Gizmorama - April 22, 2015

Good Morning,

The 3-D printer revolution is happening right now. I'm not sure why, but now with Disney getting involved, and if you have kids, you'll be getting one sooner than you think.

Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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*-- Disney develops layered fabric 3-D printer --*
SEOUL (UPI) - Most plastic is pretty hard -- not ideal for making soft, squeezable toys and playthings for little ones. New technology from Disney aims to solve the problem.

Scientists at Disney Research, Carnegie Mellon University and Cornell University have designed and built a 3-D printer that constructs objects out of layers of fabric, not plastic. The newly developed machine can make lovable bunnies, balls, dolls, cellphone cases -- anything, really -- all made out of soft, squishy layers of woven thread and yarn.

"Today's 3-D printers can easily create custom metal, plastic, and rubber objects," Jim McCann, associate research scientist at Pittsburgh-based Disney Research, explained in a press release. "But soft fabric objects, like plush toys, are still fabricated by hand. Layered fabric printing is one possible method to automate the production of this class of objects."

The printer works by cutting pieces of fabric into proper shapes and stacking the different shapes to form a 3-D object. Each shape is cut loosely leaving excess fabric. The excess fabric acts as support as the shapes are stacked. Each layer is coated with a heat-sensitive adhesive. Once assembled, the object is heated to bind. Once bonded, the excess fabric is cut away.

In a recent demonstration, the printer constructed a bunny measuring 2.5 inches tall. The rabbit was formed by 32 layers of 2-millimeter-thick felt. It took 2.5 hours to print.

"The layers in the bunny print are evident because the bunny is relatively small compared to the felt we used to print it," McCann said. "It's a trade-off -- with thinner fabric, or a larger bunny, the layers would be less noticeable, but the printing time would increase."

The printer can incorporate two different types of fabric into an object. If fabric impregnated with wire is used, the printer can construct a product that conducts electricity. In another demonstration, the printer was able to build a smartphone case that channeled energy from the phone in order to illuminate an LED light.

Researchers unveiled their new technology at the Association for Computing Machinery's Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, held this week in Seoul, South Korea.


*-- MIT study links family income, test scores, brain anatomy --*
BOSTON (UPI) - It goes without saying that poor children aren't born less intelligent. But a long list of studies show children in low-income households consistently rank below their more well-off peers when it comes to standardized testing and other measures of academic achievement.

A new study goes a step further, linking poverty to changes in the adolescent brain. When researchers at MIT scanned the brains of some 54 students, they found high-income students (in comparison with lower-income peers) have thicker cortex tissue in areas of the brain linked with visual perception and knowledge acquisition. These differences in brain structure were also linked with a dichotomy in standardized test scores.

"Just as you would expect, there's a real cost to not living in a supportive environment. We can see it not only in test scores, in educational attainment, but within the brains of these children," study author John Gabrieli, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, said in a press release. "To me, it's a call to action. You want to boost the opportunities for those for whom it doesn't come easily in their environment."

Previous studies have linked brain anatomy differences to income levels. And a variety of studies have explored the link between wealth, poverty and academic success. But the latest from MIT is the first to locate the correlation between all three.

Researchers instigated the study as a way to better understand the wide gap between students from poor families and those from more affluent circumstances. Even as racial gaps have narrowed, the achievement gap between rich and poor children has remained largely the same.

"The gap in student achievement, as measured by test scores between low-income and high-income students, is a pervasive and longstanding phenomenon in American education, and indeed in education systems around the world," said study author Martin West, an associate professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. "There's a lot of interest among educators and policymakers in trying to understand the sources of those achievement gaps, but even more interest in possible strategies to address them."

While the latest study didn't attempt to identify reasons for the differences in brain structure and test scores, previous studies suggest poorer students are less likely to have been exposed to language at an early age. Poorer children are also more likely to be exposed to psychological stressors, and are less likely to have access to educational resources like books. All these factors have been linked with lower scholastic performance.

The silver lining, researchers say, is that a wealth of scientific evidence suggests the brain is tremendously resilient.

"There's so much strong evidence that brains are highly plastic," explained Gabrieli. "Our findings don't mean that further educational support, home support, all those things, couldn't make big differences."

While Gabrieli and his research partners did locate specific brain differences, more general cerebral measurements -- the amount of white matter, overall surface area, and number of axon bundles which aid in connectivity between different parts of the brain -- weren't correlated with socioeconomic status.

Researchers plan on using followup studies to further explore what strategies work best for mitigating cognitive differences.

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science.

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