We wrote about Organovo’s game-changing human tissue printer back in January, and the company’s endeavor has gained a ton of attention since then. But organs are rather complex chunks of meat, and we’ve got a while to go before we see freshly printed livers shooting out of tissue machines in operating rooms. Skin, by comparison, is relatively simple stuff. Researchers at the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine have teamed with researchers at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and have developed a human skin printer out of a regular old inkjet.
Since traditional inkjet cartridges dispense a drop of ink roughly the size of a skin cell, it doesn’t take much, tech-wise, to turn your old HP Deskjet into a Frankenstein-style life machine. (Of course, technicians thoroughly clean and sanitize old cartridges before loading them with cellular matter.) The team has had success so far with mice, but have yet to move to human trials. The potential for this kind of device, however, is enormous. The Armed Forces is interested because battle casualties frequently include severe burns, and those soldiers may have little untouched skin from which to graft. Check out the video after the break to see an explanation by one of the researchers himself.
The video somewhat oversimplifies the process, as it glosses over the time needed to culture cells — time that most burn patients don’t have to waste. That being said, doctors would most likely look to donor cells for their skin-ink. A 3-D scanner would then map the topography of the burn site, and fill in the “gaps” with keratinocytes or fibroblasts straight from the printer. While this isn’t exactly the opening from ‘The Fifth Element,’ it’s not too far off, either. If you are unlucky enough to acquire third-degree burns a decade from now, you may find one of these printers hovering over your hospital bed, saving your limbs and life.
On March 3, a man and two women made off with 122 ink printer cartridges worth about $20,000 from the Wal-Mart at 1701 W. FM 646.Then on Friday between 12:50 a.m. and 2:21 a.m., a man and two women made off with $4,157 of printer ink cartridges from the same store, League City Police Lt. Bruce Whitten said. Like the first theft, the ink printer cartridges were loaded in to a large plastic storage bin in a shopping cart.
The thieves left the store using a fire door in the garden area, Whitten said. They drove away in a 2004 Ford Explorer with a license plate of 95M-BJ5, he said.Police have surveillance video of the suspects both inside and outside the store, Whitten said. One of the women is white and light-skinned with brown hair. She is described as being between 25 to 35 years old, he said.
The other woman is described as from 22 to 30 years old and light-skinned with brown hair. She may weigh from 180 to 210 pounds, Whitten said. The man is described as white and wore a ball cap and dark jacket, he said.Whitten said the Kemah and La Marque police departments are working similar thefts. Anyone with information is asked to call 281-338-4179 or 281-338-8210
In June 2009, Lyra analysts conducted a survey of 1,280 businesses in China from six different industries, including manufacturing, government, services, education, transportation/distribution, and banks/insurance/securities. The findings were described in Lyra’s 2009 China Business Market Demand Study, and this article provides some of the study’s data points.Want more information on the Chinese consumables market? Don’t miss Recharger and Lyra’s China Forum: Analyzing Global Imaging Supplies Trends. This full-day frontrunner to ReChina Asia Expo will take place Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2009, in Shanghai. Find our more information and register here.
Printer brand preference
HP is the most popular printer brand in China. More than one-half of companies in all six industry categories reported that they own HP printers. Canon and Epson are the second- and third-most popular printer brands, with close to one-half of the companies surveyed claiming to own those brands. Lenovo, Samsung, and Sharp form the second tier of popular brands. More than 20 percent of respondents reported owning these three brands. Other brands that were selected by more than 10 percent of the companies surveyed include Dell (17 percent), Panasonic (17 percent), Toshiba (13 percent), Brother (11 percent), Ricoh (11 percent), and Xerox/Fuji Xerox (11 percent). See Figure 1.The government sector appears to have the strongest preference for the HP brand. Fuji Xerox is among the top six brands in the transportation industry and the top seven brands in the banking and government sectors, though it has a lower standing in other industries and in the total sample. In general, however, brand popularity within each industry follows the same order found in the entire sample.
Technologies used
An overwhelming 84 percent and 81 percent of surveyed companies own inkjet and monochrome laser technologies, respectively. Seventy-three percent report that they have color laser devices in use as well. Companies in the transportation sector use all three technologies the most among all the industries surveyed. Companies in the government sector appear less likely to use inkjet printers and are more likely to use monochrome laser printers, while companies in the service sector do not use monochrome laser technology as much compared with companies in the other industries. Many companies, regardless of industry type, actively use all three technologies.
What are Chinese businesses printing?
Spreadsheets and charts comprise the number one application among Chinese business users. An overwhelming 85 percent of users said they print these documents often or very often. Text documents comprise the second-highest rated application. Almost four out of five business users print text documents frequently. Moving down the scale, brochures (43 percent), e-mails (40 percent), slide presentations (35 percent), Web pages (27 percent), and high-resolution photos (25 percent) are the next most popular printing applications. By industry type, users in the government and education sectors print more text documents than spreadsheets and charts. Users in the transportation, banking, and service industries are more likely to print brochures compared with users in other industries.
Color printing in the office
We asked Chinese office printer users who print in color where they print their color documents. We then offered them a series of responses from which to choose: printing color documents in-house only; a combination of printing color in-house and using an outside print service; or exclusively using an outside print service. Most respondents use an in-house office color device to print color documents. Forty-three percent of respondents said they use this method to produce color pages. Using an office printer or an outside print service is the second most popular method, with 28 percent of respondents citing this choice. Another 14 percent use only an outside print service to print their color documents.About 13 percent of the surveyed companies do not print color documents at all. Ten percent of these companies said they do not print in color because they have no need for it, while 3 percent said they do not have the resources. The education industry is least likely to print color documents in the office compared with other industries. The transportation industry is most likely to use a combination of in-house and outside print services to generate color, but it is least likely to use an outside service alone for that purpose.
Cartridge use
On average, each Chinese company bought 57 black, 24 single-color, and 24 tricolor printer ink cartridges in the 12 months before the survey was conducted. The median figures provide much lower volumes — 15 black, six single-color, and five tricolor cartridges, which means 50 percent of respondent companies purchased more cartridges than the volumes listed above, while 50 percent purchased fewer. The manufacturing and banking industries appear to be heavier users of black ink cartridges. Companies in these sectors purchased 65 and 59 black cartridges, respectively, compared with about 40 in other industries.Fifty-five percent of respondents said that their companies use OEM ink cartridges, while 20 percent said their companies use refill kits and another 20 percent use aftermarket cartridges. The rest were not sure if their company uses OEM or aftermarket supplies. The combined 40 percent of respondents who said that they use aftermarket supplies suggests that aftermarket manufacturers have gained market share in China in the past three years. A 2006 survey that Lyra conducted found that only 15 percent of Chinese companies used aftermarket cartridges.Slightly more than one-half of respondents said that their companies use OEM toner cartridges, while about one-quarter use refill kits or bottled toner, and another one in five companies use aftermarket toner cartridges. Combining the companies that use refill kits with those that use aftermarket cartridges shows that 44 percent of the Chinese companies surveyed use aftermarket toner supplies. This finding is quite similar to the results regarding aftermarket printer ink supplies discussed above, and suggests that aftermarket supplies have penetrated about one-half of Chinese businesses.
Find out more about the Chinese market in Lyra’s China Business Market Demand Study. This study is now available at www.lyra.com. The study is in PowerPoint format and includes 223 slides, more than 60 figures, and comparisons with findings from the 2006 study, which highlights market trends. Call Sandy Tobin at 617-454-2612 for more information about this report
SAN FRANCISCO – Hewlett Packard claims Chinese and Taiwanese competitors stole patented printer cartridge components from HP’s factory in Singapore and copied them to sell made-to-order counterfeit HP inkjet cartridges on Amazon.com. “Trucks carrying HP parts were hijacked while en route from the manufacturing facility in Singapore to the assembly plant in Malaysia … in direct response to the heightened security measures that had been implemented in HP production facilities,” HP says.After ripping off the technology, Hewlett Packard says, Microjet Technology (of Taiwan) Mipo Technology (of Hong Kong and mainland China), and their U.S. affiliates, including SinoTime Technologies (of Florida) sold more than 300,000 of the inkjet cartridges in the United States.
The defendants have the capability to make nearly 10 million counterfeit cartridges a year in Asia, Hewlett Packard says. The 28-page federal filing is the latest in a long line of complaints that China is making up its technology gap with the United States through industrial espionage, theft, and wholesale patent infringement.MicroJet “sells generic and/or made-to-order infringing printer ink cartridges to other companies, including defendants Mipo and PTC [PTC Holdings Ltd., of Hong Kong],” and sells them itself as well, Hewlett Packard says. HP claims the defendants violated six patents after stealing the HP components.
Hewlett Packard says it discovered the scheme after seeing color printer ink cartridges for sale on Amazon.com and Craigslist, advertised as “HP compatible.HP bought some of the cartridges from Amazon.com, then used HP’s internal tracking database to cross-reference ID numbers on components, and found that the cartridges had “a genuine HP printhead and a non-HP cartridge body that closely resembled a genuine HP cartridge body.”And it found that the printheads came from HP lots from Malaysia that had never been assembled by HP – “i.e., were identified as production gaps.” All of these stolen items “were packaged in a ‘Mipo’ labeled box and were individually wrapped in a clear plastic interior packaging that is clearly consistent with the standard packaging for products manufactured by defendant Microjet,” according to the complaint.HP demands an injunction and damages for patent infringement, unfair competition and conversion. It is represented by Ruffin Cordell with Fish and Richardson of Washington, D.C.
TOKYO, March 2010- Japan’s Ricoh said it aims to more than quadruple its operating profit margin to 10 percent in five years as the world’s No.1 copier maker focuses on new businesses with growth potential such as digital commercial printers.
Ricoh, which also targets a return on equity of 12 percent in five years in comparison with 1.6 percent now, has suffered a profit tumble following the global downturn as corporate clients slashed spending on copiers and printers.A global trend to reduce paper consumption out of growing concerns over the environment is also casting a shadow over the prospects for office machine demand.”We have a rough image for the next five years, where our conventional businesses might not grow that much, but our new businesses including production printing will hopefully double,” Ricoh CFO Zenji Miura told a business strategy briefing.
Ricoh, which competes with Canon Inc , Xerox Corp and Konica Minolta Holdings Inc , bought International Business Machines Corp’s digital commercial printing operations for $725 million in 2007.”We are fighting a difficult fight to get our (production printing) machines installed,” Ricoh Chief Executive Shiro Kondo said. “But those efforts will start bearing fruit slowly but steadily from the next business year on.”Kondo, a 37-year company veteran, took Ricoh’s helm in 2007 as its first top executive with an engineering background.
Fresh out of college, he was involved in the development of an advanced facsimile, which was dubbed then the world’s first high-speed office fax machine, and later sprearheaded the development of Ricoh’s first digital copier for overseas markets.An avid dealmaker on weekdays and the driving force behind Ricoh’s purchase of IBM’s commercial printing operation and its $1.6 billion acquisition in 2008 of U.S. office machine distributor Ikon Office Solutions, Kondo is a devoted gardener at weekends.
Following the announcement, shares of Ricoh closed up 1.5 percent at 1,371 yen, outperforming the Nikkei average .N225, which rose 0.8 percent.Ricoh held a 21.2 percent share in the global copier market in 2009, ahead of Xerox’s 20.1 percent and Canon’s 15.7 percent, according to data from research firm Gartner.
* Targeted 10 pct margin compares with 2.3 pct for 2009/10
* Aims for ROE of 12 pct in 5 years vs 1.6 pct for 2009/10
* Sees sales from new businesses doubling in 5 years
* Shares close up 1.5 pct vs Nikkei’s 0.8 pct gain