Live Science: The Most Interesting Articles, Mysteries & Discoveries. Chemistry resources for Teachers and Students. 3D printed body tissues becoming a reality - The Science Show - ABC Radio National. Robyn Williams: Professor Gordon Wallace of Wollongong has just been announced as the New South Wales Scientist of the Year. He and his fellow innovators 3D print parts of the body. Gordon Wallace, welcome back and congratulations. Was it a surprise? Gordon Wallace: Yes, it was actually a total surprise of course and a real honour to pick up an award like that, on behalf of so many people that we've worked with together over such a long period of time.
Robyn Williams: 3D printing. Gordon Wallace: The actual bio-inks that we use obviously will contain cells, stem cells that can be printed with other materials in an appropriate arrangement that will encourage their development into nerve or muscle cells. Robyn Williams: And the components are given to medical people who do what with them? Gordon Wallace: Yes, usually…and this is what is exciting about recent developments, the clinicians will be involved in these projects right from the start.
Robyn Williams: Of bionic ear fame. 3D printed sternum in world-first surgery. CSIRO has teamed up with Melbourne medical implant company Anatomics and UK doctors to carry out world-first surgery to implant a 3D printed titanium and polymer- sternum into a British patient. Designed by Anatomics and printed at CSIRO's Lab 22 facility in Melbourne, the sternum was implanted into 61-year-old Edward Evans, who had previously had his sternum removed due to a rare infection. Mr Evans has since made a successful recovery.
It is the first time that a titanium sternum combined with a synthetic polymer have been used to replace bone, cartilage and tissue in a patient. The operation is the latest success story for the CSIRO-Anatomics partnership. In 2015 a Spanish cancer patient was the recipient of a 3D printed titanium only sternum and rib implant that was designed and manufactured by CSIRO and Anatomics. CSIRO's Manufacturing business unit has led the collaboration with Anatomics. Theconversation. People have long dreamed of being smarter, stronger, faster. But now it seems that cutting edge technologies are out there, or in development, that might enable us truly to enhance our cognitive and physical capabilities. At the Paralympics, sprinters will be bounding down the tracks on running blades.
Students are taking “smart drugs” and using cognitive enhancement devices in order to achieve better academic performance. These recent advances in science and technology have led to much discussion on the ethics of human enhancement, giving the impression that this is an era-defining moment, one in which the very definition of what it is to be “human” is being challenged. But such concerns over human enhancement are not new. Consider, for instance, the design and mass production of prosthetic limbs 100 years ago. A booklet published by the Red Cross in 1918, aptly entitled Reconstructing the Crippled Soldier, shows several pictures of amputees sporting their tool-like prosthetic limbs. Why STEM subjects and fashion design go hand in hand.
The fashion industry evokes images of impossibly beautiful people jet setting around the world in extravagant finery. Like a moth to the flames, it draws many of our most creative young minds. Often, the first instinct of high school students who want to work in creative industries is to drop all their math and science subjects to take up textiles and art. As a fashion and textile designer myself, I would like to explain how this is a bad strategy and how the future of fashion requires science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM skills) more than ever.
Beneath the glamorous façade, the fashion industry is undergoing disruptive changes due to rapid advances in technology. We take it for granted that you can use your Iphone to watch a fashion runway show on YouTube, Google the garment to find an online retailer like Net-A-Porter, pay for it using PayPal and then upload a selfie onto Snapchat. None of these services even existed 20 years ago. Maths and creativity. Ray Kurzweil on the Future of Nanotechnology. Nicholas Negroponte: Nanobots in Your Brain Could Be the Future of Learning. Transcript Nicholas Negroponte: I gave a talk at the first TED in 1984 that was two hours long and it had five predictions in it that more or less all came true. And people called them predictions but they really weren’t predictions. They were extrapolations. The reason I talked for two hours is not because I was Fidel Castro and I was giving a rally. Because if you inject tiny robots into the bloodstream they can get very close to all the cells and nerves and things in your brain, really close.
Directed/Produced by Jonathan Fowler and Dillon Fitton. Around 100 years ago a father and his son in north England conducted an experiment that would revolutionise the way scientists study molecules. A refined version of their method still remains one of the most important tools for scientists. To achieve this feat, William Henry Bragg and his son William Lawrence Bragg used table salt (sodium chloride). They prepared a clean crystal of salt and shone X-rays on it, which created a beautiful geometric pattern on a photographic paper placed behind it. Others had done similar things before, but the Braggs made an intuitive leap. They realised that tucked away in the layout of the dots was information about salt’s molecular structure.
Today we know that inside crystals there are atoms arranged in regular patterns. Even if you never paid attention in a chemistry lesson, you may recognise the ball-and-stick representation of chemical structures, where balls are the atoms and sticks the bonds that hold them together. The future is bright.
Synchrotron: how it works [video infographic] Synchrotron technology. Theconversation. Science is like high-performance racing: today’s Formula One machine is all too soon the jalopy of tomorrow. The Australian Synchrotron, opened in 2007 and located in Melbourne, is currently at the F1 end of the spectrum. Needless to say, its 120 staff and thousands of active researchers would like to keep it that way. Which raises a pertinent and obvious question: what does it actually do?
Technically speaking, a synchrotron is a large machine that accelerates electrons to almost the speed of light. Compared to conventional sources, such as those that might be encountered while sitting in a dentist’s chair, the X-rays produced at the Synchrotron are like a laser is to a light bulb. In addition to their high brightness, X-rays are emitted as a beam and can be effectively tuned to a single wavelength (a bit like being able to choose the colour of your laser beam).
For most researchers, it’s a place to conduct experiments that simply could not be performed anywhere else in the country. What is a synchrotron? A synchrotron is an extremely powerful source of X-rays. These are produced by highly energetic electrons moving in a large circle in the synchrotron. The entire world of synchrotron science depends on one physical phenomenon: When a moving electron changes direction, it emits energy. When the electron is moving fast enough, the emitted energy is at X-ray wavelength. A synchrotron machine exists to accelerate electrons to extremely high energy and then make them change direction periodically. The resulting X-rays are emitted as dozens of thin beams, each directed toward a beamline next to the accelerator. The machine operates day and night, with periodic short and long shutdowns for maintenance. Principal structures Storage Ring The storage ring is a tube 844 metres in circumference where the electrons circle for hours close to the speed of light.
Booster synchrotron Linac Beamlines Magnets in the storage ring The storage ring includes 32 straight and 32 curved sections in alternating order. Nobelprize.org. Welcome to DST Group - Defence Science and Technology Group. Airbus, a leading aircraft manufacturer. The Boeing Company.
ESA. NASA. Ed videos | Watch | TED. TED: Ideas worth spreading. The Royal Society of Chemistry. RiAus - Australia’s Science Channel. The Australian Synchrotron. Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australian Government - CSIRO. ChemMatters Magazine. Chemistry in Australia magazine. Science News, Articles, and Information.