The first ever 3D-printed steel bridge has opened in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. It was created by robotic arms using welding torches to deposit the structure of the bridge layer by layer, and is made of 4500 kilograms of stainless steel.

The 12-metre-long MX3D Bridge was built by four commercially available industrial robots and took six months to print. The structure was transported to its location over the Oudezijds Achterburgwal canal in central Amsterdam last week and is now open to pedestrians and cyclists.

More than a dozen sensors attached to the bridge after the printing was completed will monitor strain, movement, vibration and temperature across the structure as people pass over it and the weather changes. This data will be fed into a digital model of the bridge.

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The world's first 3D-printed steel bridge opens in Amsterdam!🤩🌉 Co-developed by our engineers @ImperialCiveng and @MX3D_AM, the bridge is over four years in the making and was unveiled by Her Majesty Queen Máxima of the Netherlands. https://t.co/JL6S23UATI

— Imperial College (@imperialcollege) July 15, 2021

Congregationl singing and the common cup at the eucharist will be allowed in England once again from Monday, church authorities have confirmed, despite the sharp rise in coronavirus cases. It will be up to clergy and PCCs to decide whether to retain precautions such as face coverings, social distancing, and communion in one kind.

The latest Church of England guidance was published late on Friday afternoon, in preparation for Monday’s removal of restrictions in England. The move coincided with the news that reported daily cases in the UK had passed 50,000, and a warning by the Government’s chief medical adviser, Professor Chris Whitty, that hospital admissions could reach “scary numbers”. Different timetables for relaxing Covid restrictions have been set by the governments of Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.

The Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Sarah Mullally, who heads the Church’s Covid recovery group, welcomed the relaxation of restrictions, including what she described as the “long-awaited return of congregational and amateur choir singing”, but she also urged caution.

“This is a difficult point in the course of the pandemic. Despite vaccination rates, cases are up, hospital admissions are up, and long Covid remains an ongoing concern. Therefore our approach needs to be cautious and careful,” she said.

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Latest church Covid advice: proceed with caution https://t.co/Zf2UBLLBCt from @churchtimes

— Simon Sarmiento (@simonsarmiento) July 16, 2021

When it comes to stories about prolific gamete donors, it’s typically sperm donors and sperm banks who get the attention for producing donor siblings families in the dozens—and sometimes in the hundreds. In recent years, stories have surfaced about donor siblings connecting through private Facebook groups, and often finding their donors through DNA tests. Who can forget the 2013 Vince Vaughn comedy, Delivery Man, about a childless man having a midlife crisis who discovers that he had fathered over 500 kids conceived with sperm he donated in his youth. These are the extreme consequences of the age of “collaborative reproduction,” a term coined by the late John Robertson, a law professor and bioethicist at the University of Texas at Austin, to describe the expanded array of civil rights for LGBTQ+ families, lifestyle choices, and medically assisted methods of reproduction available to 21st century families. A large and growing component of collaborative reproduction is the increasingly open roles that surrogates and gamete donors often play in these modern families.

It’s less common, however, to hear stories of such prolific egg donors like Tyra. At a time when so many Millennials like her have become less interested in marriage and children and are also delaying having children for their careers, she is a new kind of female fertility archetype: nurturing and distant at the same time. She fulfills her sense of altruism and her desire to procreate, but in a directly transactional way, selling access to her body and body parts for her own financial gain and freedom. “I’d say it’s 50 percent business, 50 percent having a purpose,” she says. “I never fall into a career. I always thought I’d be a professional athlete between volleyball and golf. And I got my pilot’s license at a young age, but I never fell into my niche. I feel like maybe procreating for others is it.”

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With 27 biological children and three surrogate pregnancies under her belt, it’s all business as usual for Tyra Reeder.https://t.co/P9V4PthXDW

— NEO.LIFE (@NEOdotLIFE) July 15, 2021

It is interesting that nowhere in the New Testament or in the great reformation debates over adiaphora was the concept applied to issues of doctrine or moral behaviour. Paul didn’t consider differences over the doctrine of justification by faith to be matters of indifference. He was willing to confront Peter head-on if necessary. Jesus didn’t treat differences over the appropriate expression of human sexuality to be matters of indifference. Adultery and homosexuality remain behaviours which God himself condemns. God has spoken on these issues and our job is not to make room for difference but to be humble enough to be changed in our thinking and/or behaviour so that our minds and lives conform to God’s word written.

There is a lot of woolly thinking going on at the moment about adiaphora. People are trying to extend the term in ways that will insulate them from challenge about their doctrine or their behaviour. Let’s not let the term be inflated in meaning in this way. As a now standard variation from the old Catholic axiom has it: sacra scriptura locuta est, res decisa est (‘Holy Scripture having spoken, the matter is decided’). We need to talk to each other and study together when it comes to issues on which Scripture has spoken. On very rare occasions this study will reveal that Scripture itself considers the matter secondary or indifferent, as in the case of circumcision or meat offered to idols. But more often than not freedom to differ is reserved for those areas on which Scripture has not spoken.

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Read Principal Mark Thompson's review of 'What Do Anglicans Believe?' published in the latest issue of 'The Global Anglican' in 2020. https://t.co/6J7XgQUQkz pic.twitter.com/0v0sVCi3sX

— Moore College (@MooreCollege) December 27, 2020

Farron also believes that honesty and integrity in public office holders are key factors that have been largely missing in much of public life both in government and the church. He said, “we’ve almost got to the point where there’s little accountability”. He went on, “All lead by example—either good or bad”.

He thinks JKA Smith’s book, ‘Awaiting the King’ offers a pretty good explanation of the current situation. Farron said in one portion, “King refers to ‘western liberal democracies bearing the crater marks of the gospel’ and agreeing explained; “even though we may not largely be a Christian country today, our values, norms and institutions are nevertheless based on a Christian world view: justice, grace, personal responsibility, care for the needy, the knowledge that if people are sinners then you don’t want power concentrated in the hands of too few of them! The ‘crater marks’ point is more that as we move away from Christianity, then those marks will become fainter and fainter until such point that integrity may matter less and less”.

When asked about what he sees as the next big moral issues facing the nation he was quick and to the point: 1.) “the effort to decriminalise all abortion up to the point of birth”; and, 2.) “assisted dying”. He does not believe that the former will find the support necessary to be approved by parliament and that assisted dying will be a big battle.

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.@timfarron interviewed by @1761Ec: 'When asked about what he sees as the next big moral issues facing the nation he was quick and to the point: 1.) “the effort to decriminalise all abortion up to the point of birth”; and, 2.) “assisted dying”.'
Quite so.https://t.co/CAstW3TNCw

— Adrian Hilton (@Adrian_Hilton) July 16, 2021

He has not been able to speak since 2003, when he was paralyzed at age 20 by a severe stroke after a terrible car crash.

Now, in a scientific milestone, researchers have tapped into the speech areas of his brain — allowing him to produce comprehensible words and sentences simply by trying to say them. When the man, known by his nickname, Pancho, tries to speak, electrodes implanted in his brain transmit signals to a computer that displays his intended words on the screen.

His first recognizable sentence, researchers said, was, “My family is outside.”

The achievement, published on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, could eventually help many patients with conditions that steal their ability to talk.

“This is farther than we’ve ever imagined we could go,” said Melanie Fried-Oken, a professor of neurology and pediatrics at Oregon Health & Science University, who was not involved in the project.

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"Getting a second chance to talk again.” Researchers are using electrodes to tap into the speech areas of a paralyzed man's brain — allowing him to produce recognizable words and sentences simply by trying to say them. https://t.co/yOU0bQ38kt

— Pam Belluck (@PamBelluck) July 14, 2021

O God, who hast called us out of the bondage of sin into the perfect freedom of thy children: Grant us grace that we may yield ourselves unto thee as alive from the dead, and our bodily members as servants of righteousness; that we may have our fruit unto holiness, and in the end everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Waves of mist over Boho Fermanagh this morning @StormHour pic.twitter.com/AaykePnfGJ

— Tom Gilroy photography (@tomgilroy33) July 16, 2021

‘But I trust in thee, O Lord,
I say, “Thou art my God.”
My times are in thy hand’

–Psalm 31:14-15a

She’s going to be a hot one today by the look of the #sunrise here off #Brixham pic.twitter.com/Ep81Aa06Nv

— Alan Dwan (@Alan_J_Dwan) July 16, 2021