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To: edamo who wrote (115568)	4/9/1999 12:55:00 PM
From: Mike Van Winkle	Respond to of 176387

And now for something completely different, Borg implants due to go on sale at Gigabuys soon... First Steps for Bionic Woman by Kristen Philpkoski 3:00 a.m. 9.Apr.99.PDT The bionic woman may become a reality even before the '70s TV show is turned into yet another inevitable box-office retread. Researchers at De Montfort University in Leicester, England, have successfully taken porous silicon and attached and grown mammal cells, an important first step in the development of tissue and silicon sensory interaction. Living cells accepted the porous silicon and successfully grew on its surface for 10 days. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ See also: The Power of Plastic ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The ability to culture mammalian cells directly onto porous silicon, coupled with the material's apparent lack of toxicity, offers exciting possibilities for the future of biologically interfaced sensing," said Sue Bayliss, a professor of advanced materials at De Montfort, in a statement. She said these results must be duplicated to confirm the nontoxicity of porous silicon. Scientists believe the development won't occur until the distant future. The discovery of porous silicon was a fluke. Scientists were attempting to electropolish silicon with an electrolyte containing hydrofluoric acid, a process that makes the silicon more efficient. After examining the results more closely, the scientists deduced that the material could be tolerated by the human immune system. In order to develop bionic appendages that respond to humans, the porous silicon would have to be directly controlled by the brain and linked with the nervous system. The brain must be able to transmit signals and information to the device and back again. Biosensing applications made with silicon semiconductors have been available for several years in vitro, or outside the body. But these types of silicon must be "packaged" in a biocompatible material to be linked to living tissue. Nanostructured porous silicon, on the other hand, has properties that make it a promising biomaterial, particularly for sensing devices linked to biological systems. Besides the possibility of bionic limb replacement, porous silicon could engender electronic sensing devices that could restore sight and hearing for people with damaged organs. Sensing devices could also be developed to check body chemistry, so physicians could monitor pain, disease, and drug-dosage requirements. Such devices could, for example, receive optical information, convert it to a biological signal, and pass the signal into neural tissue as a substitute sight sensation, Bayliss said in an article in the journal Materials World. Researchers are currently refining the difficult process of controlling porous silicon production.