With 20 strings is it still a guitar?

 One of the specialty businesses in Rockford is Worland Guitars. I learned of Worland guitars from Kathryn Gustafson‘s blogtalkradio channel. You could pick up her radio interview podcast or visit Worland Guitars by clicking on the guitar picture. Besides getting the history of this unique 20 string, you can view YouTube videos on how Worland got started and the unique sound techniques and technology they have in guitar making.

Regenerative Medicine in 2012: Assessing Predictions from 2007

 Regenerative Medicine is bound to make strides in 2012. Dr. Atala, Regenerative Medicine guru, made a presentation in 2007 about the advances in technology predicting what the state of medicine would be in 2012. You can watch it by clicking here. Conferences are already scheduled for March in North Carolina and September in Austria. 2012 should prove an intriguing year for the Regenerative Medicine industry.

The Secret to Job Security in the 21st Century

 Tissue Engineering or Regenerative Medicine as a career appears to be the hot job choice for the 1st quarter of the 21st century. Time magazine in a cover story reported that researchers are predicting that they will make a pancreas in a petri dish by the year 2015. In 2001 there were 3,000 people working in the industry. In 2011, a book. “Regenerative Medicine” is on the shelves. The book relates a chart showing 14,517  and 2,197 publications in Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine,  respectively, have been catalogued since 2001. The field is quite broad already including everything from stem cell research to organ regeneration. Organ regeneration is of particular interest to me as the use of 3D printing is sometimes incorporated to develop the “scaffold” on which the appropriate cells are fused or allowed to permeate. The size of the market in the U.S. is estimated at 1.6 Billion in 2010. Estimates for growth vary widely, some approaching $20 Billion in the next 15 years. This represents an industry poised for growth. Growth means new jobs will be there to support this growth.

Shark inspired design! Is it time for JAWS-7? The microbe killer.

Although not strictly related to the Shark Tank show, I found this new technology fascinating. Maybe in a future post there may be a corollary analogy but for now this is just a neat story. A materials science specialist was working on a research team to investigate anti-fouling techniques for Navy vessels. As they watched an algae-laden submarine pull into port he asked, “Does any slow-moving fish not have algae?” You guessed it! The shark. They went on to study the geometry of shark skin and have mimicked it in a plastic film. The results are remarkable. From boats to medical coatings that stop the spread of bacteria on well-touched surfaces. You can read the full background at the Sharklet website. An interesting sidelight to our region is that the film has such fine, precise features that make it difficult to manufacture. Micro-machining came to the rescue to provide miniature, precise features in the tooling to be imparted to the film.

Which came first? The chicken or the dinosaur? Jurassic Park revisited.

We always used to quiz over which came first, the chicken or the egg? Paleontologist Jack Horner has a vision to live his dream and have his own dinosaur. He gives a captivating TED talk about how he plans to reach his life long dream and amuse sixth graders everywhere! Give it a watch by clicking here.

Regenerative Medicine – Frontier in 3 D printing

 In my personal experience with 3-D printing at the EIGERlab it wasn’t too hard to let your imagination run wild and think about the possibilities of 3-D objects on demand. In that world we dealt with powders and liquids that would harden under computer control to make physical inanimate objects. What if we take the inorganic stuff out and put in organic stuff? Well, a few progressive researchers are doing just that! In particular note is the work of Anthony Atala and his colleagues at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in North Carolina. They constructed  new bladders for seven patients and these are still working today. He has appeared more than once at TED. In his latest appearance he brings one of these seven patients to the stage. See what he has to say by clicking here. I was particularly intrigued with the adaptions to an ordinary ink jet printer for printing out these biological structures.

What is also fascinating is the use of scaffolding to begin a two-part process depending on the mission of the organ. In the case of a blood vessel, a tubular frame is doped with muscle tissue on the outside and slippery lining on the inside. How clever! The video has many other dimensions of the process depicted including exercising muscle tissue before it is reinserted in the patient. Give it a watch!

Related Articles

• TED Talks – Anthony Atala on Printing Human Tissue (medgadget.com)

Roger Ebert at TED

  I  always enjoyed watching Siskel and Ebert debate about the hot picks in movies. I sort of miss them. I was intrigued when I saw one of them reappear in the blogosphere.  Pulitzer prize winner Roger Ebert had an interesting speaking engagement at TED in March, 2011. Click here to see what he and his computer had to say.

3 Top things my Customers get from me

 My customers go away with 3 things from my class:

1. Education

They learn the terminology of social media.

2. Skills

They practice and gain proficiency in using the tools.

3. Sense of Accomplishment

They come away with a fully integrated Social Media Marketing  Framework.

Precision drives the car?

 What’s the greatest enabler for mass production?

Many people instantly think of the moving assembly line when they think mass production. In today’s manufacturing world it is second nature to bring the product to the worker. Sometimes the product travels miles inside the factory before it ever gets to the shipping dock. Can we credit the moving line concept as the enabler to mass production? Not quite. The moving assembly line is only made possible by standardized, interchangeable parts. This tale is artfully told in one of my favorite books, “The Machine that Changed the World”. In a recent interview I told about my search for the meaning of ‘Jo-blocks’ and how this book led to an understanding of the interplay of precision, measurement, and interchangeability in the origins of mass production. You can read it here.

Counting Crows – 1 penny at a time

What would you train a crow or crows to do? I saw this first as a TED video. I was intrigued with the concept of technology interacting with the biosphere. Upon further investigation I found that Josh Klein has spoken at a lot of events about his crow vending machine. He was interviewed on NPR which is where I found this short clip: