Now, I am not normally
skittish about
new technology, but this news story made me
stop and embrace my inner
Luddite. See, I don't think we should be making
technology that will have the
capacity to consume us like a
blue plate special.
Seems that some
crafty Japanese scientist types working at
Panasonic's
Nanotechnology Research Laboratory, bored from long hours of puzzling over
Godzilla's
genome, created a device that can produce
electricity by consuming
blood glucose, using an
enzyme capable of stripping it of its
electrons.
Human blood glucose. Like the stuff that's in your brain
right now.
As I learned in
high school biology, the human body produces energy by converting
glucose to
ATP, also known as
glycolysis. Glucose is the
major sugar in the blood, and the most easily metabolized by human
mitochondria. So your blood is
chock full of glucose.
If 100% of the
sugar present in your blood was catalyzed by this new
device, an average sized person could produce enough energy to power a
100 watt light bulb for as long as sugar was available. But you would
starve to death in a very
nasty way in about an hour.
What do the scientists hope to do with this new
generator? They envision it as a power source for
implanted devices, like
pacemakers, or even eventually
nanorobotics. Sugar fed robots are also a possibility.
Or you could build a
massive army of
killer bloodsucking robots that need
sweet, sweet human flesh to
live.
Whatever pays the
bills.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/03/1059849278131.html
http://science.slashdot.org/science/03/08/04/2224201.shtml?tid=126&tid=134