In 2002 the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) installed a series of electric barriers 37 miles downriver in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, an artificial channel that links the lakes with the Mississippi and its tributaries.

ECONOMIST: The Great Lakes

He is creating computer simulations to model the liver, so optimum channel size, flow rate and density of cells can be calculated as accurately as possible, before the artificial liver is constructed in the laboratory.

BBC: NEWS | Health | Glass liver may aid disease fight