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Robotics Science Technology

Nanotech Research Works Toward Artificial Muscles 127

Posted by timothy from the contract-a-muscle-contract-a-disease dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Nanotech researchers are developing artificial muscles that convert chemical energy to mechanical energy. This ambitious project aims at making an artificial muscles from conducting polymers and carbon nanotubes that are chemically powered, like natural muscles, and exceed the force generation, contraction and speed of their natural counterpart. This work will lead to advanced limbs for amputees and robots."
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Nanotech Research Works Toward Artificial Muscles More

Nanotech Research Works Toward Artificial Muscles

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  • Super strong muscles (Score:5, Funny)

    by nizo ( 81281 ) * on Sunday January 09, 2005 @05:05PM (#11305609) Homepage Journal
    ...exceed the force generation, contraction and speed of their natural counterpart.

    Strong muscles without the need to exercise. Sounds like a geek's dream come true huh? Except that one must keep in mind certain dangly appendages that could be torn off if you aren't careful with those new bulging biceps. And what about joints, could they handle the extra stress of markedly increased muscle strength? Like you go to pick up your car and your arms pop out of their sockets. Ouch.

    • Re:Super strong muscles (Score:3, Interesting)

      by scheme ( 19778 )
      And what about joints, could they handle the extra stress of markedly increased muscle strength? Like you go to pick up your car and your arms pop out of their sockets.

      Which is why the next step is obviously artifical bones, ligaments, and tendons.

      • Isn't lubrication one of the big problems with artificial joints these days? They wear out, while natural joints are practically magic (containing fluid that is replenished that keeps everything moving smoothly).

        • Re:Super strong muscles (Score:5, Informative)

          by ScrewMaster ( 602015 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @05:33PM (#11305782)
          Not just the lubrication: bone is a living material. But still ... electric motors with sealed oillite bearings operate for decades without maintenance. Of course, they don't have to withstand the tremendous peak forces that articulated joints do.

          I suspect there are probably a number of materials that would serve reliably in a replacement joint if they didn't have to function within the human body. Tissue rejection is a major issue, and that limits what you can put in there. Plus which human tissue is hardly chemically neutral, so I suppose you'd have to worry about corrosive effects as well. Titanium is used a lot (my Dad's pacemaker was made of the stuff) and is one of the few substances that isn't affected much by the environment of the body and doesn't trigger an autoimmune reaction. Or so his doctor told me.
          • Apparently it is still difficult to produce a strong and reliable join between titanium and bone. As a result it tends to be the interface that fails rather than the materials.
            • The main problem with making a joing between titanium and bone is that you don't want to wear the bone down. You could put the titanium right up against the bone, but the titanium would wear away the bone since there would be no lubrication (cartilige) between the titanium and bone. This is why artificial hips have a limited lifespan. The rubbery substance that goes between the artificial hip and the bone have to be replaced every now and then (10+ years or more i think). It's also why doctors don't lik
              • Makes you wonder why they don't implant a metal cap/covering on the natural bone so it wont wear away - titanium on titanuium has to be less harmful than titanium on bone. Rubbery substance can rot to hell, but with the limited strees that human joints see a metal on metal joint should pass the test of time.
                • Except that the bone would still be touching the titanium in the cap...
                • The cap would still rub against the bone, no matter how tight a fit they could make. You can't mold these things precisely to the bone until you have someone on the operating table, and they try to keep surgery time to a minimum. As it is, everything has to be pre-made from ultrasound type images and there is still "futzing" done during surgery to make a better fit. The caps just can't get a tight enough fit.
            • Actually, bone will attach itself to titanium if the joining surfaces are NOT stressed for a few months. This makes it somewhat impractical for hip replacements, where you don't want to put the patient into bed for half a year.
              But it is routinely used for tooth replacement:
              In the first stage of the treatment, you will get a titanium "foundation" implanted in your jaw but not an tooth prosthesis on top of it.
              That "foundation" is left alone for some months, and you have to get along with the gap in your teet
      • Which is why the next step is obviously artifical bones, ligaments, and tendons.

        And brains.
    • Never mind the joints - if you tried to pick up a car or something you'd likely exceed the psi rating of the material upon which you are standing.

      Besides, joint research isn't so far behind artificial muscle research these days.

      • mnb Re:Super strong muscles (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        My truck is currently on jackstands.
        The four of them combined have less surface area contacting my driveway than one of my Euro sized 45 shoes.

        • Re:mnb Re:Super strong muscles (Score:4, Interesting)

          by kesuki ( 321456 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @07:18PM (#11306293) Journal
          Grand parent could have been assuming you were standing on the grass, or could have been referring to your shoes... however you're entirely correct, concrete and asphault can easily withstand the psi of a person picking up even a bus... you don't run into a problem with ground deformation (beneath asphault) until you exceed 40 tons/Sq inch so, unless you're picking up a 400 ton dump truck, you're not at issue with PSI ratings. oh hey, and if you want to walk without deforming the ground a solid inch of tempered steel [howcogroup.com]will do for single, loaded 400 ton truck, but you'd need titanium to handle a loaded 400 ton truck in EACH hand. (this assumes of course your bones are made of solid titanium, and your tendons are made of carbon nanotubes)

          • concrete and asphault can easily withstand the psi of a person picking up even a bus... you don't run into a problem with ground deformation (beneath asphault) until you exceed 40 tons/Sq inch so

            Cool! Now try balancing that load.

            And when you walk, the weight shifts dynamically, and can get focused on just a few square inches. (Or less, if you're Wonder Woman and wearing heels.) I'd expect a lot of crappy roads wouldn't handle that well.

            Besides, the bus probably isn't designed to be supported by a fe

    • This is a welcome development, but the crucial developments for prosthetics is the interface with the nervous sysem.
    • This article reminds me of a conversation I was having with my crew the other day...

      Marco: Robot body? No way! That goes against the natural order.

      Sparks: Well, you'd have the strength of five men.

      Marco: I got that now!

      Murphy: Not five men, five gorillas! But, since you're that strong, if you try to pet a kitten, you'd crush it.
      • Hesh: then i'll stay human
        Sparks: don't expect any mercy during the great robot wars
        Hesh: yeah, well have fun on the robot reservations, suckers! we're not gonna honor those bogus treaties!
        --pause--
        Sparks: he's right .. they will screw us.
        Marco: listen! its time to get serious.
        Captain Murphy: yeah enough of this talk, lets kill humans!

    • Strong muscles without the need to exercise. Sounds like a geek's dream come true huh?

      I think men who paid for the super muscles instead of working out (and didn't have any missing limbs in the first place) would just be a laughingstock to people like me. They would be like girls who get their fathers to pay $3000 for them to get increasingly large breasts. A guy who had a much smaller body might be more appealing just for being more real.

      For people with less than two arms and two legs, this sounds good

      • Nanoboobs.

        That's what you can expect if such technology reached the market.
      • They would be like girls who get their fathers to pay $3000 for them to get increasingly large breasts.

        Some day you'll emerge from your mom's basement, squinting through your eyes at the blinding rays of full daylight, and soon thereafter you'll discover that it's usually HUSBANDS who are paying those $3000 surgery bills.

      • think men who paid for the super muscles instead of working out (and didn't have any missing limbs in the first place) would just be a laughingstock to people like me.

        If the final product were better in all ways than the natural, then from my viewpoint I'd laugh at somebody who spent all their time working out to enhance their natural muscles and still failed to reach the performance & reliability of the artificial ones.

        Then again, until we can make self-repairing prosthetics (at least able to repair

    • D'oh! Slaps forehead. Head flies off.

  • But the name... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Omega Leader-(P12) ( 240225 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @05:07PM (#11305616)
    Myomer. It must be called Myomer.
  • Robocop, terminator, etc.

    I really do hope that this is turns into a viable solution for amputees. Combining this with the recent advances in nerve and motor control research should produce some very interesting products. I'm thinking a specialized appendage for using the mouse whilest I type. Then again, a USB port into the brain would be easier.

    Jerry
    http://www.syslog.org/ [syslog.org]

    • USB? you can do better than that ;)
    • until Ganny 1.0 gets her hip and wrist updates to 3.0 and then its a whole new ball game in the walmart january sales.. .

      picture the scene, you tentatively consider that new purchase so marvellously reduced in price when a voice cracks out behind you ....

      "move away from that sale counter sonny, put down the sale item and stand away from the counter. You have 10 seconds to comply..."

      yes its Granny 209 , shes armed and dangerous...

  • Really? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Hodr ( 219920 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @05:09PM (#11305635) Homepage
    "This work will lead to advanced limbs for amputees and robots." But not necessarily in that order..

    • Re:Really? (Score:2, Funny)

      by Olix ( 812847 )
      What about a secret group of government super agents, Deus Ex Style? Thats always been my secret dream. That and being an Albino.

  • What about implants? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by millennial ( 830897 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @05:10PM (#11305641) Journal
    Yes, I'm odd. This is the first thing that came to my mind. What if someone wanted to add a limb? I'm pretty sure it could be possible. We could construct a framework of artificial bone, build the artificial muscles and tendons, implant artificial nerves, and (much like when a person gets a limb transplant) graft it into the nervous system.

    I'm no expert in this field - I'm merely speculating. Feel free to totally bash my idea. Is this even possible, though?
    • Connecting it to the nervous system, i would say would be the hardest part of this.

      Zaphod Beeblybrox anyone?
      At least they could get a realistic way for him to have 3 arms in the movie ;)
    • But the limbs may take over their user's mind and drive him to build a reactor that would blow up New Y..oh, wait. Limbs aren't sentient. Sounds like a good idea, but would people be able to multitask with multiple limbs? They'd probably have to be born with it. Actually, though, the use of this *would* have applications where humans need to handle (handle, not transport) hazardous materials delicately
      .

    • Re:What about implants? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )
      Your nervous system is not like your average computer, where you can swap out one component (say, a 2-bus RAID card) and put another one in (a 4-bus card).

      Your nervous system is intricately linked to every other part of your body: bones, muscles, balance, brain, immune system, skin - you name it. It has also grown with you for your entire life, adapting to the minute changes that take place throughout your body's growing and aging process. It subtly adapts to these changes. When a person grows too quickly,
    • Slow down- Limb transplants are barely even experimental. I don't think we knew enough about the nervous system to do it yet.

    • Neuromorphic tail (Score:3, Interesting)

      by FleaPlus ( 6935 )
      Check out these folks [umd.edu], who put together a prehensile robotic tail. The apparatus registers EMG signals from skin electrodes and uses them to control the tail.
    • So you want to surf pr0n sites AND use two hands on the keyboard ?

      interesting...
    • "Implant artificial nerves" is wildly, wildly more difficult than you seem to realize. Even the various artificial sense organs, such as the retinal implants and brain implants to provide a semblance of vision, don't do direct sensing of the nerves. No one does yet, the electrodes available don't connect to individual neurons. Electrodes that do connect to individual neurons kill the neurons over time.

    • Re:What about implants? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by danila ( 69889 )
      The problem is that many people have a very strong immune system in their brain. Just like we have leucocytes in our bloodstream protecting us from bacteria and viruses that our body deems harmful, those people have militant memocytes in their brain protecting them from new ideas and possibilities.

      Come other to your grandma and ask what she thinks about adding a 3rd arm to a person so that he can be more productive at work, more proficient in his hobby, for aesthetical reasons or so that he can masturbate
  • Scientists have been researching artificial muscles for decades now. The need for linear actuators with fast response times, almost friction-free force-less movements and power varying as a function of their lengths, is great.

    The best they could come up with for powerful movements is this pneumatic device [manufacturing.net], which is a braided sleeve with a rubber balloon inside: when the balloone expands, it pulls the fibers in the braided sleeve apart, and therefore the overall length of the device shrinks and the device f
  • So when can I retro-fit my Robosapien with these?

  • Something similar (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well, I used to play with Flexinol [mondo.com], which is a memory alloy. Not really the same technology, but it was fun playing with this stuff.

  • We can rebuild him.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by MrFlannel ( 762587 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @05:17PM (#11305692)
    We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first Bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better . . . stronger . . . faster.
    • you git...
      you utter complete git
      you total absolute and complete bastard.
      .
      .
      .
      Ive now got the theme tune to the Bionic man inside my head now and It wont stop. To top it all i re read the artical and all i could see in my minds eye was frame stepped slow motion and the gchzk gchzk gczk boing boing judder sound effects playing in my minds inner ear ! im not going to sleep now.

      Still at least it can claim to have a theme tune more memorable than flake , sorry Jake 2.0.

  • This is Great for Baseball (Score:5, Funny)

    by syntap ( 242090 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @05:19PM (#11305706)
    Now the zillionaires don't have to take steroids to cheat! And they can afford to be early-adopters of muscle upgrade procedures!

    This sig is my best one.
  • I don't want to amputate before I get an extra couple pairs of arms - Doc "Oc" Ruby.

  • What happens to... (Score:4, Funny)

    by zwilliams07 ( 840650 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @05:23PM (#11305727)
    those muscle heads when they start pumping iron and they hit an Insufficient Memory error?

  • Sounds more realistic (Score:5, Interesting)

    by karvind ( 833059 ) <karvind@gm a i l . com> on Sunday January 09, 2005 @05:29PM (#11305765) Journal
    This project sounds more realistic and well thought out than the Space elevator [space.com] dream.

    Few issues which still need to be resolved:

    (a) How to place and grow nanotubes precisely ? Even after 14 years we struggle with that.

    (b) How does carbon nanotube interacts with biology in human body ? What are the side effects ?

    (c) Need to find an easy way of making conducting vs semiconducting nanotubes.

    (d) Fuel cell efficiency. They have only said that they can convert the chemical energy to mechanical energy, but how well ?

    (e) Ethical issue: This may not be a big deal if that person with artificial limbs can generate 100 times more force with no effort and break anyone's neck. But I am sure once we start augmenting human brain with more computational power (may be carbon nanotubes are faster than neurons, use them !!), then we may have to rethink !!

  • Basic Mechanics (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Baldrson ( 78598 ) * on Sunday January 09, 2005 @05:31PM (#11305775) Homepage Journal
    While the carbon nanotube muscles can exceed the performance of natural muscle by generating a hundred times the force and elongating twice as fast, the contraction is less than one-tenth that of natural muscle. The conducting polymer muscles provide similar contractions to natural muscles, but have neither high cycle life nor high energy conversion efficiencies. The goal of the DARPA-funded program is to eliminate these problems and convert from electrically powered to chemically powered artificial muscles.

    It seems these guys haven't heard of the way you convert force to distance and vis versa.

    It's called the "leverage" and its used in everything from simple levers to pully systems.

    • Perhaps you should read up on some basic mechanics?

      This has nothing to do with leverage. Leverage is when you have a lever, or rather, torque. It is not a general 'force to distance'-converter.

      And there's nothing in the article talking about torque. They're talking about longitudal force versus longitudal contraction. No torque involved, and no leverage.
      • >This has nothing to do with leverage

        It has everything to do with leverage. How do you think your own muscles move your limbs? Through leverage. If your bicept, for example, were to be attached ten times closer to the pivit point of your elbow, your muscle would need to exert ten times the force in order to do the same work. At the same time, it would only contract one tenth as much.

        • Re:Basic Mechanics (Score:1, Flamebait)

          by k98sven ( 324383 )
          If your bicept, for example, were to be attached ten times closer to the pivit point of your elbow, your muscle would need to exert ten times the force in order to do the same work.

          First off, it's biceps. And the biceps acts in the opposite direction, the fulcrum in that case would be the shoulder, not the elbow. And what you are describing is a fucking arm not an individual muscle. Muscles contract lengthwise. That's all they do. Go get an anatomy textbook. You need one.

          How is your reading comprehension

        • Re:Basic Mechanics (Score:2, Informative)

          by SpeleoNut ( 610127 )
          Muscles do contract lengthwise but the force at the molecular level is driven by a lever arm, namley myosin. As such, all of the muscle filaments stay the same length and do not contract merely "slide" over each other.
      • If you want to pick nits here we go:

        Dimensional analysis shows that distance * force has two interpretations: energy or torque. If we're varying the distance over which a given energy is expended, we're talking about a reciprocal relationship due to the conservation of energy. All they need to do to convert that large force over a small distance into a smaller force over a larger distance is use something like a pully system. Now, I'll agree, once we start talking about pullies, it is time to start tal

      • You read up first. Almost all joint machine is through muscular contraction applied to rigid elements, the bones. The points at which the muscles attach to the bone form lever arms, and the strength of the force from the muscle times the length of the attachment from the joint itself, divided by the length of the limb, gives the available force at the end of the limb. There are a few exceptions, such as the tongue muscles, but mostly they move joints.
    • It seems these guys haven't heard of the way you convert force to distance and vis versa.

      I'm sure they have. Problem is, things like that tend to greatly increase the complexity of the system, and much of the appeal of this is its simplicity and resilience.

  • Amputees and SOLDIERS! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Colgate2003 ( 735182 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @05:43PM (#11305834) Homepage

    The real driving force behind this research is the desire for a nano-enabled soldier of the future. They hope to use these as exo-muscles in combat suits to allow soldiers to literally "leap tall buildings in a single bound."

    The MIT Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies [mit.edu] is working on this right now, but they don't see it being available for use for 30 years or so. I recently attended a lecture at MIT entitled "Nanotechnology: From Promise to Profitablility" [mitforumcambridge.org] that was almost entirely focused on military applications.

    Amputees will certainly benefit, but that's not why the money is there for this research...

    • Re:Amputees and SOLDIERS! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by foniksonik ( 573572 ) on Monday January 10, 2005 @12:42AM (#11307781) Homepage Journal
      And this surprises you somehow?

      Nearly every major leap in technology in every discipline has been funded for and by the US military.

      After the fact it is commercialized and improved upon so as to become a consumer attractive product, meaning smaller, more energy efficient and less buggy... iteratively over several generations so that by the time we see it it doesn't look anything like the original.

      The latest trend is for the military to start buying these cheaper more efficient versions from commercial suppliers... but the original tech is still developed early by the military and military contractors/university programs.

  • Triple Strength Myomer (Score:3, Funny)

    by Mukaikubo ( 724906 ) <gtg430b@pris m . g atech.edu> on Sunday January 09, 2005 @05:48PM (#11305858) Journal
    Plus, this stuff is just the thing for helping me bury the hatchet in the cockpit of an annoying Jenner.

  • Other Important Benefits (Score:5, Interesting)

    by richardmilhousnixon ( 515595 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @05:51PM (#11305868)
    I've been working with technology similar to this for the past year at University of Washington. I think a lot of people are overlooking some of the most important benefits of this type of actuator. Robustness is a very critical aspect of any mechanical device. With current hydraulics and pneumatics, a small dent or bend will render the entire device unusable. With an artificial muscle, half the device could be ripped off and it could still function with a limited capacity.

    Imagine a hydraulic actuator on a modern plane for instance. It would be nice to be able to still be able to control the aircraft's ailerons, flaps, rudder, and elevator even if significant damage occured to mechanical components.

    That's one of the biggest differences between man and man-made machines. People can be injured and keep going (watch any Arnold movie). A machine, on the other hand, is pretty much all or nothing (except in Arnold movies).
    • "That's one of the biggest differences between man and man-made machines. People can be injured and keep going (watch any Arnold movie). A machine, on the other hand, is pretty much all or nothing (except in Arnold movies)."

      Eh, in most of the Arnold movies I've seen (3 out of 5), Arnold is a machine that gets injured and keeps going. Didn't he even cut out his own eye in the first one? I'd call that one hell of an injury. And he kept going.

      Aero

    • Re:Other Important Benefits (Score:4, Funny)

      by jdgeorge ( 18767 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @09:53PM (#11307004)
      That's one of the biggest differences between man and man-made machines. People can be injured and keep going (watch any Arnold movie). A machine, on the other hand, is pretty much all or nothing (except in Arnold movies).

      After I learn all about biology by watching Arnold Schwarzenegger in "Total Recall", I plan to learn all about space travel by watching Bruce Willis in "Armageddon".
    • It would increase the robustness of aircraft control systems significantly by allowing them to operate in parallel- simply having each individual control surface with its own muscle, rather than being component of a hydraulic system, which eliminates the possiblilty of a catastrophic system-wide failure (of that type).
    • Lookup the A-10. It has massive parallel systems. One warthog in Desert Storm (IIRC) had it's hydraulics and backup hydraulics damaged. It still managed to return home using the tertiary manual control.
  • Will also lead to people upgrading their muscles on the black market to me - our dystopian cyberpunk future just got one step close

    Wooooo!!!
    • Weird-assed natural disasters, monolithic multinational megacorporations, total environmental meltdown, cashcows in high-level government positions.... Heh. Look around. Cyberpunk is now.

  • What? (Score:5, Funny)

    by isny ( 681711 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @05:56PM (#11305895) Homepage
    No comments about modding your Real Doll [realdoll.com] (or robot girlfriend, etc.)? Get with it, people!

  • Biological solutions are better (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Once again, this is another example of our medical-industrial complex trotting out a non-biological approach to solving a problem that a biological approach is better.

    Having bionic arms using nanotubes and nanotech-based muscle is fine. Figuring out how regeneration such that the body can be made to grow new arms is better.

  • The First Step... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by potpie ( 706881 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @06:45PM (#11306124) Journal
    Has anybody read the Space Odyssey series? I don't remember which book it's in, but Arthur Clarke once talks about the history of the creators of the black boxes. They were a normal civilization that became extremely advanced and eventually built large ships that could take them all over the universe. But they could also incorporate the mechanics and electronics into themselves, and incorporate (from the latin "corpus, corporis, n." meaning body: particularly effective in this sense!) themselves into their machines until eventually, they were their own machines, constantly improving upon themselves. It goes on to explain that they were able to transcend matter entirely and exist in a way we cannot quite comprehend.

    Also, in the book 3001, Clarke predicts braincap machines that add the abilities of a computer to whoever wears them.

    I for one welcome the new experience of becoming the overlords of the universe. How long until we can transcend matter and build conscienceness-inspiring black boxes?

  • Advanced Limbs For Amputees (Score:5, Funny)

    by SuperGillies ( 762897 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @09:16PM (#11306826) Homepage
    I for one welcome our new paraplegic overlords.

  • Imagine the new spam (Score:3, Funny)

    by syntap ( 242090 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @10:05PM (#11307061)
    I'm sure this can be twisted to somehow upset v|agr@ as the top spam subject.

    My best sig is this one.
  • For some reason when I read that I imagined the sound of Timpani drums, an experimental aircraft dropping from a B-52 and then a crash in the desert. After that a catchy salsa beat and a red and white track suit.
  • Can this be far off? The applications for Sci-Fi writing are enormous. 1st: This is motivated for military application (and thereby for the service of the "elite") 2nd: Does anyone think that your company insurance plan will be covering body transplants in the near future? 3rd: Who would be allowed access to quality parts? p.s. Here is the UTD press release: http://www.utdallas.edu/news/archive/2005/darpa-gr ant.html [utdallas.edu]

  • Amputees only? (Score:3, Funny)

    by tedrlord ( 95173 ) on Sunday January 09, 2005 @11:28PM (#11307452)
    I guess this means that I'm going to have to find a nice lumber mill to work in, preferably one with a really good health plan. Actually, I should probably wait until they figure out adamantium.
  • Is this a follow up of the blood made of nano-tubes thing that came out a few months ago?!
  • Tomorrow, Motoko Kusanagi :-D
  • Wit deese new muscula implaants, I can beat you een de next election and den go on to rule de wood. muhahahahahaha
  • while the benefits of this technology are undeniable, what if a robot, machine or artificial limb gets broken or explodes?

    Wouldn't this release a lot of nanostuff into the air or the waterflow?

    Couldn't this be extremely poisonous to biological life and be very hard to remove from the environment, since nanostuff would not decay? What if this breakage happens in a industrial facility? Would we get the nasty effects of a chemical contamination (like Union Carbide's Bhopal mess-up) with the transmissible and

  • would be a means of grafting titanium or another metal into bone and having it protrude from the body without the possibility of infection. Lower limb prosthetics are suspended with either straps, friction sleeves, various vacuum locking systems or some combination. I've used both friction sleeves and a vacuum system (left leg, below-knee amputation) and while these work pretty well there are issues with proprioception of the prosthetic limb. Implanting a post that the prosthetic could be attached to would

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