Anyone who’s hoping some version of our species will manage to survive the coming climate crisis through transhumanism might be interested to learn about this recent breakthrough: a robotic contact lens that can zoom in on command. A team of research scientists at the University of California San Diego set out to explore ways that “soft robotics” (which mimic materials found in living organisms) can be integrated with human bodies, and this is one of their projects.

They’ve created a prototype contact lens controlled by movement of the eye, so the wearer can simply blink twice to zoom in or out. The biomimetic lenses are made of elastic polymer films designed to respond to electric signals generated by the eyes when they move. The lens itself mimics the biology of the human eye, with layers that expand or contract to change its thickness, altering the amount of light that passes through it.

This kind of technology isn’t entirely new; it’s similar to eye tracking technology that lets users control wheelchairs.

“Thanks to many unique features, soft robots or soft machines have been recently explored intensively to work collaboratively with human beings. Most of the previously developed soft robots are either controlled manually or by prewritten programs. In the current work, a novel human–machine interface is developed to use electrooculographic signals generated by eye movements to control the motions and the change of focal length of a biomimetic soft lens.”

“The motion and deformation of the soft lens are achieved by the actuation of different areas of dielectric elastomer films, mimicking the working mechanisms of the eyes of human and most mammals. The system developed in the current study has the potential to be used in visual prostheses, adjustable glasses, and remotely operated robotics in the future.”

So, how long will it be before a real-life version of the sci-fi “eyeshine” surgery from Chronicles of Riddick, which enables night vision, is a thing?

Top image: Niek Beck/Flickr CC by 2.0

Not many sushis restaurants ask their patrons to provide urine and saliva samples upon entrance, but in our era of hyper-personalization, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. From the Japanese company Open Meals, which debuted its complex 3D-printed sushi at the South by Southwest festival in Austin last year, comes a new range of high tech food that’s tailored specifically to the nutritional needs of its diners.

Set to launch in Tokyo next year, “Sushi Singularity” relies on a system of 3D printers, CNC routers, lasers, robotic arms and other components most often associated with industrial design to produce edible sculptures made of sushi ingredients. In each item on the menu, you’ll find common sushi elements like tuna, squid, eel and seaweed, but it’ll be in a form you’ve never seen before.

In order to mix each custom cocktail of nutrients in an aesthetically pleasing way through its machinery, Open Meals transforms each ingredient into a gel or paste. Menu items include “micro pillar saltwater eel,” “oze tick kappa roll,” “dash soup universe,” “anisotropic stiffness steamed shrimp,” “negative stiffness honeycomb octopus,” “cell cultured tuna,” “powdered sintered uni” and “squid castle.” When customers make a reservation, it’ll trigger the system to automatically send them a biodata kit in the mail, which requests urine, saliva and stool samples. The results will determine the exact creations you’re ultimately served when you arrive.

Here’s how they describe their process:

“Food Ingredient Cartridges: These will contain sustainable food ingredients such as seaweed and crickets, which are mixed with water, fiber, and enzymes for output. Nutrient Cylinders: 11 types of nutrients in cylindrical cartridges. Foods will be nutritionally optimized based on a Health ID. Alginate Fermenter: Produces spherical food in a chemical reaction between sodium alginate and calcium solution. Artificial light farm: Cultivates fresh vegetables in enclosed spaces through use of artificial light such as LEDs. Hot Water FDM: Items that cannot be formed at room temperature or in air can be realized by outputting them in hot water.”

“SLS: Laser Sintered 3D Printer. Powder-based raw materials are baked into specific shapes using lasers. FFM Control Interface: The brain of the entire machine, which combines various data to design and hyper-personalize food. Laser FDM: Thermolysis Laminated 3D Printer. The raw material is melted by heat and formed by stacking layers. Robot arm: The unit is equipped with an ultra-high precision arm. Chilled FDM: Outputs at ultra low temperatures to realize shapes impossible at room temperature. 6-axis CNC router: Cuts the material with a multi-axis router, enabling precise, elaborate modeling. Fermenter: Cultivates food ingredients in real time through precise management of water temperature and nutrients.”

Whether or not any of this actually sounds appetizing to you, the final result is certainly artistic, and perhaps a signal of what’s to come to the world of food in the near future as this kind of technology grows more accessible.

Considering that it produces such controversial projects as human-sheep embryos, it’s not surprising that biotechnology is often at the center of thorny ethical debates. It’s one of those fuzzy areas of scientific study that routinely prompts headlines like Has Science Gone Too Far? While a lot of biotech simply consists of studying and modifying living cells in a lab, plenty of it concerns the welfare and use of animals, too. We read stories about how animals raised for livestock have been genetically modified to grow too quickly for their legs to support them, but on the other side of the coin, there are advancements that could alleviate suffering, like lab-grown meat and leather or new ways to reduce the need for animal testing.

The broad definition of biotechnology is simply technology involving the use of living organisms, which covers thousands of years of inventions and discoveries ranging from the brewing of beer to today’s controversial developments in genetic engineering and the use of stem cells. Ethical questions have always plagued science and medicine, with good reason – a lot of testing is done on subjects that can’t consent, whether because knowledge of the testing was kept from them or they simply didn’t have the agency to fight back (the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, injecting orphans with tuberculosis, performing surgeries on enslaved African women without anesthesia) or because the subjects are animals. Biotech solves some of these issues while constantly raising new ones as we grapple with the question of just how much humans should modify ourselves and the world around us.

When it comes to animals in particular, a lot of biotechnology research and development is focused on removing living animals from the production line of various industries. This has resulted in the creation of a cellulose-based biosilk that’s stronger than dragline spider silk, which is considered the strongest bio-based material, as well as the debut of lab-grown leather, which counters concerns about the negative impact that producing and disposing of synthetic fabrics can have on the environment. Companies like Modern Meadow “biofabricate” real leather using strains of yeast engineered to produce collagen for a strong yet flexible result.

It’s clear that demand for certain animal bodies and parts can result in catastrophic reductions in population or even extinction, whether it’s for food, ornamentation or medicine. In the Tiger Penis Project, Kuang-yi Ku uses emerging biotechnology to create lab-grown animal parts commonly used in Chinese medicine to “prevent the further destruction of both animals and traditional cultures.”

Meanwhile, lab-grown meat grows ever closer to being an everyday option on menus and in grocery stores. Just a few years ago, one of the world’s first lab-grown burgers had a $330,000 price tag, but a number of companies are now on the cusp of releasing affordable cell-cultured meat products that don’t harm animals in any part of the production process. Creating it involves retrieving muscle stem cells from adult animals and allowing them to multiply in a nutrient-rich liquid.

While it’s not hard to imagine lab-grown meat becoming just as mundane as soy milk, it may face resistance from people who prefer their food to have a closer connection to natural processes. In that case, scientists ask, what about using genetic engineering and selective breeding to produce animals that are naturally more resistant to disease, or that contain more nutrition per pound? But here’s where the double-edged sword comes in: the same technology is used to produce effects that are better for the breeder than the animals (or the people eating them.)

Pigs and chickens that grow extra fast produce more profits, but also result in animals that can’t stand up or move around, even when they have the space. Plus, people are bound to worry about genetically modified animals just like they worry about genetically modified crops (though supporters of the technology maintain that it’s essential to feeding a rapidly growing human population.)

Similar concerns come up in the area of animal testing. Currently, biotechnologists often breed animals specifically for the purposes of research, which can mean modifying them to intentionally produce painful defects like musculoskeletal conditions or susceptibility to cancer. But biotech could also produce artificial or lab-grown means of testing medical treatments and consumer products to reduce the need for painful testing on living subjects. Human and animal stem cells could help researchers test for toxicity, disease resistance and other factors in a way that “could not only replace animal models but outperform them altogether with better reproducibility and predictability.”

Back to that human-sheep embryo, which is a prime example of why none of these questions are easily answered. Researchers at the Roslin Institute are working on finding ways to grow human organs within the bodies of other animals to save the lives of people who wait for transplants that never come. Their approach introduces human stem cells into early pig or sheep embryos. In the latter case, about one in 10,000 cells in the sheep embryos are human. To successfully produce animals that grow organs that could be transplanted into human bodies, they’ll have to find ways to make about 1% of the embryo’s cells human. The end goal may be noble, but what if these chimeras end up with human characteristics in their brains?

Just like any other form of technology, biotech has its pros and cons, its potential to do good in the world and its potential to send us down a dark path that we might never be able to walk away from. Where we draw those lines remains subjective.

When 3D printers are widely accessible and affordable, will we see another industrial revolution, enabling us to manufacture just about everything we need on demand? Progress made in 3D printing thus far looks promising. Designers, engineers, architects and even novices are printing everything from fully functional human hearts and custom biodegradable shoes to full-scale architecture and bicycle bridges. One designer even printed himself a large-format camera based on three models he couldn’t afford.

Beating Artificial Heart

Created by researchers at ETH Zürich, this 3D-printed silicone heart beats almost like a real one, and though it’s not yet considered a viable long-term replacement, it can help keep a patient’s blood flowing while they’re waiting for a donor organ. Right now, the material can only withstand about 45 minutes of usage, but the team sees it as a proof of concept showing a way forward for artificial hearts in the future.

Ceramic Constellation Pavilion

Made entirely of 3D-printed terra-cotta bricks with a unique shape that allows them to slot together without conventional brick bonding techniques, ‘Ceramic Constellation Pavilion’ gives us a glimpse at what we might be able to achieve with 3D-printed architecture in the decades to come. The structure was created by the University of Hong Kong’s Department of Architecture along with Sino Group. “In a context that has largely been shaped by standardization and mass production, the project seeks to overcome the constraints of today’s architectural production through the introduction of a structure made entirely of non-standard components.”

Robotic Sign Language Arm

Shortages of sign language interpreters internationally (and the difficulty of finding one on the spot) led the students behind Project Aslan to seek better ways to bridge the communication gap between the hearing and deaf communities. This robotic sign language hand is one result, using 3D printing to make it more affordable and easy to build. The robot receives information from a local network to activate its joints, allowing it to interpret written language into sign language. It’s not meant to replace human interpreters, but rather step in when they aren’t available, and can be used to teach sign language, too.

Digital Grotesque II 3D-Printed Grotto

Designed entirely by algorithms, ‘Digital Grotesque II’ is a 3D-printed pavilion made of 7 tons of printed sandstone, with an incredible 1.35 billion surfaces. It’s another look at how we could achieve unprecedented complexities, porosities and spatial depth in future architecture using 3D printing and other new methods of fabrication as robotics become more accessible.

Flying Iron Man Suit

Considering the optimism and rapid rate of progress in the 20th century, many of us expected to have cooler toys by now. Are we finally about to get a suit that lets us fly? Kind of. The Iron Man suit by Gravity Industries is set to be 3D printed in metal, with six miniature jet engines mounted to the arms and back for vertical takeoff and flight. However, it’ll literally take an Iron Man to wear the thing, as it takes enormous strength to control the jets. The suit itself weights up to 90 pounds.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Houses To Human Hearts 13 Recent Breakthroughs In 3d Printed Designs

Not only is this a microscope made of paper, costing a total of fifty cents to produce, it can stand up to being thrown, stomped on and dunked in water. And it comes in a flat-pack of yardstick that takes just a few minutes to assemble. Foldscope by Manu Prakash has the potential to transform the way disease is identified and diagnosed in developing parts of the world.

Demonstrated in a 2012 TED talk, the Foldscope is about the size of a bookmark and based on the principles of origami. It has no mechanical moving parts and it’s cheap enough to disseminate for free and incinerate after use to safely dispose of infectious biological samples.

It might not seem like a lens this tiny would be powerful enough to identify samples of microbes like Giardia or malaria, but the unique optical physics of a spherical lens held close to the eye can magnify samples up to 2,000 times. The lens is about the size of a poppy seed and costs about 17 cents. It can be press-fit into a small hole in the center of the slide-mounting platform on the paper microscope body.

More sophisticated version have multiple lenses or even combinations of colored LED lights powered by a watch battery. Other additions include the capability to project images on the wall of a dark room. Prakash plans to give away 10,000 of the DIY origami microscopes to citizen scientists with the most inspiring ideas for their use. Prospective users can apply for a Foldscope kit by emailing Signup@foldscope.com.