Top TechTop Tech #85: electrical organs, custom parts, supercars, and hoverboards
Important innovations in science and technology, every day
By Paul Worthington
Friday’s Top Tech:
• End animal testing with organs-on-chips
• Printing a car to aid the environment
• Ford to offer customized 3D parts
• Lexus board hovers
End animal testing with organs-on-chips
Technology emulating human organs could one day deliver direct medical benefits — and in the near term might allow for the elimination of animal testing.
Start-up Emulate says its system can “better predict human response in drug development process.”
It announced it is working with Johnson & Johnson.
Also, its “Human Organs-on-Chips” won the ‘Design of the Year’ award from London’s Design Museum, “selected by design experts, practitioners, curators and academics from around the world.”
Organs-on-Chips emulate human biology to understand how diseases, medicines, chemicals, and foods affect human health, the company says. It “places living human cells in microengineered environments,” and “provides a window into the inner-workings of the human body.” Each Organ-on-Chip can contain tens of thousands of cells in tiny, hollow channels and is approximately the size of a USB memory stick.
Emulate is commercializing technology developed at Harvard University.
Printing a car to aid the environment
Yes, it’s another gadget made with a 3D printer — but not only is it a high-end performance car, but the manufacturer claims a cool reason for doing so:
Most of the emissions-making power consumed by a car is during its manufacturing — and that’s true even of “ecologically friendly” electric vehicles. “Society has made great strides in its awareness and adoption of cleaner and greener cars,” says Divergent Micro Factories. “The problem is that while these cars do now exist, the actual manufacturing of them is anything but environmentally friendly.”
The company claims it provides “a disruptive new approach to auto manufacturing that incorporates 3D printed nodes connected by carbon fiber tubing that results in an industrial strength chassis that can be assembled in a matter of minutes.”
The Blade Supercar has 1/3 the emissions of an electric car and 1/50 the factory capital costs of other manufactured cars, 3D Print.com reports. It can accelerate to 60 mph in 2 seconds.
Ford to offer customized 3D parts
Ford isn’t planning to make a whole car in a 3D printer — but it may give you greater comfort with 3D parts custom-fitted to your particulars.
Fortune reports the automaker teamed with startup Carbon3D, saying, “The next time you take your car out for a spin, imagine how much more comfortable it would be if your steering wheel perfectly conformed to the shape of your hand.”
Lexus board hovers
No, it won’t carry you across varied terrain at high speed… but yes, it’s a board, and it hovers.
Likely for promotional purposes, automaker Lexus developed what is says is “one of the most advanced hoverboards ever developed.”
The hoverboard operates using magnetic levitation “to achieve amazing frictionless movement,” the company says, by combining superconductors cooled with liquid nitrogen, and permanent magnets.
Lexus say it’s testing the hoverboard in Barcelona, Spain this Summer — and adds that it’s “a prototype and will not be on sale.”
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