Molecular Motors and Nanomedicine

The UVa Nano and Emerging Technologies Club (NExT) and the Nanomedicine Engineering Academic Society (NEAS) are co-hosting a presentation by Dr. William H. Guilford, from the Biomedical Engineering Department, about his research in Molecular Motors and Nanomedicine!!!!

Refreshments and snacks will be provided!

When: Wednesday October 26th

Time: 6:00 PM

Room: Physics 204

Exoskeletal Legs

Students At UC Berkeley Build Exoskeletal Legs That Allow Paraplegic To Walk.

Popular Science (8/31, Vlahos) reports that student engineers at University Of California At Berkeley’s Robotics and Human Engineering Laboratory “built a machine that” allowed a paraplegic student “to stand up and walk across the commencement stage” in May. Until now, the exoskeletons developed in Berkeley’s Robotics and Human Engineering Laboratory “have been elaborately engineered test pieces.” For the current project, director Homayoon “Kazerooni challenged the students to invent the Honda of exoskeletons, a bare-bones device that would cost $15,000 or less, not $100,000 or more.” Popular Science reports, “With the goal of developing an exoskeleton that costs close to what a powered wheelchair does, the students were forced to adopt a minimalist approach.” Currently, they are “working on a new exoskeleton, one that is even more streamlined and affordable than the” model used in May.

Reposted from the 8/31/11 issue of First Bell.

Surge in Biomedical Engineering

The following article is reposted from the ASEE Connections Newsletter for August 2010:

THE ONGOING SURGE IN BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING

Biomedical engineering degrees have increased more than any other field over the past decade.  Respectively, they’ve grown by 215 percent, 193 percent and 256 percent at the bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral levels since 2000.

Biomedical Engineering Bachelor’s Degrees Awarded By School: 2009
1. Duke University	141
2. University of California, San Diego	136
3. Georgia Institute of Technology	134
4. University of Texas, Austin	102
5. Johns Hopkins University	100
6. University of California, Irvine	98
7. Boston University	96
8. Case Western Reserve University	93
9. University of Pennsylvania	86
10. University of California, Berkeley	85
11. Drexel University	72
11. Washington University	72
13. Arizona State University	69
13. University of Michigan	69
13. University of Minnesota, Twin Cities	69
13. University of Southern California	69
17. Rutgers University	67
17. University of Virginia	67
19. Northwestern University	66
19. Texas A&M University	66
89 schools reported.

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This article was provided by Engineering Trends. For more information, visit Engineering Trends at engtrends.com.

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Growth in Biomedical Engineering Degrees by Degree Level

Bachelor’s 2000 – 1,156 2009 – 3,644

Master’s 2000 – 476 2009 – 1,396

Doctoral 2000 – 203 2009 – 722

Squeezing Out More Power

Piezoelectric Material Harvests Record Amount Of Energy.

Technology Review (1/29) reports, “Researchers at Princeton University have created” a piezoelectric material that “can harness 80 percent of the energy applied when it is flexed–four times more than existing flexible piezoelectric materials.” The researchers used PZT, “the most efficient piezoelectric material known, but its crystalline structure means that it must be grown at high temperatures, which normally melt a flexible substrate. The Princeton researchers, led by mechanical engineering professor Michael McAlpine, got around this by making PZT at high temperatures and then transferring thin ribbons of the material onto silicone.” The researchers are particularly focused on biomedical applications.

The above reposted from the January 29, 2010 issue of ASEE First Bell.

BioMedSearch.com

The following is reposted from the Scout Report for December 4, 2009:

Wading through the tremendous online resource that is the BioMed archive can be a bit tricky at times. This process just got much easier through the creation of the BioMedSearch feature. The goal of this work is “to make these important works available to the community in a way that is fast and easy, while still offering the advanced features demanded by power users such as portfolios, collaboration features, bibliographical citation export, alerts, and more.”  Their search engine contains all of the data in Pub Med/Medline, along with additional full-text documents, and a large database of theses and dissertations. Many users will find the “Clusters” section of the site most useful. Here, visitors can view “clusters” of documents grouped together thematically into topics such as clinical trials, exercises, diet and cholesterol, and medical imagining. The homepage contains a basic search engine, and visitors may also wish to use the “Search Tutorial” to gain a better understanding of how best to use the archive.

This research tool will be particularly useful for biomedical engineers.  Access BioMedSearch at http://www.biomedsearch.com/

Spray-on Skin

Traditionally, treatment for severe second-degree burns consists of adding insult to injury: cutting a swath of skin from another site on the same patient in order to graft it over the burn. The process works, but causes more pain for the burn victim and doubles the area in need of healing. Now a relatively new technology has the potential to heal burns in a way that’s much less invasive than skin grafts. With just a small skin biopsy and a ready-made kit, surgeons can create a suspension of the skin’s basal cells–the stem cells of the epidermis–and spray the solution directly onto the burn with results comparable to those from skin grafts.

Learn more about this new technology in an article by Lauren Gravitz in Technology Review at

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/23876/