title title woo woo

According to an article in last month's Harvard Gazette, researchers at the university recently managed to successfully merge human tissues with embedded nanoelectronics, effectively creating what's being described as "cyborg flesh". I prefer the term "Terminator Meat", personally. But I doubt that phrase will catch on, given the scientific community's stubborn refusal to admit it's intention to build cybernetic death machines; not to be confused with Austrian Death Machine (see above). Also, now that I've read it back to myself, I've remembered how easy it is to make any phrase involving the word "meat", into something unintentionally dirty. Still, I think either term is technically correct, so use at your discretion.

Whatever you decide to call it, the tissue in question was created by developing what is essentially a rudimentary artificial autonomic nervous system, in the form of "Macroporous nanowire nanoelectronic scaffolds"; from the Harvard Gazette:
  

"Beginning with a two-dimensional substrate, researchers laid out a mesh of organic polymer around nanoscale wires, which serve as the critical sensing elements. Nanoscale electrodes, which connect the nanowire elements, were then built within the mesh to enable nanowire transistors to measure the activity in cells without damaging them. Once completed, the substrate was dissolved, leaving researchers with a netlike sponge, or a mesh, that can be folded or rolled into a host of three-dimensional shapes."

The most immediate use for the nanoscaled network of silicone wires and electrodes designed by the team, according to research leader Charles M. Lieber, is in the pharmaceutical industry, where it could be used to more precisely study how newly developed drugs act in three-dimensional tissues. But the development of even a basic electronic sensory system small enough, not only to be embedded into human tissues without distorting cell structure, but that could potentially be an early precursor to a system capable of being integrated directly into the body's own electrical and sensory system, is a pretty spectacular thing.