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Archive for the ‘bioengineering’ category: Page 181

Mar 7, 2017

Zoltan Istvan Wants to Create Superpeople —Oh, and Also Be California’s Governor

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, economics, governance

I did a long-form interview on Medium’s Defiant of my run for California Governor. It covers many subjects (Trump, gene editing, basic income), as well as why I think technology is ready to change politics and governance forever:


By AJAI RAJ

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. It’s 2015, and the ever-humming machinery of American presidential politics is picking up steam. The American political machine runs on steam, okay? It’s very old.

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Mar 6, 2017

Nanoengineers 3D print biomimetic blood vessel networks

Posted by in categories: 3D printing, bioengineering, bioprinting, biotech/medical

The new research, led by nanoengineering professor Shaochen Chen, addresses one of the biggest challenges in tissue engineering: creating lifelike tissues and organs with functioning vasculature — networks of blood vessels that can transport blood, nutrients, waste and other biological materials — and do so safely when implanted inside the body.

Researchers from other labs have used different 3D printing technologies to create artificial blood vessels. But existing technologies are slow, costly and mainly produce simple structures, such as a single blood vessel — a tube, basically. These blood vessels also are not capable of integrating with the body’s own vascular system.

“Almost all tissues and organs need blood vessels to survive and work properly. This is a big bottleneck in making organ transplants, which are in high demand but in short supply,” said Chen, who leads the Nanobiomaterials, Bioprinting, and Tissue Engineering Lab at UC San Diego. “3D bioprinting organs can help bridge this gap, and our lab has taken a big step toward that goal.”

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Mar 4, 2017

Transhumanist Wants to Run for California Governor Under Libertarian Banner

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, economics, genetics, geopolitics, transhumanism

The Libertarian Republic covering my libertarian run for California Governor:


By Kody Fairfield

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Mar 3, 2017

Researchers remotely control sequence in which 2-D sheets fold into 3D structures

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, nanotechnology, satellites, solar power, sustainability

Inspired by origami, North Carolina State University researchers have found a way to remotely control the order in which a two-dimensional (2-D) sheet folds itself into a three-dimensional (3D) structure.

“A longstanding challenge in the field has been finding a way to control the sequence in which a 2-D sheet will fold itself into a 3D object,” says Michael Dickey, a professor of chemical and at NC State and co-corresponding author of a paper describing the work. “And as anyone who has done origami — or folded their laundry—can tell you, the order in which you make the folds can be extremely important.”

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Mar 3, 2017

Want more crop variety? Researchers propose using CRISPR to accelerate plant domestication

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, food, genetics, sustainability

The more crops we cultivate, the less chance our food supply wil get wiped out by a disease.


Out of the more than 300,000 plant species in existence, only three species—rice, wheat, and maize—account for most of the plant matter that humans consume, partly because in the history of agriculture, mutations arose that made these crops the easiest to harvest. But with CRISPR technology, we don’t have to wait for nature to help us domesticate plants, argue researchers at the University of Copenhagen. In a Review published March 2 in Trends in Plant Science, they describe how gene editing could make, for example, wild legumes, quinoa, or amaranth, which are already sustainable and nutritious, more farmable.

“In theory, you can now take those traits that have been selected for over thousands of years of crop domestication—such as reduced bitterness and those that facilitate easy harvest—and induce those mutations in plants that have never been cultivated,” says senior author Michael Palmgren, a botanist who heads an interdisciplinary think tank called “Plants for a Changing World” at the University of Copenhagen.

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Mar 2, 2017

Scientists Have Grown the World’s First Artificial Embryo, and It’s Nuts

Posted by in category: bioengineering

Em uma primeira experiência mundial, os cientistas conseguiram desenvolver um embrião artificial funcional, a partir do zero, usando dois tipos de células-tronco para construir a vida em uma placa de Petri.

As células-tronco foram cultivadas fora do corpo em uma bolha de gel, e foram capazes de se transformar em vários estágio inicial órgãos internos — assim como em um embrião regular. Os pesquisadores agora estão esperando a técnica vai resolver alguns grandes mistérios sobre os primórdios da vida.

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Mar 1, 2017

The curious case of cockroach magnetization

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, electronics

The discovery that living and dead cockroaches have strikingly different magnetic properties could help bioengineers design new magnetic sensors.

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Mar 1, 2017

‘Like a Bespoke Suit’: 3D-Printed Skin Breakthrough Gives Hope to Burn Victims

Posted by in categories: 3D printing, bioengineering, bioprinting, biotech/medical

A 3D bioprinter able to create human skin is already being used to help burns patients and carry out skin testing, Alfredo Brisac, CEO of Spanish bioengineering company BioDan, told Radio Sputnik.

Last month, scientists at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and the BioDan Group presented a prototype 3D bioprinter that can create human skin suitable for transplantation to patients or for use in cosmetic, chemical or pharmaceutical testing.

One of the first living human organs to be created using bioprinting, the 3D-printed skin is created using bio-inks with living cells that are deposited onto a structure that replicates nature. The bio-ink contains the key elements of keratinocytes, fibroblasts and fibrin, which can recreate the structure of the skin.

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Feb 26, 2017

IARPA Wants Ways to Protect Nation from Genome Editing

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, food

Sorry, you’re way, way too late as that genie is already in the hands to so many (good and bad) if we were going to control this; were over 2 years too late.


Gene editing could create pest-resistant crops, but it could also create new organisms that threaten humans, according to IARPA.

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Feb 26, 2017

Bioprinter makes fully functional human skin

Posted by in categories: 3D printing, bioengineering, bioprinting, biotech/medical, business

Scientists from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), CIEMAT (Center for Energy, Environmental and Technological Research), Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón, in collaboration with the firm BioDan Group, have presented a prototype for a 3D bioprinter that can create totally functional human skin. This skin is adequate for transplanting to patients or for use in research or the testing of cosmetic, chemical, and pharmaceutical products.

This research has recently been published in the electronic version of the scientific journal Biofabrication. In this article, the team of researchers has demonstrated, for the first time, that, using the new 3D printing technology, it is possible to produce proper human skin. One of the authors, José Luis Jorcano, professor in UC3M’s department of Bioengineering and Aerospace Engineering and head of the Mixed Unit CIEMAT/UC3M in Biomedical Engineering, points out that this skin “can be transplanted to patients or used in business settings to test chemical products, cosmetics or pharmaceutical products in quantities and with timetables and prices that are compatible with these uses.”

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