Personal Nanomedical Appliance to Replace Human Blood

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by Pine_net, May 16, 2002.

  1. Pine_net Chaos Product Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    485
    ABSTRACT

    The vasculoid is a single, complex, multisegmented nanotechnological medical robotic system capable of duplicating all essential thermal and biochemical transport functions of the blood, including circulation of respiratory gases, glucose, hormones, cytokines, waste products, and cellular components. This nanorobotic system, a very aggressive and physiologically intrusive macroscale nanomedical device comprised of ~500 trillion stored or active individual nanorobots, weighs ~2 kg and consumes from 30-200 watts of power in the basic human model, depending on activity level.

    The vasculoid system conforms to the shape of existing blood vessels and serves as a complete replacement for natural blood. This paper presents a preliminary theoretical scaling analysis including transport capacity, thermal conduction, control and biocompatibility considerations, along with a hypothetical installation scenario and a description of some useful optional equipment. A discussion of repair procedures and various applications of the personal vasculoid appliance is deferred to subsequent papers.

    Read on...
     
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  3. Pollux V Ra Bless America Registered Senior Member

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    Sounds great. If these go into affect and they weren't colored I'd think that we'd wind up looking somewhat like the Borg from star trek. Does this not mean that every disease that uses its hosts' blood to attack it become nullified? I think that cancer cells and the etc might have trouble infecting a machine, but somehow nature always figures out how to throw something new at us.

    Strange. This type of thing you'd never expect to see in your lifetime. I wonder when artificial blood transfusions will become commonplace....
     
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  5. Chagur .Seeker. Registered Senior Member

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    2,235
    Hmm ...

    Where do you find this stuff, Pine_net?

    Other than being interminably and needlessly lengthy, it is:

    "... a preliminary theoretical scaling analysis"

    That apparently does not originate at either a University or
    research lab. Further, it is not peer reviewed and although
    it is footnoted extensively, none of them appear to directly
    address the subject of the 'paper'.

    My bullshit meter was pushing the top of the scale as I waded
    through it. Actually, scanned it most of the time.

    Take care

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  7. kmguru Staff Member

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    The author is a research scientist at Zyvex Corp. In the corporate world there is no such thing as waiting for peer review. It is run as fast as you can. But in this case - it is more of a dream that reality at this time...because some of the projects that is being researched at this time are as follows. That means it is a long way off....

    MEMS at Zyvex
    Automated manufacturing: design and construction of assemblers capable of handling thousands of sub-micron components at high speed, using MEMS to prototype systems that can be built today at relatively low cost.

    NIST ATP Project

    The NIST ATP project will develop prototype microscale assemblers using microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), extend the capabilities to nanometer geometries, and develop nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) for prototype nanoscale assemblers. The program is structured to develop systems providing highly parallel microassembly and nanoassembly for real-world, high-volume applications. Zyvex proposed the NIST ATP project in order to accelerate the technical, economic, and societal benefits of nanotechnology and to assist the United States in maintaining a leadership position in the emerging nanotechnology era

    excerpt from Xerox PARC

     
    Last edited: May 20, 2002
  8. Chagur .Seeker. Registered Senior Member

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    2,235
    kmguru ...

    But in this case - it is more of a dream that reality at this time...

    Agree. In light of the fact that, at least to me, the 'paper' came
    across as near future feasible, my BS meter headed for the top
    of the scale.

    Take care

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    Edit: for typo
     
    Last edited: May 20, 2002
  9. Brett Bellmore Registered Senior Member

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    68
    This is an example of a genre which has been termed "speculative engineering", or "theoretical applied science"; Sort of half-way between real engineering and SF, it consists of an effort to pursue the design of some device currently impossible to manufacture as far as possible, in order to establish whether it's actually feasible in the light of currently accepted physics, and what it's limitations and capabilities would be if you COULD make one. Thus giving you some idea of what we'll be capable of in the future.

    It's not really BS, as nobody is trying to fool you into believing that they know how to design and build such a device. It's more like very hard science fiction without any plot. Or futurism with rivets.

    Here's a better description.
     
  10. Chagur .Seeker. Registered Senior Member

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    2,235
    Brett Bellmore ...

    I can see the point you wanted to make.

    Okay, so it isn't pseudoscience, it isn't science fiction, and it isn't
    science or engineering, let alone BS. Can buy that.

    Guess I'll classify it as 'suppositional science' in my world.

    Take care, and welcome to Sciforums.

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  11. Brett Bellmore Registered Senior Member

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    I should say that I think the vasculoid is a fairly unlikely device to ever be used as portrayed, as a whole body blood (And heart) substitute. Though it might find use for just the brain, in a whole-body cyborg. After all, if you're going to go that far, why not finish the job? The vasculoid is kind of like replacing the utilities in an aging tenement apartment, but leaving the rotting structure in place around them.

    Among other issues, there's the question of how to get from the liquid circulatory system, to the mechanical circulatory system, assuming both work, without dying during the transition. Since they're not particularly compatable... Perhaps if you worked really fast, during a period of extreme hypothermia?

    I thought the respirocyte was much more plausible. (The vasculoid was probably inspired by it, in the "lets see how far we can carry this idea" spirit.) Relatively simple product, capable of being introduced incrementally into the body, and would provide a huge benefit even at modest levels of use. I could see this one being a big hit.
     
  12. Chagur .Seeker. Registered Senior Member

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    2,235
    Brett Bellmore ...

    Took a look and two things immediately came to mind:

    1. Why is there a need for propulsion?

    2. How would the immune system be circumvented?

    Seems not quite as far fetched as the vasculoid system but both
    rate as extremely speculative to me. At the limits of suppositional
    science.

    Take care.
     
  13. Brett Bellmore Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    68
    Nah, the respirocyte is at the lower limit of speculative engineering; Many of it's components have already been simulated on molecular modeling software, and it's not really pushing the limits in terms of things like strength of materials. Any more conventional and it would hardly merit being called speculative.

    Immune response isn't much of a problem, there are materials which the immune system doesn't respond to, they're used in implant surgery already.

    Why propulsion? Good question. I have to admit I'm a bit vague on the justification for that feature myself.
     
  14. Chagur .Seeker. Registered Senior Member

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    Brett Bellmore ...

    I think you'd better bone up a bit on immune system response.

    It's apparent you're not that knowledgeable.

    Take care

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  15. Brett Bellmore Registered Senior Member

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    You mean to say that I've forgotten everything I learned taking a dual degree in electrical engineering and human biology?

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    Seriously, there are materials which escape the immune system's notice. Saphire, for instance, which I believe is the material the respirocyte is proposed to be made of for the most part. And there are more sophisticated ways of dealing with immune response than dosing somebody with immune suppressant drugs. They're a bit on the experimental side at the moment, but hardly the most speculative part of the notion.
     
  16. alanH Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    523
    VDH kicks some butt and takes some names

    Indeed, the liberal Europeans should love Israel, whose social and cultural institutions — universities, the fine arts, concern for the “other” — so reflect its own. Gays are in the Israeli military, whose soldiers rarely salute, but usually address each other by their first names and accept a gender equity that any feminist would love. And while Arabs once may have been exterminated by Syrians, gassed in Yemen by Egypt, ethnically cleansed in Kuwait, lynched without trial in Palestine, burned alive in Saudi Arabia, inside Israel proper they vote and enjoy human rights not found elsewhere in the Arab Middle East.

    When Europe frets over the “Right of Return” do they mean the over half-million Jews who were sent running for their lives from Egypt, Syria, and Iraq? Or do they ever ask why a million Arabs live freely in Israel and another 100,000 illegally have entered the “Zionist entity”? Does a European ever ask what would happen should thousands of Jews demand “A Right of Return” to Cairo?

    Instead, the elite Westerner talks about “occupied lands” from which Israel has been attacked four times in the last 60 years — in a manner that Germans do not talk about an occupied West they coughed up to France or an occupied East annexed by Poland. Russia lectures about Jenin, but rarely its grab of Japanese islands. Turkey is worried about the West Bank, but not its swallowing much of Cyprus. China weighs in about Palestinian sovereignty but not the entire culture of Tibet; some British aristocrats bemoan Sharon’s supposed land grab, but not Gibraltar.

    All these foreign territories that were acquired through blood and iron and held on to by reasons of “national security” are somehow different matters when Jews are not involved. Yet give Israel a population of 250 million, massive exports of oil and terrorists — and wipe away anti-Semitism — and even the Guardian or Le Monde would change its tune.


    http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200312300000.asp


    landv.net
     
  17. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    18,523
    alanH,

    aaaaaah what does that have to do with artificial blood??? :bugeye:

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    Sadly we have yet to come up with a more efficient molecule then hemoglobin for transport of oxygen in the body.
     
  18. alanH Registered Senior Member

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    It has less to do with artificial blood than it has to do with the fact that I made a boo boo.

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