This Squishy 3D-Printed Human Heart Feels Like the Real Thing

In the intro to the HBO sci-fi series Westworld, a 3D printer churns out humanoid robots, delicately assembling the incredible complexities of the human form so that those robots can go on to--spoiler alert--do naughty things. It takes a lot of biomechanical coordination, after all, to murder a whole lot of flesh-and-blood people. Speaking of: Researchers just made a scientific leap toward making 3D-printed flesh and blood a reality. Writing recently in the journal ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering, a team described how they repurposed a low-cost 3D printer into one capable of turning an MRI scan of a human heart into a deformable full-size analog you can actually hold in your hand. Squeeze it, and it'll give like the real thing.