Implanted pacemakers and defibrillators have to be replaced when their power sources run low – normally every 7 to 10 years. The surgery requires general anaesthetic and carries some risk for patients.
But David Tran and colleagues at Stanford University, California, US, say it may be possible for the devices to harvest their own power from the human body.
The team has come up with a number of designs which generate power by virtue of being attached to the outside of the heart. This causes, for example, a magnet to move through a coil, or a piezoelectric element to move, in a way that generates current.
The team says this could make implantable devices self-powering, or at the very least, increase the periods between replacements.
Read the full self-powering implants patent application.
Justin Mullins, New Scientist contributor
Archive for the ‘biomedical’ Category
Heart-powered pacemaker
Friday, November 16th, 2007Sea cucumber corneas
Tuesday, November 6th, 2007
When a person's cornea – the transparent surface layer at the front of the eye – becomes damaged, it can be replaced using tissue from an organ donor. But there is a big shortage of corneal donors, as there are for every other type of organ.
An ideal solution would be to develop an artificial cornea, but is has proved very hard to design and manufacture a structure so that it is optically clear in the middle and biocompatible at the edges.
Now Garret Matthews, a biophysicist at the University of South Florida in Tampa, US, and his colleagues have come up with a design for artificial corneas that they say achieves this – using sea cucumbers.
Sea cucumbers are sausage-shaped echinoderms, most species of which live on the sea floor in a variety of marine environments around of the globe.
The team's artificial cornea is made from tiny collagen fibres extracted from these sea cucumbers. When placed in a centrifuge, the fibres self assemble into layers in which the fibres are aligned vertically, a structure that is very similar to the tissue in mammalian corneas. The result is a thin layer of material that is transparent and biocompatible, as well as cheap and easy to make, says the team.
Read the full sea cucumber cornea patent application.
Justin Mullins, New Scientist contributor
An ideal solution would be to develop an artificial cornea, but is has proved very hard to design and manufacture a structure so that it is optically clear in the middle and biocompatible at the edges.
Now Garret Matthews, a biophysicist at the University of South Florida in Tampa, US, and his colleagues have come up with a design for artificial corneas that they say achieves this – using sea cucumbers.
Sea cucumbers are sausage-shaped echinoderms, most species of which live on the sea floor in a variety of marine environments around of the globe.
The team's artificial cornea is made from tiny collagen fibres extracted from these sea cucumbers. When placed in a centrifuge, the fibres self assemble into layers in which the fibres are aligned vertically, a structure that is very similar to the tissue in mammalian corneas. The result is a thin layer of material that is transparent and biocompatible, as well as cheap and easy to make, says the team.
Read the full sea cucumber cornea patent application.
Justin Mullins, New Scientist contributor