The New Yorker: Urgent Care from the Army Corps of Engineers

The New Yorker: Urgent Care from the Army Corps of Engineers

By Paige Williams

When the pandemic first began, Trump failed to create vital infrastructure to support the soon overflowing hospitals. But the Army Corps of Engineers stepped up to the challenge. The agency's 36,000 employees are mostly civilians. It operates under the DOD and has its hand in virtually everything that needs construction. It has built the Pentagon, Washington Monument, Library of Congress, and many waterways. It has, however, come under fire in recent years for creating fake statistics to fund unnecessary projects and not being fast enough. Still, its top general is enthusiastic and claims the agency is focused on utmost quickness.

    When the pandemic struck, the Corps' usefulness was certainly proven. First, Governor Cuomo asked them to create emergency hospitals to house non-COVID patients. Volunteers quickly used cubicle-type barriers to turn gyms into temporary hospitals, complete with privacy curtains. As it quickly became clear that hospitals didn't have capacity for COVID patients, it was transformed again into a COVID care center with ventilators and air vents.

    In other states, the engineers found ways to use warehouses from storage centers and turn them into makeshift chambers with full capabilities in a matter of hours with prefabricated materials. An added bonus was clear walls that allowed doctors to check on patients without infection risk.

    They have also been involved with Trump's wall and its controversy, with the President even trying to use the agency's current fame for its benefit. According to its head, the agency does everything it can to remain apolitical and carry out the orders it is given, as written in its mission.

TedEd: How to 3D print human tissue

A TedEd by Taneka Jones

There are currently thousands of people waiting for implants of crucial organs like kidneys, hearts, and livers, but not enough donors for all of them. But what if we could create them from scratch? That's what bioprinting, a new branch of regenerative medicine, aims to do. Although we can't create major organs yet, we have already managed to print blood vessels and other circulatory systems. Bioprinting is similar to 3D printing, which prints layers of material on top of each other. Instead of ceramic, plastic, and metals, Bioprinting uses bioink, which is a printable material containing living cells. Most bioinks are something called a hydrogel, which contains the cells, which may be one or more types, in the hydrogel and other chemicals. The most common form of printing is extrusion printing, in which the ink is loaded into a pen and pushed out through a nozzle that is usually 400 microns wide. The tissue is printed onto a surface or a substance that will keep it stabilized until it is ready. The printed tissue will then behave the same way as normal tissue. Researchers have succeeded in producing things like skin, lung tissue, and cartilage, as well as miniature versions of larger organs. But the problem with those is that it is hard to replicate the bodily environment for larger organs. A faulty nozzle could destroy cells, and then there is the challenge of supplying blood and oxygen to the tissue. And this technology opens up many more possibilities, like computerized organs and prolonged life.