DailyDirt: Prosthetics To Be Proud Of

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

A few years ago, Oscar Pistorius was not allowed to participate in the Olympics because, as a double amputee, his prosthetic legs might have given him an advantage over athletes who weren't using prosthetic legs. Prosthetic technology doesn't stand still, so it's understandable that the Olympic committee didn't want to allow devices that could give future athletes extremely unfair mechanical advantages. Here are just a few interesting prosthetic developments that might change the perception of "disabled" persons. If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.
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Filed Under: claire lomas, fuel cell, london marathon, mit, olympics, oscar pistorius, prosthetics


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  1. identicon
    Pixelation, 25 Jun 2012 @ 7:12pm

    The cyborg nation begins!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 25 Jun 2012 @ 7:53pm

    The website for for the second story, ReWalk, has a video that is really very touching. The faces on the people who have been confined to wheelchairs when they stand up and walk speak volumes about their appreciation.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 25 Jun 2012 @ 8:11pm

    http://phys.org/news/2012-06-scientists.html

    Now that people can bend light, it may be possible to create floating induction furnaces that mold the metal directly into thin air.

    Ok, ok, I just though that 3.5 Terabits of data transfer was cool and I tried finding a way to plug it here.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 25 Jun 2012 @ 8:24pm

    Talking about prosthesis, what if the world was afflicted by a cataclysmic event?

    Hydrolemic System

    With this premise, takram was tasked to design a water bottle.After a period of thorough research and analysis, takram reached an uncanny solution. Our conclusion was that it would make more sense, in fact, to regulate how much water the human body can retain and recycle in this dire environment. This revelation resulted in the Hydrolemic system, a set of artificial organs.


    A set of prosthetics that enables a human being to live on 32mm of water a day?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 25 Jun 2012 @ 8:27pm

    A cooler name for a floating induction furnace would be plasma-vortex-induction-furnace.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    Zem, 25 Jun 2012 @ 9:21pm

    Add to the list

    Surely you must add to the list the novel Limbo 90 by Bernard Wolfe, published in 1952.

    Read it, then read the linked articles.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. icon
    Anonymous Monkey (profile), 26 Jun 2012 @ 11:36am

    We Are the BORG

    You will be Assimilated.
    Resistance is Futile!

    link to this | view in thread ]


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