Important Innovations

New Device Captures the Heart's Energy Source:  Dartmouth College Implants Powered By Electricity from Heart Beats This is fascinating and very promising research from Dartmouth College engineers funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH),  The Dartmouth team have created a dime sized device that harvests the kinetic energy of a beating heart to generate electricity and power a biomedical device indefinitely. It's an implant, a heart pacemaker, powered by a beating heart. Dime-Sized Device What is so interesting is this is a dime sized device.  It relies on a thin film - piezoelectric film - attached to a pacemaker's lead.  It converts heart beats' kinetic energy into electricity to power the pacemaker implant. NIH Funded Research with Other Implant Device Applications This is essentially an organ energy harvesting device that could work beyond the heart and for other organs such as kidneys.  The Dartmouth team's three years of research res...

Ambitious US Government Robotic Program Source:  DARPA HI-MENS Robotic Program Spying Insec ts You might call them Cyborg Insect Spies.  The US Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency DARPA has a novel, science fiction like robotic research program underway.  It's called the HI-MEMS program. Insect Controlled in Flight by Implants Scientists have explored using a variety of insects as part of the program.  They have put implants on flying moths and beetles.  Using the implants, researchers are able to stimulate insect brains and actually control them in flight. End Game The potential use of these robotic insects is fascinating.  The goal is to deploy them on missions in the field to gain access to areas not reachable by traditional robots and humans.  This is an important scientific research program that DARPA is actively pursuing.