Cyborg Snail Turned Into Living Battery
At http://www.livescience.com/19008-cyborg-snail-living-battery.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Livesciencecom+%28LiveScience.com+Science+Headline+Feed%29
A snail transformed into a living battery has moved the world one step closer to having tiny cyborg spies underfoot.
The pioneering experiment harnessed a snail's blood sugar to "recharge" an implanted battery — the first time researchers have shown sustainable generation of electricity in a living creature's body over several months. If the snails' bodies can create enough electricity to power microelectronics, they could act as living sensors or detectors for the U.S. military and Homeland Security.
"In this [direction] the biofuel cells are expected to operate in small creatures (snails, worms, insects, etc) providing sustainable electrical power for various sensors and wireless transmitters," said Evgeny Katz, a professor of chemistry at Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y.
Katz and his colleagues implanted the snail with electrodes made of thin sheets of carbon nanotubes — called Buckypaper — that could conduct electricity. Those electrodes, coupled with certain enzymes, created electricity by using glucose sugar and oxygen circulating in the snail's "hemolymph" blood.
Such a setup allowed the snails to roam freely and live life almost as normally as possible — resting and eating allowed the creatures to build up glucose levels to "recharge" the battery. A new study describing the results is detailed in the March 8 online edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
"Our snail was living for a few months with the implanted electrodes, eating, drinking, moving, etc.," Katz told InnovationNewsDaily. "The snail was fixed for a few minutes to make the electrical measurements and then it was released again to move."
The amount of electricity created was still far below that of just one AAA battery, but Katz's team and its Israeli colleagues at Ben-Gurion University hope to boost the flow of electricity in new experiments. They have also begun testing different substances in the bodies of... (more at http://www.livescience.com/19008-cyborg-snail-living-battery.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Livesciencecom+%28LiveScience.com+Science+Headline+Feed%29 )Robots Set New World Record for Ocean Travel
At http://www.livescience.com/19021-wave-gliders-distance-record.html
Oceangoing robots have broken a distance record by reaching Hawaii from San Francisco, braving 26-foot waves and gale force storms along the way.
The four wave gliders made by Liquid Robotics traveled more than 3,200 nautical miles on the first leg of their 9,000-mile journey across the Pacific. Their arrival on the big island of Hawaii four months after leaving the West Coast shattered the Guinness World Records mark of 2,500 miles for the longest distance traveled by unmanned wave power vehicles.
"We are proud our PacX Wave Gliders have reached their first destination and broken the world record," said Edward Lu, chief of innovative applications at Liquid Robotics, which is based in Sunnyvale, Calif. "PacX represents a new model for providing widespread and easy access to environmental monitoring of the world's oceans, one in which Liquid Robotics operates fleets of mobile, autonomous ocean robots across previously inaccessible areas."
Each of the four drones consists of an underwater glider connected by a cable to a floating section. The wave gliders convert the endless motion of the ocean's waves into forward thrust, which would allow them to travel thousands of miles without fuel during... ( more at http://www.livescience.com/19021-wave-gliders-distance-record.html )
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