3D-printed bicycle rivals modern aluminum frames

We’ve seen all sorts of objects printed from 3D printers, but the European Aerospace and Defence group (EADS) has shown off the first bike made from nylon—which they’re saying could replace traditional steel and aluminum bikes due to the affordable method it’s created.

The new manufacturing process is known as Additive Layer Manufacturing (ALM) and it allows single products to be grown from a fine powder of metal (such as titanium, stainless steel or aluminum), nylon or carbon reinforced plastics. Drip by drop, each part of the bike is made from powder with the machine connected to a computer loaded with the CAD bike design.

Aluminum bikes are already pretty light, but EADS is saying their nylon Airbike is 65 percent lighter. It’s also more eco-friendly to produce, and due to the nature of 3D printing, individual parts can be printed easily if damaged.

Andy Hawkins, lead engineer for ALM at EADS, described it as ‘a game changing technology’. "The beauty is that complex designs do not cost any extra to produce," he said. "The laser can draw any shape you like and many unique design features have been incorporated into the Airbike such as the auxetic structure to provide saddle cushioning or the integrated bearings encased within the hubs."

By removing production lines and the need for factories, Hawkins believes the costs of ‘manufacturing’ will be significantly reduced and, through this, ALM has the potential to reverse trends of urbanization that have historically accompanied industrialization.

3-D Printing Spurs a Manufacturing Revolution

SAN FRANCISCO — Businesses in the South Park district of San Francisco generally sell either Web technology or sandwiches and burritos. Bespoke Innovations plans to sell designer body parts.

The company is using advances in a technology known as 3-D printing to create prosthetic limb casings wrapped in embroidered leather, shimmering metal or whatever else someone might want.

Scott Summit, a co-founder of Bespoke, and his partner, an orthopedic surgeon, are set to open a studio this fall where they will sell the limb coverings and experiment with printing entire customized limbs that could cost a tenth of comparable artificial limbs made using traditional methods. And they will be dishwasher-safe, too.

“I wanted to create a leg that had a level of humanity,” Mr. Summit said. “It’s unfortunate that people have had a product that’s such a major part of their lives that was so underdesigned.”

A 3-D printer, which has nothing to do with paper printers, creates an object by stacking one layer of material — typically plastic or metal — on top of another, much the same way a pastry chef makes baklava with sheets of phyllo dough.

The technology has been radically transformed from its origins as a tool used by manufacturers and designers to build prototypes.

Fatty foods may cause cocaine-like addiction

Scientists have finally confirmed what the rest of us have suspected for years: Bacon, cheesecake, and other delicious yet fattening foods may be addictive.

A new study in rats suggests that high-fat, high-calorie foods affect the brain in much the same way as cocaine and heroin. When rats consume these foods in great enough quantities, it leads to compulsive eating habits that resemble drug addiction, the study found.

Doing drugs such as cocaine and eating too much junk food both gradually overload the so-called pleasure centers in the brain, according to Paul J. Kenny, Ph.D., an associate professor of molecular therapeutics at the Scripps Research Institute, in Jupiter, Florida. Eventually the pleasure centers "crash," and achieving the same pleasure–or even just feeling normal–requires increasing amounts of the drug or food, says Kenny, the lead author of the study.

"People know intuitively that there’s more to [overeating] than just willpower," he says. "There’s a system in the brain that’s been turned on or over-activated, and that’s driving [overeating] at some subconscious level."

In the study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, Kenny and his co-author studied three groups of lab rats for 40 days. One of the groups was fed regular rat food. A second was fed bacon, sausage, cheesecake, frosting, and other fattening, high-calorie foods–but only for one hour each day. The third group was allowed to pig out on the unhealthy foods for up to 23 hours a day.

They began to eat compulsively, to the point where they continued to do so in the face of pain. When the researchers applied an electric shock to the rats’ feet in the presence of the food, the rats in the first two groups were frightened away from eating. But the obese rats were not. "Their attention was solely focused on consuming food," says Kenny.

In previous studies, rats have exhibited similar brain changes when given unlimited access to cocaine or heroin. And rats have similarly ignored punishment to continue consuming cocaine, the researchers note.

See the original article at CNN.

Japanese researchers develop see-through goldfish

TOKYO (AFP) – First came see-through frogs. Now Japanese researchers have succeeded in producing goldfish whose beating hearts can be seen through translucent scales and skin.

The transparent creatures are part of efforts to reduce the need for dissections, which have become increasingly controversial, particularly in schools.

“You can see a live heart and other organs because the scales and skin have no pigments,” said Yutaka Tamaru, an associate professor in the department of life science at Mie University.

“You don’t have to cut it open. You can see a tiny brain above the goldfish’s black eyes.”

The joint team of researchers at Mie University and Nagoya University in central Japan produced the “ryukin” goldfish by picking mutant hatchery goldfish with pale skin and breeding them together.

“Having a pale colour is a disadvantage for goldfish in an aquarium but it’s good to see how organs sit in a body three-dimensionally,” Tamaru told AFP.

The fish are expected to live up to roughly 20 years and could grow as long as 25 centimetres (10 inches) and weigh more than two kilograms (five pounds), much bigger than other fish used in experiments, such as zebrafish and Japanese medaka, Tamaru said.

“As this goldfish grows bigger, you can watch its whole life,” he said.

Meanwhile another group of researchers who announced in 2007 they had developed see-through frogs said they planned to start selling the four-legged creatures, whose skin is transparent from the tadpole stage.

“We are making progress in their mass-production. They are likely to be put on the market next year,” said Masayuki Sumida, professor at the Institute for Amphibian Biology of Hiroshima University.

Sumida said see-through tadpoles and adult frogs would be available in the first half of next year in Japan for laboratories and schools and as pets, with a price tag expected to be below 10,000 yen (110 dollars) each.

He also wants to sell the creature abroad.

Animal rights activists have pressed for humane alternatives to dissections, such as using computer simulations.

Sumida’s team produced the creature from rare mutants of the Japanese brown frog, or Rena japonica, whose backs are usually ochre or brown. Two kinds of recessive genes have been known to cause the frog to be pale.

While goldfish are easier to keep, frogs are higher forms of life and therefore preferable for experiments, Sumida said.

New Yorkers beware! New cockroach hits the Big Apple

NEW YORK (AFP) – New Yorkers are used to fighting each other for space, but there may be a new contender in town according to a Rockefeller study that appears to have uncovered a new species of cockroach.

“The cockroach is genetically modified. Species don’t differ more than one percent, this cockroach is four percent different, which suggests it is a new species of cockroach,” Professor Mark Stoeckle, an expert on genomics and DNA barcoding at Rockefeller University, told AFP.

“We think that the museums of natural history in Paris or New York could be interested.”

The previously-unidentified creepy-crawly was uncovered as part of a project undertaken by two high-school students, Brenda Tan, 17, and Matt Cost, 18, under Stoeckle’s supervision.

In their roles as “DNAHouse investigators,” the pair trawled New York apartments, stores and street, collecting 217 specimens between November 2008 and March 2009.

They took samples from supermarket food, the remains of an insect found in a box of fruit, a feather from a duster, dried dung and a cockroach and matched DNA sequences using the Barcode of Life Database and GenBank.

The American Museum of Natural History laboratory identified 170 genetic codes, leading the researchers to identify 95 different animal species, including some that were unexpected.

“A feather from a duster yielded ostrich DNA. A delicacy labeled ‘sturgeon caviar’ instead turned out to be from the strange-looking paddlefish. A popular Asian snack was revealed as giant flying squid. Bison DNA was found in a dog biscuit,” the pair wrote on the Rockefeller University website.

In fact, they found that 16 percent of food items were mislabeled, including cheeses labeled sheep’s milk that were actually made of cow’s milk, a potentially dangerous labeling error for those with allergies.

But perhaps the biggest surprise for the researchers was the discovery of “a genetically distinct ‘mystery’ cockroach that might be a new species.”

“By appearance it looks like the American cockroach (Periplaneta americana) but it is genetically different from other American cockroaches in the databases,” the researchers said.