Category Archives: BioEngineering

Nearly 60 seventh and eighth grade students from local Philadelphia schools visited Penns Bioengineering Department this January. Students pulled apart spaghetti and measured its strength using a mechanical testing device, watched their muscles fire as they kicked their legs, participated in a lab on fluid mechanics and interacted with flying robots. For its work increasing awareness about bioengineering among high school students and for its bioengineering mentorship program, Penns chapter of the Biomedical Engineering Society won the national organizations Outreach Achievement Award. Co-presidents Kush Mehta, an Engineering junior, and Ben Freedman, a 2014 Engineering graduate and current Engineering PhD student, will travel to San Antonio, Texas, in two weeks to receive the award and present the clubs achievements. In addition to the department visit in January, Penns chapter also participates in a PennPals program, which matches freshman bioengineering students with local seventh and eighth grade students to mentor them on their science fair projects, and a mentoring program. In terms of a hands-on experience, its something that [middle school students] have not had before, Freedman said of the January event. Kids are really creative. They have a lot of untapped potential, Freedman added. [I enjoy] being able to probe some … Continue reading →

5 hours ago Image 1: A schematic diagram of the two-step assembly process of the core-shell structure of the green tea drug carrier. The core of this carrier is made of OEGCG and Herceptin, a protein drug currently used to treat breast cancer. Surrounding the EGCG-Herceptin core is a shell containing PEG-EGCG. Green tea has long been known for its anti-oxidant, anti-cancer, anti-aging and anti-microbial properties. A group of researchers from the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) of A*STAR has taken the health benefits of green tea to the next level by using one of its ingredients to develop a drug delivery system, which kills cancer cells more efficiently. A key ingredient in green tea, epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), is an antioxidant which is known to have therapeutic applications in the treatment of many disorders including cancer. Using EGCG, IBN researchers have successfully engineered nanocarriers that can deliver drugs and kill cancer cells more efficiently. Their work was published recently in the leading journal Nature Nanotechnology. "The numerous health benefits of green tea have inspired us to utilize it in drug delivery systems. This is the first time that green tea has been used as a material to encapsulate and … Continue reading →

Scientists believe green tea could be used to develop drugs to fight cancer Drink is made up of chemicals including EGCG (Epigallocatechin Gallate) Researchers from Singapore think EGCG could have anti-cancer effects It has been combined with anticancer protein Herceptin to target tumours Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology finding could prove crucial By Jenny Awford for MailOnline Published: 11:37 EST, 5 October 2014 | Updated: 12:04 EST, 5 October 2014 82 shares 16 View comments Scientists believe green tea could be used to develop drugs to fight cancer It has been shown to lower cholesterol, improve blood flow and protect against heart disease. And now scientists believe green tea could be used to develop new drugs to fight cancer. A chemical extracted from the beverage is an ideal carrier of proteins that combat the disease, according to research by the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, Singapore. Read more here: Green tea could helps scientists develop new cancer fighting drugs … Continue reading →

Contact Information Available for logged-in reporters only Newswise The University of Illinois College of Medicine has presented to the universitys Board of Trustees a white paper with a series of recommendations that would integrate engineering and technology into medical training programs, develop a new bioengineering institute, and build upon research that would attract more federal dollars to the four regional College of Medicine campuses at Chicago, Peoria, Rockford and Urbana-Champaign. The initiative would draw upon the strengths in engineering and medicine that exist across all campuses of the University of Illinois. The UI College of Medicine, based at the Chicago campus, is the largest in the nation -- and the most diverse -- and is part of a comprehensive health sciences center. The Urbana-Champaign campus, in turn, has one of the top-ranked colleges of engineering in the country, as well as renowned strengths in supercomputing, basic and applied sciences, and humanities. The University of Illinois is well-positioned to leverage and integrate existing engineering and medical expertise to provide our students new opportunities for learning and research in bioengineering and biotechnology, said Dr. Dimitri Azar, dean of the College of Medicine. A unified College of Medicine, together with UICs six other … Continue reading →

September 30, 2014 Photos of the faces of Angelina Jolie and Halle Berry were morphed together in a bioengineering experiment to determine how neurons react to ambiguous faces when individuals try to decipher identity. We are constantly bombarded with noisy and ambiguous sensory information and our brain is constantly making decisions based on such limited data, says Professor Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, director of the Centre for Systems Neuroscience and Head of Bioengineering at the University of Leicester in the UK. Using the morphed image, Dr. Quiroga and his team concluded that the neurons activate upon recognition of the faces rather than the visual stimulus of the features. Looking at a face, he says, one recognizes consciously that its the face of a friend, for example, but the process of identifying the individual features is sub-conscious. The neurons the researchers observed in the study illustrated this point to perfection, according to Dr. Quiroga, who says they fired upon perception, not upon contemplation of the features. Furthermore, he says, the experiment proves Aristotle was correct in saying that humans create images of the external world and seal them into memory more than they gather information from visual stimuli. This result supports the … Continue reading →

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 30-Sep-2014 Contact: Ken Ma ma28@llnl.gov 925-423-7602 DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory @Livermore_Lab LIVERMORE, Calif. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) a grant today to develop an electrode array system that will enable researchers to better understand how the brain works through unprecedented resolution and scale. LLNL's grant-funded project is part of NIH's efforts to support President Obama's BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative, a new research effort to revolutionize our understanding of the human mind and uncover ways to treat, prevent and cure brain disorders. NIH is seeking exceptionally creative approaches to address major challenges associated with recording and manipulating neural activity for this endeavor. The agency announced its first wave of investments totaling $46 million in FY14 funds to support the BRAIN Initiative's goals. More than 100 investigators in 15 states and several countries will work to develop new tools and technologies to understand neural circuit function and capture a dynamic view of the brain in action. "The human brain is the most complicated biological structure in the known universe. We've only just scratched the surface in understanding how it works or, unfortunately, doesn't quite work when disorders and … Continue reading →

Students at the University of Pittsburgh are trying to discover a cure for common acne using a not-so-common tool: facial bacteria. An eight-member team of undergraduate student researchers is studying a common bacterium that lives deep in the skin and survives on oil produced in the face but also is a component of healthy skin. Their goal is to produce a probiotic with the bacterium that will help combat acne. We felt like there was a really big need for it, said Stephen Kita, a recent bioengineering graduate and team founder. Who hasnt experienced acne at some point or another? This has the potential to impact or help a lot of people. The team is preparing to compete with thousands of students from around the world, including a team from Carnegie Mellon, at this years International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition in October. The team raised its own funds for the synthetic biology competition costs and lab materials through a crowd funding website, many of the donations coming from friends, family members and supportive faculty and staff at the university and totaling about $1,900. Everyone who knows about it is really excited about it, Mr. Kita said. The nice thing … Continue reading →

Relaxnews Sep 29, 2014 , Last Updated: 2:55 PM ET Photos of the faces of Angelina Jolie and Halle Berry were morphed together in a bioengineering experiment to determine how neurons react to ambiguous faces when individuals try to decipher identity. "We are constantly bombarded with noisy and ambiguous sensory information and our brain is constantly making decisions based on such limited data," says Professor Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, director of the Centre for Systems Neuroscience and Head of Bioengineering at the University of Leicester in the U.K. Using the morphed image, Dr. Quiroga and his team concluded that the neurons activate upon recognition of the faces rather than the visual stimulus of the features. Looking at a face, he says, one recognizes consciously that it's the face of a friend, for example, but the process of identifying the individual features is sub-conscious. The neurons the researchers observed in the study illustrated this point to perfection, according to Dr. Quiroga, who says they fired upon perception, not upon contemplation of the features. Furthermore, he says, the experiment proves Aristotle was correct in saying that humans create images of the external world and seal them into memory more than they gather information … Continue reading →

September 29, 2014 Image Caption: Angelina Jolie + Halle Berry were morphed for the study. Credit: University of Leicester Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, University of Leicester Study reveals individual neurons in the human brain are triggered by the subjects conscious perception, rather than by the visual stimulus An international team of scientists, involving Professor Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, director of the Centre for Systems Neuroscience and Head of Bioengineering at the University of Leicester, has shown how individual neurons in the human brain react to ambiguous morphed faces. For this, the researchers used images of celebrities, such as Angelina Jolie and Halle Berry, morphed together to create an ambiguous face which test subjects were asked to identify. The study found that for the same ambiguous images, the neurons fired according to the subjective perception by the subjects rather than the visual stimulus. For example, a neuron originally firing to Whoopi Goldberg fired to a morph image between Goldberg and Bob Marley only when the subject identified the morphed image as Goldberg and remained silent when the subject said the very same image was Marley. They concluded that neurons fire in line with conscious recognition of images rather than the actual images seen. … Continue reading →

3D Printer @ NTUA Systems Bioengineering Group Time Lapse Print 1 By: … Continue reading →