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Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

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11–20 of 132 posts

Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#11

I've always found it incongruous that we can move a person's body around the globe at 900 kilometers per hour for 25 hours for under $1500 but for 1000x that price and even with 1000x that time we can't bridge the distance between a brain and a foot.

It might help to remember that a human body has more cells than there are people on Earth by around three orders of magnitude, and that you're engineering things on the scale of nano- or micrometers.

A typical human cell is on the order of 10 micrometers. If you need to bridge even 1 cm of that, you're bridging ~a thousand cell-widths. If you think of a cell as the somatic equivalent of a house in a city, that's the equivalent of an infrastructure project spanning (based on a quick count of the number of houses on each block in Oakland) the equivalent of around six miles, or roughly from downtown Oakland to El Cerrito on a map of the Bay (~4 BART stations). And you have to do that on a scale where precision manufacturing is incredibly hard, where you're dealing with extremely difficult problems of chemical synthesis, in a living body, without provoking the body's defense or repair mechanisms to stop you. And that's assuming you even know what you're trying to do, which requires an understanding of the machinery of those cells that we often don't have.

Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#12

I've always found it incongruous that we can move a person's body around the globe at 900 kilometers per hour for 25 hours for under $1500 but for 1000x that price and even with 1000x that time we can't bridge the distance between a brain and a foot.

Some things turn out to be hard to do.

Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#13

I've always found it incongruous that we can move a person's body around the globe at 900 kilometers per hour for 25 hours for under $1500 but for 1000x that price and even with 1000x that time we can't bridge the distance between a brain and a foot.

So, I'll put this into terms that a sysadmin can understand: imagine if all the Ethernet or fiber going to a datacenter rack was bundled up, and I cut that bundle up. Now you have to splice them back together so that every port is still connected to the same port it was before I cut the cables. Oh, and also, the cables are microscopic, incredibly fragile, and we don't know how to actually repair them. We sort of just…

The fact that they grow back in place makes the whole thing 1000x easier, no?

Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#14

I've always found it incongruous that we can move a person's body around the globe at 900 kilometers per hour for 25 hours for under $1500 but for 1000x that price and even with 1000x that time we can't bridge the distance between a brain and a foot.

Ever tried splicing fiber optic cable by hand compared to say telephone wire ???.

How does the bus protocol work - it is not like it is 5V/-5V , it is insanely complex ???.

Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#15

I've always found it incongruous that we can move a person's body around the globe at 900 kilometers per hour for 25 hours for under $1500 but for 1000x that price and even with 1000x that time we can't bridge the distance between a brain and a foot.

Is that interesting? It seems natural. Precision has always been quite hard. Most people can kick a ball 10 m more easily than they can kick a ball 1 m but to center the hit at a 1 mm spot. I can carry a pile of sand 100 m easier than I can move 1 grain of sand precisely 1 cm without disturbing the others around it.

Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#16
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I'll put this into terms that a sysadmin can understand: imagine if all the Ethernet or fiber going to a datacenter rack was bundled up, and I cut that bundle up. Now you have to splice them back together so that every port is still connected to the same port it was before I cut the cables. Oh, and also, the cables are microscopic, incredibly fragile, and we don't know how to actually repair them. We sort of just…

The fact that they grow back in place makes the whole thing 1000x easier, no?

Only if it grows back correctly!

Imagine attempting to wire up a datacenter that is actively trying to rewire itself (and not necessarily to your plans).

Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#17
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I'll put this into terms that a sysadmin can understand: imagine if all the Ethernet or fiber going to a datacenter rack was bundled up, and I cut that bundle up. Now you have to splice them back together so that every port is still connected to the same port it was before I cut the cables. Oh, and also, the cables are microscopic, incredibly fragile, and we don't know how to actually repair them. We sort of just…

The fact that they grow back in place makes the whole thing 1000x easier, no?

No.

Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#18
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I'll put this into terms that a sysadmin can understand: imagine if all the Ethernet or fiber going to a datacenter rack was bundled up, and I cut that bundle up. Now you have to splice them back together so that every port is still connected to the same port it was before I cut the cables. Oh, and also, the cables are microscopic, incredibly fragile, and we don't know how to actually repair them. We sort of just…

The fact that they grow back in place makes the whole thing 1000x easier, no?

Unless they get weird and turn cancerous, or some kind of strange Ethernet-eating bug attacks and eats them etc.

Regenerative medicine of living tissues is extra hard.

Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#19
post #2

I'm not a medical person, can anyone who knows more than me explain exactly how cool this is? Fixing spinal cords, or just repairing simple nerve severance?

Too early to tell. Might make less invasive neurostimulation therapies, may or may not make them more effective (not all neurons can grow back or grow back to where they are supposed to be).

Re: Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

#20

I've always found it incongruous that we can move a person's body around the globe at 900 kilometers per hour for 25 hours for under $1500 but for 1000x that price and even with 1000x that time we can't bridge the distance between a brain and a foot.

I don't see what's incongruous about it, those two tasks are completely different, making a comparison with respect to distance isn't meaningful.
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