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ICYMI: Toilet tech, sight-giving headset & lab-grown veins
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-185676{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-185676, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-185676{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-185676").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: Biosynthetic veins and arteries have been created by researchers in London that are able to imitate traits of human tissues, including the ability to self-heal. A headset designed for people with serious vision problems costs a hefty $15,000 but is able to modify sight for users by sending a tweaked for color and focus livestream of reality back to the display. And a Kickstarter gadget aims to tech out your toilet to actually smell okay rather than like... well you know.
Harvard scientists grow human cells onto nanowire scaffold to form 'cyborg' skin
Growing human tissue is old hat, but being able to measure activity inside flesh is harder -- any electrical probing tends to damage the cells. But a new breakthrough from Harvard researchers has produced the first "cyborg" tissue, created by embedding functional, biocompatible nanowires into lab-grown flesh. In a process similar to making microchips, the wires and a surrounding organic mesh are etched onto a substrate, which is then dissolved, leaving a flexible mesh. Groups of those meshes are formed into a 3D shape, then seeded with cell cultures, which grow to fill in the lattice to create the final system. Scientists were able to detect signals from heart and nerve cell electro-flesh made this way, allowing them to measure changes in response to certain drugs. In the near-term, that could allow pharmaceutical researchers to better study drug interaction, and one day such tissue might be implanted in a live person, allowing treatment or diagnosis. So, would that make you a cyborg or just bionic? We'll let others sort that one out.
Invetech 3D bio-printer is ready for production, promises 'tissue on demand'
Say hello to "the world's first production model 3D bio-printer." What you're looking at is a machine capable of arranging human cells and artificial scaffolds into complex three-dimensional structures, which result in such wonderful things as replacement liver and kidney tissue, or such simple niceties as artificially grown teeth. All we're told of the internal workings is that the bio-printer utilizes laser-calibrated print heads and that its design is the first to offer sufficiently wide flexibility of use to make the device viable. Organovo will be the company responsible for promoting the new hardware to research institutions, while at the same time trying to convince the world that it's not the fifth sign of the apocalypse. Maybe if the printer didn't have a menacing red button attached to it, we'd all be a little less freaked out by it.