Hundreds of thousands of people die annually because the demand for organs far exceeds the donor supply. Artificial organs could save those lives — and scientists just made a huge breakthrough in the field by “bio-printing” artificial vascular networks.

Researchers from the University of Sydney, MIT, Harvard, and Stanford have successfully bio-printed blood vessels, offering 3D-printed organs access to nutrients, oxygen, and waste-disposal routes, according to a … Read More → "Researchers successfully 3D print blood vessels, a ‘game changer’ for artificial organs"

The Landesgartenschau Exhibition Hall in Stuttgart, Germany, is claimed to be the first building to have its core structure made entirely from interlocking timber sections created by robots. Made up of over 240 individual segments of beech plywood created using a robotic fabrication method, the 17 meter (55 ft) tall, 245 square meter (2,637 sq ft) structure required just 12 cubic meters (424 cubic feet) of timber to construct.

Looking remarkably like a very large peanut, the exhibition … Read More → "Robots help create ultra-thin wooden exhibition hall"

Well, restroom wait times are getting drastically reduced at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles thanks to a new stall indicator system from Tooshlights (yes, that’s really the name). Inspired by the city’s parking space lights in its garages, the company is applying the same logic to public restrooms at arenas and music venues — with the aforementioned amphitheater being the first installation. For places like the Bowl with long rows of stalls … Read More → "Public restrooms reduce waits by learning from parking garages"

Granett, a former technician at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has sketched out plans for a machine he calls the Bugjuggler, for which he’s currently soliciting corporate funding. The cutesy name hardly conveys the pure, ambitious madness of the project.

If constructed, it will rise 70 feet tall on two fixed legs. It … Read More → "This giant robot is designed to let you juggle cars (for real)"

Earlier this month, astronomers were excited to discover three supernovas in far-off galaxy, with a huge galaxy cluster sandwiched between us and them. The galaxies’ enormous gravity magnified the light of the exploding stars, an effect called gravitational lensing.

Since these were a particular type of exploding star, they can be used as cosmic yardsticks. That means astronomers were able to check the prescription, as it were, of the gravitational lenses. This … Read More → "How do we measure distances to other stars?"

Coleslaw is a fairly straightforward dish to make. And yet, Dawn Perry, Bon Appetit’s senior food editor, recently found herself staring at list of ingredients for a Fourth of July slaw that included a strange array of flavors: cabbage, tamarind, mayo, buttermilk, basil, two types of onions and flour. If you know anything about the summer side, this recipe was not … Read More → "How IBM’s Watson will make your meals tastier"

There’s something particularly eerie about an abandoned shopping mall. Perhaps it’s the stark contrast from its intended purpose: to see such a sterile place once designed to entice throngs of shoppers into its doors, now so completely devoid of any human life, dilapidated and darkened with time. It’s basically the very definition of post-apocalyptic. But in the case of the (now ironically named) New World shopping … Read More → "An abandoned mall in Bangkok has been overtaken by fish"

Currently being developed by Australian tech firm Optus, the buoy is anchored to a seabed-located box, that emits sonar signals into the surrounding water. A processor in the buoy analyzes the reflections of those signals, and is able to identify the sonar signature of shark-sized objects in the vicinity. To lessen the chances of it being fooled by animals like dolphins, it also takes note of how such objects propel themselves through the water, to see … Read More → "Clever Buoy uses sonar to raise the shark alarm"

Too many people die each year waiting on organ transplant lists, but a new technique could increase the number of available, viable organs. The technique, developed at Harvard, “supercools” the organ while pumping it full of nutrients and oxygen, making it last up to three times longer. That can save a lot of lives.

Currently organs are only considered viable for 24-hours after being harvest from a body. Supercooled organs harvested … Read More → "New organ “supercooling” technique could save lives of those on transplant lists"

For more than a million years, the simple stone hand axe was one of our most important tools, but in the age of smartphones and virtual reality it can be hard to understand how revolutionary it really was. In their design series “Man Made,” Dov Ganchrow and Ami Drach use 3D printing to make the tool’s importance a little more … Read More → "Designers recreate stone age tools with space age technology"