#Home depot starts selling Makerbot 3d printers 3d printed nuts and bolts from a Makerbot. Home depot, the world s largest home improvement chain, announced the start of a pilot program#to sell Makerbots.
They are described by the manufacturer as a type of professional-grade 3-D printing machine and will be in a dozen stores following a three-month period of online-only sales.
Video)# The Makerbot printers, which range from a compact $1, 375 model to a high-end $2,
899 version, went on sale July 14 in Chicago and New york city-area stores, as well as Home depot locations throughout California.
As we were thinking about a partnership with Makerbot, we re always looking for new innovation, Joe Downey,
Home depot s online merchant for tools, told Huffpost by phone. It s really about bringing about new innovation to customers. 3-D printers can whip up everything from#vagina selfies#to#handguns,
but Home depot envisions its customers using the Makerbots for decidedly more practical applications. Imagine a world where you can 3-D print replacement parts
and use 3-D printing as an integral part of design and building work, Makerbot CEO Bre Pettis said in a statement.
In demonstration kiosks at the 12 pilot locations, Home depot employees can show customers how to print items like#replacement parts and product prototypes, CBS reports.
While a Makerbot can, in theory, churn out many of the same items that people go to Home depot to buy,
the retailer doesn t seem worried about 3-D printing itself into obsolescence. We re comfortable with the partnership, Downey said,
noting that customers haveeconomies of scale to consider. In other words, a Makerbot owner would be unlikely to print all her own screws or bolts for a large project.
Besides said Pettis of the current fleet of Makerbot printers, You can t use it as a hammer.
Downey said customers typically use the printers for personalization projects, like a Chicago father who Downey said purchased a Makerbot to print custom furniture for his daughter s dollhouse.
The current generation of 3-D printers are still relatively slow#printing an item the size of a Lego brick can take roughly half an hour
#and customers would still need to go to a store to purchase the (often costly) raw materials.
Ten years from now, it will be quite common for people to have 3-D printers in their homes
Tim Shepherd, an analyst with the U k.-based research firm Canalys,#told Bloomberg last week.
In addition to Home depot, companies like#Amazon, Staples and Dell have joined the ranks of 3-D printer retailers.
Touted as asecond industrial revolution, 3-D printing comprises a $3 billion industry#that has grown 600 percent#in the past decade, Forbes reports.
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#Mass incarceration may be the greatest social crisis in modern American history More than 2. 4 million people#are behind bars#in the United states today.
The U s. Sentencing Commission#voted unanimously last week to allow#nearly 50,000 nonviolent federal drug offenders to seek lower sentences.
The decision of the commission retroactively applied an earlier change in sentencing guidelines#to now cover roughly half of those serving federal drug sentences.
Both the Department of justice and prison-reform advocates have endorsed the change. It s a significant step forward in reversing decades of mass incarceration
though in a global context, still modest.####How large is America s prison problem? More than 2. 4 million people#are behind bars#in the United states today,
either awaiting trial or serving a sentence. That s more than the combined population of 15 states, all but three U s. cities,
They re scattered throughout a constellation of 102 federal prisons, 1, 719 state prisons, 2, 259 juvenile facilities, 3, 283 local jails,
and many more military, immigration, territorial, and Indian Country#facilities. Compared to the rest of the world,
That graph is from a recent report by Prison Policy Initiative, an invaluable resource on mass incarceration.
#Disturbingly, many states prison populations outrank even those of dictatorships and illiberal democracies around the world.#
Starting in the 1970s with the rise of tough-on-crime politicians and the War on Drugs, America s prison population jumped eightfold between 1970 and 2010.
The graph below does not include local or territorial prisons. These two metricsthe international and the historicalhave to be seen together to understand how aberrant mass incarceration is.
For a great many poor people in America, particularly poor black men,#prison is a destination that braids through an ordinary life,
much as high school and college do for rich white ones, #wrote Adam Gopnik in#his seminal 2012 article.
In truth, there are more black men in the grip of the criminal-justice systemin prison, on probation,
a brush with the criminal-justice system can hamstring a former inmate s employment and financial opportunities for life.
A new University of Chicago study found that black men are no better off in 2014 than they were passed
although criminologists and scholars like Michelle Alexander have#consistently found no correlation#between the incarceration rate and the crime rate.
Claims about ablack pathology also#fall short. But police scrutiny often falls most heavily on people of color nonetheless.#
#In New york city alone, officers#carried out#nearly 700,000 stop -and-frisk searches in 2011. Eighty-five percent of those stops targeted black and Hispanic individuals,
Any meaningful discourse on racism, poverty, immigration, the drug wars, gun violence, the mental-health crisis,
and scholars who ve worked on prison and criminal-justice reform for years. But for the general public
an Indian startup, is going to start selling its Bluetooth enabled Lechal shoes for more than $100 a pair in September.
The smartshoes sync up with a smartphone#app#that uses Google maps and vibrate to tell users
when and where to turn to reach their destination.####Just tell your phone where you want to go
and then you can leave it in your pocket because the buzzing in your left
and has grown to 50 employees in the city of Secunderabad in the#newly-formed southern Indian state of Telengana.
You will leave your house without your watch or wristband but you will never leave your house without your shoes.
Mr. Lawrence used his experience as a former U s.#patent prosecutor to get 24 international
and not have to stop to check their phones as they move because the buzzing in their shoes will let them know when to turn.
which is backed by three angel investors, is now looking to raise an additional $4 million to $5 million to market its products,
He declined to disclose the names of angel investors or the amount they invested. Ducere is also tying up with nonprofit organizations
and eye institutes to sell Lechal products to the visually challenged at a more affordable price.
#China and India race to fully harness thorium for nuclear power Thorium is an alternative to uranium as a way of doing nuclear fission.
and more sustainable sources of nuclear energy to provide our electricity. And just like in a Hollywood movie,
thorium has taken almost 200 years to be taken seriously as an energy contender. After a period in the 1950s and 1960s in which it flirted with thorium,
because uranium was an easier component for nuclear weapons. But times have changed, and thorium s status as a safer alternative to uranium is now a help,
not the hindrance it was during the Cold war. India, which has hundreds of thousands of tonnes of the metal amid its terrain
has announced plans to build a thorium-based nuclear reactor by 2016. But it faces competition from China,
where the schedule to deliver a thorium-based nuclear power plant was overhauled recently, meaning scientists in Shanghai have been told to deliver such a facility within the next ten years.
While thorium nuclear exploration is had not New britain its own reactor in Dorset carrying out tests 40 years ago the will to make it a viable energy source is growing stronger.
Professor Roger Barlow from the University of Huddersfield is part of a team researching thorium power generation.
because an overheating thorium reactor can be switched simply off, avoiding the problem that occurred at Fukushima, for instance.
Thorium also produces less radioactive waste than uranium, waste which needs to be secured for hundreds rather than tens of thousands of years.
meaning it cannot be split to release energy alone, but when exposed to neutrons it will react to produce a particular isotope of uranium (U-233) that becomes the nuclear fuel.
and produces less waste than the usual uranium power plant reaction that generates plutonium, which can be used to make weapons.
But who will be the first across the line in the thorium race? The Chinese have thrown a lot of resources at it,
people are going to want more and more energy. Although they re building lots of coal fired power stations, they re also looking at other ways of generating power.
Thorium is not without its critics, who point to its nuclear reaction producing U-232, the decay products
And many supporters of green energy believe the nuclear equation should be abandoned not solved. But Prof Barlow thinks those campaigning solely for alternative energy sources such as wind
and solar are missing the bigger picture. If you re trying to move to a low-carbon fuel economy,
And nuclear power has got to be part of that basket t
#Researchers develop new process that raises prospects of 3d printed bone grafts 3d printing could help mend broken bones.
but it has been held back by the difficulties in printing materials that are strong, flexible and can encourage the regrowth of healthy bone in the same way as current methods,
antibiotics to prevent infections, or even living cells to the scaffolds. At the moment, calcium phosphate powder is temporarily bound using an acidic binder chemical typically phosphoric acid
Now, researchers in the U s. have developed a new way of printing in calcium phosphate that can be done at relatively low temperatures which results in a scaffold that is mechanically strong
Their approach relies on adding collagen to the phosphoric acid binder solution to create a composite material with the calcium phosphate,
they report in the journal Biomaterials. Collagen is the most abundant structural protein in the body
The team from the University of Rochester, Alfred University and the University of California San diego also added a surfactant to the mix to improve the printability of the material.
They printed scaffolds using the composite material on an adapted 3d Systems ZPRINTER 450 and subjected them to a series of laboratory tests.
Inkjet printing of collagen solutions with high resolution has not been utilized previously in 3d printing of calcium phosphates
#New LED light technology sheds light on the future of food LED growing lights, delivering sunlight whatever the weather.
We need to feed more people with limited agricultural land and resources. We need to make better use of land, light and logistics for an increasingly urban population.
And we need to incorporate zero waste and low energy technologies into the task of food production. What can achieve the intensification of food supply we require,
but in a way that is also sustainable and less harmful to the environment? There is an urgent need to develop new methods for sustainable food production.
This includes a greater emphasis on urban agriculture such as vertical farming which, properly designed and planned, could provide the sustainable means to improve food supply we need.
Ideally, urban agriculture fits neatly alongside or within existing buildings in a self-contained and sustainable manner without competing for resources.
Such urban plots can be at ground level or on rooftops. They can use greenhouses in order to take advantage of the sun s energy,
or grow indoors with the help of artificial lights. Vertical farming is promising because it requires no soil,
and can save space and energy and improve crop yield. It takes advantage of the vertical space of city buildings rather than turning over wide expanses of land to agriculture and uses advanced greenhouse technology:
hydroponics or aeroponics, and environmental controls that regulate temperature, humidity and light to produce vegetables, fruits and other crops year-round.
In large cities such as New york, Chicago, Tokyo and Singapore, these ideas are taking root. Singapore has taken local urban farming to a high level Skygreens has built the world s first commercial vertical farm in large three-story greenhouses, providing a sustainable source of fresh vegetables.
The cost of growing Vertical farming s biggest limitation is energy consumption. Considerable energy is required to power a closed, indoor greenhouse facility s artificial lighting, heating and cooling
and hydroponic or aeroponic growing systems. The amount of energy required per unit of product is an important factor for ensuring
not only that the farm is sustainable, but that it is economically viable. Recently, more and more studies have focused on pairing solar panels
and wind turbines with greenhouses to provide self-generated renewable electricity on-site. But the single technology that will be key to making vertical farms possible is lighting.
New LED light technology is the key that makes it possible to build vertically integrated farms.
This kind of artificial light has an extremely high photoelectric conversion efficiency consuming only one eighth the power of incandescent lamp, half of the power of fluorescent lamp,
and using a lower supply voltage (6-24v) that makes it safer to work with
and reduces transmission losses. They re also physically small, have a long service life, lower power consumption, generate less heat,
and can produce light of varying intensity. Because it produces less heat, the light can be moved closer to the plants.
This increases efficiency, not just in terms of energy use but by allowing layers of growing plants to be packed more densely, making more efficient use of space.
LED LIGHTS can be tuned to emit only a narrow wavelength of light they can be combined to create perfect lighting that provide light on the ideal spectrum for a plant s growth.
Evidence is emerging that specific wavelengths of light have distinct effects on crop yield, quality, and even pest and disease resistance.
There is potential for these multifunctional techno-greenhouses built around LED grow lights to increase the quality of the food we eat
and the amount that we can grow with the same land and resources: the very 21st-century problems we now face
and through technology are getting closer to solving g
#Uncanniest valley when robots know us better than we know ourselves Robots don't judge. Humans do.
Japanese roboticist Mashahiro Mori coined the termuncanny valley in 1970 to describe the strange fact that,
as robots become more humanlike, we relate to them better but only to a point.
The uncanny valley is this point. The issue is that, as robots start to approach true human mimicry,
when they look and move almost, but not exactly, like a real human, real humans react with a deep and violent sense of revulsion.
This is evolution at work. Biologically revulsion is a subset of disgust, one of our most fundamental emotions and the by-product of evolution's early need to prevent an organism from eating foods that could harm that organism.
Since survival is at stake, disgust functions less like a normal emotion and more like a phobiaa nearly unshakable hardwired reaction.
Psychologist Paul Ekman discovered that disgust, alongside contempt, surprise, fear, joy, and sadness, is one of the six universally recognized emotions.
Because once disgust shows up the brain of the disgust-feeler starts processing the other person (i e. the disgust trigger) as a toxin.
(i e. get me the hell away from this toxic thing response), it dehumanizes the other person,
Something that acts almost human but not quite, reads to our brain's pattern recognition systemas illness.
we read this as a sign of disease meaning the close but no cigar robot reads as a costly mate
and a toxic substance and our reaction is deep disgust. But the uncanny valley is only the first step in
Ellie is an early iteration computer simulated psychologist, a bit of complicated software designed to identify signals of depression
and other mental health problems through an assortment of real-time sensors (she was developed to help treat PTSD in soldiers
and hopefully decrease the incredibly high rate of military suicides). At a technological level, Ellie combines a video camera to track facial expressions,
a Microsoft Kinect movement sensor to track gestures and jerks, and a microphone to capture inflection and tone.
At a psychological level, Ellie evolved from the suspicion that our twitches and twerks and tones reveal much more about our inner state than our words
(thus Ellie tracks 60 different features-that's everything from voice pitch to eye gaze to head tilt).
"And we know that the body displays things that sometimes people try to keep contained.
"The mere belief that participants were interacting with only a computer made them more open and honest, researchers found,
when they thought only pixels were present. The reason for this success is pretty straightforward.
and roughly 50,000 psychiatrists. But, well, with Ellie 2. 0 in the pipeline, not for long. It s also worth noting that these professions generate about $3. 5 billion dollars in annual income,
whichassuming robo-therapy is much, much cheaper than human-therapywill also vanish from the economy.)
But the second issue is philosophical, and this is where the uncanniest valley comes back into the picture.
Now, for sure, this particular valley is still hypothetical, and thus based on a few assumptions. So let's drill down a bit.
psychologist and psychiatrists are a deep knowledge base, arguably one of our greatest repositories of about human information.
when an AI can train up an robo-therapist better than a human canagain, no great stretch because all we re really talking about is access to a huge database of psychological data combined with ultra-accurate pattern recognition, two already possible developments.
Via Forbes Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorat t
#Job growth is faster in states that raised minimum wage The 13 states that raised their minimum wages on Jan 1 have added jobs at a faster pace than those that did not.
The Department of labor released new data that suggests that raising the minimum wage in some states might have spurred job growth,
contrary to what critics said would happen.####In a report on Friday, the 13 states that raised their minimum wages on Jan 1 have added jobs at a faster pace than those that did not.
The data run counter to a Congressional Budget Office report in February#that said raising the minimum wage to $10. 10 an hour,
as the White house supports, would cost 500,000 jobs. The Associated press writes: In the 13 states that boosted their minimums at the beginning of the year,
Nine of the 13 states increased their minimum wages automatically in line with inflation: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont and Washington.
The state-by-state hiring data, released Friday by the Labor department, provides ammunition to the camp in favor of raising the minimum wage.
Economists who support a higher minimum say the figures are encouraging, though they acknowledge they don t establish a cause and effect.
It raises serious questions about the claims that a raise in the minimum wage is a jobs disaster,
said John Schmitt, a senior economist at the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research.
The job data isn t definitive he added, but is probably a reasonable first cut at
There are competing schools of thought among economists on the impact of raising the minimum wage. As#The Washington post notes:
Some studies, notably those lead by UMASS Amherst economist Arin Dube, argue that there are no adverse employment effects from small increases in the minimum wage.
Other studies, notably those lead by University of California Irvine economist David Neumark, argue there is an adverse effect.
The Economist#says: America s minimum wage has long been low by international standards, equaling just 38%of the median wage in 2011,
close to the lowest in the OECD. Congress changes it only occasionally, and in the interim inflation eats away its value.
The wage was last raised, to $7. 25 per hour, in 2009. Since then its real value has slipped back to where it was in 1998.
#Imprint Energy is developing flexible, printed batteries for wearable devices Ultrathin zinc-polymer battery. Imprint Energy is developing flexible,
rechargeable batteries that can be printed cheaply on commonly used industrial screen printers. The California startup has been testing its ultrathin zinc-polymer batteries in wrist-worn devices
and hopes to sell them to manufacturers of wearable electronics, medical devices, smart labels, and environmental sensors.
The company s approach is meant to make the batteries safe for on-body applications, while their small size and flexibility will allow for product designs that would have been impossible with bulkier lithium-based batteries.
Even in small formats the batteries can deliver enough current for low-power wireless communications sensors, distinguishing them from other types of thin batteries.
The company recently secured $6 million in funding from Phoenix Venture Partners, as well as AME Cloud Ventures, the venture fund of Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang, to further develop its proprietary chemistry and finance the batteries commercial launch.
Previous investors have included CIA-backed venture firm In-Q-Tel and Dow chemical. The batteries are based on research that company cofounder Christine Ho began as a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley,
where she collaborated with a researcher in Japan to produce microscopic zinc batteries using a 3-D printer.
The batteries that power most laptops and smartphones contain lithium which is highly reactive and has to be protected in ways that add size and bulk.
While zinc is more stable, the water-based electrolytes in conventional zinc batteries cause zinc to form dendrites,
branch-like structures that can grow from one electrode to the other, shorting the battery.
Ho developed a solid polymer electrolyte that avoids this problem, and also provides greater stability,
and greater capacity for recharging. Brooks Kincaid, the company s cofounder and president, says the batteries combine the best features of thin-film lithium batteries and printed batteries.
Such thin-film batteries tend to be rechargeable but they contain the reactive element, have limited capacity,
and are expensive to manufacture. Printed batteries are nonrechargeable, but they are cheap to make, typically use zinc,
and offer higher capacity. Working with zinc has afforded the company manufacturing advantages. Because of zinc s environmental stability, the company did need not the protective equipment required to make oxygen-sensitive lithium batteries.
When we talk about the things that constrain us in terms of the development of new products, there s really two that
I lose the most sleep over these days. One is batteries and one is displays, says Steven Holmes, vice president of the New Devices Group and general manager of the Smart Device Innovation team at Intel.
Despite demand for flexible batteries, Ho says no standard has been developed for measuring their flexibility, frustrating customers who want to compare chemistries.
So the company built its own test rig and began benchmarking its batteries against commercial batteries that claimed to be flexible.
Existing batteries failed catastrophically after fewer than 1, 000 bending cycles, she says, while Imprint s batteries remained stable.
Imprint has also been in talks about the use of its batteries in clothes andweird parts of your body like your eye
Ho says. The company also recently began working on a project funded by the U s. military to make batteries for sensors that would monitor the health status of soldiers.
Other potential applications include powering smart labels with sensors for tracking food and packages. Via Technology Review Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorat t
#Mcor Technologies improves their paper-based, full-color 3d printer Mcor Iris 3d printer Most people think 3d printing involves a machine that either extrudes molten plastic, in a way similar to how a hot glue gun works,
or think of one of the larger industrial level 3d printers manufactured by 3d systems or Stratasys.
These huge machines print objects in a variety of materials, but come with price tags that are only affordable#for a select few.##
##Fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3d printers mainly are limited to plastic and plastic-like materials. Plastics are the only materials that can be melted,
and then quickly hardened in a safe environment that doesn t require a tremendous amount of heat.
Industrial level 3d printers provide a lot of other material options, but these printers costs range from $75, 000 up to over $1 million.
Most individuals, and even a lot of businesses end up having to sit on the sidelines only dreaming that one day these prices will fall.
Because of the patents held on most of these technologies the prices probably won t be coming down all that soon.
Even as some of the older patents expire, there are still thousands that remain in effect for years
and even decades to come. 3d printing has been around since the early 1980s when Chuck Hull invented the first commercial 3d printer, based on a technology called sterolithography.
Many of the 3d printers available today still use this technology, including some of the larger industrial level machines.
Hull went on to create a company called 3d systems, which today is the largest 3d printer manufacturer in the world.
They still hold multiple patents on stereolithography although many have expired already. I recently was introduced to a 3d printer like none I ve seen before.
While walking around the Inside 3d printing Conference#recently, I saw some 3d printed objects that were unlike those on display by other companies.
When I picked them up, they felt as though they were printed out of wood. Upon talking to the marketing team on hand,
I found that this 3d printer did not fit into the same category as those other machines on the display floor.
That printer was the#Mcor IRIS, created by a company called Mcor Technologies. Mcor is a relative newcomer on the 3d printing scene.
Founded in 2005 by Dr. Conor Maccormack and Fintan Maccormack who invented an innovative new paper-based 3d printing technology back in 2003,
Mcor has quickly become one of the more talked about companies within the 3d printing industry.
a water-based adhesive, inkjet printer ink, and your standard A4 business paper. That s right, no expensive polymers, resins,
or other materials are required. That s what makes the Mcor line of 3d printers both unique and refreshing to those tired of the tremendous expenses associated with 3d printing in general.
Mcor currently offers two different 3d printers, the Matrix 300 +which was unveiled in 2009, and the full-color IRIS printer which was released in 2012.
Both printers utilize a technology called Selective Deposition Lamination (SDL. In SDL, standard sheets of paper, like you currently use with your desktop printer,
are fed into the machine. The initial sheet is bonded to the build plate, then the printer deposits an adhesive
and follows by stacking another sheet of paper on top. This occurs until the printer is ready to begin the actual cutting and printing of the object.
It begins to stack the paper using a process that selectively deposits a water-based adhesive to each individual sheet of paper,
before applying another sheet. The build plate is moved then up to a heat plate where it applies pressure to make sure that the two sheets of paper are bonded correctly together.
based on instructions received by computer CAD and slicing software. This occurs until a completed object has been printed.
there is an additional step involved where each piece of paper is colored using a modified 2-dimensional inkjet printer,
This allows for the printing of objects that can look extremely realistic. As you can imagine,
Mcor s Director of Marketing tells 3dprint. com. Staples, Gunma Internet, Vincennes University, WH Williams/Williams 3d,
The company believes that this technology can be used for multiple purposes in many sectors of business and education.
lifelike anatomical 3d models in the medical field, full scale models of architecture, and the list goes on.
Personally I am impressed by the maxillofacial surgeon who is using Mcor 3d printing to create surgical guides,
thus reducing the amount of time a patient needs to be under anesthesia and open in the operating room, says Reece.
and then 3d print their faces in full color with the Mcor IRIS. The resulting facial 3d prints were on display in a gallery in Europe.
a price that is pennies in comparison to some of the other industrial level printers on the market today.
by basically price gouging their materials, due to the fact that many of them are only obtainable through the manufacturer themselves, Mcor printers use simple A4 business paper.
In fact, even paper that has previously been used and printed on, is compatible with both of Mcor s 3d printers.
once the printing of an object is complete. If you don t like how an object turns out,
it can simply be thrown into the recycling bin. As you can imagine, this will both save money,
as well as the environment. Our mission is to make professional-quality 3d printing accessible to to everyone,
while remaining safe, eco-friendly and full color, says Reece. You can expect to see more from Mcor that delivers on that mission.
These are just the two latest innovations from a company that has put a lot of money into research and development.
allowing their printers to print objects that look extremely realistic. This means that photographers, engineers and designers can all take photographs
and create CAD files, and then print 3d objects with enhanced color precision. Typically when 3d printers are fed color data,
they translate it into machine-specific colors, rather than maintaining the original ICC. This means that traditionally colors are not as realistic and precise as intended.
Likewise, a company s logo will be the same colour on the computer screen as on a model 3d printed by the Mcor IRIS because of our ICC profile.
More details on Mcor can be found on their#website where they have made available a free#White paper,
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