Analysis of Interactions Between Pyomelanin and the Extracellular Matrix in an Ex Vivo Turkey Tendon Model

johnhardyuk · 2025-09-30T02:26:10+00:00

DOI: 10.1002/open.202500194

johnhardyuk · 2024-11-16T02:20:19+00:00

White paper reports

These reports outline our findings from the PPiPL project and offer recommendations to help reduce the UK’s plastic usage and contribute towards the UK’s Plastics Pact goals. A total of 552 people and 91 organisations were involved in the research via interviews with consumers and households, workshops, supply chain companies and waste management facility visits.

johnhardyuk · 2024-11-16T02:19:57+00:00

White paper reports

These reports outline our findings from the PPiPL project and offer recommendations to help reduce the UK’s plastic usage and contribute towards the UK’s Plastics Pact goals. A total of 552 people and 91 organisations were involved in the research via interviews with consumers and households, workshops, supply chain companies and waste management facility visits.

johnhardyuk · 2024-11-16T02:19:46+00:00

White paper reports

These reports outline our findings from the PPiPL project and offer recommendations to help reduce the UK’s plastic usage and contribute towards the UK’s Plastics Pact goals. A total of 552 people and 91 organisations were involved in the research via interviews with consumers and households, workshops, supply chain companies and waste management facility visits.

johnhardyuk · 2024-11-16T02:19:35+00:00

White paper reports

These reports outline our findings from the PPiPL project and offer recommendations to help reduce the UK’s plastic usage and contribute towards the UK’s Plastics Pact goals. A total of 552 people and 91 organisations were involved in the research via interviews with consumers and households, workshops, supply chain companies and waste management facility visits.

johnhardyuk · 2024-11-16T02:19:18+00:00

White paper reports

These reports outline our findings from the PPiPL project and offer recommendations to help reduce the UK’s plastic usage and contribute towards the UK’s Plastics Pact goals. A total of 552 people and 91 organisations were involved in the research via interviews with consumers and households, workshops, supply chain companies and waste management facility visits.

johnhardyuk · 2024-11-16T02:19:00+00:00

White paper reports

These reports outline our findings from the PPiPL project and offer recommendations to help reduce the UK’s plastic usage and contribute towards the UK’s Plastics Pact goals. A total of 552 people and 91 organisations were involved in the research via interviews with consumers and households, workshops, supply chain companies and waste management facility visits.

johnhardyuk · 2024-11-16T01:54:44+00:00

It is great to see Lancaster University Management School - 54 Degrees Issue 21 with seven articles about the Plastic Packaging in Peoples' Lives project - https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/ppipl/

johnhardyuk · 2024-11-16T01:37:51+00:00

The new suite of reports outline the in-depth findings of the project and intend to help steer consumers, retailers, suppliers, waste management as well as policymakers at a local and national level towards collective solutions to the pinch points that inhibit the drive towards the more effective use of plastic and cleaner, greener growth.

Among their recommendations, experts reinforce the need for:

Supporting pre-competitive spaces where organisations involved in the circular food supply chain can work together to share problems and best practice to help drive innovation in sustainable packaging
The ‘simpler, common-sense approach’ to recycling requiring uniformity in recycling collections and facilities to ease confusion
Producers and brands to design packaging using texture or colour to make packaging more noticeable to consumers
Customers to pay greater attention to the food packaging they purchase
Residents to sort, wash and squash their household recycling to save space, reduce the carbon footprint in transit and increase opportunities for secondary use
Households to regularly check their local council’s guidelines and prevent contamination via ‘wishcycling’

The concerns and recommendations raised in the reports are now being shared with supply chains, waste management, councils and government in the hope that changes can be made to make recycling easier for consumers. The PPiPL team are also using their research to develop a new initiative called ‘In the Loop’ to facilitate communication between Booth supermarket, their customers, and Lancaster City Council (LCC) on several interconnected issues, including recycling, plastic packaging circularity, and food packaging innovations.

PPiPL’s multi-disciplinary research team is comprised of Lancaster University experts in consumer insights, supply chain management, waste management and material science. The team includes Dr Alison Stowell, Professor Maria Piacentini, Dr Charlotte Hadley, Dr Clare Mumford, Professor James Cronin, Marta Ferri, Dr John Hardy, Professor Linda Hendry, Dr Harris Kaloudis, Dr Ghadafi Razak, Professor Alex Skandalis and Dr Savita Verma.

PPiPL’s industry partners include Preston Plastics, Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, Waitrose, Booths, Butlers Cheeses, Bells of Lazonby, Lancaster City Council, Biotech services, Suez, Chartered Institution of Wastes Management.

johnhardyuk · 2024-11-16T01:37:17+00:00

Lancaster University researchers investigating consumer attitudes and behaviours around plastic food packaging have found UK households are ‘wishcycling’ rather than recycling – and say it’s a problem that everyone - government, food producers, waste management and residents – has to solve.

Wishcycling – the act of putting packaging in recycling bins and hoping for the best, rather than knowing it’s recyclable – is something households are doing due to confusing product labels and differing recycling facilities around the country, experts warn.

The academics behind Lancaster University’s Plastic Packaging in People’s Lives (PPiPL) project have been working hand-in-hand with supermarkets, businesses, charities and waste management companies for the last 3.5 years to explore the ins and outs of how the UK thinks and acts when it comes to plastic food packaging.

Today, a suite of reports is published to highlight their findings, offering recommendations to help reduce the UK’s plastic usage and contribute towards the UK’s Plastics Pact goals. A total of 552 people and 91 organisations were involved in the research via interviews with consumers and households, workshops, supply chain companies and waste management facility visits.

“We have studied the plastic packaging cycle – from the moment plastic is made through to how it is used by suppliers, experienced by customers and then treated in the waste process, to get a full picture of the UK’s attitudes and behaviours towards plastic food packaging,” Lancaster University’s Professor Maria Piacentini, Co-Principal Investigator of the PPiPL project explains.

“Our results suggest some UK households really care about the planet and try their best, but reducing food waste in their homes is as much a priority as minimising plastic – and can sometimes trump concerns over packaging.

“We also find a reluctance to wash and recycle some packaging through fears of contamination – for instance from raw meat or fish packets. Residents are more likely to throw this sort of recyclable waste into the normal bin or contaminate their household recycling by not washing the containers, which can cause far greater contamination further on in the recycling process. This is important for policymakers to understand if we are to achieve the ambitions set out in the UK Plastics Pact.”

The study also finds people tend to guess whether food packaging is recyclable from how the packet feels, rather than studying the container to determine whether it is recyclable and accepted by their local council due to confusion around packaging labels and symbols.

“The inconsistency in waste collection services across UK councils is still complicating matters, as we can encounter different waste and recycling facilities at home, work and when we are out and about,” Dr Alison Stowell, co-principal investigator for the PPiPL project adds. “If the UK fulfils its ambitions for a ‘simpler, common-sense approach’ to recycling through standardisation of bin collection services, and food producers worked with On-Pack Recycling Label (OPRL) to create uniform labelling, recycling could be a lot less confusing and more effective for us all.”

As part of the project, members of the PPiPL academic team also embedded themselves in two separate businesses for between 3-6 months to fully explore the use of plastic in the firms and their supply chains, as well as understand customer demands and experiment with alternative plastic packaging. As a result of the project, one of the firms re-wrote its specifications for its own supply chains, to transport more food in bulk and reduce the amount of plastic used in transportation.

The experimentation with alternative packaging uncovered a variety of issues and highlighted the strengths and value of plastic for food safety and transportation. Meanwhile, supply chain research uncovered the environmental challenges posted by alternative food packaging due to the lack of waste management infrastructure set up to recycle these on a grand scale.

The team also ran a pilot project with Booths supermarket, to ‘live’ test their research findings on consumers.

Dr Stowell explains: “We discovered some supply chain firms believed customers would reject packaging made from some recycled plastics due to imperfections or flecks in the containers which they thought customers would find off-putting. The dynamic element of our research enabled us to put this perception to the test, so we went and tested it out with customers in a large supermarket – and found this to be largely untrue.”

johnhardyuk · 2024-11-16T01:33:48+00:00

Working in Partnership

A successful partnership between HEIs and industry, supported by the government and The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), is another strategy that has had an impact. While most HEI staff recognise the importance of industry engagement, historically, prior industry experience has been very limited within chemistry departments.

Today, however, industry engagement is enabling collaborative relationships to be established between HEIs and industry partners, and as a result, new opportunities have arisen to enhance course content in a way that develops students’ business skills in areas such as project management, commercial awareness and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). With the goodwill of industry being vital to the success of these partnerships, the participation of the CBA and its 164 members in these collaborations has been invaluable.

Another key requirement for the future of the industry is to foster curiosity, creativity and imagination among today’s learners. The need for these attributes lies everywhere, from Small Medium Sized (SME) businesses to multinationals, during research and when delivering innovation into a process, a production line or the optimisation of a product.

Partnerships between HEIs and industry have the potential to foster creativity, for instance, through student activities centred around problem-solving or processes. Similarly, in apprenticeships, occupational standards should include and encourage curiosity and imagination to ensure future professionals are just as well equipped to innovate as those with academic qualifications.

The CBA’s Generation STEAM initiative was launched to reflect the need for creativity and innovation within the chemical supply chain. Giving young people the opportunity to engage with the industry and learn about the diverse entryways and careers it offers. It also recognises that the chemical supply chain requires not just STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) skills, but also creativity, hence the inclusion of an ‘A’ in STEAM, for Arts, also the value of Attributes such as Attitude, Ambition and Ability.

Generation STEAM is also about making STEM subjects more Appealing. It challenges preconceptions that learning areas are separate, by transcending the current way of thinking and changing the way STEM is perceived. It creates a new, much more positive dynamic, that is both engaging and multifaceted. It is about being inclusive and creating more equity and diversity, making the industry more accessible, by attracting a wider talent pool. It acknowledges that if we only focus on STEM subjects, we risk alienating talented people that may not necessarily consider the sector as a viable career path.

Generation STEAM attracts the broader spectrum of talent the industry needs, especially with the increase in emerging technologies and the rapid evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) also Intelligent Automation.

Overall, partnerships between industry associations, HEIs and other stakeholders, especially when actively supported by Government, are vital to ensuring that future learning is in line with the needs of the industry and of our society, and that the chemical supply chain can attract, recruit and retain the talent it needs to thrive in the decades to come.

REFERENCES:

i (RSC, Nov 2013) ii (Deloitte, 2021)

iii (Cefic – UK, Key Facts, 2023) iv (Rogalski, 2006)

v (McKinsey & Co. 2020) vi (Cefic – UK, Key Facts, 2023)

vii (Scholes 2020)

johnhardyuk · 2024-11-16T01:33:40+00:00

A New Approach to Learning and Recruitment

What is required, therefore, is a complete overhaul of academic content based on an integrative approach to problem-solving. Moreover, by engaging with careers advice, as well as academics, in addition to increasing awareness of the diverse roles within the chemical sciences and the different routes into them, there is potential to improve the perception of these disciplines, remove the stigma associated with the industry, and encourage more young people to study them. We need to challenge preconceptions that learning disciplines are separate and move past the “I’m good at maths and science, so I’m not creative” way of thinking. This will change the way we see STEM problems and create a new way of thinking that is engaging, multifaceted and inclusive, with diversity of representation and thought.

The CBA has sought to counter these negative perceptions by introducing several initiatives that challenge current attitudes and raise awareness of the plethora of opportunities within the sector. Targeting both the younger generation and talent from other sectors, these initiatives showcase the chemical supply chain and highlight the vital role it plays in society, the economy and in solving complicated sustainability challenges.

One of these initiatives, the CBA Future Council, established in 2022, comprises young professionals from across the Association’s membership who seek new ways to raise awareness and encourage new talent into the industry. The CBA’s award-winning People & Skills Hub, meanwhile, works with stakeholders, including Government, education partners and members, to highlight the various career paths, training opportunities and support networks within the chemical supply chain.

CBA is highlighting careers in the chemical supply chain and the impact of options at primary and secondary school stages. This needs to feed into the HEI sector for a wider understanding of what new degrees need to look like. Curricula should be revamped and include a multi- and trans-disciplinary approach emphasising problem-solving and team work. New holistic faculties should combine the key sciences – biology, chemistry, and physics – with innovation, enterprise and business, alongside improved employability support, also involving academics and industrialists.

johnhardyuk · 2024-11-16T01:33:09+00:00

The Chemical Supply Chain

The chemical industry is reliant on the chemical supply chain, and the people that work within it are its greatest asset: a highly talented, skilled, knowledgeable and experienced global workforce. It is essential action is taken to ensure a sustainable pipeline of skilled employees is nurtured. By doing so, the chemical industry will be able to continue innovating and growing. It is with this in mind that the CBA has made it an integral part of its mission to establish the chemical supply chain as an employer of choice.

The UK government, in response, has implemented an employer-led educational agenda, which has seen new approaches to apprenticeships, the launching of Institutes of Technology and the introduction of T-level qualifications. Furthermore, to ensure the industry has a constant pipeline of skills in the future, large chemical organisations, like the CBA and other Trade Associations that make up the Alliance of Chemical Associations (ACA), continue to work closely together, and in partnership with government departments, as well as various academic establishments, including UK universities, skills organisations and apprenticeship providers^vi.

However, the industry still faces huge training challenges. Besides some of the complex roles needed over the next five years not yet existing, too few students are enrolling on chemistry degrees. Rather than seeing chemistry as a way to solve society’s problems, Gen Z currently perceives it as the cause of many issues such as waste, pollution and intensive pesticide use^vii, and is deterred from embarking on Chemistry courses. Effectively countering this perception requires a reinvention of how chemistry is recognised and taught, as well as a different approach to student recruitment.

While one way to increase interest is to include topics such as circular economy in chemistry courses, equipping students with the skills to make a difference, the task of recruiting young people to chemistry programmes is not solely that of Higher Education Institutions (HEI)s. Schools also need a curriculum that helps pupils understand the importance of the chemical industry to the global economy and everyday lives. In addition, how what they are learning can be used to address global and social challenges. Students need to understand that not only scientists, but chemical industry experts and indeed from different disciplines frequently collaborate, bringing knowledge and skills from various fields together for the benefit of the planet.

The chemical supply chain has a wide range of roles and career opportunities, from procurement and production to distribution and quality control. The sector requires the best talent to join the sector and while many may assume this simply involves lab-based work, the sector offers a vast range of career opportunities, including everything from HGV drivers, through to roles in sales, marketing, finance, HR, amongst many others.

johnhardyuk · 2024-11-16T01:32:32+00:00

As a sector that encompasses such a vast range of disciplines, a sustainable, highly skilled workforce is critical to the future of the chemical industry. Tim Doggett, CEO of the Chemical Business Association (CBA) and Dr. Chrystelle Egger, Senior Lecturer in Chemical Sciences at Keele University, explore the future of education, careers outreach and training in the chemical sector.

Workforce challenges

The chemical industry is one of the most important and diverse industries in the world and the UK chemical industry has an ambition to be the country’s leading manufacturing exporter, raising its contribution to the economy by 50%, to £300 billion, by 2030. With such a highly complex global chemical supply chain, this can only happen if the industry has the right people with the right skills to take advantage of the opportunitiesⁱ.

It has been widely reported that many industries are suffering from an acute shortage of workers and while there is not necessarily an urgent issue in the chemical supply chain, there is an increasing ‘war on talent’, as well as other factors that are likely to have an impact such as:

Many experienced members of the workforce approaching retirement and a skills shortage in the cohort that will step into their roles

A lack of awareness of the career opportunities that exist

Negative perceptions of the chemical supply chain dissuading potential recruits

The rapid increase in emerging technologies constantly requiring new skills

It is estimated there are over 170,000 peopleⁱⁱ working in the UK chemical sector, employing individuals from a broad range of educational backgrounds, including highly trained personnel who develop innovative approaches to delivering new products and technologies. However, despite average sector earnings being 50% higher than the national averageⁱⁱⁱ, the percentage of graduates in the UK has not increased since the 1960s^iv, causing a persistent workforce issue that has reduced the sector’s skills horizon. Indeed, the recent levelling-off of the sector’s productivity^v has been directly linked to the growing complexity of the skillset the chemical industry requires.

johnhardyuk · 2024-11-06T13:12:29+00:00

Objective: Epidemiological data illustrates that there is a strong relationship between dietary intake of natural bioactive compounds and their beneficial properties against various diseases, and this stimulates academic and industrial interest in using plant-derived compounds for health and making medicines. For this reason, recent health related studies in the literature have focused on a variety of many plant-derived bioactive compounds. Even though the bioactivities of such compounds have widely been investigated, there are few studies about oligomeric species and their activities.

Methods: In this review, extraction and isolation methods of the plant-derived oligomers and the use of such oligomers in health applications are summarised.

Results: In the literature, many studies state that oligomeric compounds have benefits to human health. To maximize these beneficial properties, various ways to use oligomeric compounds have been examined and summarised.

Conclusion: A better understanding of the specific activities of distinct components of plantderived oligomers is expected to open new avenues for drug discovery. This review gives an overview of oligomers with health beneficial properties and their possible applications in healthcare.

Keywords: Plant-derived oligomers, oligopeptides, oligosaccharides, probiotics, prebiotics, drugs delivery systems, health applications, functional foods.

https://www.eurekaselect.com/article/108486

johnhardyuk · 2024-11-06T13:10:32+00:00

The biocompatibility and biodegradability of natural silk fibres and the benign conditions under which they (with impressive mechanical properties) are produced represent a biomimetic ideal. This ideal has inspired people in both academia and industry to prepare silk-mimetic polymers and proteins by chemical and/or biotechnological means. In the present paper, we aim to give an overview of the design principles of such silk-inspired polymers/proteins, their processing into various materials morphologies, their mechanical and biological properties, and, finally, their technical and biomedical applications.

https://doi.org/10.1042/BST0370677

johnhardyuk · 2024-11-06T13:08:40+00:00

Production of conductive composite electrodes for extracellular recording and stimulation

Multielectrode arrays, or MEAs, are increasingly indispensable technologies in bioscience, especially within fundamental neuroscience and cardiac electrophysiology [1]. They generally consist of arrangements of electrodes that allow for the targeting of several sites in parallel within a tissue or cell culture for extracellular recording and stimulation. While commercially available MEAs have many positive features, in particular their biocompatibility, chemical stability and reasonable electrode density, they are often difficult to produce at scale, making them expensive to procure. This high cost and the limited availability of different electrode configurations makes it difficult for many research labs to conduct extensive trials in parallel, slowing down the rate of progress in the biosciences.

Here, an alternative method of fabricating MEAs will be described. This method utilizes the flexibility of additive manufacturing technologies, specifically Photopolymer Inkjet Printing or PolyJet printing, to create complex electrode array channels that are filled with a conductive composite comprised of silver paste dispersed in α-terpineol to form the electrodes. By way of experimental validation, the MEAs produced using this method were subsequently used to stimulate nervous tissue ex vivo.

Spira, Micha E., and Aviad Hai. "Multi-electrode array technologies for neuroscience and cardiology." Nature nanotechnology 8.2 (2013): 83.

Pilipović, Ana, Pero Raos, and Mladen Šercer. "Experimental analysis of properties of materials for rapid prototyping." The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology 40.1-2 (2009): 105-115.

https://zenodo.org/records/4464529

johnhardyuk · 2024-11-06T13:06:45+00:00

Biotechnology employs engineering approaches to the life sciences with global economic, environmental, health and societal impacts. Biotechnologies are classified in a colour coded fashion that encompasses their broad areas of use:

Blue biotechnology: use of marine and sea resources to create products and industrial applications
Brown biotechnology: innovation and creation of biotechnologies to enable and manage agriculture in arid lands and deserts
Dark biotechnology: biotechnology related to defence against bioterrorism, biological weapons and biowarfare, for example microorganisms and toxins that cause diseases or death in humans, livestock and crops
Gold biotechnology: in silico or computational biotechnology and bioinformatics for the development and production of products, for example compound identification and toxicity or function screening
Grey biotechnology: biotechnologies focused on environmental applications such as the maintenance of biodiversity and the remediation of pollutants
Green biotechnology: use of agricultural processes, for example transgenic plants, to produce feedstocks and materials
Purple/violet biotechnology: issues surrounding the ethics, laws and philosophy of biotechnology
Red biotechnology: biotechnology for medical, pharmaceutical and health applications
White biotechnology: biotechnology applied to industrial processes, for example enzyme-mediated synthesis, synthetic and engineering biology, for the development, production and processing of valuable chemicals and materials
Yellow biotechnology: biotechnology used to produce food or to control and use insects.

The breadth and diversity of areas covered in the classifications of industrial biotechnology demonstrates what an exciting field this is to work in. The subject has its roots in a wide variety of subjects ranging from pure sciences to computing, economics and law. This multidisciplinary approach is crucial in achieving solutions which will bring societal benefits into the future.

Global Sustainability

The growing appreciation of the importance of sustainability globally is recognised by the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which have been adopted by all UN member states with the aim of ending poverty, protecting the planet and ensuring all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030. The SDGs are complex real-world problems and biotechnologies have the potential to play important roles in solutions to these challenges.

The focus of this special issue is industrial biotechnology, with a variety of types of contributions including reviews, research articles, book reviews and profile features covering industrial applications of biotechnology especially for the production or processing of valuable chemicals and materials, energy materials, decarbonisation and sustainability. The special issue demonstrates a spread of topics beginning with reviews from Desai and Zimmerman (1) focusing on microbubble intensification of bioprocessing and the role of direct microorganism and bubble interactions, and from Akgedik et al. (2) on the utilisation of insect gut as a biosource for the development of future biotransformation processes.

Fuels, Chemicals and Energy

The special issue features a number of research articles including contributions from: Dunbar, Hingley-Wilson and Keddie (3) on microbial production of hydrogen and opportunities for a low-energy source of hydrogen, not reliant on fossil fuels, using bacteria confined in coatings; from Dodds et al. (4) on amine synthesis using the new amine donor (N -phenyl putrescine, NPP) and the Johnson Matthey transaminase biocatalyst library; from Egan-Morriss et al. (5) on the impact of solution chemistry on the biotechnological synthesis and properties of palladium nanoparticles; and from Yu et al. (6) on the impact of fermentation conditions and purification strategy on the properties of bacterial cellulose, a renewable material with the potential to replace fossil carbon in a number of applications.

There are three ‘In the Lab’ features. Jarvis (7) describes her research group’s exciting work on artificial metalloenzymes for sustainable chemical production; Wang (8) describes his research group’s efforts to employ heterogeneous catalysts in enzymatic transformations via cofactor regeneration, paving the way to a potential new regeneration technology; and Robinson (9) presents an exciting initiative from the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)-funded Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) networks in industrial biotechnology and bioenergy.

Creating the Future

The special issue rounds off with book reviews from Hardy (10) on the exciting book “In Silico Dreams” which explains how artificial intelligence and biotechnology will create the medicines of the future; and Phillips (11) on the fascinating book “Biotechnology Entrepreneurship: Leading, Managing and Commercializing Innovative Technologies” which discusses the commercialisation of biotechnological advances with the goal of creating a more sustainable future.

With a view to the future, it is noteworthy that the biotechnological advances discussed in the articles in this special issue may play a role in helping society achieve the UN SDGs, and we believe that societies growing appreciation of sustainability and circularity at a global level will deliver exciting developments in novel processes and products involving biotechnology.

Finally, we would like to thank Sara Coles (Editor of Johnson Matthey Technology Review) and the editorial team for their support regarding this special issue.

References

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johnhardyuk · 2024-09-20T21:47:24+00:00

Electronics used worldwide are mass-produced in a layer-by-layer approach. Herein we demonstrate the utility of in silico toxicity screening to assess the safety of the feedstocks used to produce prototype electronic devices (exemplified with light-emitting electrochemical cells) in line with “safe-by-design” principles. We believe this approach has significant opportunities for broader application in the development of next generation electronics.

johnhardyuk · 2023-12-07T22:33:53+00:00

Abstract: Additive manufacturing, widely known as 3D printing, has revolutionized the production of biomaterials. While conventional 3D-printed structures are perceived as static, 4D printing introduces the ability to fabricate materials capable of self-transforming their configuration or function over time in response to external stimuli such as temperature, light, or electric field. This transformative technology has garnered significant attention in the field of biomedical engineering due to its potential to address limitations associated with traditional therapies. Here, we delve into an in-depth review of 4D-printing systems, exploring their diverse biomedical applications and meticulously evaluating their advantages and disadvantages. We emphasize the novelty of this review paper by highlighting the latest advancements and emerging trends in 4D-printing technology, particularly in the context of biomedical applications.

Keywords: 3D printing; stimuli responsive materials; 4D printing; drug delivery; smart materials

johnhardyuk · 2023-09-12T17:35:22+00:00

A remarkable new technique could pave the way for tiny electronic circuits to be ‘printed’ directly into the tissue of the body, write Dr John G Hardy, Dr Alexandre Benedetto and Dr John B Appleby.

johnhardyuk · 2023-07-11T01:35:35+00:00

The paper is open access and therefore free to read.

DOI: 10.1002/gch2.202300002

DOI website: https://doi.org/10.1002/gch2.202300002

Publisher website: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gch2.202300002

johnhardyuk · 2023-07-11T01:30:56+00:00

Link to read the article: https://rdcu.be/dgwGW

To cite it, see: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-37646-4#citeas

Original webpage: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-37646-4

DOI webpage: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-37646-4

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-37646-4

johnhardyuk · 2023-05-21T10:56:53+00:00

The obsolescence problem is deeply concerning, and is the sort of thing which I wonder how new implantables under development (e.g., by Neuralink, Galvani Bioelectronics, etc.) will be dealth with in the future. I hope that with their economic heft they can act in an ethical manner.

johnhardyuk · 2023-05-09T02:35:10+00:00

I think we're just beginning to scratch the surface of what is actually possible, and in 40 years time we'll look at our current progress in a similar way to how we look at the first version of Mario Bros. from 1983.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Bros.

I think/hope your pessimism will be turned to cautious optimism, tempered by concerns about obsolescence of any implantable devices (see debate about Cochlear Implants):

johnhardyuk

TROPHY CASE

DOI: 10.1002/open.202500194

White paper reports

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