From: matt.hood@convergys.com
Date: Thu Jun 03 1999 - 09:36:01 MDT
What can be added to blood to increase it's thermal conductivity? Or maybe
a biological appendage that could increase or decrease it's surface area to
aid in heat dissipation?
The Spikester wrote:
>
>> Jeff! This is a masterpiece! Thanks. {8^]
Thank you, Spike, but really, all I'm doin' is playin' in my head with
these nano tinker toys. You got your tubes--for transport of fluids, and
slurries, and electric currents--and your ball shaped containers--for all
the things containers do: store stuff, transport stuff, serve as a site for
combining and reacting stuff. I mean nothing really NEW here, just, well,
you know, smaller. There'll be motors for driving mechanical motion, and
pumps for pushing fluids and fluid-borne solids around, and for generating
electrical effects by pumping fluids containing ions. And what all...
The next step: what do the synaptic sites look like, and by what mechanism
do you get nano-neurons to generate new sites so as to achieve an
equivalent dynamic to that of bio neurons? (Big fancy-ass question sends
Jeff back to his tinker toy set.)
Then Lee Daniel wrote:
>Fuel cells; ethanol is cheap and convenient. "I'm not drinking, honey, I'm
refueling."
Hmmm. Let me see if I understand you. First you tank up. Then you get
tanked up. Then the nano-neurons of your enhanced brain use it for fuel
for enhanced thinking, sparing your liver the wear and tear associated with
the normal mode of disposal, and your brain pan the crapulence of "the
morning after".
Sounds very extropian to me. Make it so.
> Getting rid
>of waste heat is more of a problem.
Getting rid of waste heat is clearly a real-world engineering concern. At
what nano-neuron density it will prove to be limiting is more than I can
say. Depends on the operating efficiency, ie power consumption per
nano-neuron, and packing density.
The limiting factor for biological neurons is--well, I don't know what it
is. Metabolic rate? ie mitochondrial atp production rate? Intracellular
transport rate? ie, atp or "other stuff" transport? Trans-membrane
ion-pumping rates? (Nerve cells function electrically, regenerating
discharged potentials by pumping ions into or out of the cell against
electrical or osmotic gradients.) Food or oxidizer delivery rates (from
blood flow)?
Because of the high heat capacity and therefore heat transport capability
of the water-based slurry which is blood, I'd guess there to be maybe two
orders of magnitude more heat-disposal capacity than currently required.
Just a guess. Anybody know the blood flow rate to the brain?
Best, Jeff Davis
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