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How to Print a House – 3D Printing [VID]

3D printers build 3-dimensional objects by spreading layers of supported materials over movable control surfaces. Current models can use a variety of materials, including metals, and can include colors in printed objects.

Looking into the future: imagine being able to 'print' an entire house or building. A system for doing just that with concrete is being developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The technique could make it possible to create fanciful, organic-looking shapes that would be difficult or impossible using molds. It could also allow the properties of the concrete itself to vary continuously, producing structures that are both lighter and stronger than conventional concrete!

The Future of Building: Self-Assembling Machines

Micromolds Build Tissues & Organs/Deliver Drugs

In an advance that could broadly expand the possible applications for microparticles in medicine, MIT engineers have developed a way to make microparticles of nearly any shape, using a micromold that changes shape in response to temperature.

Tiny particles made of polymers hold great promise for targeted delivery of drugs and as structural scaffolds for building artificial tissues. However, current production methods for such microparticles yield a limited array of shapes and can only be made with certain materials, restricting their usefulness.

The new MIT technology will allow for precisely placing drugs into different compartments of the particles, making it easier to control the timing of drug release, or arrange different cells into layers to create tissue that closely mimics the structure of natural tissues.

The new technique, described in a paper published online July 18 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, also allows researchers to create microparticles from a much more diverse range of materials, says Halil Tekin, an MIT graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science and lead author of the paper.

Currently, most drug-delivering particles and cell-encapsulating microgels are created using photolithography, which relies on ultraviolet light to transform liquid polymers into a solid gel. However, this technique can be used only with certain materials, such as polyethylene glycol (PEG), and the ultraviolet light may harm cells.

Another way to create microparticles is to fill a tiny mold with a liquid gel carrying drug molecules or cells, then cool it until it sets into the desired shape. However, this does not allow for creation of multiple layers.

The MIT research team, led by Ali Khademhosseini, associate professor in the MIT-Harvard Division of Health Sciences and Technology, and Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor, overcame that obstacle by building micromolds out of a temperature-sensitive material that shrinks when heated.

The mold is first filled with a liquid gel that contains one kind of cell or drug. After the gel has solidified, the mold is heated so the walls surrounding the solid gel shrink, pulling away from the gel and creating extra space for a second layer to be added. The system could also be modified to incorporate additional layers, Tekin says.

Artificial Tissue

So far, the researchers have created cylindrical and cubic particles, as well as long striped particles, and many other shapes should be possible, Tekin says. Their starting material was a gel made of agarose, a type of sugar.

The long striped particles would be particularly useful for engineering elongated tissues such as cardiac tissue, skeletal muscle or neural tissue. In this study, the researchers created striped particles with a first layer of fibroblasts (cells found in connective tissue), surrounded by a layer of endothelial cells, which form blood vessels. Researchers also created cubic and cylindrical particles in which liver cells were encapsulated in the first layer, surrounded by a layer of endothelial cells. This arrangement could accurately replicate liver tissue.

Such gels could also be embedded with proteins that help the cells orient themselves in a desired structure, such as a tube that could form a capillary. The researchers are also planning to create particles that contain collagen, which constitutes much of the body’s structural tissues, including cartilage.

Eventually, the researchers hope to use this technique to build large tissues and even entire organs. Such tissues could be used in the laboratory to test potential new drugs. “If you can create 3-D tissues which are functional and really mimicking the native tissue, they are going to give the right responses to drugs,” Tekin says.

This could speed up the drug discovery process and decrease the costs, because fewer animal experiments would be needed, he says.

How Twitter Began

What did Twitter look like before it was Twitter? Let us begin the story with an image…

We’re taught from a young age to avoid errors and failure at all costs, yet as any successful creator or entrepreneur will attest, breakthroughs don’t happen without them.

So we have to be willing (and able) to think differently. Instead of trying to develop elaborate plans or perfect ideas, we need to make small, affordable bets in order to learn quickly, build momentum and networks, and expand our abilities and resources in order to discover unique ideas and opportunities.

Consider how Twitter came about. It didn’t happen overnight. Jack Dorsey had been, in his words, “obsessed” by how people moved, interacted, and communicated since the early 1990s. So, he learned basic computer programming, created maps with dots on them, and used information from Manhattan dispatch systems to track the movement of bike messengers, taxis, police, firefighters, and couriers. It was a start.

Dorsey then transferred to New York University and got a job as a programmer with the largest dispatch company in the world. He learned a lot in the role and eventually focused on the short format messages that people sent to large dispatch boards. “This became the basis for all of my work going forward,” he recalled.

After moving to the San Francisco in 2000, Dorsey continued to tinker with short messaging ideas. He started a company that dispatched emergency and taxi services from the web, but soon realized how little he knew about start-ups. Coming at the end of the dotcom era, the timing was bad, too. “The company scuttled and was more or less a failure,” he acknowledged.

Yet he would learn from it.

Dorsey continued to use instant messaging and LiveJournal (the early blogging platform) to post updates on what he was doing – simple things like, “I’m on the phone” or “I’m listening to the Black Eyed Peas.” Once again, these were small, achievable steps toward Jack’s larger interests.

Then one night, Dorsey couldn’t sleep and sketched out an idea on a white board. The idea was to exchange short “status update” emails with friends using his RIM 850, a predecessor to the BlackBerry. The device had four lines of text good for short format messaging, but unfortunately his friends didn’t have RIM 850s.

So that experiment didn’t go anywhere either, but Dorsey got little bit smarter, a little bit better, and a little bit closer to a big idea.

Around that time, Dorsey sketched out what would become the basis for Twitter several years later. On top it reads “STATUS,” followed by a short fill-in the blank where he wrote “Reading.” But lacking resources, Dorsey had to get a real job while continuing to tinker on the side.

Dorsey was eventually hired as an engineer at Odeo, a podcasting company where people weren’t in love with podcasting. The company was, in fact, going nowhere, so founder Evan Williams asked employees for new ideas.

One night in 2006, Dorsey’s colleague sent him the first text message he ever received. “I had no idea what this thing was,” he remembered. But as Dorsey and his colleagues talked more about text messaging, he realized the short message format could be the missing link.

Williams gave him two weeks and another programmer to develop the idea. After the prototype was a resounding success internally at Odeo, Williams upped the ante for a six-month project then launched a full-scale version publically in July 2006. Twitter would consume more and more resources until Williams spun it off as a separate company in 2007.

Of course, luck was an important factor, but Dorsey’s approach was brilliant. He focused like a laser on short messaging and made hundreds (if not thousands) of small, affordable bets in that area, most of which failed. But with each step he got slightly smarter, better, and closer until he ultimately achieved a remarkable feat.

It’s an approach that the best entrepreneurs and creators have learned to do well, but anyone can do it. Jack began when he was a programmer.

It begins with a little bet. What will yours be?