vessel

For the first time in the U.S., surgeons have successfully transplanted a bioengineered blood vessel into the arm of a patient -- a possible stepping stone toward more complex human-engineered organs such as livers or eyes, and potentially a more immediate boon for kidney dialysis patients and perhaps even people with heart disease.

The surgery represents a major milestone for tissue engineering: The bioengineered blood vessel can be stored relatively easily and donated universally (unlike veins harvested from a patient's own body and therefore specific to that body). Also, it's human-cell-based, with no biological properties that can cause organ rejection.

"We hope this sets the groundwork for how these things can be grown, how they can incorporate into the host, and how they can avoid being rejected immunologically," Jeffrey H. Lawson, a vascular surgeon and biologist at Duke Medicine who helped develop the technology and performed the implantation, said in a statement. "A blood vessel is really an organ -- it's complex tissue. We start with this, and one day we may be able to engineer a liver or a kidney or an eye."… Read more

If you think that engineering functional human body parts using a printer and laser is a sign of the end of time, you might want to proceed with caution. If you think such a development portends the saving of lives, read on.

Because researchers from an interdisciplinary group of five Fraunhofer institutes in Germany are announcing their successful creation of completely functional blood vessels using 3D printing and intense laser impulses.

First, advances in 3D printing have enabled researchers to print organs inexpensively and quickly using a modified inkjet printer. As in, very modified.

Using special inks, the researchers were … Read more

Pirates Lite is a fun three-level preview of Pirates: Sea Battle 2, a nautical-combat arcade game in which you fight enemy ships with cannons and boarding parties.

The game has an easy-to-learn, two-thumb touch-screen interface: you move and steer your ship with a spinning steering wheel under your right thumb, while firing cannons with your left thumb. To fire on an enemy ship, you want to turn around to broadsides (so the side of your ship is facing your target), then press the cannon button to fire some or all of your guns. Status meters on each ship--including your own--show … Read more

Battle of Midway is a one-player iPhone adaptation of the popular "Battleship" guessing game (and the iconic Milton Bradley game of the same name).

Gameplay closely mirrors the analog version, with you and an opponent (an enemy AI, in this case) secretly placing rectangular ships on a 10-by-10 grid, which you can do manually or automatically. You then take turns guessing the location of each other's ships by firing at specific squares, and Battle of Midway has both "volley" and "salvo" modes (either fire until you miss or fire once for each of … Read more

Here it is: "The newest and most advanced" robo-boat in the world. It sure looks the part.

Unveiled this month at IDEX 2007 in Abu Dhabi, the Marine Robotics Vessels International (MRVI) Interceptor is a fourth-generation unmanned surface vessel. Project partner SeaRobotics provided the command, control, navigation and data-acquisition system, which allows both remote control by radio and autonomous operation. In autonomous mode, an onboard computer will steer the rig on a pre-determined course to complete its programmed mission. Onboard sensors allow the craft to change course to avoid collisions.

Applications range from anti-piracy patrol to oil rig … Read more