BIONICS

   Dr. Gerald Loeb professor at UCLA has perfected a "wireless implant" the size of a grain of rice. The bionic component can be implanted under the skin to provide independent communication between nerves and the bionic devise. Computer processing for the devise is done outside of the body. Miniaturization may soon make it possible for the computer processing to be done on the inside of the implant itself.

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    Ophthalmotronics is developing implantable products for the treatment of vision impairment. One of the new products is "The Smart Eye Band". The Smart Eye Band is based on Ophthalmotronics' core technology platform, the patented Artificial Muscle technologies.

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     Scientists at the University of Arizona made substantial progress in the development of "biomedical implants" with the help of a grant by the Whitaker Foundation. Stuart K. Williams, PhD Chairman of the program has been researching to find materials that would not be rejected by a human body when implanted.

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     Cornell University (Ithaca, N.Y.) biological engineers have demonstrated the feasibility of small "self-propelled bionic motors" that do their builders bidding in plant, animal, or human cells. Such machines could travel through the body, functioning as mobile pharmacies dispensing precise doses of chemotherapy drugs exclusively to cancer cells. The devise, the result of integrateing a living molecular motor with a fabricated devise at the "nano" scale, is a few billionths of a meter in size. The first integrated motor, a molecule of the enzyme ATPase coupled to a metallic substrate with a genetically engineered "handle" ran for 40 minutes at three to four revolutions per second. Carlo Montemagno and George Bachand are researchers.

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Researchers at the OAK RIDGE NATIONAL LABORATORY in Tennesse claimed a new world record for wieghing tiny amounts of stuff. Tiny gold-coated silicon bars two microns long and fifty nanometres thick vibrated by heating them with a solid-state laser at around two million times a second and variations in their resonant frequency measured. Those variations reflected extra weight loaded onto the bars -- in this case, masses as low as 5.5 femtograms could be detected. A fetogram is one billion billionths of a gram or roughly the mass of 122 gold atoms.

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FDA approves of New Bionic Ear Technology. The CLARION CII Bionic Ears manufactured by ADVANCED BIONICS CORPORATION (Irvine, California) has been given FDA Approval. The bionic Ear took 5 years and $30 million to develop.

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CYBERKINETICS invents "BrainGate"

CYBERKINETICS has been conducting extensive research on the subject of connecting the human brain to a computer. CYBERKINETICS has introduced a new bionics product named the "BrainGate" a brain/computer interface system used to detect brain waves which allow the user to control a computer and control robotic devises. Researchers at CYBERKINETICS have also found that neural spiking - the language of the brain can be recorded in humans, routed outside the brain and decoded into movement commands. Paralyzed persons can successfully use the invention to move, in the form of neural spiking patterns, to demonstrate real-time, continous, two dimensional control of a computer cursor, as well as to operate a prosthetic hand and/or control a multi-joint robotic arm. John Donoghue is Chief Scientific Officer at CYBERKINETICS. Mr. Donoghue is also a Professor and Director of the Brain Science Program at Brown University.

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     The AbioCor (artificial heart) is contained within the body and runs off a battery system that transmits current through the skin without wires.

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