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Smallest Implantable Body Batteries
An implantable body battery 100 times smaller than a standard AA battery has been developed by Argonne National Laboratory in cooperation with Quallion and the University of Wisconsin. The battery will power a system designed to help patients with neuromuscular disorders.
Alfred Bester, in his remarkable 1956 novel The Stars My Desination, envisioned an operation that would augment the nervous system of a man to improve performance. The operation
This is the same kind of system powered by the Quallion I Series battery.
...had transformed him into an extraordinary fighting machine. Every nerve plexus had been rewired, microscopic transistors and transformers had been buried in muscle and bone, a minute platinum outlet showed at the base of his spine. To this Foyle affixed a power pack the size of a pea and switched it on. His body began an internal electronic vibration that was almost mechanical...
(Read more about the internal body power pack)
(From smallest body battery)
The implantable microstimulator system is designed to help patients with neurological disorders and muscular impairments like Parkinson's, stroke and urinary incontinence.
The microstimulator system, like the refurbished nervous system proposed by Bester, is implanted near nerves, and emits electrical micropulses that stimulate muscles and nerves. These systems have been in use for more than a decade; the Bion microstimulator is a miniature, self-contained neurostimulator. A significant difference is that the actual system uses microstimulators that are self-contained; Bester's fictional system requires that all of the stimulators be interconnected and powered from a single source.
(From Battery and Bion Microstimulator)
Read more at Argonne researchers becoming nation's experts in lithium-battery technology; thanks to Roland for the story.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 7/7/2005)
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Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
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