ripperdoc's clinic

So messy to change batteries on my artificial liver so this is a very welcome innovation!

So MIT and University of Massachusetts-Amherst collaborated on a solution: a small, wearable jamming device, tailor-made for your implant, blocking out any and all unauthorized attempts to connect. It’s taken some serious innovating to develop a wireless signal that won’t disrupt the very implant the jammer’s meant to protect, but the implant and jammer work together: “Because the shield knows the shape of its own jamming signal, however, it can, in effect, subtract it from the received signal.” Your pacemaker stays shielded, the jammer handles the security work, and you can walk around without worrying about an invisible zap of death. 

Another small step for cybernetics, but a giant leap for Anti-Cyborg Squad’s attempt at finding Prosthesis Jones left arm that is still roaming the streets looking for it’s next victim!

Toxoplasma gondii (who wants to be called “Toxo”), is a cat parasite that don’t mind living in other creatures, and changing their behaviour ever so slightly to achieve its goals: to get into a cat stomach. With rats, that means making them more daring.

With humans, it is another story. Researchers seems to have found indications that Toxo makes men more rebellious and women more romantic.

Whatever the background, double points for weirdness and sky high scifi potential: what if a whole country was infected with behaviour altering parasites, or what if getting employed requires ingesting specially engineered parasites to keep behaviour closer to a statistical desired vision?

Scientists are trying to create artificial savants (e.g. “Rain Man”), which makes the test subjects able to draw perfectly from memory or memorize long array of numbers. Cue EvilCorp (TM) creating hordes of savants to create their strategy - no matter they can’t take part in social life, they are serving Our Path to A Better Future.