Top 10 technologies in bionics

Scientists are gradually approaching to assemble a fully bionic person, like a designer of parts. The number of organs in the human body that can be surgically replaced is greater than ever.

LiveScience magazine offers a list of the most interesting achievements of modern bionics.



Bone repair
Since the 60s, scientists have known about proteins that stimulate the restoration of bone tissue in damaged areas. Unfortunately, the technology never worked normally. Only in 2005, an artificial protein was created that acted precisely on a certain type of bone tissue. Protein was called UCB-1, and its active use in practical medicine is beginning now.
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Microcircuit instead of hippocampus
Replacing a part of the brain is not as easy as repairing a piece of an ordinary organ, but soon even this will become possible. The University of Southern California developed a chip that performs the functions of the hippocampus (this is an important part of the brain that is responsible for short-term memory, namely, the transition of individual memories from short-term memory to long-term memory). It is damaged in Alzheimer's disease and other diseases, so that such an implant can return a full life to many people. The inventor Theodore Berger is currently continuing to test his microchip.

Artificial cells
Often, when you need to enter a medicine, tablets or an injection do not cope with the transportation of the substance to the desired part of the body. Professor of bioengineering Daniel Hummer from the University of Pennsylvania offers the best solution: artificial polymeric cells that can easily travel through the blood vessels throughout the body and deliver the medicine anywhere.

New hands
Intellectual prostheses of the new generation are connected to the nerve endings from the brain, so that they can be controlled like ordinary hands: miniature motors are turned on literally with the effort of thought. The signal goes on the same nerve endings that were used to control the limb before it was lost. At the moment, scientists continue to calibrate the system in order to perceive the nerve impulses more clearly. They also want to add feedback so that the brain receives information from sensors on the arm about temperature, vibration and pressure.

Mobile kidney
For people with affected kidneys, maintaining the body in a normal state — removing toxins and maintaining a normal balance in the blood — requires lengthy procedures. For several hours they are connected to a large dialysis machine. The new portable kidney is quite small and light, so you can even carry it with you. It is completely autonomous and works even better than a standard dialysis machine, because it performs its function 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, like a real kidney.

Senseless taste
Especially for food manufacturers, scientists from the University of Texas created an electronic language that clearly distinguishes one taste from another. Microsensors fix the content of various types of sugars in the product and change color depending on this. Such a language is not able to understand where the good taste is, and where it is bad, but with the help of it you can accurately fix the taste of a specific natural product, and then pick up an artificial mixture that tastes exactly the same.

Portable pancreas
In the coming years, a device capable of partially taking over the pancreas functions will appear on the market. As is known, it is this organ that contains endocrine glands that secrete insulin and glucagon - hormones that regulate carbohydrate metabolism. These hormones have the opposite effect: glucagon increases, and insulin lowers blood sugar levels. The new device immediately and measures the level of sugar in the blood, and releases insulin in the right quantities, making life easier for diabetics.

Smart knee
A normal human knee has absolutely no intelligence, unlike the artificial counterpart created at MIT. If the former replicants for the knee had to be programmed, then it is completely autonomously capable of adapting to the master, adopting his manner of walking. Sensors even take into account the type of shoe and the surface on which a person walks.

Restoring corpora cavernosa functionality
Specialists from Wake Forest University were able to grow in the laboratory new muscle corpora cavernosa, which is the "motor" of the male reproductive organ, filling the penis with blood during erection. The experiment on rabbits was completed successfully: after removing the old muscle, a new one was created and functioned normally a month after the operation.