From artificial organs to advanced batteries: A breakthrough 3D-printable polymer
A new type of 3D-printable material that gets along with the body's immune system, pioneered by a University of Virginia research team, could lead to safer medical technology for organ transplants and drug delivery systems. It could also improve battery technologies.
The breakthrough is the subject of a new article published in the journal Advanced Materials, based on work done by the University of Virginia's Soft Biomatter Laboratory, led by Liheng Cai, an associate professor of materials science and engineering and chemical engineering. The paper's first author is Baiqiang Huang, a Ph.D. student in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
Their research shows a way to change the properties of polyethylene glycol to make stretchable networks. PEG, as it's known, is a material already used in many biomedical technologies such as tissue engineering, but the way PEG networks are currently produced—created in water by crosslinking linear PEG polymers, with the water removed afterward—leaves a brittle, crystallized structure that can't stretch without losing its integrity.
Colombian moderators work six days a week for $261 a month, compared with about $2,200 in the UK, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism rep
today in "content moderation is thankless work done by underpaid, overworked contractors, largely in the global south":
Carolina, a former TikTok moderator who worked remotely for Teleperformance, a Paris-based company offering moderation services and earned $10 a day, said she had to keep her camera continuously on during her night shift, TBIJ reported. The company also told her that no one should be in view of the camera and was only allowed a drink in a transparent cup on her desk.
[...]
Luis, 28, worked night shifts moderating videos for TikTok. He listed to the outlet the kind of content he sees regularly: "Murder, suicide, pedophilia, pornographic content, accidents, cannibalism."
(and before anyone gets needlessly smug and tries to spin this as a problem unique to tiktok: it's not. not by a long shot. content moderation across the board is a thorny issue that requires huge amounts of real human oversight, which is made worse by the fact that so much of it is low-paying, soul-crushing work (or, in some cases like reddit, completely unpaid work done by volunteers). facebook in particular has been mistreating its content moderators for years now.)
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