/ News
Bionic Muscles Toughen Up
The tissues of the heart are mechanically tough and electrically conductive, and they keep a strong, rhythmic beat—properties that are tough to mimic in the lab. But a new hybrid material that combines cell-friendly gel, strong, conductive carbon nanotubes, and living cardiac cells mimics natural heart tissue more successfully than previous attempts. Eventually the new material could be useful in both medical and robotic applications.
The bionic tissues, made by Ali Khademhosseini, a professor at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, could serve as muscles for biological machines—moving, programmable living tissues that take synthetic biology beyond single cells. A lot of the things that natural tissues and biological cells can do, such as sense and respond to their environment, are hard for engineers to achieve with the synthetic materials used in conventional robotics. Researchers hope that building machines from biological materials like heart tissue will expand what’s possible. The new tissues can swim untethered in water, swing back and forth, and perform other moves programmed by controlling their shape and thickness.
If these materials turn out to be safe for use in the human body, they might also be used to patch tissue damaged by heart attacks. Researchers engineering heart tissues in the lab often use polymers and gels to provide cardiac cells with an environment in which they will grow and behave as they do in the body. The resulting materials have two critical flaws, says Khademhosseini. They don’t match the electrical conductivity of heart tissue, nor are they as mechanically strong.
“When the heart beats, cells respond to that mechanical force and release chemicals that encourage growth,” says Thomas Webster, a chemical engineer at Northeastern University in Boston, who was not involved with the work. And if the patch is less conductive than the rest of the heart, electrical signals might experience delays. If a patch without just the right properties is placed on a patient’s heart, it might not grow properly, and it might not be able to beat in time with the rest of the heart, says Webster.
The Cambridge group solves this problem by adding carbon nanotubes to tissue-engineering gels. The result is a squishy gel with a tangle of strong, conductive carbon fibers embedded in it. Khademhosseini seeded cardiac cells on these gels and studied their properties. The bionic tissues were similar in elasticity to rat heart—much more elastic than previous lab-made materials. They also had much better conductivity. And the tissues were better at heart tissue’s main job, beating in synchrony. Khademhosseini exposed the bionic tissue to various chemicals and found that it was it was relatively resistant to damage—perhaps because the carbon nanotubes provide electrical links between cells that can maintain communication even when under stress. This work is described online in the journal ACS Nano.
Webster says before any medical applications can be considered, researchers will have to demonstrate that carbon nanotubes are not toxic—especially since they are not biodegradable and would be likely to stay in the body for a long time. He notes that even if the carbon materials themselves are safe, the manufacturing process for nanotubes might leave traces of toxic metal catalysts.
Khademhosseini says the first use for the materials may be in biological machines used to assess and restore toxic environments or repair buildings. Last year, researchers demonstrated free-swimming jellyfish-like robots and walking biological machines built from heart tissues and polymers. But without conductive materials, their applications are limited, says Rashid Bashir, a bioengineer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who made the walking robot. “If you can pattern the base material, you could make circuits inside,” he says.
Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/510721/bionic-muscles-toughen-up/
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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