The Elimination of Limitation

By Veronica Pineda

Tuesday, April 16, 2013 was the annual Mechanical Engineering Department's Design Day at the University of Utah where the entire department displays some of the projects that the students have completed throughout the year.

The senior design class built various innovative machines that will be capable of improving society in a variety of ways.

A total of 23 groups designed projects applicable anywhere from the moon to a surgeon's table. I was particularly interested in projects aimed at increasing recreational opportunities for people who are physically disabled. Not only is there a large economic market for such inventions, but also there is a large humanitarian benefit to expanding the capabilities of those who would otherwise be limited in recreational activities.

The first of two projects that I was particularly interested in was the Site Project 2013. The goal was to design soccer equipment which would enable blind players to also enjoy the sport. The second project was the E-Tetra, a kayak that could be controlled by paraplegics.

The design team in charge of the SITE Project 2013, Adaptive Soccer, consisted of Nader Badizadegan, Brady Warner, Yanson Cheah, and Elton Jasaraj. The project involves a soccer ball and goal system, which will produce sound to aid visually impaired players in locating the ball and goal. This project was funded by a grant through the National Science Foundation.

“I wanted to make sure that if I am going to put a lot of time into a senior design project, that the end product would be able to help others,“ said Badizadegan.

The sounds emitted by the ball were based on on the classic theme song from Nintendo's Super Mario Brothers.

“In many cases these children who are visually impaired don't know anything about soccer, what the ball looks like, what the goal looks like, what the objective of the game is, etc. So we wanted to create a system that will help them learn about the game, and at the same time motivate them to be more physically active,” said Badizadegan

The Site Project 2013 has opened a bridge between the world of sound and the visually impaired to the world of sight, allowing the players to gain new experiences.

The E–Tetra kayak had a similar objective of expanding the opportunities for the physically disabled. The team consisted of Caleb Perkins, Michael Myers, Zak Evans, Orlando Cintron, Raleigh Cornwell, and Chris Cosman. Their goal was to expand the availability of recreational activities for paraplegics.

In this project, the design team reverses engineered signals from a wheelchair, which would feed into a motor to drive the kayak forward and a rudder to steer. The same signals that are used in classical wheelchairs were adapted in a way that allowed control of a kayak instead. The person controlling the kayak would use breathing patterns and head positions to steer the kayak.

The breath system works using a sip and puff system. When the user puffs their cheeks outward into the control tube, the breath drove the motor of the kayak forward; sipping on the control tube drove the kayak backward. The pressure difference between breaths controlled the speed of the kayak. The kayak had a maximum speed of 9.5 knots.

The team made sure that the kayak was adjustable at the head, torso and arms, so that people with a wide variety of body sizes could also make full use of the design, according to Cornwell.

“It was a lot of work but it makes it worth it when you see that the people who are actually going to use it, enjoy it,” said Cornwell.

The electronics, which facilitate the kayak’s functions possible for tetraplegics, is watertight.

“It’s not submersible, but it can withstand rain,” said Cornwell.

Overall the objectives of comfort, security, and functionality were met. The kayaks are designed to have a fully trained kayak rider assistant riding in front, so incase the kayak does submerge, the assistant can take control and correct any issues.

Many of the parts used could be found in stores and were not custom made. The kayak was also 20 feet long, spanned approximately the width of four people laying shoulder to shoulder, and housed a sail that extends 18 feet high - approximately the height of a two story building. 

U researcher develops new way to test pharmaceutical drugs

U researcher develops new way to test pharmaceutical drugs

By Veronica Pineda

Approving a new drug takes a minimum of 500 million dollars and years of clinical research. Despite this large investment, about 73 percent of pharmaceuticals drugs fail clinical trials, and 10 percent are recalled after FDA approval due to unforeseen harmful side effects.

What’s the flaw? One possible reason could be that pharmaceutical testing overlooks the harmful side effects that show up on unexpected organ systems.

University of Utah scientist, Shannon Gaukler, believes her lab has developed a drug testing methodology called the Organismal Performance Assay (OPA) that may be capable of revealing drug toxicities that are often missed by other pharmaceutical tests.

The OPA utilizes semi-natural enclosures to test the performance of wild mice. Measures of performance include reproductive success, survivorship, and male dominance.

“I come from an ecology background, and this is what animals in the environment do. They compete for mates and resources that are essential for survival,” said Gaukler.

           

Pharmaceutical safety and efficacy are assessed in both in vivo and in vitro studies. In vivo studies are conducted in animals, typically inbred strains, to determine if the drug causes cancer, birth defects, or genetic mutation. In vitro studies are usually conducted in tissue culture, cells from an organism grown in a flask that are used as the experimental model instead of an animal.

 One major downside to in vitro testing is that this approach ignores the synergy, or interaction, between the many physiological systems in the body. The drug might be designed to affect one body system, though the drug could affect various physiological systems.

“If you determine that a particular drug is safe for the heart, (it) does not mean that it will be safe for other organs and organ systems,” said Gaukler. “A lot of drug failures are due to toxicities that emerge in unexpected organ systems.”

One way that the pharmaceutical approval process could be improved is through the use of the OPA. The OPA utilizes genetically diverse wild mice that compete for limited resource in semi-natural enclosures. Since humans are genetically diverse, it is best to test in genetically diverse animals. Typically, preclinical trials are conducted in genetically inbred strains that are housed in a stress-free caged environment.

“By housing our wild mice in semi-natural environments, we are challenging mice to be mice,” she said.

Gaukler has used the OPA to test paroxetine (Paxil), a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), and an antidepressant. At the moment, Paxil is available on the market and is suspected of causing birth defects in babies born to mothers who take the drug during pregnancy.

GlaxoSmithKline* now warns pregnant women against taking the drug. Studies reveal that women who took Paxil during the first three months of pregnancy were about one and a half to two times more likely to have a baby with a heart defect, such as murmurs, than women who received other antidepressant medication or women not on antidepressant medication. The FDA approved Paxil after successful preclinical and clinical trials.

Paxil was incorporated into rodent food so that each mouse would ingest approximately 30 mg/kg/day, which is about 10 times the human therapeutic dose. Breeding pairs are exposed to the drug in a caged environmental. The offspring produced by these breeders are the test individuals that go into the OPA.

Gaukler found that Paxil litters were significantly skewed towards female offspring (p=0.0021) and that the offspring weighted significantly less (p<0.0001) than litters in the control treatment. Gaukler also found that pregnancy was significantly delayed (p=0.05) in the Paxil breeders.

Once the offspring are approximately two months old, they are released into semi-natural enclosures. Each population consists of 24 individuals: eight males, four from the control treatment and four from the Paxil treatment; and 16 females, eight from the control treatment and eight from the Paxil treatment.

Each enclosure consists of six territories. Four of the territories contain dark nesting sites, in which males compete for. The remaining two territories contain open nesting areas in which the losers are then forced into.

The males constantly fight to either obtain or defend the optimal territories, while females continually gestate and nurse new young.

“Unlike caged animals used in preclinical studies, mice competing in these semi- enclosures require high performance from most of their physiological systems to establish social dominance and become successful individuals,” said Gaukler.

Paxil- exposed males were significantly less dominant (p<0.0001) and had approximately 50 percent fewer sons (p=0.0236) than control males. Paxil-exposed females had approximately 25 percent fewer offspring (p=0.1014) that control females.

However, there were no significant differences in terms of survivorship between treatments Gaukler said.

“These results tell us that Paxil is really impacting the overall fitness of these animals. We do not know the mechanisms that are responsible for these fitness declines, but they could be determined in future studies,” she said.

One possible mechanism of fitness declines could be how Paxil interferes with serotonin levels. Serotonin, known as the happy drug, impacts a region of the brain called the hypothalamus, a gland within the endocrine system.

The endocrine system is responsible for regulating hormones in the body, including testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone. Alterations to these hormone levels could explain why males have reduced dominance and why females have a reduced number of offspring, said Gaukler.

In addition to Paxil, Gaukler has also used the OPA to test the safety of Baycol (cerivastatin), a drug that was prescribes to reduced cholesterol.

Gaukler has detected significant fitness declines in Baycol-exposed mice as well.

The results from these two studies suggest that the OPA is a superior approach to assessing the safety of pharmaceutical drugs according to Gaukler.

“If OPA’s were implemented as a tool in preclinical testing, there is the potential to save millions of dollars and reduce human suffering by identifying drug toxicities early in development and prior to clinical trials,” said Gaukler.

     

At what height can I breathe right?

At what height can I breathe right?

By: Veronica Pineda

In 1952 the heart of Industrial Revolution experienced what was deemed the “Killer Smog.” Over 4,000 people suffocated in London from the terrible pollution of burning coal and releasing smoke vicariously into the air.

This was one of the gravest environmental repercussions of London’s rapid Urbanization that led to air quality regulation. But as the human population is expected to grow to 9 billion by 2050 with 70 percent living in urban areas more information on how humans contribute to air quality is needed to prevent disaster like that of London.

Currently, research is being done on this at the University of Utah by graduate research assistant Lacey Holland. Her research is monitoring the effects of urbanization on air quality from over 1,000 metropolitan locations around the world.

Her observations are based on records from a weather balloon called “Radiosonds” that are sent up twice a day to assess a vertical profile of the atmosphere.

By finding out the stability in the air and how the wind changes with height, Holland can determine an average height of where the air stops being so turbulent. The boundary between this height and our surface is called the “mixing height.”


“The big question that I’m trying to answer is do people effect the mixing height and if so does it have an effect on air quality,” said Holland.

The Earth's atmosphere naturally contains “greenhouse gases” such as, water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, and nitrous oxide. They make the planet suitable for life as we know it.

Trees, mountains, rivers and other natural obstructions also create turbulence in the air.

But with Urbanization, our construction and emissions have produced a new dynamic variable to air quality.

The emissions from cars, refineries, and power plants mix together and collide against our buildings reversing their direction of flow and continuing their chaotic dance through the streets and alleys.

This turbulent flow of all the pollutants around people formed a lid that restricts any of those pollutants of ventilating out into the free atmosphere.

Depending on the geographical and atmospheric variables of that city, the mixing height layer ascends and descends anywhere between 100 meters to 1,00 meters such as a balloon of condensed and transforming contaminants.

“ Whenever the mixing height is low to the ground that means that there is a higher concentration of these chemicals and pollutants,” said Holland. “And whenever it’s up high, there is a bigger volume to be spread over so the concentration aren’t so high.”

Just imagine breathing in air in which all the contaminants have been crammed into one-tenth of the space it usually inhabits. Many of the gases and particles in the air are known to have adverse effects on people’s respiratory system.

Exposure to high nitrogen dioxide levels can contribute to the development of acute or chronic bronchitis, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

According to the EPA, in the case of the London’s “Killer Smog,” it was high concentrations of sulfur dioxide that come from fossil fuel combustion at power plant’s industrial processes such as, extracting metal from ore, and the burning of high sulfur containing fuels by locomotives, large ships, and non-road equipment, according to the EPA.

The smog gave humans and animals difficulty breathing and induced the vomiting of phlegm.

Temperature has also shown to be a major variable affecting the mixing height. The change to cooler air lowers the mixing height.

In reference to Salt Lake City, the biggest impact is going to be in the winter because the mixing height becomes so low in the valley said Holland.

The mixing height is usually at its highest during the day and at its lowest at night, she said.

According to the EPA, Urbanization has also created a “heat island effect” in which the city becomes 0-3 degrees Celsius warmer than its surroundings.

“Initially I thought mixing heights would get bigger. SO if it gets bigger that means pollutants are spread out with more volume,” Holland said.

But her observations have proven otherwise.

In Beijing, the mixing height is increasing during the day and the night. In New Delhi, the mixing height is increasing at night and decreasing during the day. Mexico City’s mixing height is slightly decreasing during the day and the night.

According to a report by The Daily Finance, these cities are considered both the most developed cities in the world and also the ones with the worst air quality.

“What I think is happening is that in some cities it can be like urban heat island stuff, but for other cities it could be depending on some pollutants that they produce,” said Holland.

Different types of particles have different impacts on climate. Black carbon warms the climate while sulfates and nitrates cool the climate, according to the EPA.

The way these gases react with sunlight and with other pollutants is still in question to how it’s affecting the mixing height. But Holland’s research is mostly observational and the data has revealed how urbanization is causing wild fluctuations in mixing height.

Holland hopes that her research will influence individual awareness of how people contribute to air quality.

“I think that the main thing that will come out of it will be the effects people have on their surroundings,” she said.

During the past 20 years, about three-quarters of human-made carbon dioxide emissions were from burning fossil fuels according to U.S. Energy Information Administration.

It’s the inefficient combustion from our cars, our trends in consumption, and our use of energy that is the adding to the concentration of gases in our air.

It took killer smog that only lasted four days to directly influence the implementation of the Clean Air Act.  Despite regulation efforts, similar smog 10 years later killed approximately 100 Londoners.

What will it take for each city to take sustainable initiatives as populations grow?

“It will be interesting to see as people move to a place so quickly what impact they have on environment,” said Holland. 

Atmospheric Boundary Layer

Light pollution and the planetary boundary layer over Berlin

New technology explores Earth’s Tectonic Hot Spots

New technology explores Earth’s Tectonic Hot Spots

By: Veronica Pineda

Acting as a historian, an observer, and futurist of our planet's movements, University of Utah Researcher Marie Green uses Magnetotelluric (MT) data to map out the thermal structure and fluidity underneath the surface of the US Pacific Northwest Region.

The Pacific Northwest Region is the most geologically diverse and active area of our continent to observe due to the dynamics of plate tectonics.

According to J. Figge’s publication Evolution of the Pacific Northwest, “The unique characteristic of this region is that it did not exist prior to Mid-Jurassic time. It consists of
 volcanic island belts and scraps of
 ocean floor rocks, which have been
 added to the edge of the continent
 over the past 200 million years, and
 overprinted by several episodes of 
volcanism and mountain building.”

This area is situated at the junction of three major tectonic plates (the Gonda, the Pacific, and the North American plate), otherwise known as the Mendocino Triple Junction, that slide, sub duct and collide in relation to one another.

“Prior to the breakup of Pangea and migration of subsequent land masses, Idaho defined the coastline of what became the North American Plate,” said Green.

As one continental plate clashes into the next, it sets off a chain reaction of geological transformation. The Cascadian Mountain Range, the Cascadian Volcanoes, the Columbia Basin, the geysers of Yellowstone, and the San Andreas Fault among many other geologic spectacles are evidence of these interactions

MT data allows scientists to see the anatomy of these features. It acts as a super detector of oil, mineral deposits, and the physical process of volcanic and earthquake eruptions.

“For such a complex region, definitive structural interpretation based purely on siesmological data may not be sufficient for reliable study of the deep earth interior,” said Green.

The obtained MT data can actually look at the changes of Earth’s substructure due to heat, molten fluidity, and other factors that fluctuate the resistivity.  

Green’s research with the Consortium for Electromagnetic Modeling and Inversion at the U consists of placing temporary stations that measure the electric and magnetic field variations from solar winds at any particular time and location.

These stations record how long that electric signal takes to reach the receptor, measuring the rate of decay on the field of that area’s subsurface.

The time at which it takes the signal to reach the other receptor determines how resistive the rocks are in the crust and upper mantle.

If the layer underneath shows low-resistivity, the rock underneath probably has enough fractures to have had fluid transport.

This fluid, or molten rock, would act as a lubricant for the tectonic plates to slide and push against each other causing earthquakes, volcanoes and other hiccups in Earth’s cycle.

Organizations such as; Earth Scope, US Array, National Science Foundation as well as Oregon State University are funding this worldwide project to observe and measure the motions of the Earth's surface, revealing the Earth’s geologic evolution. Also, over 300 stations have been deployed 70 km apart in a grid-like pattern to map the thermal structure of the crust and upper-mantel from the Pacific Coast to the Rocky Mountain range.

Recently Green’s Group has found evidence that the heat source of Yellowstone is not directly underneath. Instead, this channel of heat called a plume is located 40 to 80 km beneath the Snake River Plain and slowly moving further northwest.

"It’s migrating in the subsurface and is helping break up the crust all through here,” said Green.

The Snake River Plain extends 400 miles westward from Northwest Wyoming to the Idaho-Oregon border.  It is a broad, flat bowed depression that covers one quarter of the states. 

http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/north_america/yellowstone.html

According to Green, the crust is moving over the upwelling mantle, causing expressions of basalt, a porous black igneous rock from volcanic activity that cools rapidly after lava drizzles on the surface.

Under the measured area, scientists can see the plume’s path as it breaches the Earth’s crust.

"It has these wormlike confutes coming from the surface of Yellowstone,” She said.

Scientists believe that these plumes are the driving mechanism for continental plate movement.

“From the data we're analyzing, it now seems like a regional phenomenon,” said Green.

The images from the MT data systems have mapped the Snake River Plane as the continuous source of magma from the mantle to Yellowstone—one that continues to be moving into other fault lines, changing the structure of our earth.

MT data research has only been around since the 1950s, and as it and alternative geological technology develops, scientists can catch another glimpse into the events that that make up the present world we live in.

This poster explains in depth the Green's MT research.