New software dramatically simplifies addition of objects to photos

Shadows from set geometry are accurately depicted on added objects

For more than twenty years, the software program Photoshop has been the industry standard for seamlessly manipulating images, especially the removal of unwanted items like blemishes, wires and telephone poles. When it comes to adding something to a photo, however, the process is still rather involved. Now, a team from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), led by PhD candidate Kevin Karsch, is presenting a new algorithm at Siggraph Asia 2011 that promises to radically simplify the procedure of believably incorporating new or "synthetic" objects in still shots and the results are quite impressive.

To appreciate the elegance of the UIUC team's contribution, it's helpful to understand just what an improvement it is over current techniques. Look at any effects-heavy feature film and you'll see instances where computer-generated objects, be they giant robots, dinosaurs or futuristic vehicles, were added to previously-shot footage (also called a background plate in the Biz). In order to sell the illusion that the added objects were there in the first place, technicians typically need to gather copious amounts of on-set data (e.g. lens height and focal length, size of on-set objects and direction/color temperature of visible light sources, etc.) from which they recreate a virtual environment. When this is done poorly, it's a dead giveaway that the added object is fake and was inserted after the original image or footage was shot.

The genius of the Karsch team's approach lies in what the user doesn't have to provide in order to create believable additions. (Currently, the software only handles still images, but plans are in the works to tackle film and video sequences before long). Starting with a still photo about which nothing is known, novice users have been able to add virtual subjects in just minutes with results good enough to fool experts. That's great news for graphic artists, but maybe not so thrilling for folks like crime scene investigators who'll soon have to doubt the veracity of every object in frame!

To pull off this digital sleight-of-hand, the process is broken up into intuitive stages, the first being the creation of 3D geometry from 2D data. "The main idea is we want to take our picture and we want to get a 3D model of the scene from it," Karsch explained. "We first apply an automatic estimation procedure which tries to find the boundaries of the scene - it tries to find the walls, the ceiling, the floor." Since that's occasionally inaccurate, the software also includes an interface that allows the user to refine the estimate.
"With two vanishing points, we can recover the focal length of the camera, and then using the rest of the input we can also recover a rough representation of the 3D geometry of the scene: where the floors are at, where the walls are at and where the ceiling is at," Karsch added.

Next, the Lighting Stage requires the user to identify light sources in the image, whether in frame or not. In the traditional computer graphics approach, lighting sources and characteristics are identified by placing a chrome reference ball in front of the camera. The UIUC team's approach eliminates the need for that and a host of other steps as it calculates a decent representation of the actual lighting conditions.
If the object to be added will land behind another opaque item, the Occluding Object Stage (in which the user basically scribbles on the objects that will block part of the object to be added) comes next. Also called a spectral matting procedure, this generates an object mask which, when applied, creates the illusion that the added object is behind the masked one.
Enabling beginners to generate professional results with minimal time and effort is sure to make the Karsch team's algorithm a big hit in the graphics world. Judging from the sample images provided from the team's paper, the approach adeptly handles just about every lighting condition conceivable, even for transparent and shadowed subjects. For those of you itching to get your hands on it, plans are in the works to create an online version that anyone can use. In the meantime, it seems we'll just have to make do with run-of-the-mill reality!
Source: Kevin Karsch
Check out the video below for a look at the software in action:

New MIT video camera shoots a trillion frames per second

Media Lab postdoctoral associate Andreas Velten explains how the camera works

We've been hearing about trillions in the news so much lately, it's easy to become desensitized to just what a colossal number that is. Recently, a team of researchers at MIT's Media Lab (ML) built an imaging system capable of making an exposure every picosecond - or one trillionth of a second. Just how fast is that? Why, a thousand times faster than a nanosecond, of course. Put another way, one picosecond is to one second as one second is to about 31,700 years. That's fast. So fast, in fact, this system can literally slow down light itself and it does so in a manner unlike any other camera.

High-speed photography pioneer Harold "Doc" Edgerton established his groundbreaking laboratory at MIT, so it seems fitting that such work continues there today. But aside from the high speed aspect, any similarity between Edgerton's famous bullet-through-the-apple shots and the Media Lab's project abruptly ends. Whereas Doc shot on film illuminated by powerful strobes, the new "picocam" employs a bright titanium-sapphire laser light source and captures images with an array of about 500 sensors sequentially triggered one trillionth of a second apart. In the words of ML postdoctoral associate Andreas Velten, one of the system's developers, "there's nothing in the universe that looks fast to this camera."
A key component in this complex imaging system is a re-purposed streak camera, an instrument originally designed for measuring temporal variation in the intensity of light pulses. On the ML rig, the streak camera's aperture consists of a narrow slit. Light particles or photons enter here and encounter a rapidly-changing electrical field that deflects them perpendicularly to the slit. This field variation causes later-arriving photons to deflect more than those that arrived earlier, so the 2D images created represent time in one dimension (the degree of deflection) and space in the other (defined by the direction of the slit).

Unfortunately, individual one-dimensional slices of space do not an image make. To get a fully recognizable video of an event, say, a light pulse traveling the length of a one-liter plastic bottle, the event must be precisely repeatable thousands of times. After each light pulse, a mirror supplying the image to the streak camera is repositioned slightly until, slice by slice, the entire subject is captured - an additive process reminiscent of 3D printing that incorporates a bevy of delicate instruments and requires about an hour to complete. The voluminous raw data is then crunched into viewable two-dimensional image sequences by special algorithms developed by other members of the team. A lengthy process overall, the irony of which isn't lost on ML Associate Professor Ramesh Raskar, who dubbed their system "the world's slowest fastest camera."
Obviously, the need for exact repeatability is a significant limitation for a video camera, but the potential discoveries about the picosecond properties of light alone will probably more than make up for that. At US$250,000 for the laser and camera alone, it's not a system likely to be available for home use any time soon, but this valuable new tool will hopefully begin unlocking more of light's hidden secrets... quick as a flash!

Augmented reality app lets you see through catalog models' clothing

The cover of Moosejaw's winter catalog

Here's an unlikely recipe for successfully spicing up a winter clothes catalog - make the models lose their clothes, or to be more exact, allow your clients to see what is hiding underneath the bulky winter garments. The X-Ray augmented reality app by clothing retailer Moosejaw does exactly that. It uses your mobile device's camera and some augmented reality trickery to grant you X-ray vision, as you scan both female and male models' bodies in the catalog. All you have to do is position your device over the catalog pages.

Augmented reality is a versatile technology. It can make a car trip more enjoyable and interactive, it can help you repair your BMW and it can revolutionize the way you interact with your surroundings. Oh, and it can be used to see what other people look like in their undies.
Of all the different fields augmented reality is being applied to, it is marketing that has allowed the technology to really take root, and Moosejaw's ingenious application provides another proof of its effectiveness. Seventy-five thousand downloads in five weeks, one million impressions on Twitter and 160,000 video views - these numbers from MarxentLabs, the maker of the app, speak for themselves. Most importantly, however, the application contributed to a 37 percent boost in sales compared with the same period a year earlier.
Although this is perhaps unlikely, we do hope that the success of Moosejaw's X-Ray app is going to serve as a signal to all the marketing managers out there that interactive advertising is better than unsolicited advertising (no matter how well targeted it is). At the same time, we pray that the idea of augmented reality-powered X-ray scanning is going to remain constrained to winter clothing catalogs, and we will never see it ported to one of these things.
The app is available for iPhone, iPad and Android devices and can also be used to interact with an online version of the catalog available on Moosejaw's website. See the video below for instructions.

Clikka Mouse - software that "clicks"

Clikka Mouse is software designed for those who have trouble clicking a mouse

Not everyone can easily click a mouse. Many people with permanent motor disability have difficulties, along with those suffering Repetitive Stress Disorder or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, and anyone recovering from hand surgery. Clikka Mouse is innovative "work around" software that addresses the problem and best of all, it's free.
Head-pointers and other assistive devices have long been used by people with disabilities to move a cursor. However, once you move to the object you want to click on, it's very difficult to push the mouse button without accidentally moving the cursor again in the process. In other words, it's easy enough to move a mouse with a head-pointer, but clicking can be tough.

Clikka Mouse, designed by Marcello Petrio e Gianni Baini, works with devices like head pointers to enable "automatic" clicking. Clikka emulates the double, single, left, middle and right clicks of a regular mouse without the need to use mouse buttons. As shown in the Bar Window screen shot above, Clikka Mouse puts a small bar at the left of your screen (which remains hidden when not needed). The user can select which "click" function is to be automatically performed. The cursor is then dedicated to this particular action, and will perform it once the cursor has come to rest on a selected object (such as a tab, icon, etc).
The program's "Tolerance" setting determines how quickly it will select an object prior to clicking. For example, Tolerance set at 0 means that as you run the cursor across your Desktop screen, it will immediately select the first icon it comes across. Tolerance set to 10 gives the user much more time to make a selection before the icon is highlighted.
The other crucial program setting, "Wait before click" allows you to determine how many seconds should elapse before actually clicking on the selected object (from 2 to 20). Unless you want to click on everything your cursor comes into contact with, you need to select a value of at least 5-10 seconds for your settings.
Clikka Mouse requires no hand dexterity to operate and can be downloaded free from websites such as Softpedia and CNET.

Lumus glasses let you watch video, and the real world

Lumus transparent lenses display a virtual 87-inch screen, while allowing you to see what's going on in front of you

Cinema glasses aren't exactly anything new. You typically wear the glasses like you would your favorite pair of shades, and then see what appears to be a private giant screen in front of you. The downside of these cinema-shades? You can't see what's actually going on in the world around you. Lumus is attempting to fix that issue with a new line of video glasses that you can see through. The transparent lenses display what appears to your eyes as an 87-inch screen, while allowing you to see what's going on in front of you at the same time.

                                

The video is currently 720p (a 1080p version is in the works) and can display content from devices like an iPhone through the use of a special adapter. Besides watching movies, the idea is that the glasses could be used for things like presentations, where you want to read a speech while focusing on your audience, or for directions to a location while you're walking around.

Lumus isn't trying to sell the glasses on their own, and is instead currently showing the technology off to media companies that might potentially integrate it into their products in the future.
Should you be heading for Japan sometime soon, you can pick up an almost identical product, in the form of Epson's Moverio system.

New 3D transistors could mean faster, lighter, cooler computers

A diagram of a three-dimensional indium-gallium-arsenide transistor (Image: Peter Ye, Purdue University)

Starting next year, computers will be available with three-dimensional transistors - these will incorporate vertical components, unlike the flat chips that we're used to seeing. This structure will allow them to have shorter gates, which are the components that allow the transistors to switch the electrical current on and off, and to direct its flow. The shorter the gate, the faster the computer can operate. While the new 3D transistors will have a gate length of 22 nanometers, as opposed to the present length of about 45, the use of silicon as a construction material limits how much shorter they could ultimately get. That's why scientists from Purdue and Harvard universities have created prototype 3D transistors made out of indium-gallium-arsenide - the same compound recently used in a record-breaking solar cell.
Computers implementing 3D silicon transistors will not only be able to run faster, but should also weigh less, and generate less heat than their present-day flat-transistor-using counterparts. Their new-and-improved shorter gates are made from dielectric-coated silicon nanowires, and it is estimated that such gates could be further shortened to about 14 nanometers within a few years. In order to go any shorter, however, a material is needed that can move electrons faster than silicon is able to.
Studies of the indium-gallium-arsenide gates suggest that they should be able to move electrons five times faster than silicon gates, allowing for gate lengths in the neighborhood of just 10 nanometers.
At any length below 14 nanometers, the silicon dioxide insulating layer currently used on transistor gates no longer works properly, allowing the electrical charge to leak out. To that end, the Purdue/Harvard transistors instead utilize a thinner layer of aluminum oxide. It appears to serve as a better insulator at such a small scale, which in turn should allow the transistors to run faster, using less power - they are still being tested.
The production process for the 3D indium-gallium-arsenide transistors could be easily implemented into existing manufacturing processes, the scientists report, so adoption of the technology on a wide scale ought to be feasible.

Strap-on macro lens works with any smartphone camera

The Macro Cell Lens Band captures detailed macro images

The cameras on most smart phones tend to be rather simple affairs so it's not surprising that savvy inventors have dreamed up numerous add-on attachments such as mini-microscopes and wide/telephoto adapters. They do tend to be rather elaborate and brand-specific, however, not to mention somewhat pricey. Not this one though - the Macro Cell Lens Band is a simple close-up photography solution that has two definite pluses - it works on any camera equipped phone and it's very inexpensive.

The Lens Band is decidedly low-tech, just a thick rubber band with a thin plastic lens smack in the middle of it, but judging by the sample shots, it produces surprisingly good quality images.
Installation is quick and simple, take the band out of your wallet or off your wrist, wrap it around the phone with the lens positioned correctly and you're away.
PhotoJojo sells the Macro Cell Lens Band for US$15.

MIG 675 draws its power from the water

The LUXURY MIG 675 is a 70-mph hydrogen-powered motor boat

If money is no object to you, but environmental concerns are, then LUXURY's MIG 675 might be your kind of boat. The 22 x 8-foot (6.7 x 2.5-meter) cruiser seats three, has a top speed of 70 mph (113 km/h), and produces emissions consisting of nothing but water vapor - this sucker is hydrogen-powered.

 Unfortunately, the Quimperlé, France-based company still hasn't responded to our request for more detailed information, but here is what we do know.

Instead of carrying pressurized hydrogen tanks, the MIG 675 reportedly produces its own fuel, using an onboard generator that harvests hydrogen from the surrounding seawater. This powers its 500 HP supercharged engine, providing a cruising speed of 45 mph (72.5 km/h) and the previously-mentioned 70 mph top end.

The hydrogen generator also powers all the onboard electrical devices, which include an electric anchor roller, a 10-inch touchscreen controller, GPS, depth finder, rear-view camera, an Alpine audio system, a bar fridge with an electric retractable table, and an LED navigation lighting system.

Other features of the 2,866-pound (1,300-kg) aluminum-hulled watercraft include a shower, toilet, leather interior, sun deck, and teak floor. It also, so we're told, comes with its own set of dental forceps - perhaps there was a problem with the French-English translation, with that one.

The LUXURY website claims that the MIG 675 features "live [hydrogen] production during navigation," although one has to wonder ... does this mean that the boat could theoretically just keep running indefinitely, or does its hydrogen consumption exceed its hydrogen production?

If you're interested in finding out for us, you can purchase a MIG 675 of your own as of next year, for a mere EUR250,000 (US$329,727).

The audio-disabled video below shows the boat in action.

Google engineer builds ultimate LAN party house

A Google software engineer built a house designed specifically for hosting LAN parties

Anyone who has a attended a LAN party - where people connect their computers on one network in one location to play multiplayer games together - can tell you that they can be both very fun but also kind of a hassle. Playing games with your friends all in the same room: fun. Having to organize all your friends to each haul their usually-oversized gaming rigs to one person's house, ensuring they all have the same software, and inevitably dealing with one or more people having trouble connecting: not fun. With that in mind, it makes sense that one Google employee decided to bypass all that inconvenience and just build a house specifically for LAN parties, complete with multiple networked computers and TVs connected to game consoles.
Kenton Varda, a software engineer with Google, moved into his dream home in March but has just now revealed some of the inner workings of the gaming-centered house. On the surface the house appears pretty typical, but when guests are over the space transforms into a haven for gamers. Twelve fold-out PC stations are built into the walls for easy storage and are split between two rooms for team vs. team matches. The stations themselves only contain a monitor with a mouse and keyboard, while the actual computers are housed in a different room and connected to a server machine. When putting together the computers, Varda went for a hardware configuration that balanced price and performance. However, since he does not own multiple copies of each game, guests still need to log into their personal Steam, Battle.net, etc. accounts to play using their own licensed copies.

Just setting up computers on a network isn't going to automatically ensure a LAN party-ready home though. Those machines are each going to need software updates for the operating system and games constantly, which would be time consuming to do on every individual PC. Luckily, Varda thought of this and had the server machine host a master disk, which can be used to sync all the machines with the latest updates all at once.
In addition to the stations, the house contains two large TVs connected to various game consoles, though Varda says those are usually just used to stream pro Starcraft matches. The house also has a security setup with cameras and motion detectors, along with some custom software of Varda's own design that sends picture updates to his email and phone and can stream a real-time video feed. The actual design of the living areas (this is his home after all) was handled by his father, Richard Vardas. In the future, Kenton hopes to improve on the tech in his home further by installing whole-house audio, solar panels, and Dance Dance Revolution using Google TV.

Intel & Micron Unveil 128Gb, 20nm NAND Flash Device

Intel and Micron’s 64Gb, 20nm NAND flash? Old news. It’s now in mass production. Today, Micron revealed the two companies’ hottest new collaboration, a 128Gb, 20nm NAND flash device. The little thing crams 1Tb of storage onto eight die for a total package that’s roughly the size of a fingernail.

The new device, which is designed to provide flash storage to mobile devices and high-capacity SSDs alike, can hit 333 megatransfers per second (MT/s).

The dramatic increase in density is enabled by the planar cell structure technology used on the 20nm NAND, which gets around scaling issues by incorporating a Hi-K/metal gate stack.

Intel, Micron Extend NAND Flash Technology Leadership With Introduction of World's First 128Gb NAND Device and Mass Production of 64Gb 20nm NAND

New 128Gb Device Ideal for Small Form Factor Tablets, Smartphones, SSDs and High-Performance Compute Devices

SANTA CLARA, Calif. and BOISE, Idaho, Dec. 6, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Intel Corporation and Micron Technology, Inc., (Nasdaq:MU) today announced a new benchmark in NAND flash technology — the world's first 20 nanometer (nm), 128 gigabit (Gb), multilevel-cell (MLC) device. The companies also announced mass production of their 64Gb 20nm NAND, which further extends the companies' leadership in NAND process technology.

Developed through Intel and Micron's joint-development venture, IM Flash Technologies (IMFT), the new 20nm monolithic 128Gb device is the first in the industry to enable a terabit (Tb) of data storage in a fingertip-size package by using just eight die. It also provides twice the storage capacity and performance of the companies' existing 20nm 64Gb NAND device. The 128Gb device meets the high-speed ONFI 3.0 specification to achieve speeds of 333 megatransfers per second (MT/s), providing customers with a more cost-effective solid-state storage solution for today's slim, sleek product designs, including tablets, smartphones and high-capacity solid-state drives (SSDs.)

"As portable devices get smaller and sleeker, and server demands increase, our customers look to Micron for innovative new storage technologies and system solutions that meet these challenges," said Glen Hawk, vice president of Micron's NAND Solutions Group. "Our collaboration with Intel continues to deliver leading NAND technologies and expertise that are critical to building those systems."

The companies also revealed that the key to their success with 20nm process technology is due to an innovative new cell structure that enables more aggressive cell scaling than conventional architectures. Their 20nm NAND uses a planar cell structure — the first in the industry — to overcome the inherent difficulties that accompany advanced process technology, enabling performance and reliability on par with the previous generation. The planar cell structure successfully breaks the scaling constraints of the standard NAND floating gate cell by integrating the first Hi-K/metal gate stack on NAND production.

"It is gratifying to see the continued NAND leadership from the Intel-Micron joint development with yet more firsts as our manufacturing teams deliver these high-density, low-cost, compute-quality 20nm NAND devices," said Rob Crooke, Intel vice president and general manager of Intel's Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group. "Through the utilization of planar cell structure and Hi-K/Metal gate stack, IMFT continues to advance the technological capabilities of our NAND flash memory solutions to enable exciting new products, services and form factors."

The demand for high-capacity NAND flash devices is driven by three interconnected market trends: data storage growth, the shift to the cloud and the proliferation of portable devices. As digital content continues to grow, users expect that data to be available across a multitude of devices, all synchronized via the cloud. To effectively stream data, servers require high-performance, high-capacity storage that NAND delivers, and storage in mobile devices has consistently grown with increased access to data. High-definition video is one example of an application that requires high-capacity storage, since attempting to stream this type of data can create a poor user experience. These developments create great opportunities for high-performance, small-footprint storage, both in the mobile devices that consume the content and the storage servers that deliver it.

Intel and Micron noted that the December production ramp of their 20nm 64Gb NAND flash product will enable a rapid transition to the 128Gb device in 2012. Samples of the 128Gb device will be available in January, closely followed by mass production in the first half of 2012. Achievement of this milestone will further enable greater densities and overall fab output, while also helping the companies' development teams cultivate the expertise required to design complex storage solutions and refine future technologies.

AOC Introduces Portable, Laptop-Friendly USB Monitor

AOC introduced a new portable USB monitor that uses the DisplayLink DL-125 chip. The new e1649fwu portable USB 2.0 monitor features a 15.6-inch display that supports a resolution of 1366 x 768 at 60 Hz. This monitor also has a built-in stand that supports both horizontal and vertical positions and sits flush with the monitor when not in use. The monitor receives power and signal via a USB cable. The monitor weighs just over two pounds. AOC’s e1649fwu USB monitor is currently available for $139. A 22-inch model is also available.

DisplayLink Drives Portable 16-Inch USB 2 Monitor from AOC

AOC’s New Portable USB Bus-Powered Monitor to Expand Digital Desktop Now Available at Retailers Nationwide

PALO ALTO, Calif., and FREMONT, Calif., December 5, 2011 – DisplayLink®, provider of technology for virtual graphics and USB-connected computing, and AOC®, a leading manufacturer of LED/LCD and HDTV monitors, today announced the new e1649fwu portable USB 2.0 monitor from AOC (www.aoc.com), enabled by the DisplayLink DL-125 chip, is available at major retail chains and outlets throughout the United States.
The lightweight AOC e1649fwu combines productivity and portability into an elegant 15.6-inch display providing an ideal take-along monitor for business presentations, and for other multi-screen applications like social media monitoring, photo editing, expanded spreadsheets and more. It’s a great productivity enhancement for anyone who runs multiple applications and is priced at just $139 MSRP.
“AOC has leveraged DisplayLink’s USB 2.0 virtual graphics and the capabilities of our DL-125 chip to deliver a portable, extended monitor that requires nothing more than plugging in a USB cable, at a very attractive price point,” said Dennis Crespo, DisplayLink executive vice president of marketing and business development.

The AOC e1649fwu monitor offers a maximum resolution of 1366 x 768 at 60 Hz, and receives both its power and video signal through a USB 2.0 port. Designed to increase productivity for laptop and netbook users at home, at the office, and on the road, it draws a maximum of eight watts yet delivers brilliant clarity. The USB monitor has a built-in stand that supports both horizontal and vertical positions.
"With DisplayLink technology, AOC was able to rapidly bring to market this productivity-enhancing, versatile monitor for both mobile professionals and the home office user," said Robert Velez, AOC Marketing Manager. "The market for extended displays is growing rapidly, and this offering with its low power consumption, cord-independence and value price makes multi-screen computing more practical than ever."
The combination of AOC’s e1649fwu and DisplayLink technology easily integrates with existing desktop / notebook environments and is supported on all leading operating systems including Windows XP / Vista / Windows 7 & Apple MAC OSX Tiger / Leopard and Lion. Linux support is also available through many of the standard distributions.
AOC’s model e1649fwu USB monitor is available now at retailers like BestBuy.com, Costco.com, hhgregg, Nebraska Furniture, TigerDirect.com, ABC Warehouse, Electronics Express, and other major retailers, and carries a list price of $139.

Siri hack lets your iPhone control your car

Developer Brandon Fiquett has hacked Siri on the iPhone 4S to enable control of his car

What if you could ask your iPhone to start your car?
Developer Brandon Fiquett has gotten his phone to do just that - hacking Siri on the iPhone 4S to work along with his Viper SmartStart module to not only start his car, but also to arm and disarm the car's alarm, lock and unlock doors, and even pop the vehicle's trunk.
Fiquett was able perform the hack by using Siri Proxy created by another hacker @plamoni, and then running a custom PHP script on his home computer along with some custom plugins to communicate with Siri.
Originally the system was only able to respond to commands such as "Vehicle Arm", "Vehicle Disarm", "Vehicle Start", "Vehicle Stop", "Vehicle Pop Trunk", and "Vehicle Panic," with an update later adding more conversational commands such as "Start my car", "Lock my car", and "Pop my trunk."

The hack is currently in the "proof of concept stage," and isn't something you're likely to be able to replicate unless you really know your way around some code. If you are super tech-savvy, however, Fiquett has published links to the code on his website you can use to recreate the hack with your own phone and vehicle.
This particular hack is the work of just one man, and with Siri only being available a little over a month, it will be interesting to see what other functionality the developer community is able to create over time, as well as what other functionality Apple may add to Siri in the future.

Researchers create bone-like material using 3D printer

The re-purposed ProMetal 3D printer used by the WSU researchers to create objects in a bone-like material

Over the past decade, 3D printing technology has made the transition from huge expensive units used by industry to produce prototype components to small desktop units like the DIY MakerBot Thing-O-Matic that are within the reach of home users. But home users looking to produce custom household objects aren't the only ones set to benefit from advances in 3D printing technology, with 3D bio-printers offering the prospect of creating organs on demand for replacement surgery. Now researchers have used a 3D printer to create a bone-like material that could be used to create customized scaffolds to stimulate the growth of replacement bone tissue.

For their work, researchers at Washington State University (WSU) optimized a commercially available ProMetal 3D printer designed to make metal objects. The re-purposed printer uses an inkjet to spray a plastic binder over a bed of powder in layers just 20 microns thick - that's about half the width of a human hair.
When paired with actual bone and used with some bone growth factors, the resulting bone-like material acts as a scaffold for new bone to grow on before dissolving with no apparent ill effects. The researchers say this would allow customized scaffolds to be produced for new bone to grow on in orthopedic procedures, dental work and to deliver medicine for treating osteoporosis.

"If a doctor has a CT scan of a defect, we can convert it to a CAD file and make the scaffold according to the defect," said Susmita Bose, a professor in WSU's School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and co-author of the WSU study.
The researchers say they have already seen promising results in vivo tests on rats and rabbits and after just a week in a medium with immature human bone cells, the scaffold was supporting a network of new bone cells. The main finding of their research was that the addition of silicon and zinc more than doubled the strength of the main material, calcium phosphate.
Research into the use of three-dimensional scaffolds to stimulate the growth of bone and/or tissue within the body isn't new, with researchers at MIT using a similar method to stimulate bone and cartilage growth when transplanted into knees and other joints. Meanwhile, Columbia University researchers have been looking at growing dental implants in a patient's empty tooth socket using a tooth-shaped scaffold. But the use of 3D printing technology would make it easy to create scaffolds specifically tailored for individual patients.
The WSU team's study has been published in the journal Dental Materials.
Professor Bose explains the technology in the following video:

New technique turns 2D patterns into 3D objects using nothing but light

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new technique for transforming two-dimensional print output into 3-D structures, using nothing but light

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new technique for transforming two-dimensional print output into 3-D structures, using nothing but light. A pre-stressed polymer sheet is fed into a conventional inkjet printer, which applies black stripes to areas designed to be used as hinges. The desired pattern is then cut out and subjected to infrared light. The material contracts at the hinges, and the sheet collapses into a predefined 3D structure. Dr. Michael Dickey, who co-authored a paper describing the research, says the process could be used for packaging purposes and could be applied to high-volume manufacturing.
The idea is based on a remarkably simple principle. The printed-on black stripes absorb more energy that the remaining part of the polymer sheet, so the contraction manifests itself exactly where it's needed, which is at the hinges. What is more, the technique uses existing materials and is compatible with widely used commercial printing methods, such as roll-to-roll printing or screen printing. Three-dimensional objects, such as cubes or pyramids, can now be printed using techniques that are inherently two-dimensional.

It is possible to vary the extent to which a hinge folds by changing the width of the black stripe. The wider the hinge, the further it folds, e.g. 90 degrees for a cube and 120 degrees for a pyramid. Also, wider hinges fold quicker, as the energy-absorbing area is larger. By patterning the lines on either side of the material, the researchers can decide which direction the hinges should fold, so the resulting structures can be pretty complex.
A computer model of the process shows that the surface temperature of the hinge must be higher than the glass transition temperature of the material used (i.e. the temperature at which the material changes its behavior and becomes flexible). Another important finding is that the heating needs to be targeted at the hinges, and not at the whole sheet, for the folding to take place.

The work is described in a paper recently published in the journal Soft Matter. See the video below for a presentation of the process.