3D-Printed Human Embryonic Stem Cells Created for First Time -

3D-Printed Human Embryonic Stem Cells Created for First Time - 


Scientists used 3D printing to form these aggregates of embryonic stem cells, shown here at 24 hours (left) and 48 hours (right) after printing.

Imagine if you could take living cells, load them into a printer, and squirt out a 3D tissue that could develop into a kidney or a heart. Scientists are one step closer to that reality, now that they have developed the first printer for embryonic human stem cells.
In a new study, researchers from the University of Edinburgh have created a cell printer that spits out living embryonic stem cells. The printer was capable of printing uniform-size droplets of cells gently enough to keep the cells alive and maintain their ability to develop into different cell types. The new printing method could be used to make 3D human tissues for testing new drugs, grow organs, or ultimately print cells directly inside the body.

Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) are obtained from human embryos and can develop into any cell type in an adult person, from brain tissue to muscle to bone. This attribute makes them ideal for use in regenerative medicine — repairing, replacing and regenerating damaged cells, tissues or organs.

Read more - 

http://news.yahoo.com/3d-printed-human-embryonic-stem-cells-created-first-165551783.html

City workers paint handicap sign under legally parked car; video goes viral -

City workers paint handicap sign under legally parked car; video goes viral - 




An Israeli woman has turned to Facebook to beat a parking ticket — and expose a Tel Aviv road crew.
Hila Ben Baruch says she parked her car legally near her Tel Aviv home only to find it gone and replaced with a handicapped parking sign. City Hall slapped her with more than $300 in fines. Making matters worse, she says a city representative accused her of lying when she called to complain.
Determined to prove her innocence, she obtained footage from a security camera showing municipal workers painting the handicapped symbol under her car, then towing the vehicle away.
She told Channel 2 she was “shocked.” The video, put on Facebook, has gone viral.
The Tel Aviv municipality has apologized and refunded the fines.

Asteroid to Traverse Earth’s Satellite Zone - will pass Earth on Feb. 15 -- lower than the orbits of some satellites -

Asteroid to Traverse Earth’s Satellite Zone - will pass Earth on Feb. 15 -- lower than the orbits of some satellites - 


An asteroid half the size of a U.S. football field will dart between Earth and orbiting satellites next week, sparing the human race and putting on a show for sky gazers in Eastern Europe, Asia and Australia, NASA said.
The 150-foot diameter asteroid, named 2012 DA14, will pass about 17,000 miles above Earth on Feb. 15 -- lower than the orbits of some satellites -- in the closest known approach of an object of its size. It will travel at 7.8 kilometers a second (17,400 miles an hour), or about eight times the speed of a rifle shot, NASA scientists said today.
“No Earth impact is possible,” Donald Yeomans, who manages the Near-Earth-Object office at Pasadena, California- based Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said today in a press conference.
The NASA unit monitors relatively small space objects such as DA14 to measure the risks they present to the Earth. Researchers said the asteroid’s close trajectory will help NASA in preparing for an eventual encounter with a near-Earth object later this decade. DA14 was discovered in February last year.
While a strike by an asteroid DA14’s size would do “a lot of regional destruction,” it wouldn’t be catastrophic to the planet’s population, said Lindley Johnson, program executive for NASA’s Near-Earth Object observations program in Washington.
Yeomans said the damage from DA14 if it were to hit would rival an impact event in Russia in 1908 that leveled trees over an 820-square-mile territory. The asteroid that is thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs was about 10-kilometers in diameter.
Space Station Safe
The NASA scientists said the asteroid would still pass above the orbits of most of the communications satellites circling Earth, and doesn’t pose a threat to the International Space Station, which moves above the planet at about 250 miles.
Amateur astronomers will need a small telescope to see the asteroid, which would appear as a moving pinpoint in the night sky, said Timothy Spahr, the director of the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The best viewing location for DA14’s closest approach is Indonesia, with sky gazers in Eastern Europe, Australia and Asia also getting good looks at the asteroid.
The NEO program office said that an object of similar size gets this close to Earth once every 40 years, and that an actual collision can be expected only once in 1,200 years.
Some companies and entrepreneurs are eying asteroids as possible sources for trillions of dollars in precious metals.
Planetary Resources Inc., based in Seattle and backed by Google Inc. Chief Executive Officer Larry Page and Chairman Eric Schmidt, are working to launch a telescopic space surveyor to identify resource-rich space rocks in the next couple of years.

Read more -

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-07/asteroid-s-earth-fly-by-will-traverse-satellite-zone-nasa-says.html