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New Battery Technology Draws Energy Directly From The Human Body (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader quotes BleepingComputer:
A team of eleven scientists from UCLA and the University of Connecticut has created a new energy-storing device that can draw electrical power from the human body. What researchers created is a biological supercapacitor, a protein-based battery-like device that extracts energy from the human body and then releases it inside an electrical circuit â" the implantable medical device. According to a research paper published earlier this month, the supercapacitor is made up by a device called a "harvester" that operates by using the body's heat and movements to extract electrical charges from ions found in human body fluids, such as blood, serum, or urine.
As electrodes, the harvester uses a carbon nanomaterial called graphene, layered with modified human proteins. The electrodes collect energy from the human body, relay it to the harvester, which then stores it for later use. Because graphene sheets can be drawn in sheets as thin as a few atoms, this allows for the creation of utra-thin supercapacitors that could be used as alternatives to classic batteries. For example, the bio-friendly supercapacitors researchers created are thinner than a human hair, and are also flexible, moving and twisting with the human body.
As electrodes, the harvester uses a carbon nanomaterial called graphene, layered with modified human proteins. The electrodes collect energy from the human body, relay it to the harvester, which then stores it for later use. Because graphene sheets can be drawn in sheets as thin as a few atoms, this allows for the creation of utra-thin supercapacitors that could be used as alternatives to classic batteries. For example, the bio-friendly supercapacitors researchers created are thinner than a human hair, and are also flexible, moving and twisting with the human body.
There's a movie about that, you know? It doesn't end up well for us.
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I just charged my phone to 100% and it only drained 0.005 years of my life!
A witty
Having to 'take some time to recharge my batteries" might have to be taken literally now.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
It would just drain some of your fat. You know... that biological battery technology used by all animals bigger than a bacteria.
Also, besides being used to reduce fat by the slimmest of margins (Getit?!) it would probably be there to help diagnose various medical issues - perhaps even repair some of them.
Would that extend people's lives? Remains to be seen.
There's always a chance that recording oneself while licking an electric socket might become the new craze as people keep giving up smoking more and more - eliminating any life extending benefits of medical nano-machines.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Some folks call it a Graphene; I call it a Flubber.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Raise your hand if you're interested in having something called "the harvester" implanted in your body.
On the other hand... It would make a good sci-fi horror film. People are implanted with a device made called, "the harvester", made by John Deere (or similar) and are sub-sequentially enslaved by the support contracts because they have no right to repair the devices and removing them is not a survivable option. Oh wait, sounds like a "dark" version of the movie, Repo Men - never mind.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
You could at least have waited to finish typing your post.
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Apropos super capacitors - one of the problems with capacitors lies in having to keep the opposite charges apart, which is exactly what the membrane surrounding the mitochondria does, and very well. According to this: http://bionumbers.hms.harvard...., the field strength across that membrane is some 30 MV/m (that's Mega-Volt, yes) - IOW, a lot.