Part 2 of TED Radio Hour episode Reshaping Evolution
Stem cells have long been heralded as a potential tool to treat illnesses. Nabiha Saklayen explains how it’s still early, but scientists are getting closer to turning this vision into a reality.
Circa 2014
Scientists have come closer than ever before to creating a laboratory-scale imitation of a black hole that emits Hawking radiation, the particles predicted to escape black holes due to quantum mechanical effects.
The black hole analogue, reported in Nature Physics1, was created by trapping sound waves using an ultra cold fluid. Such objects could one day help resolve the so-called black hole ‘information paradox’ — the question of whether information that falls into a black hole disappears forever.
Virginia mom April Stringfield is now the owner of Habitat for Humanity’s first 3D-printed home — built in record time, thanks to new construction tech.
The massive time and money savings from 3D printing means the nonprofit is very likely to print more in the future.
More than 30 years ago, Andreas Floer changed geometry. Now, two mathematicians have finally figured out how to extend his revolutionary perspective.
The team of academician GUO Guangcan of University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has made important progress in the research of cold atom.
An atom is the smallest component of an element. It is made up of protons and neutrons within the nucleus, and electrons circling the nucleus.
Such is the promise and peril of NFTs.
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, offer many potential benefits to creators. They apply the mechanisms of scarcity to digital assets by allowing artists to render them as one-of-a-kind collectibles, like a painting or a baseball card. This means artists — especially digital artists — who have struggled to make their streamable, screenshot-able or reprintable work hold value — can price their items at rates appropriate for something in short supply.
However, the digital trading mechanism is still in nascent stages, and rife with scams, hacks and copyright issues. Beeple was hit by an organized hack, for example. While artists can sometimes find financial solvency with NFTs, other times, they lose millions.
😮 circa 2021.
The fundamental forces of physics govern the matter comprising the Universe, yet exactly how these forces work together is still not fully understood. The existence of Hawking radiation — the particle emission from near black holes — indicates that general relativity and quantum mechanics must cooperate. But directly observing Hawking radiation from a black hole is nearly impossible due to the background noise of the Universe, so how can researchers study it to better understand how the forces interact and how they integrate into a “Theory of Everything”?
Continue reading “A better black hole laser may prove a circuitous ‘Theory of Everything’” »
On Saturday, the James Webb Space Telescope successfully unfolded its primary mirror, a massive milestone in its mission.
A major obstacle to widespread study and clinical use of 3D tissues is their short shelf-life, which may be anywhere from a just few hours to a few days. As in the case of an organ transplant, a bioprinted tissue must be transported rapidly to the location where it is needed, or it will not be viable. In the journal Matter on December 21st, researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School describe their work combining 3D bioprinting with cryopreservative techniques to create tissues which can be preserved in a freezer at-196°C and thawed within minutes for immediate use.
“For conventional bioprinting, there is basically no shelf life. It’s really just print, and then use, in most cases,” says lead author Y. Shrike Zhang (@shrikezhang), a biomedical engineer at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “With cryobioprinting, you can print and store in the frozen state for basically as long as you want.”
Continue reading “3D-bioprinted tissues can now be stored in the freezer until needed” »
For the first time in medical history, a drone has played a crucial part in saving a life during a sudden cardiac arrest.
