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"  Want to know how you&amp;#039;ll (almost) live forever? Download our pdf to see why the Census Bureau says life spans will climb nearly 10 years in the next half-century.  Then click here to see additional photos and some animations of nanobots in action. The Modern Guy&amp;#039;s Tools--the basic keyboard, scuba tank, cordless drill--are used pretty much like the old mastodon-femur club or flint scraping knife. You take them in hand and apply some muscle. Then you put them away (or misplace them somewhere in the garage) until the next time. The concept of a tool is a bit different for Robert Freitas, a researcher who&amp;#039;s drawn up plans for an oxygen-carrying nanobot that, injected into the bloodstream, could let a human dive without tanks for hours at a time. And for the University of Chicago engineer who&amp;#039;s working out the technology to let someone send an e-mail just by thinking about it. And for the researchers developing nanobots powered by glucose that could clean your arteries for decades without ever needing new batteries. Such devices will disappear inside our bodies, operating on a semipermanent basis and gradually transforming us into, well, superheroes. Skeptical? Imagine what the user of a cellphone or a Cessna--or, heck, the telegraph--would have looked like to the guy who invented the wheel. Even greater changes lie ahead. Ready, wheel-user? Here&amp;#039;s a preview of the guy one researcher calls Homo technicus. HOW WE&amp;#039;LL BE ABLE TO Merge With Our Machines By the year 2000, 25 million Americans had medical implants, such as pacemakers and artificial hips, made of the same sorts of metal alloys and ceramics engineers use in other sophisticated machinery. The implants of the future will be different. Researchers in several countries are growing neurons on silicon chips like vines on a garden trellis to create a better point of contact between the brain and future neurological implants. Tejal Desai, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, has tested an artificial pancreas in rats that could change the way diabetes is treated. Living islet cells inside microscopic chips release just the right amount of insulin at just the right time--a big advance over finger--prick tests and injections. Desai plans to use similar technology to treat neurological disorders. And a new kind of synthetic bone, ready to compete with such orthopedic mainstays as titanium screws, should be in clinical use by early 2007. NanOss, created by a company in Woburn, Mass., called Angstrom Medica, is made of the same material as our skeletons, hydroxyapatite. NanOss is bone, but it&amp;#039;s better, having been restructured at the molecular level into a sort of superbone. One of the first devices incorporating nanotechnology to receive FDA approval, NanOss encourages real bone to fuse with it--resulting in a hybrid that is as tough as steel. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve created something that is strong and bioactive,&amp;quot; says Edward Ahn, who developed NanOss while he was a graduate student at MIT. Until now, he says, &amp;quot;these two have been mutually exclusive.&amp;quot; Such materials merge with their human hosts, straddling the divide between the living and the inanimate. Things, it must be said, can get creepy. A UCLA team led by biomedical engineering professor Carlo Montemagno grew heart-muscle cells onto a gold and silicon structure. Using methods borrowed from computer chip makers, they first etched supporting &amp;quot;beams&amp;quot; into a thin block of silicon. They coated the surface with a biocompatible polymer and an arched layer of gold. Then they deposited living heart-muscle cells from a rat. After the replicating cells enveloped the gold, the polymer was dissolved and beams snapped off, and the microscopic device--an organic-inorganic hybrid--began to shuffle forward. &amp;quot;This device is alive,&amp;quot; Montemagno says. Unsettling, right? But it&amp;#039;s useful, too. This miniature Frankenstein is self-assembling and requires no power source other than the adenosine triphosphate (ATP) molecules that power living cells. The back-and-forth movement of many such biobots, grown from a patient&amp;#039;s own shoulder muscle, might one day generate the electricity to power implants--perhaps helping paralyzed patients to breathe.  OUR IMPLANTS, OURSELVES: An &amp;quot;implanted stimulator telemeter&amp;quot; can entable paralyzed patients to grasp and release objects and even to stand.  A microCHIPS impant with 400 tiny reservoirs can release medications. PHOTOGRAPH BY DANA LIPP   Superstrong NanOss screws, pins and artifical joints can fuse with bone.  HOW WE&amp;#039;LL BE ABLE TO Hold Our Breath for an Hour Weddell seals can stay underwater comfortably for more than an hour. As concrete-shoe wearers have discovered, humans can&amp;#039;t make it past a few minutes. Why not? The seals don&amp;#039;t have enormous lungs in comparison to humans--but they do have extraordinary blood, capable of storing great quantities of oxygen. Robert Freitas, a research fellow at the Institute of Molecular Manufacturing, has published a detailed blueprint for an artificial red blood cell, which he calls a respirocyte. Injected into the bloodstream, these superefficient oxygen-grabbers could put the scuba industry out of business. As Freitas envisions it, each respirocyte--a ball measuring a thousandth of a millimeter across--is a tiny pressurized gas tank. Inject the balls and they course through the blood vessels, releasing oxygen and absorbing carbon dioxide in the body&amp;#039;s periphery and recharging themselves with oxygen in the lungs. Freitas says respirocytes would transport oxygen 236 times more efficiently than red blood cells--and a syringeful could carry as much oxygen as your entire bloodstream. It seems like an oddball idea, but Freitas actually has some competition. A group of NASA-funded bioengineers at the Universities of Pennsylvania and Minnesota have created double-walled artificial cells, called polymersomes, that can potentially float through the bloodstream loaded with cargo: cancer-zapping drugs, imaging agents--and, yes, extra oxygen. Durable, chemically controllable and biocompatible, polymersomes can be dried and rehydrated, which makes them appealing as an artificial blood. Unlike Freitas&amp;#039;s O2-pumping nanobots, an oxygen boost from a polymersome would be a one-shot deal--one that would allow you to leave your diving equipment at home. HOW WE&amp;#039;LL BE ABLE TO Control Machines With Our Minds In 2003, lab monkeys made news by moving prosthetic arms using brain implants. Then, last year, a quadriplegic named Matthew Nagle demonstrated a newfound ability to open e-mail, turn on a TV and play Pong merely by thinking, thanks to the BrainGate system--a microelectrode array plugged into his motor cortex and hard-wired to a computer. No one really envies either the monkeys or Nagle, but scientists, at least, should be grateful: The events highlighted the profound breakthroughs taking place in brain-computer interface (BCI) research. Some of that progress is being made by Nicholas Hatsopoulos, a University of Chicago professor and a cofounder of Cyberkinetics, the company that built BrainGate. Hatsopoulos and his team are now working on what he calls a hybrid neuromotor BCI. By jacking into the right areas of the motor cortex, he plans to allow both the continuous control of the cursor (mouse movement) and discrete symbol selection (keyboard punching), giving patients full command of a computer--using only their minds. They&amp;#039;d even be able to mentally dictate e-mail, with letters, words or phrases popping up on the screen at the mere thought. &amp;quot;There are limits to how fast you could go,&amp;quot; Hatsopoulos says, &amp;quot;but they&amp;#039;re practically the limits of the speed of light compared to how fast you can move your fingers.&amp;quot; Monkeys might get there first, thanks to the work of CalTech neuroscientist Richard Andersen. His team is learning to &amp;quot;read the minds&amp;quot; of rhesus macaques by decoding brain signals picked up by implants in the monkeys&amp;#039; parietal cortex. That area of the brain involves not only movement but movement planning. The researchers know what the monkeys are about to do before they do it--and even how enthusiastic they are about the action. &amp;quot;In the future,&amp;quot; Andersen has said, &amp;quot;you could apply this cognitive approach to language areas of the brain.&amp;quot; Observe which neurons fire when a person thinks of a word, build a reference database of words and their related signals, and write computer algorithms to translate back and forth between the two. While this mind-reading stuff is in its infancy, researchers are already pretty good at producing electrical pulses that the brain can interpret. More than 100,000 previously deaf patients have been outfitted with cochlear implants, which convert sound into pulses that are picked up by the auditory nerve and transmitted to the brain. Eventually, scientists will close the loop, sending electronic signals to the brain and getting back meaningful responses. It will be a life-altering breakthrough for those cut off from communication by profound disabilities. It also would seem to open the way to a neat parlor trick. Today, the pulses transmitted to the auditory nerve by cochlear implants represent sounds from near the patient, but why couldn&amp;#039;t the signals come from miles away? In fact, why do they need to reflect real sounds at all, as opposed to, say, an e-mail run through some text-to-speech software? And, finally, does this imaginary e-mail need to be typed with a keyboard-or would a BCI implant do the trick? This is just speculation, but someday wireless implants may transmit the equivalent of an e-mail from one mind to another: &amp;quot;Hey, honey, I was just thinking of you.&amp;quot; It sounds like an unlikely idea--but heck, so did the telegraph. NANOBOTS: THE TINIEST DRIVETRAINS    One day, tiny robots may roam the body, cleaning cholesterol from arteries, attacking tumors, even penetrating cells to repair DNA. Surprisingly, the toughest challenge will be finding ways to propel and power the biobots. Here&amp;#039;s what&amp;#039;s taking shape in labs. MAGNETIC TORPEDOES Researchers such as Metin Sitti at the Carnegie Mellon NanoRobotics Lab envision nanobots powered and controlled by magnetic fields generated outside the body in machines akin to today&amp;#039;s MRI equipment. Propulsion might be generated by a mechanical flagellum (as shown here). Other concepts call for screw propellers or flapping fins. BATTERY-POWERED CRAWLERS While many nanobots will swim through the bloodstream, cerebrospinal fluid or other liquid environments, other bots may perform biopsies, deliver drugs and conduct imaging in the intestines. This Gutbot, envisioned by Carnegie Mellon&amp;#039;s Sitti, creeps along on grippy feet modeled after a beetle&amp;#039;s. Somewhat larger than artery-borne bots, it can carry a battery. BACTERIA IN HARNESS While researchers are just beginning to devise methods for constructing minute propellers, nature has been working on the problem for eons. Some scientists propose attaching large numbers of E. coli bacteria, which move using whiplike flagella, to nanobots. Movement would be controlled by focusing a laser beam on the organisms, which are sensitive to light. STEALTH POLYMERS Not all the new bots will look like machines. For instance, the University of Michigan&amp;#039;s James Baker developed a dendrimer (a complex polymer) to fight cancer. In rat trials, the dendrimer used folic acid to trick cancer cells into letting it in. The dendrimers also carried a potent chemotherapy drug, which then poisoned the cell before being flushed out of the body. Such targeted chemotherapy may prove both safer and more effective than current treatments. BAD NEWS FOR UNDERTAKERS?  Biomedical innovations will likely extend lives. But iconoclastic Cambridge, England-based biogerontologist AUBREY DE GREY goes further. He says the aging process can be virtually halted.    You&amp;#039;ve said that people walking around today might live to be 1000. How? There are really just seven major categories of age-related damage. One is cell loss without replacement. Another is the opposite--the accumulation of cells you don&amp;#039;t want. Three problems have to do with things that go wrong inside cells: mutations in the chromosomes; mutations in the mitochondria; and the accumulation of indigestible molecules in the lysosomes. The final two factors are things that go wrong between our cells: the accumulation of indigestible molecules that get in the way, and the accumulation of chemical bonds that link long-lived proteins together, stiffening elastic tissues such as artery walls. We want to fix all those things. Okay--but can it be done? Three solutions are already in clinical trials. In the case of the stiffening of elastic structures, like artery walls, it&amp;#039;s possible to design drugs that break these cross-links without serious side effects. The drug that&amp;#039;s gone furthest seems to break a large proportion of these cross-links--maybe half--including the stiffening that causes hypertension. Another example: Stem cells are being tested as a therapy for cell depletion. The highest-profile clinical trials involve Parkinson&amp;#039;s disease--it&amp;#039;s fairly straightforward to inject new or precursor cells into the affected area of the brain. Clinical trials have also occurred for heart repair, using precursor cells from skeletal muscles. Let&amp;#039;s say we really do solve one of these seven deadly problems. How much time will that buy people? There&amp;#039;s a difference between working on aging and working on a specific age-related disease. Curing one age-related disease might extend life by five or 10 years, but an awful lot of people who would have died from it will die of something else instead. Even if we fix only four or five of these things very well, we probably won&amp;#039;t get more than an extra 10 or 20 years of life because the things that we can&amp;#039;t fix will still be accumulating. Really, I&amp;#039;m focused on getting all of them working. It all sounds pretty far-fetched. But, assuming you&amp;#039;re right, how long do we have to wait? Depending on funding, it will take another 10 years or so to get to the proof-of-concept stage in the lab. I&amp;#039;d say we have a 50/50 chance getting these therapies all working in humans 15 years after that. GETTING JUICED The human body hums with electricity, especially the central nervous system. Researchers say that implanted electrodes could help treat conditions from Parkinson&amp;#039;s disease to depression to chronic pain. Today, millions of Americans take drugs such as Ritalin and antidepressants that have broad effects on the brain and body. Eventually, nervous system implants may seem like a more conservative choice. An industry study predicts that implant sales will hit 360,000 a year in 2010.  THALAMUS In deep-brain stimulation, an electrode inserted in the thalamus can calm Parkinson&amp;#039;s disease tremors. Such implants may one day relieve depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and Tourette&amp;#039;s syndrome. RETINA Retinal implants now coming into use translate light into signals that travel along the optical nerve to the brain. There are several versions; one consists of a 2mm-wide silicon chip covered by 5000 microscopic solar cells. VAGUS NERVE Last year, Texas-based Cyberonics won FDA approval for vagus nerve stimulation (VNS)--mild, intermittent pulses through the vagus nerve to the brain-to treat depression. VNS is already used for epilepsy, and may prove effective in treating Alzheimer&amp;#039;s disease and obesity. MUSCLES Tiny capsules called Bions use precisely timed electrical pulses to reanimate muscles paralyzed by stroke and spinal cord injury. Future versions could supply sensory feedback to the brain. SPINAL CORD Chronic pain caused by injury, degenerative disc disease, cancer, nerve damage and other disorders can sometimes be treated with mild electrical stimulation of the spinal cord. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a646/2713146/>