Recently, Elon Musk, Canadian-American business magnate, tried to make us think about the causes of things. He is explaining his theory by giving two examples: weights on a scale and causal chains. Read More
Researchers discover changes in the activity of sodium and potassium channels during the day and night impact the sleep-wake cycle.
Scientists at the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences have developed a new quantum computing technique in which operations occur without a well-defined order. The new technique accomplished a task more efficiently than a standard quantum computer, and could open the way to faster quantum computing.
Biohackers are installing USB drives in their fingertips and growing third ears on their arms. Welcome to the world of DIY cyborgs.
Undoubtedly one of the most exciting areas within the 3D printing space is that of bioprinting. Using layer-by-layer fabrication methods, a number of companies are in the process of pushing forward a new paradigm shift within the medical implant, transplantation, and surgical spaces. While the media has mainly focused on Organovo, the company behind the world’s first 3D printable liver tissue, there are actually several other companies involved in this incredible space. Here are 3DPrint.com we thought it would be helpful to underline just a handful of those companies that may be about to change medicine as we know it.
Organovo The company, headquartered in San Diego, California, has been at the forefront of 3D bioprinting research for some time now. Not only are they currently bringing revenues in by providing pharmaceutical companies with their 
exVive3D™ Liver Tissue for drug toxicity testing, but they have partnered with major companies in the health space including L’Oréal and Merck, and are planning on introducing their exVive3D™ Kidney Tissue product by next year. With an ultimate goal of 3D printing patches made of human tissue for failing organs, and eventually entire organs for transplantation, Organovo certainly has their work cut out for them.
While smaller organisms such as nematode worms have been imaged before, a entire central nervous system has now been recorded for the first time in the fruit fly, drosophila melanogaster.
The video shows neural activity (yellow/red) throughout the entire central nervous system (grey) of a Drosophila larva.
Credit: Keller et al. Nature Communications See More.
The Void is an ambitious project that seeks to combine virtual reality headsets with custom-built physical playgrounds.
A Utah man is developing a virtual-reality experience unlike anything the world has seen before.
Scientists have developed a new hydrogel that stretches and contracts just like an artificial muscle. The team created an L-shaped object made out of the hydrogel and immersed it in a water bath. When the water’s temperature was varied, it slowly “walked” forward.
The researchers at the Riken Center for Emergent Matter Science in Japan got the hydrogel to move by tweaking its properties. Polymers like hydrogels carry large amounts of water within their structure which gives them the capacity to respond to variations in environmental factors such as acidity, voltage and temperature. Typically, this response time is quite slow, as the hydrogel must excrete or absorb water to correspondingly shrink or expand.
The Japanese scientists altered the new hydrogel to enable it to contract only in one dimension while expanding in another. Since the hydrogel doesn’t contract equally in every direction, it’s able to alter its shape without absorbing or excreting any water. To test the hydrogel’s properties, the team created an L-shaped polymer and changed the temperature repeatedly to observe its response.
