In short:
A mechanical heart has been implanted in a New South Wales man who was experiencing severe heart failure.
He has become the first person in the world to be discharged from hospital with the titanium heart.
What’s next?
Doctors say the invention will likely be an alternative for donor heart transplants in the future.
I hope no software is involved.
software update is available, heart will be restarting now
Serious answer to a facetious reply: I’d imagine there has to be some level of software involved if it’s pulsing, even if it’s rudimentary or low level. I also wonder what it does in terms of the bodies demands such as during physically intense activities. I’d guess that it doesn’t which, along with the 4 hour battery life, probably answers why it’s a stop gap and not an alternative at this point. Still awesome though.
Fascinating, and awesome for people in need, but a whole new level of battery anxiety.
The headline makes it sound like the heart was a reward. “Congratulations on your operation, here’s your prize: a titanium heart.”
It’s for being wounded as a result of enemy action while in space
Why only 4 hours though? How is the capacity of that battery? Also, how does thies heart react to increased demand like a normal heart does?
I actually know this! I used to work on an LVAD controller about 10 years ago. The technology is largely similar.
The pumps are centrifugal, they have to maintain blood pressure, and are largely waterproof.
The pumps spin with a brushless DC motor controlled by PWM. Depending on the specifics of the motor the RPM can be between 8,000 and 22,000. Because of the limitations of battery technology, you’re stuck with using a LiPo battery. LiPos are annoying as all shit to deal with. You have to charge them carefully, discharge them carefully, and they’re pretty big.
To give you an idea - FPV racing drone batteries can last several minutes: https://www.getfpv.com/batteries/mini-quad-batteries/cnhl-ultra-black-series-1050mah-150c-6s-lipo-battery-xt60.html On a really carefully tuned racer, you can get maybe 5 minutes out of a quad that would use that battery.
Edit: I was incorrect, the first battery I provided was not the battery that would be used in racing. LiPos are what I wanted to share. The battery now highlights what I wanted to.
Interesting, What about the change of heart rate a normal heart does in response to exertion? I assume this heart only runs at a single speed?
Nope! It has a range of speeds. The PWM signal it provides also produces something called “counter-electromotive force”. I don’t remember the exact specifics, but if this measurement falls (corresponding with a drop in blooded pressure) it will increase the pump speed (up to the maximum RPM permitted).
That is how our circulatory system works as well - a drop in blood pressure usually results in an increase to heart rate. I say usually, because I coincidentally have a nervous disorder where this is broken - an increase in heart rate will drop my blood pressure. A drop in blood pressure will also increase my heart rate, which then drops my blood pressure, which causes a runaway and I faint.
From the article…
It is powered by an external rechargeable battery that connects to the heart via a wire in the patient’s chest.
The battery lasts four hours and then alerts the patient that a new battery is needed.
This is amazing, but it would certainly be a pain in the ass to have to wake up every four hours during the night to change your battery for your damn heart. And if the alarm couldn’t wake you, you’d just fucking die or something.
Sounds like actual hell.
The alternative is death, so a lot people would choose this instead.
It’s also just temporary, until a biological donor heart can be found for them.
what’s the particular license about?
what’s the particular license about?
These links can explain it better than I could …
By default, everything you write, from a novel to an Internet forum shitpost, is not only copyrighted by you but also “all rights reserved.”
What that guy is doing is (a) making his writings more available for reuse than they would be otherwise, and (b) making a point about how fucked-up it is that corporations treat stuff posted to social media as if it were a free-for-all they could use however they want.
the license is actually a Creative Commons license for Non-Commercial uses. Creative Commons is a copyleft license that’s “free to use with some restrictions”. Mostly used in art, literature, audio, and film, for my part I’m using it to license my comments. Anybody can cite with attribution, but commercial use is forbidden by the license.
The why: I just don’t like non-opensource commercial ventures. Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Facebook, Apple, and so on are harmful in many ways.
Enforcement and legality: Microsoft’s Github CoPilot (a large language model / “AI”) was trained on copyrighted text source code. A few licenses clearly state that derivatives should also be opensource, which CoPilot is not. So there is a big lawsuit against it. Many artists, non-programmer authors, musicians, and others are also unhappy that AI was trained on their copyrighted works and have sued for damages. Until these cases make it out of court, it will not be clear if adding a license to comments could even jeopardize commercial AI vendors.
This link shows that ProPublica also licenses their content here on Lemmy.
I want to license my content to be available to non-profit open-source, and restricted for for-profit.
I understand that its not my responsibility to enforce laws, and that just because laws are not enforced currently that I should still be able to avail myself to them, as well as that enforcement of the laws may not be happen currently, but that enforcement will catch up to the reality on the ground.
Also, that laws trump ToS’s. And “Safe Harbor” laws that corporate social media companies/sites protects themselves with state that we own our content, and not them. And that they can’t use a ToS to strip away our ownership, and hence, our content licensing.
Finally, if the license link looks weird, it may be that your app/client does not support Lemmy.World’s formatting text. You would have to speak with the devs of the product you use to view Lemmy to get that corrected.
A mods response to the usage of a license to a third-party.
Hopefully it can just run off wall power while at home. It would suck to change in the middle of each night.
God the fear of accidentally sleeping through the alarm would probably keep me from sleeping at all
“When you hear the beeping you need to swap out the battery because if you don’t you’ll die. Goodnight.”
