Engineers have created a bionic ear that can tune in to TV, radio, and Wi-Fi and might also provide fantastic hearing. Created in the lab out of a mix of electronics and living tissue, the ear would give people fitted with it “superhuman abilities,’’ said Susan Young in TechnologyReview.com, such as detecting frequencies a million times higher than the sound waves our normal ears perceive.
The researchers from Princeton and Johns Hopkins joined a radio antenna with a spiral electrode that synthesizes the nerve impulses that sound vibrations normally invoke. A 3-D printer then “printed” the circuit and the ear’s tissue using a gooey “mix of bovine cartilage-forming cells.’’ With a super ear, a person could pick up a broad range of electromagnetic wavelengths, said Chris Lee in ArsTechnica.com. Researchers hope to later enable the ear to amplify normal sound frequencies.
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