Author: David Bradley

UW-Madison’s Biology New Media Center has added a new tool to its gleaming fleet of technology dedicated to making biological concepts come to life. The Z-Corp Three-Dimensional Printer, purchased for $57,000 can create customized and remarkably lifelike 3-D replicas of virtually anything under the sun.

Ted Pan, a technology specialist in the center, exhibited a table full of early experiments with the printer, including double helices, complex proteins, bacteria flagella, animal skulls and – for kicks – a toy sports car. One particularly menacing looking mass of horn-shaped proteins was a replication of the anthrax bacterium. Another model was of a new protein discovered by a UW-Madison scientist, who is bringing handy “copies” of the structure with him to conferences.

The 3D scanner looks very much like a printer, except with a curved glass top that covers the ink-jets and a deep tray of white polymer powder. The jets move back and forth over the tray, creating the object one layer at a time based on a three-dimensional computer image. Most of the larger objects are made hollow to reduce material costs.

The objects come out of the printer fairly brittle, but are then fortified with glues that make them remarkably strong. The printer can make things up to 10 inches tall and literally create moving parts, such as a spool encased with ball bearings.

Pan says that educators are excited about the academic uses of the new device. Even with the level of 3D sophistication in computing, sometimes there is no substitute for picking something up and looking it over.

“The technology has been around for some time and has been widely used by architects and engineers,” Pan says. “What’s newer are the applications as a teaching tool. This is especially useful when teaching about complicated structures like molecules or viruses, where having something in hand makes it easier to conceptualize.”

Pan’s goal is to make the new technology available for broader campus use beginning this fall. He is describing the possibilities of the new tool at the annual Teaching and Learning Symposium in May, which showcases classroom innovation.

Located in the Biotechnology Center, the Biology New Media Center is devoted to enhancing the visual potential of discovery, with video editing suites, large-scale printing, online materials and 3D computer monitors. It can also translate the real into the virtual with a scanning device that makes three-dimensional computer programs out of real objects. The center is widely used not only for instruction, but also for scientific presentations where visual enhancements are crucial.

There is an old WebMD item about why your urine smells funny after eating asparagus. I only bring it up because the stalky delicacy is once again in season; delicious they are too from our local farm shop. Anyway, the WebMD item mentions that it’s the presence of a sulfur compound known as mercaptan in the asparagus (also found in rotten eggs, garlic, onions and skunk scent) that leads to the smell.

The article says, and I quote: “When your digestive tract breaks down this substance, by-products are released that cause the funny scent. The process is so quick that your urine can develop the distinctive smell within 15 to 30 minutes of eating asparagus.”

I’m not sure they’ve got that entirely straight though, it is definitely a sulfur compound being metabolised that releases the methanethiol giving urine the smell, and most researchers would suggest the amino acid methionine is the source. If it weren’t we’d also talk about asparagus poo as well as pee as the breakdown product would be present in both.

I wrote a report for the Royal Society about one of its discussion meeting on emerging viral infections some time ago, so it’s quite interesting to see that visitors who hit the Sciencebase site via Google are still reaching the site searching for causes of viral infections. I suspect the visitors are after solutions to their own diseases…the main cause of viral infection, I felt like saying in facetious mode, is a virus…

The journal Chemical Communications forever trying to publicise its papers, recently highlighted a “hot” paper about removing harmful bacteria from an airstream using a titania photocatalyst. That’s all well and good but “LJ”, who wrote the highlight, seems to imply that the inspiration for this works comes in the wake of the SARS outbreak. To quote: “The recent SARS outbreak has triggered concern over airborne bacteria and the diseases they can cause.”

Well, forgive me, but isn’t SARS a virus? The researchers themselves mention Legionella and the virus SARS but LJ presumably felt Legionnaire’s disease was not topical enough to catch the eye of any science writers prowling the Chem Commun hot papers page. Well, LJ, I’m afraid your mention of SARS caught my eye, but for all the wrong reasons.

Regular Google visitor with clumsy typing skills? Watch that you don’t hit the “k” before the “l” when entering the search engine name into your browser address bar, you could be in for a nasty shock. Googkle.com was registered by some phishy customers and if you were dumb enough to visit their site you would be bombarded with trojan sites and all sorts of malware, according to Icelandic computer security company F-secure. Gooogle.com on the other hand will bring you to the Google homepage while Gooooogle.com will send you to a casino site. But, who types in Google.com anyway, don’t most users these days have it bookmarked or run the Google toolbar to access the search engine?

Yahoo has added an intriguing feature to its Messenger software that will have bosses up in arms but allow malingerers and timewasters to save their skin. Stealth settings, Yahoo claims, will allow users to hide their online status from their boss, for instance, but remain visible and so chattable to their friends. It all sounds like good clean fun, to be honest, they should call it skive and hide. One thing that struck me though…how many bosses use Yahoo Messenger anyway? Haven’t those in higher places been persuaded to run Skype these days?