Lifeboat Foundation

The human brain is a fragile and powerful tool, and is also fully dependent on a sturdy skull to keep it secure and intact. Unfortunately for some, there is a need for cranial reconstruction on people who were either born with a skull-related deficiency or critically injured in the head area. 3D printing has shown itself to be a potential game-changer in this regard; we have already witnessed successful titanium mesh skull replacements for one Chinese farmer and even a three-year-old girl born with congenital hydrocephalus. Now, researchers out of Western Australia are developing a new advanced 3D printing method that involves reconstructing the human skull from stem cell cultures.

The project, which is taking place within the Royal Perth Hospital and is being funded by the State Government, will provide their patients with damaged or surgically removed skull fragments with a high-quality cranial reconstruction surgery. The 3D printed stem cell-based skull replacement can potentially increase the success rate and the post-surgical quality of life of patients who require this intensive surgery.

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A thyroid gland printed last March by 3D Printing Solutions is now proven to be fully functional, and experts say the results will revolutionize medicine.

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We can build structures that resettle after quakes, and self-cooling homes – the trick is to 3D print custom building blocks, not whole buildings.

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Coronary artery structure being 3-D bioprinted (credit: Carnegie Mellon University College of Engineering)

Carnegie Mellon scientists are creating cutting-edge technology that could one day solve the shortage of heart transplants, which are currently needed to repair damaged organs.

“We’ve been able to take MRI images of coronary arteries and 3-D images of embryonic hearts and 3-D bioprint them with unprecedented resolution and quality out of very soft materials like collagens, alginates and fibrins,” said Adam Feinberg, an associate professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

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You might not be able to control the 7Bot robotic arm with your mind or your eyes, but at least it’ll only cost you around $350 — cheaper than an iPhone, its creators point out — to get one. Even better, you don’t need to know how to code to program it: just physically guide the arm or use a gesture control device like a Kinect or a Leap motion sensor to make it mimic your movements. In the video below the fold and on its Kickstarter page, you can see it doing calligraphy after a team member’s grandfather physically taught it how. The team also managed make it paint cherry blossoms and do basic mathematics, and we’ll bet you can teach it other productive things, like how to terrorize your cat.

If you prefer the more hands-off approach, you can remotely control it using its 3D visualization app on a computer. And, in case you’re more tech-savvy than the average user, you can program it using the C and C++ open source APIs the 7Bot team provides. In addition to the basic model, the team also offers packages with more features, such as a version with two arms and one that comes with a 3D printer, though they’re also understandably more expensive. According to its campaign page, rewards should start shipping out as soon as January 2016, but as always, it’s best not to treat Kickstarter and other crowdfunding websites as a store.

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As of this month, over 4,000 Americans are on the waiting list to receive a heart transplant. With failing hearts, these patients have no other options; heart tissue, unlike other parts of the body, is unable to heal itself once it is damaged. Fortunately, recent work by a group at Carnegie Mellon could one day lead to a world in which transplants are no longer necessary to repair damaged organs.

“We’ve been able to take MRI images of coronary arteries and 3-D images of embryonic hearts and 3-D bioprint them with unprecedented resolution and quality out of very soft materials like collagens, alginates and fibrins,” said Adam Feinberg, an associate professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Feinberg leads the Regenerative Biomaterials and Therapeutics Group, and the group’s study was published in the October 23 issue of the journal Science Advances. A demonstration of the technology can be seen below.

“As excellently demonstrated by Professor Feinberg’s work in bioprinting, our CMU researchers continue to develop novel solutions like this for problems that can have a transformational effect on society,” said Jim Garrett, Dean of Carnegie Mellon’s College of Engineering. “We should expect to see 3-D bioprinting continue to grow as an important tool for a large number of medical applications.”

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If you think the image above looks frightening, you’re right. The crazy contraption pictured in the image is the first portable railgun, a futuristic projectile launcher associated most commonly with the military or NASA. The man in the image above isn’t in the military, and he’s not a NASA engineer. Instead, he’s a civilian who used some engineering smarts, some widely available parts and a 3D printer to create a functioning weapon that can fire graphite, aluminum, tungsten and even plasma projectiles at speeds of more than 560 mph.

And then there’s the best part: There are videos of this homemade railgun in action.

Continue reading “3D printing used to make first real handheld railgun, which fires plasma projectiles at 560 mph” »

Created by Russian engineer Nikita Chen-yun-tai, the new Apis Cor 3D printer is powerful enough to print a building in one day, yet small enough to be moved with minimal preparation and transportation costs. This portability allows users to print a building in one location and easily move the Apis Cor the next day to another spot. It promises to revolutionize the use of 3D printers in construction, especially in developing nations where low-cost, efficient printing is critical.

The 3D printing of houses is not a new idea — companies have been using the tenets of additive manufacturing for years. What makes the compact Apis Cor printer unique is the unit’s small size — it measures 16.4 ft by 5 ft, weighs 2.5 tons and can be assembled within 30 minutes. As a result, the Apis Cor can be moved easily without the need for an expensive method of transportation and setup. It requires no site preparation and no testing before use, which means it can be dropped on site and deployed right away after assembly.

Related: A Chinese company assembled this 3D-printed home in just three hours.

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1. A heart of foam.
2. Artificial arteries.
3. Brain implants.
4. Robotic hand that can recognize objects by Feel.
5. Upside-Down Rover to explore Europa.

Welcome to #18 Avatar Technology Digest. Again, get ready for exciting news on Technology, Medical Cybernetics and Artificial Intelligence. Thank you for watching us. You are welcome to Subscribe, follow us in social media, leave your comments and join the conversation. And here are the top stories of the last week.

1) A heart of foam could replace your own. Existing artificial hearts have multiple moving parts, which increases the chance of failure, but this new device is just a single piece of material. Researchers inspired by soft robots have built a pumping artificial heart that could one day replace the real deal.
The team of Bioengineers at Cornell University build their robots out of a solid, plastic foam, which naturally has an interconnected network of tubes to let air flow – just as our muscles are permeated by blood vessels. A solid coating of plastic seals everything inside like a skin.

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