Gizmorama - November 2, 2015

Good Morning,

Attention, Star Wars fans! The University of Sussex has developed first-ever sonic tractor beam that has the ability to lift and move objects via sound waves. Let's just hope that The Empire doesn't get their mitts on it.

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

Until Next Time,
Erin

P.S. Did you miss an issue? You can read every issue from the Gophercentral library of newsletters on our exhaustive archives page. Thousands of issues, all of your favorite publications in chronological order. You can read AND comment. Just click GopherArchives

***
*-- Scientists show off sonic tractor beam --*
FALMER, England - Researchers have unveiled the first-ever sonic tractor beam, capable of lifting and moving objects using only sound waves.

Tractor beams from science-fiction narratives typically consist of some sort of laser-like column able to pick up and manipulate spaceships. In reality, the new technology isn't quite that powerful.

Designed by scientists at the University of Sussex, the newly unveiled tractor beam uses small, specially arranged speakers to move a tiny ball made of polystyrene. A collection of 64 mini loudspeakers creates columns of dense sound waves.

These sonic columns create a sort of force field that traps the ball in the air. By changing the levels and distribution of the high-pitched and high-intensity sound waves, the device can move ball through the air.

"In our device we manipulate objects in mid-air and seemingly defy gravity," Sriram Subramanian, Sussex researcher, said in a press release. "We can individually control dozens of loudspeakers to tell us an optimal solution to generate an acoustic hologram that can manipulate multiple objects in real-time without contact."

In a new paper, published this week in the journal Nature Communications, scientists detailed three acoustic force fields shapes that can be used to trap and move tiny objects. The shapes resemble a pair of tweezers, a vortex and a cage.

Researchers say the technology could potentially be used to deliver medical therapies. For examples, sound waves could maneuver a drug capsule through soft tissue.


*-- Scientists: New method may allow for 3-D printed organs --*
PITTSBURGH - Hard objects are created on 3-D printers by placing using thin layers of plastic or metal, slowly constructing the object. For several years, doctors have made hard implants using the printers, but soft tissues such as organs are more difficult because the materials used for them can't support their own weight.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University may have solved the problem, however, by devising a method of 3-D printing soft objects by layering the materials they're made with inside of another specially designed type of gel.

Adam Feinberg, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at Carnegie Mellon, said the research has been made somewhat easier because the research team used off-the-shelf 3-D printers and open source software to augment the software that operates them.

"The challenge with soft materials -- think about something like Jello that we eat -- is that they collapse under their own weight when 3-D printed in air," Adam Feinberg, lead author of the study, said in a press release. "So we developed a method of printing these soft materials inside a support bath material. Essentially, we print one gel inside of another gel, which allows us to accurately position the soft material as it's being printed, layer-by-layer."

The researchers developed a printing method called FRESH, or "Freeform Reversible Embedding of Suspended Hydrogels," that starts with an appropriate-sized container of support gel. The printer, armed with a needle, injects other gels into the support gel based on computer-aided design models.

Once the structure is completed, the support gel is melted, leaving only the soft object that had been printed. In tests, the researchers created femurs, branched coronary arteries, trabeculated embryonic hearts, and human brains using the method.

Feinberg said his research team has had some focus on the heart, as they have constructed a properly designed organ and now are researching ways to inject living cardiac cells into the 3D-printed heart, providing a scaffold to grow a heart in the lab.

"Not only is the cost low, but by using open-source software, we have access to fine-tune the print parameters, optimize what we're doing and maximize the quality of what we're printing," Feinberg said. "It has really enabled us to accelerate development of new materials and innovate in this space. And we are also contributing back by releasing our 3-D printer designs under an open-source license."

The study is published Science Advances.

***
Missed an Issue? Visit the Gizmorama Archives