Data Stream: Nano-Scale 3D Printing, 4D Printing Nano-Magic, Pegleg YouTube App, 3D Printed Skulls, & Mice with Super Brains

Notable recent articles to add to your data streams.

A 3D Printed Spaceship on the Scale of a Human Hair? Hello Nanoscribe 3D Printer, by David Hill

Writing for Singularity Hub, David Hill explores the growth of nano-scale 3D printing. The applications here, across industries and disciplines, are enormous. Technology Review provides a succinct run-down of the tech here.

Hill writes:

“Last year, a group of researchers at the Vienna University of Technology in Austria refined a 3D printing technique that allowed the construction of sophisticated structures (an F1 racecar and a cathedral) smaller than dust mites in about 4 minutes. Now, a company called Nanoscribe GmbH that emerged from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany has made a 3D printer called the Photonic Professional GT which can produce detailed structures on a similar scale but faster. In fact, the technique was able to produce a spaceship (from the Wing Commander line of video games) from a CAD file that measures 125µm x 81µm x 26.8µm (on the order of the width of a human hair) in less than 50 seconds.”

The nano-bio-technological health implications are significant. 

(Video Source: NanoScribe)

Technology Review notes:

“Printing microstructures with features a few hundred nanometers in size could be useful for making heart stents, microneedles for painless shots, gecko adhesives, parts for microfluidics chips, and scaffolds for growing cells and tissue. Another important application could be in the electronics industry, where patterning nanoscale features on chips currently involves slow, expensive techniques. 3-D printing would quickly and cheaply yield polymer templates that could be used to make metallic structures.”

Skylar Tibbits: The emergence of "4D printing," TEDtalksDirector 

Continuing the theme of future-print-manufacturing technologies, Sklyar Tbbits’ recent TED talk on the developing field of 4D printing makes one take pause and marvel at the awesomeness of science. Tibbits points out the labor intensive and time intensive processes involved in the Maker movement – endless hours of complexity. How can portions (or all) of this work be self-automated in order to make systems more efficient and to produce materials that use their own energies to self-design and self-shape? Enter 4D printing. The art and design applications are tremendous. Practical applications such as self-assemble and self-shape pipes, self-assemble buildings, and self-generated scaffolding for cell growth can be used in the here and now.

Connect the technologies used in nano-scale printing with 4D printing technologies and we have some seriously powerful tools to reshape the human body, environmental spaces, and not least of which, the possibilities of space exploration. Combining nanospace with the build environment – programmable materials that order themselves – building ordered structure through local interaction. Here, materials and geometry couple with various energy sources with smart design interaction that allows for error correction. 




(Video Source: TedtalksDirector)

Pegleg Wants To Help You Find All Those Free, Full-Length Movies On YouTube, by Chris Velazco

YouTube is growing up. The integrated re-design across Google platforms and applications has resulted in a YouTube app that is a more user-friendly and a more design-beautiful application. Increasingly, videos of longer length and depth are appearing on YouTube channels. What if an app helped crowd-source the search and retrieval of YouTube full length films? It is called Pegleg.

Reporting for TechCrunch, Chris Velazco notes:

“The concept is simple enough — Pegleg’s front page shows off all the films that users have already found, and those looking for something specific can either drill down by certain criteria or punch in the name of a movie they’d like to see. If the flick in question has already been added to the Pegleg collection you can watch it immediately. In the extremely likely event that the movie you’ve been jonesing for isn’t there yet, Pegleg will display a list of YouTube videos it thinks could be what you’re after, along with a little notification showing you how sure it’s actually a full-length movie based on the clip’s running time.”

There are some obvious copyright issues and digital rights management concerns here. It will be interesting to see how digital legal industry types respond to third party applications like Pegleg that piggy-back on massive applications such as YouTube that provide publically accessible content. Till then, cue the retro-sci-fi films. 

Patient Receives 3D Printed implant to Replace 75 Percent of Skull, by David Hill
This past March an American patient received a 3D printed skull replacement. If that was not amazing enough, consider the build-to-application time line: two weeks or less from submission of scans to implant. The technology used here, OsteoFab™, will likely revolutionize orthopedic surgery and beyond. Serious disruptive tech this. There are obvious bio-technological uses with stem cells. 

At Singularity Hub, Hills writes: 

“The implant is called the OsteoFab Patient Specific Cranial Device (OPSCD) or OsteoFab for short and is made from polyetherketoneketone (PEKK) thermoplastic through an additive manufacturing process. This material is not only biocompatible but is bone-like and will not interfere with x-ray scanning. After the patient’s skull was 3D scanned, the custom-made implant was printed using an EOS P800 laser sintering 3D printer. By generating the implant layer by layer, details can be added that promote the attachment of bone and surrounding cell growth.”

3D and 4D technologies integrated with nano-bio-tech applications will transform the 21st century cyborg body.

Hill writes:

"Last year, a company named LayerWise used 3D printing to manufacture a titanium jaw replacement for an elderly patient. Doctors are increasingly turning to 3D printing to make bone models in preparation for surgery. Recently, a human ear was also produced through a 3D printing process, and 3D printing of organs is something that Dr. Anthony Atala and colleagues are busily trying to make a reality. Besides 3D printing, researchers have also used stem cells to grow bone in a patient’s skull and produce a jawbone. Other boney materials such as teeth are being actively pursued as well." 

Scientists Inject Human Brain Cells into Mice, Make them Smarter, by Peter Murray. 

One last from Singularity Hub. Researchers injected mice with human astrocytes to examine if human astrocytes would affect memory and learning capabilities. They injected another group of test mice with mouse astrocytes in order to compare group data to make sure any differences were specifically due to the human astrocytes and not just any astrocytes. At the center of this experiment is long-term potentiation (LTP), a phenomenon in which the response of a neuron to a signal is boosted after it receives a strong stimulus. Spoiler Alert: the “human glial chimeric” mice performed better on maze and tone tests that did the mouse-only astrocyte group. The original study appears here in a recent article in Cell Stem Cell. 



(Video Source: University of Rochester).

Writing for SH, Peter Murray opines:

“If it’s true that astrocytes help us to think, and human’s are the smartest of all thinkers, then maybe we owe much of our cognitive prowess to astrocytes. To test this idea, scientists at University of Rochester Medical Center injected human glial progenitor cells into the brains of mice and tested to see if it changed the mice’s ability to remember and learn. Glial progenitors are precursor cells that mature into astrocytes in the young brain. The human progenitors were injected into the brains of mice shortly after they were born. In an early show of superiority, the human progenitors drove out the mice’s own progenitors. By the time the mice were six months old, most of their astrocytes were of human origin.”

One can’t but conjure up the cult classic, Secret of Nimh, and the augmented rats that escaped capture and testing to develop their own society. Enjoy this classic flashback. 



(Video Source: WIll Dendis)

Image Source: By Gregory F. Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail.com> PGP:0xB0413BFA (By uploader) [GFDL 1.2 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/fdl-1.2.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

3D Printing: A Video Primer

As follow-up to the previous post on challenges in 3D-4D printing, here is a video overview showing some how-to basics on 3D printing and an overview of the 3D printing space. 

While some of the more practical applications might still be out of reach for Citizen X, the current design and art applications are present and accounted for. 

If videos do not show on mobile devices, please view on desktop or laptop. 

Here, the Creators Project provides a succinct overview of 3D printing basics.

Check out more on the Creators Project Youtube Page. 

(Video source: PBS Off Book.)

Some great examples of design excellence were shown at recent 3D Print Show London 2012. 






(Video source: ExplaningtheFuture Youtube)

4D Printing and shape shifting. Three dimensions be damned!

(Video source: seyfullah51.)

At a recent TED event, Anthony Atela expanded on the amazing uses of working with bio-synthetic materials. He identifies three past challenges with bio materials. The first challenge was the design of the materials that could be readily integrated into the body properly. The second challenge was cells and not having enough cells grown outside the body. He notes that still certain cells cannot be grown such as liver and pancreatic cells. The third challenge was vascularity - the supply of blood to help regenerate organs. Enter 3D bio-genetic and bio-synthetic printing.  

(Video source: TedDirectorTalks)

Here, Lee Cronin expands on the chemistry set of the future: 3D printed organic chemistry. The question: Can the chemistry set of the future be 3D printed? The result is reactionware. Software would allow us to eventually print our own medicine. This will be complicated. Print drugs. Download new diagnostics. On-the-fly molecular assembly. Why not use your own stem cells and print personally tailored medicine? This software will likely be purchased on a subscription basis, with constant updates as new viruses, illnesses, and disease develop and are found. The more complicated the meds - the higher the subscription price. The FDA will be concerned.
  



Click here for my YouTube channel where I have archived a growing list of 3D printing videos.

Printing the Future: Challenges in the 3D-4D Digital Print Revolution

Like so many others, I am excited about the potential of 3D and now 4D printing. Writing for ZDNet, Oliver Marks states, "The fourth dimension in 4D printing refers to materials that are able to change and mutate over time when exposed to water, temperature changes and/or air to self assemble. 4D object formats will soon have API's (Application Programming Interfaces) that enable designers to define the characteristics of the materials they are made from, which are then printed using sophisticated chemical calibrations to enable specific attributes and functionality."

From the outset, 3D printing seems a powerful piece of democra-tech. For me, democratech includes new technologies that can be easily adopted/integrated into the lives of working class and middle class people to enhance quality of life and lengthen lifespans. All new technologies though bring new sets of challenges to solve. For help on that score, Jonas Bentzen penned a balanced post on the three main issues with 3D printing in the home: size, economics, and materials.

Size is a concern in terms of both the items one wishes to fabricate and the size of the printer itself. Will the garage of the future have a 3D printer and be full of raw materials? Will we desire to have large-scale printers in our homes? Will the small-end printers we are likely to have in our homes be able to produce the kind of larger size mundane items we will need? Will we want to fabricate forks, coasters, pans, etc...or go buy them at cheaper cost or with better design?

In regards to economics, Benzen elucidates: "Let's look at the economics of this: Suppose that some years from now you'll be able to get a decent 3D printer for $200. Since the technology moves at a fast pace, you'd probably have to replace it after four years, and you'd be able to sell it for $25. That's an expense of $43.75 per year. Now let's say you want to print a product once a month. You'd need raw materials for that - let's say 1 kilo at $30 per year. Of course the printer uses electricity, so let's add $5. Total yearly expense: 78.75."

It is quite likely we will see 3D-4D materials shops open in communities that have adopted these technologies. Next to the local QuickMart will be MaterialsQuick - a 21st Century hardware store. Stop in - pick up replacement parts for the printers, add-on modules, software packages, raw materials, prefabricated core materials, and ordering of speciality materials (including mix-materials fabrications).

In terms of materials, a pressing issues is that of materials sustainability. Where will these raw materials come from, be made of, and what will be the environmental impact? Solutions are needed. Will plastics be the core base material used? Do we need more plastics production?

Good news everybody! People within the industry, and across biotech, have already begun to expand past plastics into more exciting materials such as biological matter.

French surgeon and biologist Alexis Carrel
(1873-1944)

In terms of 3D/4D printing, the really mind-boggling work is with biochemistry, genetics, and synthetics...regenerative medicine: the use of cells, materials, or a mixture of both to print organs, skin, bones, and teeth. The concept dates back to 1938 in The Culture of Organs, written by Nobel Prize winner Alexis Carrel and Charles Lindbergh. Carrel did pioneering work with blood vessel graphs. The future-now is these bio-materials that can be used to help the body regenerate, materials that interact with patient's cells, materials that integrate with the patient's cells.  

Oliver Marks insightfully noted, "Some of our printing concepts are an outmoded paradigm - the real advances are sure to come in the chemistry of the materials. As Daniel Dikovskey of Stratasys explained, it's the blends of multiple materials that are an important element of the material programming interface. This form of modern alchemy that programs properties into the materials to be created is the important new paradigm. Design principles that take advantage of the mutable properties of these amazing new materials are slowly taking shape, and while today's materials are limited there is an explosion of activity and rapid advancement. Within four to five years we should see highly sophisticated materials that can be programmed and printed, the result of a flowering of collaboration in a rapidly evolving and currently open, inclusive business space."

There is of course skepticism. Writing for ZDNet about Chris Anderson's move from Wired to 3D printing, Tom Foremski opined, "Our industrial age has created a massive number of advanced materials that are essential to producing our products - 3D printers can only handle soft, easily melted materials. A home 3D printer that can create a product with multiple materials, such as ceramics and metals, hasn't been invented and won't be for many years." It might come quicker than we think if Moore's Law applies here as it has in so many other future-tech instances.

As the digital printing space explodes: issues of size, cost, materials, and sustainability will continually need to be addressed. One thing is for certain: in the next decade, 3D-4D printing will change our world quite dramatically.