Kidney Cells Make Implantable Power Source 88
Galactic_grub writes "New Scientist has an interesting round-up of patents related to green power technology. The ideas mentioned include an implantable power source made from stacks of kidney cells that could drive implanted devices like pacemakers, a chemical way to purifying hydrogen, a buckyball-based filter for methane fuel cells and an organism that turns grass cuttings (and other bio-waste) into ethanol."
In a related patent, I claim a brain in a vat ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Recalling a time when a working example of the device to be patented had to be presented.
CC.
Re:Proper Ethanol (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Screw the fucktards with weak genes (Score:2, Insightful)
1. not fat, otherwise it would be a very hypocritical post
2. doesn't smoke, so same as #1
3. his parents didn't love him, otherwise he might be less of a dick
4. barely graduated from high school, otherwise he might have a larger vocabulary
5. must I list any more, its this kind of person who's the real "fucktarded" one... jeez i sound dumb just making fun of the use of that non-word
if only we could harness (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Proper Ethanol (Score:1, Insightful)
I bet you vote libertarian.
Re:Proper Ethanol (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In a related patent, I claim a brain in a vat . (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure what a host's body rejecting an implantable device has to do with biobatteries. As you've said, rejection of the device can be deterred in other ways. It's more likely that biobatteries are being developed so that an otherwise-functional implantable device won't have to be replaced several times over a host's lifetime just because its batteries have been depleted.
That type of surgery is hard on a host. For example, for the last twenty years, my father has needed a pacemaker to regulate his bradycardia (extremely slow heartrate). In that time, he has undergone three pacemaker replacements, all due to depleted batteries. As he gets older, these procedures have taken an increasing toll on his health. One of these days, he will be deemed physically unable to recover from one of these procedures and, in essence, he'll only survive as long as his most recently-implanted pacemaker's batteries hold out.
So, I wouldn't say that biobatteries/biogenerators are "dubiously useful". As mentioned in the article, these batteries are self-sustaining and should endure for the host's lifetime. Personally, if Dr. Levinson can produce such a thing, then more power to him.