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[Karnewarrior]

Kind of makes you wonder what else we're doing wrong.

[RedKing]

Their analogy to flapping wings makes sense. Early flying machines all had flappy wings (which make them look LOLtastic in hindsight) because we assumed that flapping was crucial.

And it makes sense that they're a lot less likely to wear out if they're not pumping. Only a couple of moving parts, less jostling of your internal organs, much smaller sort of device needed. And in theory, you could optimize the thing to increase and decrease impeller rates the same way your heartrate increases when you're active. The obvious next step is to replace all your blood vessels with high-strength polymer so that you can crank the impeller up to insane rates and flush your entire blood supply through the oxygenation cycle in seconds. Which would require super-lungs, which means a redesigned throat built like a wind tunnel....yeah, it's probably a good thing I never went into biomedical engineering like I initially planned. I'd be the guy in the secret island lair doing unauthorized medical experiments.

[Leafsnail]

Which would require super-lungs, which means a redesigned throat built like a wind tunnel...

Frankly, why even have the oesophagus so close to the wind pipe?  Constant choking hazard.  You could have your air intake/ outtake somewhere else and make it possible to breath out of your mouth so you can still talk.  Plus if you got that and the pulseless heart you'd have all the required abilities to easily fake your own death.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Of course, you could also replace your normal blood with a superior synthetic varient. RBC's are actually very, very inefficient. Estimates suggest that optimized synthetic blood could let you go several hours without having to breath with just 10% replacement.

[RedKing]

Yeah, it kinda terrifies me that cyborgs could be an everyday thing if people really wanted to.

Which makes me think DoD has at least a few heavily-modified volunteers walking (or rolling or jetpacking) around somewhere.


EDIT: Also found this, which I had to factcheck to be sure it wasn't an April Fools' joke. There's a Japanese robotics company called Cyberdyne which manufactures an exoskeleton system named HAL. If they unveil a system for networking these and call it SkyNet or SHODAN, I don't know quite how I'm going to react.

DOUBLE EDIT: They claim the HAL is primarily to assist elderly people who have trouble with walking and moving. Then have this on their website. (Couldn't hotlink the photo).

That doesn't scream "Happy System For Grandma Mobility". More like "Super Seiyuu Knight Warrior Go!" 

[Jopax]

I've seen that in some show a long time ago, i think the creator was very convinced in his stance on weaponizing that thing, medical and rescue uses only, that is untill someone tech savy and evil enough gets their hands on one of those and makes it into an awesome weapon system

[olemars]

There's competition too. Lots of angry comments on that TedTalk from people feeling it was pretty much just a sales pitch for supersoldier kits. Using a marine to showcase the exoskeleton probably didn't help.

On the impeller heart, it strikes me that you probably don't want to pass out near anyone who knows CPR if you have one of those in your chest. Broken ribs aren't fun.

[RedWarrior0]

"Do Not Resuscitate"

On topic, I had a dream involving an extremely non-euclidean d8 that had 6 sides. Yeah, I don't know either.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

"Do Not Resuscitate"

Wow, that's brilliant. It does take on new meaning with the existance of artificial hearts. (Although in a non-hospital setting, you'd probably have to tattoo it on your chest or somthing. I imagine that would be very confusing to a would-be resuscitator to find when they tried to save you.)

[Angel Of Death]

I searched "Tarn Adams" in Google Images, and one of the first pictures I saw was a monster eating a baby.

Huh?

[bremarv]

I searched "Tarn Adams" in Google Images, and one of the first pictures I saw was a monster eating a baby.

Huh?

Didn't see any baby eating monsters, but was quite a few female Tarn Adams profiles an various sites.

Which reminds me, why would anyone name their girl Billie Paul Piper?

[Angel Of Death]

I searched "Tarn Adams" in Google Images, and one of the first pictures I saw was a monster eating a baby.

Huh?

Didn't see any baby eating monsters, but was quite a few female Tarn Adams profiles an various sites.

It won't show up if safesearch's on.

[Duke 2.0]

Of course, you could also replace your normal blood with a superior synthetic varient. RBC's are actually very, very inefficient. Estimates suggest that optimized synthetic blood could let you go several hours without having to breath with just 10% replacement.

Thank god RBC's don't assist in any other bodily functions and can't be easily replaced.

[Bohandas]

Scientists develop new artificial heart with no pulse. 

Wouldn't making an artificial heart that pulses be a lot harder than one that's just an impeller?  Seems petty obvious to me, a mere cardiolohobbiest.

Logically, yes. The proble was that everyone assumed the pulsers were critical.

Wow! That's really incredibly stupid of them. You'd think it would be obvious to anybody with even the slightest background in biology, and especially people who are actually involved with it for a living, like medical engineers, that a natural heart's pulse is an artifact of the way that all body movements are ultimately based on expansion and contraction of muscle fibers which can only deform to a finite extent.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Of course, you could also replace your normal blood with a superior synthetic varient. RBC's are actually very, very inefficient. Estimates suggest that optimized synthetic blood could let you go several hours without having to breath with just 10% replacement.

Thank god RBC's don't assist in any other bodily functions and can't be easily replaced.

I'd think it would be a given that a sucessful synthetic blood replacement would be able to perform all the jobs of the RBCs it is replacing.