This new in vivo glucose powered fuel cell turns humans into batteries
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Technology always pushes boundaries and at the edge we’re finding new ways to generate electricity using the human body … Love the Exponential Future? Join our XPotential Community, future proof yourself with courses from XPotential University, read about exponential tech and trends, connect, watch a keynote, or browse my...
Living pharmacies within our bodies could help cure jet lag and disease
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Today we make drugs in factories and then inject and pop them when we need to – but what if our bodies could make those drugs in vivo at the first sign of disease? Love the Exponential Future? Join our XPotential Community, future...
Researchers use light to re-charge pacemakers for first time
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF When the battery in your implanted medical devices runs out you run to the hospital for emergency surgery to change it – no more. Love the Exponential Future? Join our FREE XPotential Community, enjoy exclusive content, future proof yourself with XPotential University, connect, watch a keynote, or browse my blog. We’ve heard...
US military starts trialling robotic surgeons in the battlefield
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Being able to monitor the health of soliders in battle will help keep them at peak efficiency, and military robot surgeons will help save lives on the battlefield. Keeping soldiers healthy has always been a struggle but there may soon be a high tech solution after US...
Chinese scientists unveil a new material that heals itself like human skin
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Up until now most self-healing materials have either been hard, or soft, and that narrows their number of applications, this new material is the first to have the best of both worlds. Imagine a smartphone, or window, that can heal from cuts and scratches...
MIT’s new secure, low power chip helps create the “Internet of Secure Things”
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF More cyber criminals are choosing to target Internet of Things devices than ever before because they are easy to gain access to and exploit at scale, MIT’s new chip hopes to reverse that trend. From data breaches to weaponised devices, the Internet of Things...
New spinal chord treatment lets paralysed man walk again for the first time
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Put simply paralysis may no longer be a life sentence In the past paralysis meant just that, and it was forever. But now we are witnessing amazing breakthroughs in treating, and curing, paralysis that include the development of artificial neurons and cyborg implants, to brain chips and new...
The size of a grain of rice, researchers unveil the world’s smallest computers
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Micromotes will stop the sensors at the edge of the world’s networks from flooding datacenters with exabytes of worthless information, and open the door to new computing applications. At just one cubic millimetre in size Micromotes, which are so small that they can almost be...
A connected heart just helped convict a man of arson
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Connecting devices to each other and to the internet can make them much smarter, and much more usable, but increasingly companies and law enforcement are using connected devices to track, log and analyse our activities, and that has some serious privacy implications People have...
Hacking pacemakers and medical implants gets harder as FDA issues new cybersecurity guidelines
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF More and more implanted medical devices are becoming connected devices and this exposes them to cyberattacks, the FDA’s new cybersecurity guidance hopes to curtail, and prevent deaths that might result from an attack on people’s IMD’s. You have a pace maker. It’s hacked. You’re...