Could the days of custom clavicles and bespoke bladders produced just in the knick of time for suffering patients be around the corner?
While keeping an eye on tissue engineering studies, we’ve been seeing some significant wins in the lab that are bringing the sci-fi future of on-demand 3-D printed organs, bone and blood vessels closer.
Harvard and Brown bioengineers are taking their own routes to build complex tissues in customized 3-D printers. And just the other week, we reported on newly unveiled work at the University of Florida to print complex soft structures in baths that could one day birth replacement human parts along with soft robots.
Now, Carnegie Mellon engineers reported on Friday that they had successfully printed simplified proof-of-concept anatomical structures like mini femurs, blood vessels and brains suspended in soft gelatin. Learn more and see a video below.
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That’s one small hole for a probe, but one giant leap for NASA. This past weekend, the space agency jerry-rigged Curiosity’s malfunctioning drill, allowing the rover to bore into Martian rock for the first time in over a year.
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Computer Model to Help Manage Hydropower in Kenya
Green Lake (Grüner See) in Styria, Austria, is an amazing place. For half of the year, it’s an underwater village with fish swimming through the branches of trees, a floor covered in grass, benches and bridges.
For the other half, it is over ground. In the frozen winter months the area is almost completely dry and is a favorite site for hikers. As the temperature begins to rise in spring, the ice and snow on the mountaintops begins to melt and runs down into the basin of land below. The waters are at their highest in June when it becomes a mecca for divers keen to explore the rare phenomenon.
This is our demand, our request to all the responsible people – that instead of sending weapons, instead of sending tanks to Afghanistan and all these countries that are suffering from terrorism, send books. Instead of sending tanks, send pens. Instead of sending soldiers, send teachers. This is the only way we can fight for education.
Education activist Malala Yousafzai at today’s #UNGA event on Global Education First.
For more on the event see here.
(via united-nations)
UAV Will Determine Best Locations for Wind Energy
For more on the Fermi Paradox and why alien life hasn’t found us yet. (Infographic via futurism)