[Puke]

I remember a few years back, Russian inteligence declasified documents on a cyber cat they had built, for survailance. they could steer through implants in the poor thing, record video and audio (god knows where they put the sensors) and it had an antenna burried under its skin. poor thing cost MILLIONS.

honest to god, i read this in the news - and you can probably dredge it up on the web. according to the report the day they were going to field test it, they let it out of their van and watched in horror as it was run over by a car.

in unrelated news, there is also some fierce competition between companies developing ocular implants to restore sight to the blind. some of them tap directly into the occular nerve, and the one that has gotten the most press coverage is able to deliver a 100 pixel (10x10 field of dots) display, enough to enable the subject to destinguish shapes, or read very large block lettering.

Artificial Muscle is a big thing, not only for medicine but for robotics and small motors. nanotubes are all the rage right now, but I saw one interesting report a few months back, about using very fine and very poreous strands of platinum that can contract by huge ammounts, because of all the holes and pores.