HEART ON A CHIP IS NOW A REALITY

Harvard University researchers have made the first entirely 3D-printed organ on a chip with integrated sensing. Built by a fully automated, digital manufacturing procedure, the 3D-printed heart on a chip can be quickly fabricated and customized, allowing researchers to easily collect reliable data for short-term and long-term studies.

This new approach to manufacturing may one day allow researchers to rapidly design organs-on-chips, also known as micro physiological systems, that match the properties of specific disease or even an individual patent's cells.

"Our micro fabrication approach opens new avenues for in vitro tissue engineering, toxicology and drug screening research," said Kit Parker, tar family Professor of Bio engineering and Applied physics at SEAS, who coauthored the study. Parker is also a core faculty Member of the WYSS INSTITUTE.

                                                           3-D Printed heart on a chip
                                                   
                                                             
Organs-on-chips mimic the structure and function of native tissue and have emerged as a promising alternative to traditional animal testing. Harvard researcher have developed micro physiological systems that mimic the micro architecture and functions of lungs, heart, tongues and intestines.

The researchers developed six different inks that integrated soft strain sensors within the micro architecture of the tissue. In a single, continuous procedure, the team 3D printed those materials into a cardiac micro physiological device a heart on a chip with integrated sensors.



The researchers developed six different inks that integrated soft strain sensors within the micro-architecture  of the tissue. In a single, continuous procedure, the team 3D printed those materials into a cardiac micro physiological device — a heart on a chip — with integrated sensors.


Facts About Human Heart.

In average lifetime,the human heart will beat more than 2.5 billion times.

The heart pumps about 1 billion barrel of blood during an average lifetime enough to fill than 3 supertanker

Because the heart has its own electrical impulse,it can continue to beat even when separated from the body,as long it has an adequate supply of oxygen.

The heart of an average man beats approximately 70 times a minute,whereas the average woman has heart rate of 78 times beats per minute.

When the body is at rest,it takes only six seconds for the blood to go from the heart to the lungs and back, only eight seconds for it to go to brain and back,and only 16 seconds for it to reach the toes and travel all the way and back to the heart.


                                                                                           
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BAD MEMORIES COULD SOON BE "DELETED" FROM OUR MIND.

Memory-zapping devices like those in "Men in Black" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" could soon be a thing of the past (if they were ever a thing at all), as researchers have now discovered a much cheaper and less complicated way to erase unwanted memories. According to a new study that appears in the journal Psychonomic Buetllin and Review, the key to forgetting could lie in simply changing the way we think about the “context” surrounding our memories.

Context is quite a broad thing that can be hard to pin down. Essentially, it refers to everything else that’s going on around a particular event, and, according to the study authors, has a huge influence over how memories are “organized and retrieved” by the brain. For example, if you happen to have a bad experience after drinking too much tequila (itself a pretty effective memory eraser), then it’s likely that the very thought of taking another shot of the stuff will dig up unpleasant memories of that experience.

While you’ll probably only have yourself to blame for getting too drunk and putting yourself in a particular spirit, people who experience more serious distressing events can sometimes develop post-traumatic stress disorder(PTSD), whereby certain contextual cues cause them to relive painful memories. If sufferers can learn to dissociate these memories from their context, however, it may be possible to alleviate their PTSD.

To test whether this is possible, researchers from Princeton University and Dartmouth College subjected volunteers to a memory test, in which they were shown a list of words that they were told either to memorize or forget. In between viewing each word, they were shown an image of a natural landscape, such as a mountain or a forest, in the hope that they would automatically associate the memory of the words with this contextual cue.

People who experience distressing events often suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder

While this was going on, the researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to observe participants’ brain activity, noting the neural patterns that occurred as they encoded these contextual images.

Subjects were then asked to try and recall the word lists, while researchers once again measured their brain activity using fMRI. Results showed that those who had been told to remember the lists tended to replay the same neural patterns associated with context when recalling the words, indicating that the memory and its context had become intertwined in their brains.

However, those who did not remember the lists did not repeat this neural pattern when unsuccessfully attempting to recall the words, suggesting that the event and its context had not become entangled in their minds. Importantly, the degree to which this contextual recall was diminished correlated directly to participants’ ability to remember the words from the list.

Lead researcher Jeremy Manning explained in a statement that this process is similar to “pushing thoughts of your grandmother's cooking out of your mind if you don't want to think about your grandmother at that moment.” Having now identified this as a mechanism for forgetting, he hopes to see his work used as a platform to develop a range of new memory therapies.

“For example, we might want to forget a traumatic event, such as soldiers with PTSD. Or we might want to get old information 'out of our head,' so we can focus on learning new material,” he said.

                                                                                                             

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SCIENTISTS ARE ABLE TO FORM HYDROGEN INTO METAL.

A team of scientists say they have successfully turned hydrogen into a metal, potentially confirming a prediction made 80 years ago.

In 1935, scientists predicted that the element hydrogen could become a metal if subjected to enough pressure. Teams have been attempting to confirm the prediction ever since, but have not been able to construct a vise capable of squeezing the element enough without breaking the equipment.

But a team of scientists at Harvard University published a paper this week in the peer-reviewed journal Science saying they managed to squeeze hydrogen in a diamond vise to the point that the element became reflective, a key property of metals.

The study is not merely a parlor trick. Metallic hydrogen is thought to be a superconductor, meaning it could conduct electricity without any resistance. Electricity traveling through normal circuits loses energy to resistance overtime, often in the form of heat. This is why it is harder to send electrical currents (say, through the electricity grid) over long distances than short ones. But a current traveling through a superconducting material loses nearly zero energy.

Superconductive metals are used to make the magnets for devices such as hospital MRI machines and particle accelerators such as CERN. The trouble with many superconductors is that the materials now used need to be cooled to extremely low temperatures in order to work, which is expensive.

It is also possible that metallic hydrogen material may be "meta stable," according to Science Magazine. This means that, once formed, it may retain its metallic properties even at normal temperatures and pressure levels, like diamonds. If so, it could conduct electricity at nearly 100 percent efficiency in normal conditions. Again, this could dramatically reduce the costs of transferring electrical currents, meaning more powerful and efficient electric motors, and a far more efficient electrical grid.

Scientists have been searching for such a material almost as long as they have known about superconductivity.

Of course, the study has its critics. Eugene Gregoryanz, a physicist at the University of Edinburgh, told Science Magazine he sees a several problems with the experiment's procedures.

"The word garbage cannot really describe it," said Gregoryanz, of the experiment.

The video below, from Harvard, discusses the discovery in detail:

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