The Future Is HERE

So this happened last year, and some of you may have heard of it already, but recently someone was complaining that the Back To The Future Hoverboards haven't been created by scientists yet and would scientists just invent that already?

Well my impatient friend, scientists have something better to do. Like create the first 3D printed titanium human jaw and successfully implant it into a female patient.

BOOM.

So what happened was this woman had osteomyelitis (bone infection) that was so bad her lower jaw couldn't be saved. The awesome folks at Hasselt University Biomed (in Belgium) has a functional morphology research group and decided to help out. Functional morphology is the study of why things are shaped the way they  are shaped, and how that shape affects the function of the thing.

So this research group created a customized 3D printed titanium jaw. They gave her an MRI so that they could customize the jaw, and built it in just two days.

This woman had a complete lower jaw implant, and it restored vital functions (breathing, speech, chewing, and sensation) as well as aesthetics (her jawline still looks like her). It's an incredible step forward with implants and health care. While current technologies limit the amount of personalized prosthetics that can be made, this could be commonplace in the near future, and represents a huge step forward in medical technology. This technique could be used in hip prosthetics, as well as knees and elbows, even spinal inserts.

It's all very exciting.

Sources:
3D Printer World

UHasseltBE

The Body Farm

Human decomposition is probably not something you want to think about often. I find it fascinating. It's one of those things that's taboo to talk about in society. Which is why I'm going to talk about it in honor of one of my favorite authors, Mary Roach, who wrote the book Stiff, which I just finished and thoroughly enjoyed. It's been around a while, but I just got to it, and I'm encouraging all of you to go out and read it. You can check it out here.

UT Knoxville has a body farm. A body farm is a research facility where human decomposition is studied.  UT Knoxville cleverly names their body farm the Forensic Anthropology Center (FAC), so that it's less creepy sounding. While creepy, what they do there is fascinating stuff, and provides a lot of interesting and relevant facts that allow us to better solve crimes.

At the FAC law enforcement can request the recreation of a crime scene (like stuffing dead bodies into trunks and things) and the FAC will then test out those cases. They'll take a dead body, toss it into a field, or bury it, or stuff it in a trunk, and then they'll force some poor student/intern to monitor the stench/bugs/decay and such. The FAC even works with the FBI testing out facial recognition programs.

Personally I think that while this is probably a very foreign concept to most people, this is such a contribution to our pool of knowledge. There are certain things that, in the modern world, are slightly taboo to discuss (for instance things that happen to your body after you die). So it's nice to know that the squeamishness of some people hasn't limited the quest for knowledge.

To hear more about it in a more entertaining medium, here is a link to a video NatGeo did on Body Farms.

Also FYI If you want to contribute, you can donate your corpse. Once they're done with your dead body, they'll cremate your remains and hand you back to your family, OR they'll add your skeleton to their collection (they have 1,100).

There is actually going to be another body farm established in, I think, Michigan that is going to be dedicated to how bodies decay in cold weather, which is probably going to be fascinating, and I'm looking forward to the papers they'll be publishing as they get going.

Sources:
UT Knoxville

Awesome College Labs

The Body Farm