This year he showed how, by injecting the cells into a matrix made from silica nanotubes wrapped in a sol-gel, he was able to keep a cell alive for six months.
The research team uses a RepRap 3D printer and a custom extruder head to print a filament network composed of sucrose, glucose and dextran which is later encased in a bio-gel containing living cells.
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Sandia flew him to Battelle labs in Columbus, Ohio, where he proved in front of the then reigning world sol-gel expert that his paper creation worked in real life.
The FDA restricted the use of silicone-gel implants in 1992 - only women participating in clinical trials are allowed to have them.
The company expects to develop branding for its Sol-Gel product in the same way that 3M (nyse: MMM - news - people ) has with Scotchgard and Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) with PCs.
Dr Michel Alary, an Aids specialist in the department of medicine at Laval University and the Saint-Sacrement Hospital Research Centre, said that the extremely high temperatures in sub-Saharan African countries could prevent the gel working there if it requires room temperature to be effective.
After 30 months, 98 women became infected with HIV - 38 in the group that got tenofovir in the gel and 60 in the group that got placebos.
The non-oxynol nine gel, was based on one already used in condoms as a spermicide.
In the double-blind, randomized control trial, half the women got tenofovir gel and half got a placebo.
I've had my eye on a Shell-Gel series case from Ballistic, but I'm still in need of suggestions.
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The visit was slightly surreal for Van Poppel, whose hometown in the Dutch Province of Noord-Brabant is best known for its university and a gel capsule manufacturing plant.
In their bathroom, tubes of hair gel, hair spray bottles, flatirons, blow-dryers, brushes and makeup compacts battled for counter space, with bobby pin casualties scattered on the floor.
The nanotubes are mixed into a compound called "bucky gel" to prevent clumping, and after some rubber-like flourinated copolymer is mixed in and it's all poured onto a glass plate, holes are punched in the material to better flexibility.
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Toshiyuki Nakagaki of the Bio-Mimetic Control Research Centre, Nagoya, Japan, placed pieces of the slime mould Physarum polycephalum in an agar gel maze comprising four possible routes.
But the pair have failed to gel and after a honeymoon period in which they won the final Test against South Africa and the one-day series 4-0, England flopped in the Stanford Super Series in Antigua before losing the one-dayers and Tests in India.
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