3D printed trachea splint The life of a baby in Michigan was saved by the insertion of a 3-D printed trachea at two months old. The baby was diagnosed with tracheobronchomalacia, a condition in which the airways collapse, not allowing oxygen to enter the lungs.      

Futurist Thomas Frey: In September 1989, GE Chairman Jack Welch flew to Bangalore, India for a breakfast meeting with an Indian delegation that included Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi. The purpose of his trip was to sell airplane engines and medical equipment to India, but the meeting took an interesting twist along the way.    

Bill Gates speaking at the National Academy of Sciences. Bill and Melinda Gates spoke at the National Academy of Sciences, a non-profit group that has advised the nation on important scientific matters for 150 years. The NAS has roughly 2,200 members, all scientists at the top of their respective fields. About 200 of them have Nobel [...]

Watch the grant-winning prototype print some synthesized chocolate. NASA awards a $125,000 grant to Anjan Contractor, head of Systems & Materials Research Corporation, to develop a 3D food printer. Under the six-month grant, the first device Contractor plans to build is based on epRap’s open-source hardware and will be designed to print a pizza comprised of [...]

Teens are leaving Facebook and turning to Twitter. Teens find Facebook to be more an extension of their daily interactions at school and home than a place where they can relax and be themselves, according to the latest data from Pew. The unease the teens are feeling isn’t from concerns about third parties accessing their [...]

Employees at Intel, a semiconductor-chip-maker, recently devised a new chemistry process that reduced chemical waste by 900,000 gallons, saving $45 million annually. Another team developed a plan to reuse and optimize networking systems in offices, which cut energy costs by $22 million.    

Merging man and machine. Many future followers predict the pace of technological progression in genetics, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence will become so fast that humans will undergo radical evolution by around mid-century. Advances that provide a forever youthful and healthy state of being could be realized.    

Something as simple as tweaking the color of a button changes user behavior or endears people to your product. Why is Facebook blue? The reason is simple, according to The New Yorker. It’s because Mark Zuckerberg is red-green color blind; blue is the color Mark can see the best.    

There has been a lot of excitement around Google Glass, but the truth is, head-mounted displays that interact with the world around you are an area being aggressively explored by a number of companies. One of the primary areas of interest for these devices involves augmented reality. A group of former Valve employees have set out on their [...]

Rock Health predicted 2013 would be a record year for digital health. According to some of the biggest names in health investing, it’s a great time for health startups to raise money. Digital health funding grew dramatically in 2012 and it is continuing to grow.