Gizmodo: organs

Heart-Shaped Box

johnb — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 12:15:09 EDT

No time for a sit-down lunch? The Organ Care System let's you take your viable human hearts, kidneys, or livers anywhere, allowing you to enjoy the taste of fresh meat anywhere—in the park, after your workout, or in Deepwater Cave down by the old sawmill on the edge of town.

The Organ Care System keeps organs viable by pumping rich, creamy blood through the tissue, ensuring things don't get too gamey. There's a video here, but you might want to wait until you finish your beef tongue sandwich before clicking through. – John Biggs

Product Page [Transmedics via Sagags]

Print New Organs With Bioink

gizmodo.com — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 11:00:07 EDT

Our donut and fizzy sugar water consumption aside, we're working hard on keeping our arteries from clogging these days, but we must admit to being somewhat more reassured about our prospects of longevity whenever we read stories about tissue engineering like this:

Gabor Forgacs, a biophysicist at the University of Missouri in Columbia, described his "bioprinting" technique last week at the Experimental Biology 2006 meeting in San Francisco. It relies on droplets of "bioink", clumps of cells a few hundred micrometres in diameter, which Forgacs has found behave just like a liquid.

This means that droplets placed next to one another will flow together and fuse, forming layers, rings or other shapes, depending on how they were deposited. To print 3D structures, Forgacs and his colleagues alternate layers of supporting gel, dubbed "biopaper", with the bioink droplets. To build tubes that could serve as blood vessels, for instance, they lay down successive rings containing muscle and endothelial cells, which line our arteries and veins. "We can print any desired structure, in principle," Forgacs told the meeting.

We could tell you about how their method might be faster and therefore more desirable than the 3D scaffolding and 3D inkjet printing used thus far in tissue engineering, but forget that—we're just excited at the thought we might get less spam of the "She wants a better sex? All you need's here!" sort once labs can just grow bigger replacement dongs on order.

Organ Printing [University of Missouri, via New Scientist News]

Organ Transportation Gets an Upgrade

Travis Hudson — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 15:00:40 EST

The days of television medical dramas consisting of transporting organs in a ratty cooler filled with ice are no more. The TransMedics Organ Care System is the latest and greatest technology used to preserve organs while being transferred to a new body. It works by pumping warm, oxygenated, nutrient rich blood throughout the organ while on the journey to its new owner. This helps prevent any kind of organ damage or deterioration that may occur during transportation when the organ happens to be missing the body it used to be housed in.

Transmedics: Better Transport for Transplants [MedGadget]

MIDI-Controlled Beer Bottle Organs

johnb — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 13:59:45 EDT

No, it s not you: those 99 bottles of beer on the wall really are singing. The idea of a beer bottle organ was born some time in the 1800s; I m guessing those who were there didn t recall the details too clearly, because you naturally have to drink the beer before the bottles are ready for use. Modern models are made by Chicago organ tuned Peterson under their own name and for player piano company Gulbransen. They're fully, permanently tuned (in contrast to your buddies blowing into their bottles at the bar), and fully-MIDI capable for connection to a keyboard, digital player, or computer. And they only run in five-digit prices. Just invite me over to help empty those bottles, okay? —PK

Product Page [Peterson Tuners]

Gulbransen Beer Bottle Organ and other strange instruments [ Create Digital Music ]

Another photo after the jump.