人類身體中10個可替換的器官(1)
Human bodies are frail, easily damaged packages full of parts that can never fully come back once lost. Luckily, researchers worldwide are working on replacing every bit of the body to make us all cyborgs.
人的身體是十分脆弱的，有些嬌弱的器官一旦破壞就永遠難以復原。幸運的是，世界各地的研究人員都在研究能替代我們身體部位的生化機械器官。rsensitive Electronic Skin
10.超敏感電子皮膚
Skin has the thankless job of coating and protecting your whole body, making it your most easily damaged organ. When you burn or rip off a stretch of skin, your main option right now is to graft some back on from elsewhere on your body. But an effective synthetic replacement skin may not be that far off, thanks to research from Stanford scientists. Stanford's Zhenan Baohas has developed a super-flexible, super-durable, and super-sensitive material that can be the basis for future synthetic skin. People have tried developing synthetic skin before, but Baohas's material handles touch sensitivity better than any predecessor. It contains organic transistors and a layer of elastic, letting it stretch without taking damage. And it's self-powered—this skin contains a series of elastic solar cells.
皮膚辛苦的擔任着包裹我們和保護我們整個身體的責任，因此它也成爲了最容易被傷害的器官。當皮膚被燒傷或者被割破，你最快的選擇是從身體其他部位移植一部分過來。然而，感謝斯坦福大學科學家的研究，一種能有效替代人體皮膚的材料，不久後將面世。坦福大學的Zhenan Baohas 研發出了一種具備超彈性、超耐性和超敏感的材料，能夠作爲未來發展人工皮膚的基礎。以前，人們也研究過生化皮膚，但是Baohas的材料比以前研發出來的更具敏感性。它帶有有機轉換物質和一層彈性材料，保證它在不被破壞情況下的延展性。另外，這種材料帶有一系列的太陽能電池元件，可以自動充電。
ing Hearts Created In A Petri Dish
9.在培養皿中跳動的心臟
Scientists have long investigated stem cells' potential for growing hearts, and they reached a major milestone this year when they created heart tissue than can beat on its University of Pittsburgh team used stem cells made from skin to make MCPs, a special kind of cell that acts as a precursor to cardiovascular tissue. They then placed these cells on a 3-D scaffold designed to support a mouse heart. Within 20 days, the new heart began beating at 40 to 50 beats per heart is too weak to actually pump blood, which is the primary reason anyone would want an new heart. But the tissue has a lot of potential for patching heart muscles that have suffered damage.
長久以來，科學家一直在研究幹細胞分化爲心臟組織的潛力，今年當他們創造出可以自己搏動的心臟組織時，這一研究工作達到了一個重要的里程碑。匹茲堡大學的研究小組從來自皮膚的幹細胞培養出MCPs，一種可以作爲心血管組織驅動器的特殊細胞。他們把這些細胞放在一種可以維持老鼠心臟的3-D支架上。在20天內，新的心臟開始以每分鐘40~50次的速率搏動。雖然這個心臟太虛弱，不能真的輸送血液，但是這種細胞組織在修復受傷的心臟肌肉方面具有巨大潛力。thetic Hands That Sense Touch
8.觸感人造手
Current prosthetic hands do little beyond filling the arm-shaped space between your body and the air. Sure, they can grasp things all right, and they help in balance, but they lack one of the human hand's most important abilities—the sense of touch. People with prosthetics can't detect if they're in contact with an object without looking at it directly. A research team at the University of Chicago has solved this problem, producing hands that send electric signals to the brain. They've begun with monkeys as test subjects, studying the animals to see how their brains respond to touch. When outfitted with prosthetic hands that stimulate their brains that way, the monkeys respond just as though they physically touch objects themselves. Programming these same signals into artificial human limbs would give amputees replacement hands unlike anything we've developed before.
現在的假手除了具備手的外形外，幾乎沒有其他功能。當然，這些假手能夠拿東西和保持身體平衡，但是它們缺乏人手最重要的功能之一——觸感。裝了假手的人在碰觸到一樣物品時，如果不用眼睛看，是沒法判斷東西的。芝加哥大學的一個研究小組製造了一種能夠向大腦傳遞信號的假手來解決這個問題。他們以猴子爲測試對象，研究動物大腦對觸摸信號的反應。當裝備了可以刺激大腦的假手後，那些猴子的反應就好像他們身體接觸到了物體一樣。將這些類似的信號通過編程的方式寫入造假肢，會給截肢者帶來和以前研發出來的產品完全不同的假肢。ght-Controlled Bionic Legs
7.思想控制仿生腿
Though bionic legs are of course a huge boon to amputees, they lack actual nerve connections with the body. As a result, walking on them is cumbersome and tiring. But last year, Seattle resident Zac Vawter was outfitted with the world's first thought-controlled leg, a bionic limb that takes signals directly from his technology previously existed for arms, but legs are rather more complicated. And since a misread signal can send you jumping off a bridge or in front of a moving car, thought-controlled legs need more stringent programming than equivalent arms. As one of the researchers delicately put it, “If you're using a bionic arm and it misbehaves, the elbow may move slightly. If the prosthetic leg misbehaves . . . that could be quite a safety issue.”Vawter climbed 103 floors of a Chicago skyscraper on his bionic leg, but its designers are still working on improving it. To optimize it for everyday use, they have to make it even thinner and lighter. Its successor (the iLeg Air?) may meet the Army's stated goal for a bionic leg—10,000 steps without recharging.
雖然仿生腿對截肢者來說是巨大的福音，但是它們與人體缺乏真正的神經聯繫，導致依靠仿生腿走路十分麻煩和勞累。但是去年，西雅圖的居民Zac Vawter 安裝了世界上第一支思想控制的腿，一種直接接受從他大腦發出信號的仿生肢體。這項技術曾經運用於武器，但是運用在仿生腿上會更復雜。誤讀信號可能導致安裝者跳下橋或站在開動的車輛前，依靠思想控制的仿生腿需要比武器更爲複雜的程序。正如研究者指出的那樣：如果你使用仿生胳膊，而胳膊動作做錯了，可能只是手肘偏移預訂位置。而如果仿生腿動作做錯了，那可能就是生命安全問題了。Vawter使用仿生腿在芝加哥一棟高樓裏向上爬了103個階梯，但是仿生腿的設計者們仍然在嘗試提高它的性能。爲了使它能適用於日常生活，設計者們必須讓它更輕更薄。它的衍生品（充氣仿生腿）可以滿足陸軍對於仿生腿的階段性目標——行走一萬步不用充電。ature Human Brains
6.微型人腦
Brain death is a bit of an inconvenience if you're a fan of living, and if you're looking to replace yours with a spare, you're out of luck. Sure, maybe we'll one day be able to plant brains into skulls, but the brain's not just another organ. It contains all your thoughts and memories. They can plop a new brain in your head, but you'll still be gone, so the idea of making artificial brains may seem that hasn't stopped scientists from growing actual human brains in a lab. Starting with nothing but stem cells, scientists in Austria this year managed to create brains equivalent to those in nine-week-old fetuses. These miniature brains are the size of peas and are incapable of thought—so far. The one thing keeping the brains from growing beyond this stage and becoming fully functional is that they have no blood gh these brains aren't going into anyone's bodies, they're proving a great resource for scientists investigating brain diseases.
如果你熱愛生存，那麼腦死亡是一件不美好的事。而且，如果你想用空閒的大腦來替換，那你是絕對找不到的。當然，也許有一天，我們能將大腦放入頭骨中，但是大腦跟別的器官不同。它裝有你所有的思想和記憶。人們能在你頭裏放一個新的大腦，但是你還是不存在，所以人造大腦這種想法看起來很荒謬。但是這並沒有阻止科學家在實驗室發展人造大腦。今年奧地利的科學家僅從幹細胞開始，成功地創造出等同於9個周大的嬰兒的大腦。目前，這些大腦只有豌豆大小，也不能思考。阻止這些試驗品發育成具有完全功能的大腦的因素是它們沒有血液供給。儘管這些大腦沒有進入任何人的身體，但是他們給科學院研究腦科疾病提供了原材料。翻譯:鄭靜 來源:前十網
