After a cyber attack or natural disaster, a backup network of decentralized devices — like residential solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles, heat pumps, and water heaters — could restore electricity or relieve stress on the grid, MIT engineers find. 

In recent years, vaping has become popular as an alternative to traditional cigarettes. Flavored electronic cigarettes — known as e-cigarettes — have become so popular among young adults that some states have implemented restrictions such as flavor bans and taxes on e-cigarettes in an effort to reduce teen vaping.

A new study from researchers at the University of Missouri and the Yale School of Public Health found that state restrictions on flavored e-cigarettes led to a decrease in vaping among young adults in the United States. However, those restrictions also led to an increase in traditional cigarette smoking among young adults compared to states without such restrictions.

Here, Dr. Yuhua Li from Xi'an University of Science and Technology, Prof. Rui Zhu from Shanghai University of Electric Power, Prof. Liqiang Wang from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Prof. Lai-Chang Zhang from Edith Cowan University, Australia, co-authored a review in the International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing. This review provides an in-depth introduction to the latest progress in additive manufacturing (AM) technology in the field of biomedical metals. It overviews how AM technology can be applied to the manufacturing of medical implants and focuses on the AM process, microstructure, mechanical properties, and corrosion behavior of a wide range of biomedical materials, such as titanium alloys, stainless steel, cobalt-chromium alloys, and biodegradable alloys. Additionally, the article covers the application of 4D printing technology and artificial intelligence in AM, and discusses practical application cases of AM technology in clinical fields such as orthopedics, dentistry, cardiovascular surgery, and neurosurgery. Finally, the article highlights the challenges and future directions of AM in the manufacturing of medical metal implants.