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Researchers at the Hannover Medical School in Germany have developed artificial skin made from spider silk. When formed into a fine mesh, the silk from the golden silk orb weaver spider (left) can be grafted onto the human body:
The researchers found that human skin cells placed on these meshes could flourish, given proper nurturing with nutrients, warmth and air. They were able to cultivate the two main skin cell types, keratinocytes and fibroblasts, into tissue-like patterns resembling epidermis, the outermost layer of skin, and dermis, the layer of living tissue below the epidermis that contains blood capillaries, nerve endings, sweat glands, hair follicles and other structures.
Link -via Nerdcore | Photo via Flickr user leppyone used under Creative Commons license
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Everyone knows that if you swim or soak in a tub for a long time, your skin turn all pruny but have you ever considered how the skin doesn’t simply dissolve? It’s all in the keratin:
After a period in water the outer layer of the skin (the stratum corneum) expands, producing prune-like wrinkles. Earlier researchers suggested the stratum corneum expands as it absorbs water, but no one had yet explained why skin doesn’t fall apart when it has expanded.
Keratin is known to prevent evaporation from the skin and to absorb water to help keep the skin hydrated. The stratum corneum layer also gives the skin its stretchy properties and the ability to spring back.
Using computer modeling Evans approached the question from a geometric point of view to try to explain why skin maintains its structural rigidity after long exposure to water. She said the outer layer of skin contains a three-dimensional pattern of keratin fibers woven together to form a structure capable of acting like a sponge.
The fibers are helical when dry but straighten out as water is absorbed, which allows the network to hold a greater volume of water. All the contacts between the keratin fibers remain intact throughout the expansion, and this makes the material structurally stable, Evans said.
Researchers at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine are developing a printer that they hope can create skin to help injured soldiers immediately after they’re hurt:
The system, which lays down cells with the same fluid-based inkjet technology used in many printers, could print large swathes of living tissue directly onto the injuries of soldiers wounded on the battlefield. Covering burns and related wounds is of critical importance because, the scientists note, “any loss of full-thickness skin of more than 4 cm in diameter will not heal by itself.”
Tests on mice revealed advanced healing by both the second and third week of recovery, with complete closure and formation of scar tissue by week three in treated (but not untreated) subjects. The printer has two heads, one of which ejects skin cells mixed with fibrinogen (a blood coagulant) and type I collagen (the main component of the connective tissue in scars). The other head ejects thrombin (another coagulant).
Link via DVICE | Photo: US Army, used under Creative Commons license
Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have developed an artificial form of skin. It might be used in the future to give robots or people with prosthetic limbs the ability to feel:
The Berkeley group’s synthetic skin can either be transferred to another material like a plastic or glass by either directly transferring it over from a flat substrate which is then “rubbed” onto a polymer film made of polyamide. It can also be “rolled” onto the surface using a device that works much like a lint roller in reverse; the fibers are deposited to a sticky surface rather than picked up.
The e-skin can detect pressure in the range from 0 to 15 kilopascals, or similar to the pressure needed to perform normal daily tasks. In other words, when your cyber-being goes to clean the wine glasses from last night’s party, it won’t break them, and when your robot goes to make you a sandwich, it won’t flatten it to the size of your silicon microprocessor.
Link via Geekologie | Image: Paramount
According to a new study published in Nature, our skin helps us decipher the sounds we hear with our ears. Blindfolded volunteers listened to the “pa”, “ta”, “da”, and “ba” sounds. Unknown to the participant, a puff of air, softer than would be felt in normal conversation, accompanied some of the sounds. Sometimes the puff of air accompanied the appropriate sounds, at other times not.
The researchers found that if there was no air puff, participants misheard “pa” for “ba” and “ta” for “da” 30 to 40 percent of the time. The accuracy improved 10 to 20 percent when an air puff over the hand or neck accompanied “pa” and “ta.” No improvement occurred, however, if an air puff was sent through the tube in the ear, suggesting that the participants were not simply hearing the airflow.
The opposite effect was observed when the participants received an air puff with the inappropriate sounds— “ba” and “da.” While subjects correctly identified these sounds in about 80 percent of cases when played without the release of air, the accuracy decreased by about 10 percent if the sounds were accompanied by puffs of air.
Most of the volunteers were not consciously aware of the puffs of air. Link
It’s like a bear skin rug, but with a human. Artist Chrissy Conant made this self-portrait:
“Chrissy Skin Rug” represents my relationship to my parents. The rug is a silicone rubber cast of my bare skin. I position myself as a human rug on a wooden floor with an open mouth and eyes that gaze suggestively upward. Parental influences from childhood continue to suppress me, long after I have grown up and they have gone.
Link via Foolish Gadgets
This development from the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft Science Institute in Germany has made the creation of human skin much cheaper:
The basic skin production system, which Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft hopes to start selling next year, can produce 5,000 little swatches of human skin a month, for a total of over 600 square inches of mass-produced tissue. Each 0.12-square-inch section of skin would cost around $49 to produce, far less than the current cost.
The system, which should be available in 2010, is fully automated, with computers controlling the solution that the skin grows in, monitoring the vats for infection, guiding the blade that cuts the swatches, and even testing the quality of the final product. So far, this project has generated 19 patents for Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.
Potential applications include not only helping burn victims, but replacing lab animals in product safety testing. Also, robots probably won’t have to forage as much for the taste of human flesh.
Photo: Arjan Benning
We’ve seen quite a few creative alphabets, but probably none as weird (and painful) as this set, made with clothespin and skin. It’s called alfabet in huid (typeface in skin) by Thijs Verbeek.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by mrsmojorisin.
Link – via boingboing
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by whitespace.
