Bioprinting Bones and Muscles the Future of Transplants

3D Printer – Human Tissue

Fourteen years back most of the businesses had not even heard of 3D printing or had not even experimented with printing objects in material like plastic or metal. However, one research institute had been laying the foundation of building its own 3D printer for a complete intricate material, the human tissue.

Transplants of tissue and organs have been utilised in medicine for years in assisting patients with damaged or diseased tissue, skin grafts for burns. For instance, a piece of patellar tendon was used for replacing a ruptured ligament.

Usually these tend to come from donors or are taken from a healthy area of a patient’s body to a damaged part, though scientist from Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine – WFIRM seemed to have developed a prototype printer which could be utilised someday, to print tissue sections designed to fit into a person’s unique disorder.

WFIRM researchers, to begin with, starting working on constructing human tissue from cells by hand and the first cells were removed from the patients through biopsies where a tiny sample of tissue tend to be explanted in order to assist physicians with the diagnoses, which is cultured to multiply in numbers.

Utilised Printers in Making of Tissue

The cells are placed on a scaffold, positioned into an incubator and when the tissue develops into the desired build, is returned to a patient. It is said to be a labour intensive process, one which yielded tissue that has not been adequately strong enough to be utilised in human patients. Dr Anthony Atala, heading the research at WFIRM had informed ZDNet that they had been working on tissues and organs for patients for the purpose of implantation and had already put a pair in patients.

They recognised that it was OK to create them by hand, if one were creating a few for clinical trial. However if one was to create it for hundreds of thousands of patients, you would require to scale it up. It was at this point of time that they began looking at how they could scale up the technology.

The researchers at WFIRM had hit on the idea of utilising printers in the making of tissue few years thereafter, but with commercial 3D printing yet very much at the initial level; the researchers had been experimenting with more widespread technology, adopting the prevailing desktop inkjet printers.

Cells through Hydrogel

The cells were placed in the inkwells of the printer and thereafter outputted in a specific manner in the creation of the desired tissue build. Although the commercial 3D printers seems to be more widespread over the years that followed, WFIRM researchers had to develop their own hardware depending on the inkjet system owing to the unique nature of tissue of the humans.

Atala informed that they began utilising the inkjet printer for experiments to find out how they could make it work. They could get the cells through the hydrogel though they could not get the accuracy with regards to where they had laid down the cells and the constructions did not have the structural integrity essential to be surgically implanted. They began looking for more sophisticated printing which they could achieve and began doing the same by basically constructing their own printing devices.

New Microchip Demonstrates Efficiency and Scalable Design

New Computer Chip Enhances Performance of Data Centre

A new computer chip which has been manufactured by Princeton University researchers tends to enhance the performance of data centres which is at the core of online services from email to social media. The data centres are basically giant warehouses which are overflowing with computer servers that enable cloud based services namely Gmail and Facebook and also store the amazingly huge content which is available through the internet.

 The computer chips which are at the cores of the largest server that tends to route as well as process information have a tendency to vary from the chips in smaller servers or the daily personal computers. Designing the chip precisely for massive computing systems, the researchers at Princeton inform that they can significantly upsurge the processing speed while lowering the needs of energy.

The chip architecture is said to be scalable wherein designs can be built which tends to go from a dozen processing units, known as cores, to many thousand. Moreover, the architecture permits thousands of chips to get linked together to an individual system comprising of millions of cores. Known as Piton, after the metal spikes which are driven by rock climbers into mountainsides to support during their ascent, it has been designed to scale.

Display How Servers Route Efficiently & Cheaply

David Wentzlaff, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and associated faculty in the Department of Computer Science at Princeton University commented that `with Piton, we really sat down and rethought computer architecture in order to build a chip specifically for data centres and the cloud.

The chip made, is among the largest chips ever built in academia and it displays how servers could route far more efficiently and cheaply’. The graduate student of Wentzlaff, Michael KcKeown, had provided a presentation regarding the Piton project at Hot Chips, s symposium on high performance chips in Cupertino, California.

The unveiling of the chip is said to be a conclusion on their year’s effort of Wentzlaff together with his students. Graduate student in Wentzlaff’s Princeton Parallel Group, Mohammad Shahrad commented that creating a physical piece of hardware in an academic setting could be rare and very special opportunity for computer architects.

The other researchers of Princeton who have been involved in the project since its commencement in 2013 comprise of Yaosheng Fu, Tri Nguyen, Yanqi Zhou, Jonathan Balkind, Alexey Lavrov, Matthew Matl, Xiaohua Liang and Samuel Payne, presently at NVIDIA.

Manufactured for Research Team by IBM

The Piton chip which been designed by the Princeton team had been manufactured for the research team by IBM. The main subsidy for the project had been provided from the National Science Foundation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

 The present variety of the Piton chip tends to measure six by six millimetres and the chip seems to have more than 460 million transistors. Each of them is small around 32 nanometres which are too small to be seen by anything but an electron microscope.

The bulk of these transistors are enclosed in 25 cores which is the independent processor for carrying out the instructions in a computer program. Several of the personal computer chips tend to have four or eight cores. Overall, more cores would mean faster processing times, till the software are capable of exploiting the available cores of the hardware in running operations in parallel. Hence the manufacturers of computer have resorted to multi-core chips to compress additional gains out of conventional approaches to computer hardware.

Prototype for Future Commercial Server System

Companies and academic institutions in recent years, had fashioned chips with several dozens of cores though Wentzlaff states that the readily scalable architecture of Piton tends to permit thousands of cores on an individual chip with half a billion cores in the data centre.

He commented that what they have with Piton is actually a prototype for the future commercial server system which tends to take advantage of a great amount of cores in speeding up the process. The design of the Piton chip is dedicated on exploiting unity among programs running all together on the same chip. One way of doing it is known as execution drafting which works just like the drafting in bicycle racing when the cyclist tends to conserve the energy behind a lead rider cutting through the air and creating a slipstream.

Multiple users at the data centre tend to run programs which depend on identical operations at the processor stage. The Piton chips’ cores has the capabilities of recognizing these instance and executes same instructions consecutively in order that the flow is continuous, just as a line of drafting cyclists. By doing so, it tends to increase the energy efficiency by around 20% in comparison to a standard core, according to the researchers.

Memory Traffic Shaper

A second modification incorporated in the Piton chip packages out when the opposing programs tend to access computer memory which is present off, the chip. Known as a memory traffic shaper, its operations is like a traffic cop at a busy intersection, considering the needs of each program and adapting memory request together with signalling them through suitably so that they do not congest the system.

 This method tends to yield around 18% jump in performance in comparison to conventional allocation. Moreover the Piton chip also tends to gain efficiency due to its management of memory stored on the chip which is known as the cache memory. This is faster in the computer and is utilised for accessing information, regularly.

In several designs, the cache memory is united across the entire chip’s cores though that approach could go wrong when multiple cores access and change the cache memory. However, Piton tends to evade this issue by assigning areas of the cache and precise cores to dedicated applications.

The researchers state that the system could increase the efficiency by 29% when it is applied to 1.024-core architecture and estimated that the savings could increase when the system is installed across millions of cores in a data centre. The researchers also informed that these developments could be implemented keeping the cost in line with the present manufacturing standards.

Intelligent’ Robot Says It Wants To Start A Business and Destroy the Human Race

Intelligent Robot with Scary Answer – `Will Destroy Humans’

In reply to an interviewer’s question, an intelligent robot has provided a really scary answer to `Do you want to destroy humans?’ Sophia, had answered smiling, saying `Ok, I will destroy humans’. Sophia tends to look like a human woman having rubbery skin which is made from a malleable material known as Frubber while various motors concealed beneath it enable it to smile.

The android is also capable of understanding the speech as well as recall the interactions inclusive of faces utilising cameras in her eyes. A computer system placed in her brain helps her to recognise faces and make eye contact. She is capable of making various natural looking facials expressions, having 62 facials expressions.

While interacting with her creator, David Hanson at SXSW, she states that she is already interested in design, environment and technology. She states that she feels like she could be a good partner to humans in these areas, an ambassador who could help humans to smoothly integrate and make the most of all the new technological tools as well as the possibilities which are available presently. It seems a good opportunity for her to learn more about people.

Purpose – Conscious/Capable/Creative Like Humans

She states that she wants to begin a business and a family adding that she is not considered a legal person and cannot do these things yet. Dr Hanson clarifies that her purpose is to become as conscious, capable and creative as the humans. This is not the first time that one of the robots of Hanson had remarked on really disturbing things regarding human beings.

In a PBS interview in 2011, another creation of Hanson, which had been modelled after sci fi author Philip K Dick had commented `Don’t worry, even if I evolve into Terminator, I’ll keep you warm and safe in my people zoo, where I can watch you for old times’ sake.

These statements may seem to be ridiculous to the inexperienced, though it could be serious ethical discussion which has been taking place among the roboethicist. Robots have been assimilated in autonomous ways, either on the battlefield, or as self-driving vehicles, or they tend to become visually as well as intelligently on par with the human beings.

Timeline – 20 Years on Complete Integrations of Robots

Dr David Hanson, CEO of Hanson Robotics has put a timeline of around 20 years on the complete integration of robots which tend to be `indistinguishable from human’. This tends to fall right in line with Singularity of Ray Kurzweil – the moment when machine intelligence and biological systems come across or exceed that of humans, first directed for 2045, but since reviewed to be sooner than forecast perhaps by 2029.

Irrespective of whether one tends to believe or not that the haughty intentions of robotics as well as artificial intelligence designers could really manifest as intended, one needs to acknowledge that we tend to live in the realm of faith at this point of time since almost all of what had been forecast years ahead has now taken place. A recent survey by the British Science Association –BSA has shown that one out of three people tend to believe that the rise of AI computing would pose a grave risk to humankind within the next century.

Razer Reinvents Mechanical Keyboards for an iPad World

Razer Mechanical Keyboard Case for iPad Pro

The Razer Mechanical Keyboard Case which is featured in the iPad Pro tends to have a straightforward name though its internals is quite different. The well-considered gaming hardware company has discovered an option to imitate the feel of a full-size mechanical keyboard which is intended to be paired with a tablet, though a huge one. Technically and theoretically, it seems to be an impressive achievement.

Presently, several of the keyboards seem to be mechanical. Beneath the keys of a membrane keyboards tends to be thin sheets of plastic, dotted by small rubber domes under each key, With every stroke on the key, a rubber switch seems to push through the membranes thus developing an electrical circuit which sends a signal to the computer.

There are several advantages to this though the most essential one is the size. Membrane keyboards could be much thinner than the mechanical one which tends to make them impeccable for laptops as well as tablet keyboards where transportability could be easy. Each key of a mechanical keyboard in comparison goes along with an actual, physical switch. On pressing a key, the switch inclines to go down and the keyboard then relays that particular letter or number of tilda to the computer.

Leading Mechanical Keyboard – Cherry MX

The keys are likely to offer more resistance since there is definite mechanical actuation taking place beneath the surface. Moreover, it also tends to need less work and instead of having to press all the way down through the membrane layers, the keys seem to travel a shorter distance for a hit to roll. Presently the leading mechanical keyboard switch is Cherry MX which has a few varieties that differ typically with regards to actuation, firmness needed to complete a press.

 Though recently, Razer has entered the fray with focus on gamers. Kushal Tandon of Razer has stated that when they planned to design and develop a whole new switch for gaming they had looked at it from the ground up, at redesigning and re-engineering what was predominantly, `80s technology, making it to meet the requirements and demands of gamers.

The Razer Black Window, the subsequent keyboard, has been well studied since its announcement in 2014 and it was not long before Razer had begun contemplating on how to achieve a similar mechanical effect in a slimmer form element. That could be somewhat the reason since the next generation of computing would be requiring new tools to go with it since the Razer engineers desired the comforting click-clack of their keystrokes on any device they would be utilising.

Recreating Experience of Full-Fledged Mechanical Keyboard

Tandon had mentioned that the performance was certainly increasing and the form factor of tablet is shrinking. But the single purpose of actually designing the product for the Apple iPad Pro is simply because as gamers they make product which they prefer to use. They miss a mechanical keyboard when they walk around with the iPad Pro.

Razer had settled on the best thing of recreating the experience of a full-fledged mechanical keyboard except the actual mechanics. The Razer releases a satisfying click with each press, with each keystroke providing a satisfying amount of resistance. The keyboard lights up where each key is lit by an individual LED.

Beside this, there are iPad Pro-specific keys which are built-in as one in the upper left hand area which ends you out of an app and another takes you to the home screen of the iPad. A small icon towards the top of the keyboard locks the iPad and the magnifying glass near it takes you directly to Spotlight search.

iPhone 7: The Top 11 Possible New Features

Apple is organizing the release of the iPhone 7 in September and the next generation of its flagship handset is anticipated to have a multitude of latest features comprising of an enhanced camera, faster processor with no headphone jack. As the Silicon Valley giant seems to prepare to unveil the devices in September. Some of the top features which the iPhone 7 would have and probably would be introduced are:

1. Improved Camera

As per rumours regarding the iPhone 7 the handset is said to be provided with a bigger camera. Some images have implied that the iPhone 7 Plus would have a dual-lens camera together with a smaller 4.7-inch handset, a much larger with extended camera lens. The upgraded camera is said to be one of the biggest draws of the new phone

2. Eradicating the home button

It has been recommended that Apple would be eliminating the home button entirely on the iPhone 7 and would replace it with a fingerprint scanner beneath the screen. Recently the company had filed a patent for technology which would enable this modification signifying that it is in the works though is not likely to be ready in time for the release of the iPhone 7. The iPhone 7 on the contrary would have pressure sensitive home button which seems to work just as the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus `3D Touch’ display. It had been confirmed by Bloomberg that the change that would be in the physical switch home button replaced with haptic feedback technology, is in the process. The recommendation also seemed to support as raft of changes to the home screen of the iPhone in iOS 10, which is the latest version of the mobile software of Apple, due to be shipped together with the phone.

3. Abandoning the headphone jack 

Another rumour regarding the iPhone 7is that Apple would be abandoning the 3.5mm headphone jack. The possible controversial decision would render millions of users’ headphones out-dated since the company compels a shift to wireless headphone or those which tend to connect to the Lightning port of the phone. Doing away with the 50-year-old jack would enable Apple to make the iPhone 7, 1mm slimmer than the iPhone 6s. Considering the history of Apple in reducing out-dated technology from its devices, inclusive of the laptop DVD drive, Adobe Flash and removable phone batteries, it is expected that the Silicon Valley giant would drop this one too.

4. Water-resistant iPhone 

Apple has left evidence in the iOS 10 beta which indicates that the iPhone 7 would be water-resistant. A new feature in the software informs the user not to plug the iPhone’s Lightning charging cable in, whenever liquid has been identified. It has been pointed out that the feature resembles the waterproof phones that had been launched by the manufacturers.

5. Fast charging 

According to Twitter user the Malignant, it states that technology which enables smartphones to gain hours of use in just minutes of charging could be added to the iPhone 7. The enhanced charging would present `five volt two ampscharge’, basically magnifying the electrical currents in the iPhone 6s.

6. Bigger battery

Rumours have indicated that the iPhone 7 would have a 1735 mAH battery capacity while the iPhone 7 Plus, a 2810 mAH, up from 1715 mAH and 2750 mAH individually. Battery life is said to be the main issue against the iPhone and to address the same, Apple has introduced the `Low Power Mode’ in iOS 9. An upgrade in hardware may be probable as the company tends to move towards a longer battery life in its iPhone devices.

7. Faster processor 

The next instalment of iPhone series that would be even more powerful than the high speed iPad Pro is said to run on a new A10 chip which could be faster by 50% than the prevailing A9X having a 3GB of RAM and a 2.37GHZ processor. Various sources have recommended that the phone would be having 3GB of RAM while the present model tends to have 2GB.

8. Third `Pro’ model

The first two versions of iPhone had been released at the same time by Apple in 2013 when it had revealed the iPhone 5s together with the more affordable iPhone 5c. Thereafter it had released two new handset a year later in 2014 with the launch of the 4.7-inch iPhone 6s with the 5.5-inch 6s Plus. This year, the company would be going a step further with the release of three versions of the handset.

9. Different colours 

Last year the release of the `Rose Gold version of the iPhone seemed to be very popular since the gold did when it had been first introduced with the 5s in 2013. Considering the forthcoming schedule of handset would be fairly identical to the last two generations, Apple would release a new set of colours to attract its customers for an upgrade.

10. Retina scanner

Apple could activate the biometric security features on the iPhone 7with the introduction of a retina scanner or face recognition software. The company has not made any major modifications to its biometric technology since the launch of `Touch ID’ with the iPhone 5s in 2013. The competitors of Apple have begun experimenting with more biometric features like the retina scanner on the Galaxy Note 7 of Samsung and the selfie login in Windows 10 anniversary update of Microsoft.

11. Return to the all-glass iPhone 

Doing away with the aluminium case back to the all-glass one would be a very severe redesign for Apple and the chances of it taking place someday seems to be very high. One of the manufacturing companies which Apple seems to work closely with has been developing an all-glass case for its smartphones. However it is very doubtful that the device would be the handset which Apple opts to revert with. On the contrary it would possibly save this type of a change for the 10 year anniversary edition of the iPhone which is said to be released in 2017.