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Russian Scientists Revive Nikola Tesla's Designs With Help From Crowdfunding June 29 2014 | From: InternationalBusinessTimes
Russian Scientists Revive Nikola Tesla's Designs With Help From Crowdfunding
What if electricity could travel the way data does, unburdened by clunky infrastructure as voltages flow wirelessly?
That was inventor Nikola Tesla’s vision more than a century ago. Now, Russian scientists are attempting to turn his concepts into reality with the help of an $800,000 crowdfunding campaign.
The basic idea is to pump electricity into homes and other buildings not by traditional power lines or electrical substations, but via 10-story-tall transmitting towers. Each tower can handle voltages in excess of 3 million volts, which it then sends to wireless receivers by creating currents in the ground. (U.S. electrical wall sockets, by comparison, take only 110 volts).
Leonid Plekhanov and Sergey Plekhanov, both graduates of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, have spent more than five years conducting research and experiments on the Planetary Energy Transmitter project, and they previously raised $40,000 through a Russian crowdfunding campaign, the TreeHugger blog noted earlier this month.
The scientists have tinkered
with original designs by Tesla, the namesake of Elon Musk's electric car
company Tesla Motors. The new plans use more lightweight materials to
ease the construction of transmission towers. Tesla’s original
Wardenclyffe tower prototype weighed more than 60 tons, while the new
design will weigh just 2 tons, Smart Grid News said. The Russians have
also integrated advanced electronics into the design.
If the tower and receivers
function as intended, the system could “allow the transmission of large
amounts of energy via ground to any kind of distances — instantly,
safely and without losses,” say the scientists, who prefer that the
towers transmit emissions-free solar energy in particular.
On their website, Global Energy
Transmission, the Plekhanovs dismiss concerns that wireless energy
transmission will turn the planet into a microwave oven or function like
giant, super-powerful antennae. They say it’s all in line with the
basic laws of physics and electrical engineering. A purportedly
“simplified explanation” of the design offers more details.
The current crowdfunding effort
runs through July 25 on the IndieGoGo site. So far the project has
reached 1 percent of its goal.For the full story and links visit: InternationalBusinessTimes
Bioprinter can print 3D samples of human tissue
Treating
severe burns typically involves grafting a healthy patch of skin taken
from elsewhere on the body. But large burns present a problem. That has researchers at Wake Forest experimenting
with a treatment method that involves applying a small number of
healthy skin cells onto the injury and letting them grow organically
over the wound. 3-D-bioprinted skin potentially could be produced
faster, provided Organovo can successfully replicate the cell structure
of human epidermis.
L’Oreal already has a massive lab in Lyon, France, to produce its patented skin, called Episkin,
from incubated skin cells donated by surgery patients. The cells grow
in a collagen culture before being exposed to air and UV light to mimic
the effects of aging. Organovo pioneered the process of bioprinting
human tissues, most notably creating a 3-D-printed liver system.
Both parties benefit from the partnership: L’Oreal gets Organovo’s
speed and expertise, and Organovo gets funding and access to L’Oreal’s
comprehensive knowledge of skin, acquired through many years and over $1
billion in research and development.
At
the moment, L’Oreal uses its epidermis samples to predict as closely as
possible how human skin will react to the ingredients in its products.
If L’Oreal can more quickly iterate on the molecular composition of its
skin samples, it can produce more accurate results, conceivably across
different skin phenotypes. That means products like sunscreen and
age-defying serums—which inevitably will yield varying results across
varying skin types—can be tweaked for greater efficacy.
L’Oreal
also has a history of selling Episkin to other cosmetic and
pharmacology companies. The company won’t disclose the going rate, but
in 2011 toldBloomberg it sold half-centimeter-wide samples for €55 each
(about $78 each at the time). That said, Guive Balooch, who runs
L’Oreal’s in-house tech incubator, says the bioprinting will be done
primarily for research purposes.
Balooch
approached Organovo after seeing its human liver model. While the two
companies still need to settle on an exact plan for the skin samples,
the bioprinting process for epidermis will be roughly similar to that of
the liver. It happens in three steps, says Michael Renard, a VP at
Organovo. Once scientists have collected the human cells from the
various companies that harvest and sell them, they use a proprietary
in-house technology to turn the cells into a “bio-ink” that feeds into
the bioprinters. The actual manufacturing isn’t all that different from
what you might see with a standard 3D printer.
“In
concept, it’s the same idea of programming the 3-D printer to print
architecture on an X-Y-Z axis,” he says, referring to the CAD designs
that typically inform 3-D printers. “We just happened to use living
human cells. There’s delicacy involved.” During the last step, the
structure of cells is nourished (Renard won’t say how) and kept in a
temperature-controlled environment so they can fuse into a cohesive mass
of tissue.
There
are still a bevy of unknowns, such as when Organovo will start
production and just how much faster it will be compared to L’Oreal’s
current derma-farming methods. Still, Renard says Organovo produces at
“a commercial scale,” so it stands to reason the same will go for skin.
That’s a vague start, but these things—you know, the rapid
manufacturing of human flesh—don’t happen overnight.
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