Fit to Print?

Via Slate.

A new science fiction character is preparing to step off the printed page. Really.

The creation of implantable human organs with an ink-jet printer isn't as far-fetched as it might seem, a materials scientist said—at least in the future.

Scientists already use ink-jet cartridges to "print" stem cells into exacting patterns, and now engineers are taking the technology to a whole new dimension—quite literally—by exploring ways to print 3-D structures of cells.

"It's a milestone that we can print all types of cells onto a surface with an ink-jet printer without them dying, even stem cells," said Paul Calvert, a materials scientist at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. "Doing this successfully in three dimensions, however, is like going from a black-and-white to a full-color."

As if *that* could ever happen.

Print Spock out a new brain, could you Bones. The poor SOB has no head for figures whatsoever. Always with those ridiculously inaccurate but absurdly precise probability computations.

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