With so many great video-articles coming out in JoVE each week, it’s hard to make sure you catch all of the interesting science. This week, two of our most innovative articles come from MIT and The Scripps Research Institute. Check them out:
3D Printing from a Digital Projector?
In an article published on November 27, mechanical engineers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology demonstrate how to make a 3D printer from a commercially available digital projector. Using a few external mirrors and lenses, the engineers project each layer of the structure they are fabricating into a pool of photosensitive resin, which polymerizes into the desired shape. The process is known as projection micro-stereolithography, and is being used to study buckling mechanisms commonly found in nature.
The full title of the article is “Micro 3D Printing Using a Digital Projector and its Application in the Study of Soft Materials Mechanics” and can be found here.
Life from stem cells?
Stem cells have been in the news lately, particularly as The 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Sir John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka for their work in stem cells. These Nobel Prize Winners discovered techniques to produce induced pluripotent stem cells from adult cells. This is a significant breakthrough for researchers as stem cells are hard to study in adults or come from embryos, where collection of stem cells have political and ethical implications. In this JoVE article, researchers at The Scripps Research Institute demonstrate how to produce mice from induced pluripotent stem cells, a valuable demonstration of the viability of stem cells to grow into any necessary tissue.
The article, titled “Generation of Mice from Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells,” will be published on November 29, 2012 and can be found here.
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