New 3d printing technology revolutionizes medical treatment by creating organs, affordable prosthetics, and new surgery techniques

Initially being able to only make fragile and brittle objects, 3D printing technology has revolutionized the medical industry. Scientists and researchers are solving problems and making advancements within the medical field that few ever thought was possible including organ creation and prosthetic advancements. In fact it's only a matter of time before today's medical problems are a thing of the past.

3D printing technology makes prosthetics at a faster rate that are cheaper, have more degrees of freedom, and are aesthetically pleasing.

3D printing has completely revolutionized the prosthetic industry making prosthetics more affordable, giving current and the 185,000 new amputees born each year hope for a better life. 

3D printing reduces cost of prosthetic devices because it removes the costs associated with manufacturing and putting together individual parts. Correspondingly, since the 3D printing can print using different types of ink, it's possible to print high quality material at a cheaper cost than if that material were built using individual parts or through a private company. Furthermore, because 3D prosthetics can be customized due to advancements within computer software, the prosthetic can be built for virtually any specific need, whether that be for bike-riding or indoor use, thus making the prosthetics extremely versatile. The 3D printed prosthetics can also be made to have more degrees of freedom and flexibility since 3D printers print using exact measurements and because 3D printing works on the basis of additive manufacturing, thus allowing the user to experience greater levels of mobility and comfort.

3D printing applications to the prosthetic industry solves many problems that have plagued this industry for years. Normally the cost of regular prosthetics cost thousands of dollars and are made to one size only. This means that if the amputee gains weight or grows in size, like most children do during puberty, then the amputee will have to pay thousands of dollars again to have another prosthetic made. Add these problems to the fact that only 46 percent of insurance companies cover the fees associated with prosthetics, and it's no surprise why many amputees have no choice but to remain limbless without some form of mechanical assistance.

However, with the emergence of 3D printing technology, these are no longer major issues as one can easily and for a much cheaper price, have a new prosthetic printed for them within hours. 

In fact, Director of Engineering Information Technology at the University of Maryland, Jim Zahniser, believes the ability to print “new parts very quickly and cheaply” is a huge step forward for the scientific community. He feels the biggest problem that plagued the prosthetic industry was that many children would outgrow their “expensive prosthetics causing families to have to pay thousands of dollars” for new devices. But now “it's no big deal if the device brakes or doesn't fit because a new one can easily be printed."

Whats even better is that because 3D printing uses ink to create the object, the customer can choose his or her desired ink color and print out custom designs on their prosthetic. This works great for amputees who want to add a personal sense of design to their prosthetic in order to make their device more aesthetically pleasing and comfortable. In fact one child went as far as having a custom printed Iron Man prosthetic designed just for him since he loves superheros, and therefore, can grow a stronger liking to his prosthetic and hopefully lessen any insecure feelings that arise from having to wear a mechanical device in public.

Surgeons are also utilizing additive manufacturing from 3D printing to create surgical molds that help them practice difficult surgeries       

Just recently surgeons were tasked with a difficult scenario where they were forced to operate on a brain aneurysm, a surgery difficult for any skilled surgeon. In fact brain aneurysms are fatal 40 percent of the time when they occur and of those that do survive, only 34 percent live with no brain damage. In particular, this brain aneurysm of the patient Theresa Flint, was difficult to operate on so doctors decided to 3D print her brain vessels. Doing so allowed them to practice the surgery beforehand and mimic various scenarios and techniques they were planning on using throughout the surgery. The surgeons were also able to locate any potential hurdles they would have had to overcome during the actual surgery, but because they practiced beforehand, they were able to complete the surgery with ease. 

Many surgeons find practicing beforehand extremely beneficial, especially for rare diseases that require operation. Sometimes surgeons have limited experience dealing with rare diseases which is why surgical errors happen, especially in the more difficult fields like neurology. 






In fact one young girl who had a rare facial disease known as a Tessier Flacet Cleft, went to several doctors before finding one who had some experience operating on patients like her. However, despite his experience, Dr. Meara decided to practice several times on printed 3D models of the girls face. Practicing four times, Dr. Meara and his team were able to simulate every possible technique they would use and scenario they would encounter. During one of the practice surgeries, Dr. Meara noticed his surgical approach during the reattachment phase would've cause the girls eyes to be attached to close too each other, thus significantly reducing her vision. However, because Dr. Meara practiced beforehand, he had the opportunity to adjust his technique and avoid this error that he otherwise would've committed in the operating room. 

Despite the positives 3D printing brings to surgeons, Mechanical Engineering Professor from the University of Maryland, Dr. Ryan Sochol still would like to see improvements with this practice. Dr. Sochol argues that despite the benefits there are still many variables that still haven't been accounted for when practicing a surgery using 3D molding. 

Dr. Sochol maintains that “despite these drawbacks, 3D printing still makes surgeries alot safer than before” and he actually believes a time will come where surgeons can practice in "environments that better simulate body conditions and different stimuli to give surgeons a better sense of their patients body before they operate." Dr. Sochol also believes that soon the idea of “surgeons practicing before surgeries will become a common practice amongst all surgeons.”

Organ replacement can become more effective as researchers are utilizing 3D printing properties to create organs 

3D printing has created alot of progress in bio-printing, the field concerning 3D printed biological tissue and organs. Scientists have actually been able to successfully grow small organs and recreate structures that one day may be used for large organ transplant for organs like the liver or lungs. 

The problem with most organ transplants is that most organs are rejected by the body, meaning the persons own immune system attacks the replacement organ because the immune system recognizes this organ as a foreign object within the body. This happens due to different cell types interfering with the body's own cell type, thus causing a disruption in body signals. The unfortunate problem is that it's rare for a organ donor and a recipient to have a perfect match, meaning there is always some chance that the body may reject the organ, thus rendering it useless. To make matters worse, there are hundreds of people waiting for organ transplants at various hospitals throughout the world, meaning most potential recipients must wait months sometimes even dying during the process of waiting.   

Anyhow 3D printing takes care of this issue because the organ is made with the patients own cells, lowering any chance of the body rejecting the organ. Although large organ transplants is still a few years away, transplants involving small 3D printed organs have already taken place as surgeons were able to successfully implant a small 3D printed blood vessel in a 5 year old girl. The blood vessel was grown from her own bone marrow cells, therefore reducing any chance that the body may reject the organ.

Unfortunately when organ failure occurs due to cancer, this is another issue. This is because the cells of the organ are severely infected but University of Maryland Engineering Teaching Fellow and 3D Printing Expert, Ethan Reggia, has thoroughly studied bio-printing issues like these and believes there is still a solution possible

Ethan also believes that when large organ transplant is possible, he feels that many surgeons and oncologists will push towards organ replacement if they notice cancerous tissue forming on or within an organ. Ethan thinks that the sooner the cancerous organ is removed, then the smaller chance for "cancer to metastasize to other organs throughout the body." However, Ethan believes replacing large organs like the liver or kidney won't be so easy and believes more testing and research needs to be done. 

Despite all the positives 3D printing brings to healthcare many are highlighting ethical concerns with the practice

Many scientists and researchers are have begun discussing ethical concerns with 3D printing, in particular, its uses within the bio-printing industry. Some claim that technology is pushing the boundaries on what was possible, and while some feel this is great, others are warning about the implications of doing. Many believe that bio-printing, creating new tissues and organs from 3D printing, runs the risk of developing things beyond what is normal for human beings. Many are concerned that if researchers are able to print small organs now, then whats stopping people from trying to 3D print weapons or dangerous chemicals.

Some researchers have even gone as far as saying that 3D printing may lead the human race down a path where super humans are being printed, humans with extraordinary organs that provide substantial bodily functions that otherwise aren't natural.

Many also are concerned with the safety of 3D printing as researchers are noticing that their are few safety protocols in place right now. Despite these issues Jim Zahniser, still feels that the technology today offers ineffable benefits.

In fact many researchers and scientists also agree with what Jim Zahniser said in the sense that for extreme cases the ethical issues should be pushed aside as the technology offers far greater benefits.

Sometimes in a period of new change and development many begin to fear the advancements that are being made, especially with technology, but it's applications is what helps society continue to grow and help solve the 21st century's biggest problems. Without 3D printing, advancements in prosthetics, surgery, and organ creation, wouldn't be possible. Only time can tell whether technology has gone too far but for now its benefits seem to out weight any negatives that seem to temporarily arise.

New security flaw for android mobile device allows hackers to secretly access user’s camera, video player, and other multi media features

Earlier this year, researcher Joshua Drake, an employee at the mobile security firm Zimperium, discovered a dangerous bug in the android mobile operating system. So dangerous in fact, that a hacker only needs a person's phone number in order to execute an attack against their phone.

Hackers can exploit android devices by sending a text message, and even if the owner doesn’t open the message, so long as multimedia messaging services on the device within settings is activated, the phone will become infected. This is because multimedia messaging services, media services that are built within the operating system, automatically process information like text and video messages once the phone receives an incoming message.


That's why a user can be extremely cautious and follow good security practices, but still get infected with this bug, as this bug doesn't rely on a user's poor web-surfing habits, but rather the vulnerability in the android operating system. 

The bug has been labeled as Stage Fright because the vulnerability lies in a multimedia player component in the android named Stage Fright. In fact once a hacker has infected the user's device, he or she can virtually do anything multimedia wise to their device. He or she could send infected messages to the user's contacts, access their camera and microphone without their knowledge, and even send and record video without them ever knowing.

This is because when the android device was created, the creators gave the multimedia component Stage fright systems permissions, the second highest level of permissions on the device. This means the hacker can do whatever they want with the user's multimedia and messaging. Additionally, since they have systems permissions, they can also execute files to keep themselves hidden so the user finds no traces of their activity. This means that the user may never know a picture was taken or may never even receive an acknowledgement from their phone that their camera is on, as most phones display a bright light when their video player is recording.

Despite the dangers of Stage Fright exploitation, users can protect themselves by turning the auto retrieve messaging feature off. 

By going to each of their messaging apps and disabling the auto retrieve option in settings, user's disable their phone from automatically processing every message it receives. This allows the user to remove the threat of being infected by simply receiving any message.

Disabling multimedia messaging services will then prompt the user on whether or not they wish to accept any new multimedia message they receive, thus allowing them to at least have a chance to potentially protect themselves by filtering out potentially infected multimedia messages. This way if a user receives a message from an unrecognizable phone number, he or she can protect themselves by clicking reject to reject the message, thus avoiding activation of the malware within that potentially infected message.

Disabling multimedia messaging services must be done, however, with all applications that use this service, including the default applications that came with the phone like messenger and google hangouts.  As the exploit is at the core of the android’s operating system, and it uses the multimedia messaging service to carry out its malicious acts, therefore any external downloaded applications onto the phone can cause issues if its multimedia messaging services is on.

To make matters worse, a combined study done by Kaspersky lab and Interpol found that majority of cyber mobile threats were geared towards attacking the android device. This means that there could be hackers trying to develop derivatives of this virus in order to continue hacking android, even after a solution is made for the core issue. Fortunately, users have a few other precautions, besides disabling multimedia messaging services, they can take to ensure they aren't a victim of the Stage Fright exploitation. 

Android users can take extra precaution against Stage Fright hacks by keeping phone software updated and using helpful third party applications.

Although it is a good start, completely disabling all the multimedia messaging services on your phone isn’t the only thing you can do to stay protected. Users should also make sure their android device's operating system is updated to the latest version, as google has released several patches to try and remedy this problem.

One software patch in one of the updates by google, actually disables its own messenger and hangout apps from automatically processing video messages in the background. This provides users a bit of comfort, as they don't have to worry about their phones getting infected even if they do receive malicious video messages.

Unfortunately many cell phone carriers and manufacturers are responsible for software updates which will cause a delay in updates being pushed out since there are so many android users. Not to mention only few carriers and manufacturers have applied the software patch to the android devices so far. Some android devices, especially very old devices, may never receive an update at all as there are just too many android users to be able to deliver a security patch to every single user.

This may leave many users no choice but to have to buy a new phone or switch carriers. There are some users, though that still want to keep their phone. So Zimperium, the company that discovered the Stage Fright application, created a mobile app that scans your phone and will assess any potential vulnerabilities in your device. Allowing users to make informed choices regarding their android device.



Although the application cannot remedy the problem, as that must come from a software patch from either the users carrier or manufacturer, the app at least lets the user know if their phone has the potential to be infected. Nonetheless this is a serious issue that hopefully will have a concrete solution soon, otherwise thousands of hackers could potentially damage a lot of peoples lives by continuing to have access to their private information on their mobile devices. 

Technology has helped make dental crown procedures more effective, faster, and patients happier!

Green Bay Packers starting wide receiver Jordy Nelson tears ACL during an NFL preseason game against the Steelers

I would share this information with my social network because a large chunk of my social network are Green Bay Packer fans, and any Packer fan knows, that Jordy Nelson's route running and catching abilities is one of the main reasons why our offense is successful against other defenses. The Packers also don't have much depth at the wide receiver position, making his injury an even bigger loss to the Packers. Therefore sharing this unfortunate news with other Packer fans will help them stay up to date with the team and see what other options we have at the wide receiver position.

See more information by click on here.

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