Lifeboat Foundation

This Week in Science — March 20 −27, 2016.

3D printed heart replicas, A new type of colossal galaxy, shutting down HIV with gene editing, and more.

WinSun Global, the Chinese company that just last year made headlines for building the world’s first 3D printed villa and the tallest 3D printed apartment block, has now partnered with the city of Dubai to construct what is being hailed as the world’s first 3D printed office.

When the apocalypse comes, it won’t do so on four rotors. Drones, especially drones-as-we-know-them—the affordable, commercially available quadcopters—are only really engines of their own destruction. Zoltan Istvan, transhumanist candidate for President, wrote today that the American constitution is unprepared for the challenges of swarming robots. With all due I respect, I couldn’t possibly disagree more.

“The Second Amendment Isn’t Prepared for a 3D-Printed Drone Army”, Istvan argues, and vividly sets a scene of total despair:

Outer space is about to get its first pop-up retail shop.

Lowe’s, the home-improvement store, has teamed up with Made In Space, the company behind the world’s first zero-G 3D printer, to launch the first commercial manufacturing facility on the International Space Station.

The Additive Manufacturing Facility (AMF), as it is called, is an advanced, permanent 3D printer that will be available for use not only by NASA and its station partners, but also by researchers, educational organizations and commercial customers.

Continue reading “First Retailer in Orbit: Lowe’s and Made In Space Send 3D Printer to Station” »

The world’s first 3D-printed hotel suite is located in the Philippines. This is just the first in a series of 3D-printed buildings the designer hopes to create in the area.

Planning a vacation to the Philippines? Consider staying at the Lewis Grand Hotel, where a newly-printed room awaits its first guests. You read that right. The hotel, which is located in Angeles City, Pampanga, has the world’s first 3D-printed hotel suite.

Printing a Hotel Suite in 100 Hours

Continue reading “This Hotel Is 3D Printed from Sand and Volcanic Ash” »

Lawrence Livermore electronics technologists Dale Kurita, at microscope, and Julian Larregui examine manufacturing circuits for 3D printing. Photo by Julie Russell/LLNL (Download Image)

YES PLEASE.

It’s 7.5 times lighter than air, and a cubic metre of the stuff weighs just 160 grams. It’s 12 percent lighter than the second lightest material in the world – aerographite – and you can balance a few cubic centimetres of the stuff on a dandelion head. Water is about 1,000 times as dense.

Continue reading “You can now 3D print the world’s lightest material – graphene aerogel” »

March 16th, 2016 Editors Nanomedicine

Biologically powered robots may one day be used to perform surgical procedures, deliver drugs, and maybe to even make humanoid overlords for us mortals. A big step toward that was taken by researchers at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who used light-activated muscle cells as the power source to make tiny bio-bots.

The optogenetic technique published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences relies on genetically engineered mouse muscle cells that were made to contract in response to blue light. Rings of these cells were placed around a 3D printed flexible rods of different lengths between two and seven millimeters. When light was illuminated over the mechanism, the biobots contracted and walked in a certain direction. Various lengths and configurations were tried to achieve the best walking results. Moreover, the researchers were able to change the direction of the walking bio-bot.

Continue reading “Light Activated Bio-Bots Powered by Live Muscle Cells (VIDEO)” »

And it wouldn’t actually be that expensive, thanks to robots, 3D printing, and SpaceX.