General Chat

Skin-jet printers Researchers at Manchester University have developed an ink-jet printer with a special liquid formulated from human cells that will printout made to measure skin and bone. The materials scientists behind the breakthrough at the University say the technology could print out the scaffolding to grow an organ in a day. The process begins with the multiplication of cells in a special printer ink liquid. The printer then follows computer data to print the cells into a three-dimensional plastic scaffold. Once surgically attached to the damaged part of the body, researchers expect the plastic to dissolve naturally, allowing the body to use the framework of cells to repair the injury. Conventional methods for growing skin have been unable to determine the size or shape of the piece needed www.manchester(.)ac(.)uk. Trunk call The discovery of an orphaned elephant that sounds like a lorry is reported in the journal Nature, suggesting that the traditional trumpeting of elephants could change in response to encounters with human society. Although some birds, bats, apes, whales and dolphins are known to mimic sounds, this discovery marks the first time that vocal imitation has been found in a non primate land animal, giving insights into elephant intelligence and society. The project began when Dr J Poole of the Amboseli Trust for Elephants in Nairobi took recording equipment to investigate the “very strange sounds” made by Mlaika, an orphaned 10 year old female living in Tsavo, Kenya. Tsavo’s night time stockade was less than two miles from the Nairobi-Mombasa highway and Dr Poole discovered that the elephant could imitate the sound of lorries rumbling in the distance.. Mlaika appears to have picked up on the rumbles and copied them. Dr Poole and her colleagues report in the journal believe it is another indication of elephants intelligence. The elephant usually made the low frequency sounds for several hours after sunset. “It was a most extraordinary sound, like a foghorn or a truck tearing down the highway” said Dr Poole. “I think she does it to amuse herself because she is bored at night”. Keepers said that that another elephant, no longer in Tsavo, had also imitated lorries and, since the discovery, Dr Poole had heard or more discoveries. Sad A lone whale with a voice like no other has been wandering the Pacific for the last 12 years. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts used signals recorded by the US Navy’s submarine-tracking hydrophones to trace the movement of whales in the north Pacific. The partially declassified records show that a lone whale singing at about 52 hertz cruised the ocean every autumn and winter since 1992. Its calls do not match those of any known species, although they are clearly those of a baleen whale, a group that includes blue, fin and humpback whales. Blue whales typically call at frequencies between 15 and 20 hertz. They use some higher frequencies but not at 52hertz. Fin whales make pulsed sounds at around 20 hertz while humpbacks sing at much higher frequencies. The tracks of the lone whale do not match the migration patterns of any other species either. Over the years the calls have deepened slightly, perhaps because the whale has aged, but its voice is still recognisable. It is doubted that the whale belongs to a new species as no similar call has been found anywhere else, despite careful monitoring. Perhaps it is the last of its kind. Len

Here are a few bits and pieces I have come across recently. Len