Bioprinter prototype. Credit: Image courtesy of Universidad Carlos III de Madrid – Oficina de Información Científica

Scientists from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), CIEMAT Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón, with the firm BioDan Group, have a prototype for a 3D bioprinter that can create 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 new human skin is one of the first living human organs created using bioprinting to be introduced to the marketplace...

When a crystal structure of bismuth (right) is decompressed from 32,000 atmospheres (3.2 GPa) to 12,000 atmospheres (1.2 GPa) it melts into a liquid at about 23,000 atmospheres (2.3 GPa) (middle). It then recrystallizes at 12,000 atmospheres (left). The so-called metastable liquid produced by this decompression occurs in a pressure-temperature range similar to where the supercooled bismuth is produced. Supercooled liquids are cooled below the freezing point without turning into a solid or a crystal. Credit: Chuanlong Lin and Guoyin Shen, Carnegie Institution

Phase transitions surround us – for instance, liquid water changes to ice when frozen and to steam when boiled...

NTU researcher Lee Jia Min working on 3D bioprinting of blood vessels. Credit: Image courtesy of Nanyang Technological University

Tissue implants customized to a patient could soon be printed using a new type of 3D-printer under development by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) and a Singapore-based 3D printing start-up focused on healthcare. This new printer can print the supporting structure layer by layer and insert living cells to form a live tissue that could aid in regeneration of particular tissues or organs. The industry research tie-up is one of the many partnerships made possible by the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Cluster, also known as NAMIC.

Since the formation of NAMIC by the National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore and SPRING Singap...

Artist’s rendering of the space collision 466 million years ago that gave rise to many of the meteorites falling today. Credit: © Don Davis, Southwest Research Institute.

466 million years ago, there was a giant collision in outer space. Something hit an asteroid and broke it apart, sending chunks of rock falling to Earth as meteorites since before the time of the dinosaurs. But what kinds of meteorites were making their way to Earth before that collision? In a new study in Nature Astronomy, scientists have tackled that question by creating the first reconstruction of the distribution of meteorite types before the collision. They discovered that most of the meteorites we see today are rare, while many meteorites that are rare today were common before the collision.

Philipp Heck of The Fie...