Well folks, it’s been awhile since I have felt whole enough to pen anything meaningful for these pages. The economic issues surrounding the collapse of the construction industry that is such a big part of my life and yours made anything that I may have had to say seem meaningless. After much soul searching and a little prodding from John Wyatt, I have decided to end my self-imposed exile from these pages. 

Origami Risk, a risk, safety and insurance software as a service technology firm in Chicago, has been profiled in the 2023 Green Quadrant report, issued by Verdantix, of the 23 most prominent environmental, health and safety technology providers.

Location: Electronic Resource- 

Location: Electronic Resource- 

In the United States alone, more than 100,000 people currently need a lifesaving organ transplant. Instead of waiting for donors, one way to solve this crisis in the future is to assemble replacement organs with bio-printing—3D printing that uses inks containing living cells. Scientists in Israel have found that origami techniques could help fold sensors into bio-printed materials to help determine whether they are behaving safely and properly.

Although bio-printing something as complex as a human organ is still a distant possibility, there are a host of near-term applications for the technique. For example, in drug research, scientists can bio-print living, three-dimensional tissues with which to examine the effects of various compounds.

Ideally, researchers would like to embed sensors within bio-printed items to keep track of how well they are behaving. However, the three-dimensional nature of bio-printed objects makes it difficult to lodge sensors within them in a way that can monitor every part of the structures.

“It will, hopefully in the future, allow us to monitor and assess 3D biostructures before we would like to transplant them.” —Ben Maoz, Tel Aviv University

Now scientists have developed a 3D platform inspired by origami that can help embed sensors in bio-printed objects in precise locations. “It will, hopefully in the future, allow us to monitor and assess 3D biostructures before we would like to transplant them,” says Ben Maoz, a professor of biomedical engineering at Tel Aviv University in Israel.

The new platform is a silicone rubber device that can fold around a bio-printed structure. The prototype holds a commercial array of 3D electrodes to capture electrical signals. It also possesses other electrodes that can measure electrical resistance, which can reveal how permeable cells are to various medications. A custom 3D software model can tailor the design of the origami and all the electrodes so that the sensors can be placed in specific locations in the bio-printed object.

The scientists tested their device on bio-printed clumps of brain cells. The research team also grew a layer of cells onto the origami that mimicked the blood-brain barrier, a cell layer that protects the brain from undesirable substances that the body’s blood might be carrying. By folding this combination of origami and cells onto the bio-printed structures, Maoz and his colleagues were able to monitor neural activity within the brain cells and see how their synthetic blood-brain barrier might interfere with medications intended to treat brain diseases.

Maoz says the new device can incorporate many types of sensors beyond electrodes, such as temperature or acidity sensors. It can also incorporate flowing liquid to supply oxygen and nutrients to cells, the researchers note.

Currently, this device “will mainly be used for research and not for clinical use,” Maoz says. Still, it could “significantly contribute to drug development—assessing drugs that are relevant to the brain.”

The researchers say they can use their origami device with any type of 3D tissue. For example, Maoz says they can use it on bio-printed structures made from patient cells “to help with personalized medicine and drug development.”

The origami platform could also help embed devices that can modify bio-printed objects. For instance, many artificially grown tissues function better if they are placed under the kinds of physical stresses they might normally experience within the body, and the origami platform could integrate gadgets that can exert such mechanical forces on bio-printed structures. “This can assist in accelerating tissue maturation, which might be relevant to clinical applications,” Maoz says.

The scientists detailed their findings in the 26 June issue of Advanced Science.

Have you ever found a piece of paper and folded it into something beautiful like a flower or an aeroplane? If so, then you dabbled into the art of paper folding called Origami. From simple cranes to creative geometric stuff, origami is more than paper folding; it combines art, culture and science. Let’s unfold everything about origami!

The Cuckoo Movement for Children and the Peace of Paper studio invite children to fold origami paper cranes in memory of Sadako Sasaki, whose death anniversary falls on October 25

Origami artist and physicist Robert J. Lang explains origami in 11 levels of difficulty. From a simple, traditional cicada to an extremely intricate one, watch how Robert J. Lang demonstrates and breaks down everything that goes into the art of origami.

WIRED has challenged origami artist and physicist Robert J. Lang to explain origami to 5 different people; a child, teen, a college student, a grad student and an expert.

People Are Talking About columnist Danielle Nussbaum on Teen Vogue called Jurassic Towel Origami "The best thing we got in the mail this week."

http://www.teenvogue.com/industry/blogs/entertainment/2009/03/best-thing-we-got-in-the-mail-this-week.html

The FoldScope will bring microscopes to the masses and revolutionize health care around the world.

Cardborigami's clever folding shelters offer the displaced a surprisingly sturdy alternative to tents.

A group of researchers from the Harvard University Wyss Institute and the Massachusets Institute of Technology Computer Science Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, or MIT CSAIL have developed a robot gripper that uses a 3D printed origami structure to lift up to 100 times its own weight.

Origami folds have associated geometric patterns or "paper trails" in which we are able to visualise different types of triangles, angles, polygons, lines and symmetry. Use these patterns to turn a two-dimensional flat sheet of paper into a three-dimensional hopping frog!

A look at the latest gear to cross our desks.
( Photos: 17, Comments: 57 )

A robot can recreate the mechanism plants use to transport water to bend itself towards the sun and open its leaves like a real plant

Believe it or not, these folded works of wonder are created from a single sheet of paper -- no cuts, no glue.

This is Paris' largest mural, made with hand-folded origami paper birds and a bit of spraypaint.

Small-scale solar panels promise many off-grid applications for renewable energy, and the SolarPuff is a particularly elegant example.

A new 'origami-inspired' foldable shelter designed for the next generation of moon explorers is about to undergo testing in the harsh conditions of Greenland.

Robert Lang explains how to fold the Wired issue 16.07 origami splash page.

Kids swallow a lot of batteries. But now MIT researchers are developing swallowable origami to fish the nasty foreign objects out.

Chuck Hoberman's eponymous sphere is one of the best-loved toys of the last quarter century. But it's only one example of his incredible work in transformable design. From adaptive nanotech to flexible building materials, Hoberman has created surprising and inventive designs at every scale.