Greetings Economists, We know that tv had it's Bionic Man decades ago. The dream of replacing organs with something after a disabling event. Where is the technology today?
Paging Dr. Inkjet By Michael Kanellos http://news.com.com/Paging+Dr.+Inkjet/2100-1041_3-5656823.html Story last modified Wed Apr 06 07:44:00 PDT 2005 http://news.com.com/2102-1041_3-5656823.html?tag=st.util.print Inkjets are enrolling in medical school and may someday be repairing fractured arms. Scientists at the University of Manchester in England are trying to develop a technique through which inkjet nozzles will spray live human cells onto a patient. Ideally, this would speed up the healing process because doctors could seed a patient with replacement tissue that would grow to the size and shape required. The seed cells could also be grown from a previously harvested sample from the patient, thereby reducing the chances of donor rejection. So far, the Manchester group has employed the technique to spray (and grow) human fibroblasts and osteoblasts, the cells responsible for forming, respectively, muscle tissue and bone, according to Brian Derby, professor of material science at the University of Manchester. They have also grown bovine chondrocytes, or cartilage cells . "We are interested in tissue engineering cartilage, bone and blood vessels. Skin is an application but not our main focus even if the press have picked it up," Derby wrote in an e-mail. "My guess would be bone replacement as the first application." Doctors might start using these techniques in five to 10 years, he noted. More near-term applications could involve developing tools for the biotech industry. Similar inkjet research is being conducted in Japan and at Clemson University in South Carolina. ... Doyle Scaffolding the seeding of tissue. Slash Dot commentary on Eye Implants InfallibleLies writes "For the first time ever, those who have been blind since birth will have a chance to see the world. It's still in the early stages, but this is a giant leap forward in medical science." From the linked BBC article: "U.S scientists have designed a bionic eye to allow blind people to see again. It comprises a computer chip that sits in the back of the individual's eye, linked up to a mini video camera built into glasses that they wear. Images captured by the camera are beamed to the chip, which translates them into impulses that the brain can interpret." They have been making brain implant vision systems since 1978 [www.cbc.ca] In late 2002 this method was up to 68 implanted electrodes (which would be about equal to an 8x8 matrix) HOWEVER, you need more than 1000 (say 32x32 or 1028) or above for any really useful vision [seeingwithsound.com] With 8x8 you might recognize one or two ASCII characters. A Face??? Only if it's an emoticon. Now granted these are implants in the retina and not the visual cortex, but I have seen other claims for retinal implants over the last five years. Why is this research taking so long to bear fruit? In 1978 progress was limited by the available CPU horsepower to translate images into usable grid stimulation patterns. Now it seems we are stalled out with our ability to put electrodes in organic systems. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this is easy, but why doesn't this stuff scale like Moore's Law with integrated circuits? Given the state of research over a decade ago we should be up to VGA quality arrays of 640x480 by now. Doyle, Eye implants and ear implants continue to be explored. Eye implants are either retinal, or brain surface arrays. April 1, 2005 Study of Social Interactions Starts With a Test of Trust By HENRY FOUNTAIN In a finding that could help explain why a sucker never gets an even break, scientists are reporting today that they have succeeded in visualizing feelings of trust developing in a specific region of the brain. In the study, pairs of anonymous subjects were strapped into magnetic resonance imaging scanners 1,500 miles apart. The participants played 10 consecutive rounds of a risk-taking game that involved balancing monetary profit and trust. While they played, the scanners, synchronized through the Internet, measured how the subjects' brains reacted. With the development of trusting feelings, increased blood flow occurred in the caudate nucleus, an area in the rear part of the brain that is involved in processing rewards. Over time, this increased blood flow appeared earlier as an expectation of trustworthiness was established. The study's authors, from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and the California Institute of Technology, say their work shows that, at some level, the process of building trust is as basic as obtaining food or other rewards. The caudate nucleus appears to play a central role in evaluating the fairness of another person's actions and in signaling the intention to trust that person. Future studies, they said, may prove useful for understanding autism, schizophrenia or other behavioral disorders where the ability to form internal models of other people may be impaired. By allowing neuroscientists to measure how two brains act and interact, the novel M.R.I. technique, called hyperscanning, also opens avenues of research in a relatively new field, real-time brain imaging of human social interactions. "Researchers have been stuck looking at one brain at a time," said Dr. Steven R. Quartz, a neuroscientist at Caltech and an author of the study, which is being published today in the journal Science. "This really begins a new chapter in looking at the neural basis of human social interaction." Doyle, Well if we are going to deal with the tissue we ought to first understand what's really happening. thanks, Doyle
