Pneumatic artificial muscles conventional electric motors and hydraulic cylinders. Pneumatic artificial muscles Pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs) are contractile or extensional devices operated by pressurized air filling a pneumatic bladder. In an approximation of human muscles, PAMs are usually grouped in pairs: one agonist and one antagonist. PAMs were first developed (under the name of "McKibben Artificial Muscles") in the 1950s for use in artificial limbs. The Bridgestone rubber company (Japan) commercialized the idea in the 1980s under the name of Rubbertuators. The retraction strength of the PAM is limited by the sum total strength of individual fibers in the woven shell. The exertion
Traditional Chinese medicines derived from the human body centuries after Li Shizhen considered the bioethical and biomedical dilemmas of using human drugs, 20th-century technological and medical advances have raised new related questions of organ transplants, transplantation medicine, organ trade, tissue banks, human cloning, and the commodification of human body parts (Awaya 1999, Nie 2002, Scheper-Hughes and Wacquant 2002). Traditional Chinese medicines derived from the human body Li Shizhen's (1597) "Bencao gangmu", the classic materia medica of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), included 35 human drugs, including organs, bodily fluids, and excreta. Crude drugs derived from the human body were commonplace in the early history of medicine. Some of these