Thursday, September 30, 2010

And you thought YOU had a fancy-schmancy printer that could do everything!

These guys are my heros! Who would have thought lil' ol' Missourah would be at the head of such developments?!

Forgacslab
"Our research is focused on the physical mechanisms in cell and developmental biology. In particular we study the biomechanical properties of cells and tissues and their relevance to morphogenetic shape transformations. Current activity is concentrated on the application of these physical mechanisms to "organ printing" a fundamentally new approach to tissue engineering, whereby, spherical cell aggregates with composition appropriate for the particular organ (the bioink) are delivered (with a modified ink-jet printer) acccording to the organ's anatomical blueprint into biocompatible scaffolding gels (the paper)."

Yep. You heard it. (o.k., actually you read it if you're gonna be all technical today) PRINTING organs. Whooo-hooo! Oh... wait... I feel a new song coming on..... "Print Me A Liver (ooo eee ooo)" *sung to the tune of "Send Me An Angel" of course!
I gotta get me one of these printers, then David wouldn't have to go around rippin' off livers from all the poor deers around here.
Can you imagine a day when you need an organ transplant and, instead of going on a list to wait for years until you are lying at death's door and it takes major heroics, several miracles and tons of luck to save your life, your doctor just pushes a couple of buttons and a new organ is faxed straight to you?! Yeah baby, that's what I'm talkin' about!

Because University of Missouri ROCKS!

Friday, September 24, 2010

Why I love Missouri

Gotta love the creative names people come up with around here...

And right next door...

Clair de Lune


Super Harvest Moon