric energy harvester is about half the size of a conventional battery, too, which is presumably a good thing."
Vote Romney!
I had a duplex a few years back, when I moved in all I thought was SCORE!! My neighbors where so fuckin hot, perfect large tits, nice ass, they were just gorgeous (it was summer and they were going to the beach to layout, so they were in their bikinis). But then that night, well it was 4am, I woke up to the loudest hardest sex noises I have ever heard! Just screaming and moaning, and it went on for over an hour! I had no idea where it was coming from because I was hearing it from out my bedroom window, I thought it was coming from the large apartment right across from me, and there were too many windows to know which one, so I tried falling back asleep and finally I did. Anyways, the next day I was downstairs watching TV and it started again... except this time my kitchen cupboard doors were shaking and rattling! I was like holy shit... this time it only lasted a few minutes, all I could think of was I have fuckin super hot girls for neighbors and I will fuck these woman one of these days. This went on for about a month, except it was never as loud or as rough as that first night time I heard the sex(I always felt really awkward bringing it up...). Over time I kept getting more and more suspicious, because there was never any noise from the guy(s)... I never heard guys over, nothing... until one day I put my ear up to wall(yes creepy as fuck and I even felt weird doing it)... My two fuckin hot ass neighbors were lesbians and fucking their brains out just constantly! I thought it was kinda cool, but I thought about it and got annoyed about the whole situation... why in the world are there two sexy woman fucking each other? They should be fucking men(well, me), so I got a plan(to at least quiet them)... Being from Minnesota, we are all passive aggressive as fuck, so I waited until they started having loud rough sex again... and I cranked my nice surround system up to near max... I was not playing music though, I was playing a recording of monkeys or gorillas( i don't know what kind of fuckin primates they were), it was one of those recording of a monkey turf war, so it was just loud monkey noises... I did this until they stopped... then when they started again I played it again... this happened 2-3 times... never again did I hear them have sex.
Then a month later those pretentious fucks told my landlord on me because I had loud sex one night I brought a chick home from the bar and fucked her brains out...
No, the device does not violate conservation of energy.
Anyways, nice technology. I hope this really works; so much awesome technology seems to go out as a puff of vaporware.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
YO DAWG! I heard you like keeping your heart beating so I made you a pacemaker that beats your heart when your heart beats!
Q. How many fags does it take to wallpaper a room?
A. Two, if you slice them thin enough.
The beating of our hearts is the only sa-ound
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
That's the first thing I thought of. I'd assume it follows the same basic concept.
Just to be clear the replacement surgery on a pacemaker is almost always done on an outpatient basis with local anesthetic.
Madre de Dios! Es El Pollo Diablo! -- Captain Blondebeard
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...it's already on phones. why not just tell the patient to wave their cell phone's powermat over their pacemaker for a couple minutes?
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It's probably not a "defibrillator" type of heart-restarter in case the heart starts fibrillating: defibrillators require too much power in order to be able to "jump start" the heart. (At least I think that's the kind Cheney got). If it's just an automaticity regulator, than a piezo-electric harvester with a good-internal-rechargeable battery / capacitor system might be good for a long time. Don't kids need a redo-surgery as their bodies grow, though?
So when my heart skips a beat, it will actually skip quite a few? Sounds great, screw testing. Wire me up!
As long as your heart keeps beating... your heart will keep beating?
If you had to replace the battery in a car every time it ran out it would be painfull, thankfully someone invented the alternator that charges said battery when the car is running. When the car stops it is fully charged. Glad to see someones thinking again.
Now, what if we pop a high efficiency solar panel on to their weak hearted bold spot????
Back in 1989 when I was doing my masters one of my classmates had this as her project. No hardware, just some conceptual studies, literature survey and a project report.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Some possible repercussions from long-lasting pacemakers:
* Time to sell stock in pacemaker battery companies?
* More seriously, a pacemaker can keep you alive long after the time you might wish you were dead already. Here's an excellent article about a senior who was effectively tricked into getting a pacemaker, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/magazine/20pacemaker-t.html?pagewanted=all It kept his heart beating for years after dementia took away all his quality of life.
right?
I don't know if straight pacemakers are all that common. My late wife had a pacemaker that was also a defribulater that gives quite a jolt if the heart tries to stop beating. Even thirty minutes after death that thing was still firing away in her chest.
As long as my tissues can secrete and pump around any kind of fluid - I want to be kept alive.
And fuck your stock in battery companies too.
I'd say fuck the horse you rode in on too, but I'm not into that thing.
But it's OK. We'll look around, we'll find someone to fuck your horse for you.
Now fuck off and go die somewhere before your quality of life gets taken away if your beer gets warm while your food goes cold.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Actually the device is powered by your metabolism in the end so no it does not violate thermodynamics. It is like the watches that collect energy as your wrist moves. The interesting question would be if the increased energy demand stresses the heart significantly to warrant concern.
Are you thinking the pacemaker actually runs the heart? All it does is tell the heart when to beat. Think of it as a metronome that gets its energy from the vibrational energy of the rest of the orchestra.
dom
It's like using the vibrations of passing four locomotive coal trains to charge the battery that drives the signal lights, and it's a very busy track with a lot of passing large trains but without much signalling going on.
Just signals to control traffic, no HUGE battery reserve to run a locomotive starter motor.
So in other words, a pacemaker and not a crashcart defibrilator, and having the constraint that no battery is allowed at all is not reasonable. It could be seen as deliberately adding a constraint for no reason other than making something fail, but you are not doing that are you? That would be childish and pointless.
Nah, I guess they wouldn't want to operate on you; they'd rather be the OEM that makes you in the first place: humans 2.0, or since it's apple, iHumans 2.0, now with improved resolution and Retina (TM by apple don't use it it's our phrase) vision capable Retinas in each eye!
Heartbeat powered pacemaker is as useful as a solar powered flashlight.
Sounds kinda optimistic to me.
Remember that this device gets wired directly into the heart. It doesn't have to go through a business suit, dry skin, 6 inches of fat, and an inch of bone.
This device is wired directly into the heart. A normal defibrillator needs to zap right through a business suit, dry skin, 6 inches of fat, an inch of bone, and more. The difference is huge.
Will this allow for enough power to encrypt the wireless connection these things have?
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
And it doesn't tell the heart when to beat all the time, either. My father's pacemaker works something like 3% of the time only, at least that's what they told him last time he went for the pacemaker check up.
Sounds to me like another cog in the wheels of the zombie apocalypse.