Pregnancy complications lead to more than 260,000 maternal deaths and millions of infant deaths globally. One serious condition in pregnancy linked to placental dysfunction is preeclampsia, which affects 5%–8% of pregnancies.
The study, led by Associate Professor Lana McClements and first author Dr. Claire Richards, from the UTS School of Life Sciences, has just been published in the journal Nature Communications.
Four research volunteers will soon participate in NASA’s year-long simulation of a Mars mission inside a habitat at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. This mission will provide NASA with foundational data to inform human exploration of the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
Ross Elder, Ellen Ellis, Matthew Montgomery, and James Spicer enter into the 1,700-square-foot Mars Dune Alpha habitat on Sunday, Oct. 19, to begin their mission. The team will live and work like astronauts for 378 days, concluding their mission on Oct. 31, 2026. Emily Phillips and Laura Marie serve as the mission’s alternate crew members.
Through a series of Earth-based missions called CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog), carried out in the 3D-printed habitat, NASA aims to evaluate certain human health and performance factors ahead of future Mars missions. The crew will undergo realistic resource limitations, equipment failures, communication delays, isolation and confinement, and other stressors, along with simulated high-tempo extravehicular activities. These scenarios allow NASA to make informed trades between risks and interventions for long-duration exploration missions.
In 3D bioprinting, researchers use living cells to create functional tissues and organs. Instead of printing with plastic, they print with living cells. This comes with great challenges. Cells are fragile and wouldn’t survive a regular 3D printing process. That’s why Levato’s team developed a special bio-ink, a mix of living cells and nourishing gels that protect the cells during the printing process.
With the advancements in bio-inks, layer-by-layer 3D bioprinting became possible. But this method is still time-consuming and puts a lot of stress on the cells. Researchers from Utrecht came up with a solution: volumetric bioprinting.
Volumetric bioprinting is faster and gentler on cells. Using cell-friendly laser light, a 3D structure is created all at once. “To build a structure, we project a series of light patterns into a spinning tube filled with light-sensitive gel and cells,” Levato explains. “Where the light beams converge, the material solidifies. This creates a full 3D object in one go, without having to touch the cells.” To do this, it is crucial to know exactly where the cells are in the gel. GRACE now makes that possible.
The existing bottleneck in efficiently miniaturizing components for quantum computers could be eased with the help of 3D printing.
Quantum computers tackle massive computational challenges by harnessing the power of countless tiny parts working seamlessly together. Trapped ion technology, where charged particles like ions are trapped by manipulating the electromagnetic fields, is one such component.
Current microfabrication techniques fall short when it comes to producing the complex electrode structures with optimal ion confinement suitable for quantum operations.
Students at ETH Zurich have developed a laser powder bed fusion machine that follows a circular tool path to print round components, which allows the processing of multiple metals at once. The system significantly reduces manufacturing time and opens up new possibilities for aerospace and industry. ETH has filed a patent application for the machine, and the results are published in the CIRP Annals.
Today, virtually all modern rocket engines rely on 3D printing to maximize their performance with tight coupling between structure and function. Students at ETH Zurich have now built a high-speed multi-material metal printer: a laser powder bed fusion machine that rotates the powder deposition and gas flow nozzles while it prints, which means it can process several metals simultaneously and without process dead time. The machine could fundamentally change the 3D printing of metal parts, resulting in significant reductions in production time and cost.
The team of six Bachelor’s students in their fifth and sixth semesters developed the new machine in the Advanced Manufacturing Lab under the guidance of ETH Professor Markus Bambach and Senior Scientist Michael Tucker as part of the Focus Project RAPTURE. In a mere nine months, the students realized, built and tested their idea. The machine is particularly aimed at applications in aerospace featuring approximately cylindrical geometries, such as rocket nozzles and turbomachinery, but is also of broad interest for mechanical engineering.
Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed a novel framework for understanding and controlling the flow behavior of granular hydrogels—a class of material made up of densely packed, microscopic gel particles with promising applications in medicine, 3D bioprinting, and tissue repair.
The new study, published in Advanced Materials, was led by chemical and biomolecular engineering professors Brendan A. Harley and Simon A. Rogers, whose research groups specialize in biomaterials engineering and rheology, respectively.
Granular hydrogels have a unique ability to mimic the mechanical properties of living tissue, which makes them ideal candidates for encapsulating and delivering cells directly into the body. By integrating material synthesis and characterization with rheological modeling, the researchers created a predictive model that captures the essential physics of how granular hydrogels deform—reducing a complex problem to a few controllable parameters.
SpaceX’s rumored “Starfall” program, related to its Starship initiative, aims to revolutionize in-space manufacturing, enabling advancements in various fields and reducing cargo transportation costs to unlock economic potential in space ## ## Questions to inspire discussion.
In-Orbit Manufacturing Potential.
🚀 Q: What unique advantages does in-orbit manufacturing offer? A: In-orbit manufacturing provides no gravity, perfect fluid flow, stable heat flow, and no air moving heat around, enabling growth of structures without scaffolding and benefiting industries like pharmaceuticals, advanced materials, and military logistics.
🏭 Q: Which industries could be disrupted by in-orbit manufacturing in the 2040s? A: In-orbit manufacturing could disrupt terrestrial industries in the 2040s, particularly pharmaceuticals, advanced materials, and military logistics, allowing production of high-value goods like protein crystals, retinal organoids, ZBLAN fiber, and semiconductor ingots in space.
Starfall Program.
🛰️ Q: What is SpaceX’s Starfall program? A: Starfall is a secret SpaceX program using small return pods from Starship to bring high-value goods back from orbit, potentially slashing the $40,000/kg cost of returning materials to Earth.
Researchers in Germany have unveiled the Metafiber, a breakthrough device that allows ultra-precise, rapid, and compact control of light focus directly within an optical fiber. Unlike traditional systems that rely on bulky moving parts, the Metafiber uses a tiny 3D nanoprinted hologram on a dual-core fiber to steer light by adjusting power between its cores. This enables seamless, continuous focus shifts over microns with excellent beam quality.