Bionics in Medicine Engineering
While medical science has been progressing by leaps and bounds during the last few decades, it has been matching its progress stride by stride.
In the field of medicine engineering, one very important part is bionics that is dedicated to the study of synthetic implants in the body of human beings, animals, and even plants.
In fact, bionics in medicine engineering refers to synthetic implantation within any living organism.
Medicine engineering views human body as biological machine. Therefore, the study of this science also includes study of human body and its natural systems.
The sole aim of such study in medicine engineering is the innovation of a safe process for replacement of biology with technology.
The aspect of this science introduces to us the study of bionics or bionical creativity as it is called.
Bionics in medicine engineering is also known as biomimetics, biognosis or bionical creativity engineering. The basis of this study is the process of applying the natural systems and methods in the realm of medicine engineering and to its designs. As a result it combines the natural elements with the modern technology in the process of improvement of medicine engineering.
The term “Bionics” has originated form the Greek word “Biov” whose true pronunciation is “bion”. “Bion” means unit of life and “ic” means “like” and thus the term bionics has come into the arena of medicine engineering. Some medicine engineering experts however believe that the word “bionics” refers to a combination of biology with electronics which is also true in a certain sense.
Medicine Engineering and Human Body
For age long, the study of human body from different directions and for different purposes has been a very interesting and complicated part of medicine engineering.
While medicine aims to sustain, enhance, and replace functions of the human body, the engineering aims at providing the necessary know how for it, and thus medicine engineering can be considered to be a science of application of medicine to the human body.
Medicine engineering on human body is basically concerned with the application of various pharmaceutical drugs and their effects. Not only that, medicine engineering is also concerned with replacement of natural organs in human body by artificial ones. Some potent examples are brain implants and pacemakers, which could be considered to be the irreplaceable gift of medicine engineering to human society.
Brain implants, also known as neural implants is perhaps the most important part of medicine engineering related to human body. These are technological devices that directly contact with a human brain. Following the avid principles laid down by in depth study of medicine engineering, these devices are ordinarily placed on the surface of the brain. Medicine engineering has also discovered of late the biomedical prosthesis circumventing areas in the brain. These parts become non-functional consequent upon a stroke or injuries sustained. Medicine engineering has come up with the solution of sensory substitution caused by such head injuries or stroke.
[Italy] Crp Technology
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What makes this company different are the partnerships we have formed with the different teams. CRP is involved at the earliest design and development stages and our innovative approach to the use of new materials and technology is widely recognised by the race car industry.
CRP Technology therefore provides race car design and construction services to competition car constructors and motoracing teams.
Constantly developing and improving itself, CRP’s business is nowadays constituted by:
- The complete creation of mechanical parts, especially for sports racing cars, including the study and engineering of the customer’s main project, to the choice of the manufacturing process
- The sale of parts made by layer manufacturing techniques using internally developed composite materials WINDFORM branded
- Production and commercialization of those WINDFORM composite materials for laser sintering all around the world.
Automotive engineering brings processors in vehicles
Automotive engineering has brought in advanced concepts in today’s auto industries. Cars are now installed with 8- to 16- to 32-bit processors, with thoughts of introducing the state-of-art processor technology in the very near future.
The proven technology of dual core processors, bring in speed and faster computing power, with a lower clock speed, hence consuming less power. This would mean less heat generation. In modern information technology systems, dual core processors have already created a mark, with thoughts going on for multi-core processors to be soon introduced in the market.
In the past, auto manufacturers have used dual-core processors in automotive engineering, but the thoughts are fast changing with applications taking a new turn. It is understood that some auto manufacturers is contemplating using triple-core processors in vehicles, and is also working with groups to implement quad-core processor systems.
There are many areas in automotive engineering that have notable application that require the performance of dual-core processors. The most important areas of application are fuel saving, and emission reductions, with diagnosis of safety management and transformation of hardware based functions to systems based on software.
With regards to the transformation from single-core units to dual-core would be simpler than, if this change was required to be made from a 16-bit system to a 32-bit processor. There would have been requirement for wide changes in the software making it suitable to run on a 32-bit system. As for the transformation from single-core to dual-core, the changes would be simpler, without having any major re-writes.
Electron Beam Lithography
Electron Beam Lithography (EBL) is a method that allows the original digital image to be transferred directly to the interested substrate without the use of mask. It was introduced soon after the development of the scanning electron microscope.
In 1954, Broers reported 50 nm lines ion milled into metal films using a contamination resist patterned with a 10 nm wide e-beam. Later in 1976, with improved electron optics, 8 nm lines in Au-Pd were reported using a 0.5 nm probe. In 1984, a functioning Aharonov-Bohm interference device was fabricated with Electron Beam Lithography.
One year later, 1 nm to 2 nm features in metal halide resists were reported. Until recently, Electron Beam Lithography is used almost exclusively for fabricating research and prototype nanoelectronic devices. Its precision and nanolithographic capabilities make it the tool of choice for making masks for other advanced lithographies.
Car suspension system in automotive engineering
Automotive engineering has brought forth the ability in today’s cars to reach a balance between the riding comfort and its road handling capability. This has been achieved through an active suspension control installed in the car, through a typical distributed control system. We discuss here a brief account of the mechanism of an active suspension system in a vehicle, where the distributed structure of the mechanism has been taken into account.
Automotive engineering has helped to conceive the theory of embedded distributed control architectures that have come to be the first and foremost innovation in modern cars, which have been applied to achieve improvements in performance in the vehicles. The system costs more than a quarter of the cost that is required to manufacture a car, which has made the car manufacturers to have a re-look at the costing and make improvement of the effective cost of the vehicle.
Introduction of such technologies have brought disadvantages. With computers deployed in the architectural design of the system in controlling the suspensions of a car, it has given rise to delays and jitters in the vehicles, giving rise to degraded performance.
Deployment of larger computer systems in the architecture has been found to solve the problem, but it has become a hard challenge for the car manufacturers to reduce prices and meet the competition.
With the advent of modern automotive engineering, the architectural concepts of distributed control have been applied in active suspension control systems in vehicles in order to provide a smoother ride.
This suspension control system comprises of a set of mechanisms at the four corners of a vehicle. These are springs, shock absorbers, and a hydraulic actuator. These four sets of mechanisms provide the car with a better road holding and improved comfort, with the suspension buffering all the forces between the vehicle and the road.
Drugs and Medicine Engineering
During the last century there have been many revolutionary changes in the fields of invention of drugs and medicine engineering. Using the skills of biotechnology, medicine engineering has been able to identify a lot about human genes.
However, the real work of medicine engineering, that of transforming this knowledge into new qualitative drugs, is of comparatively recent origin.
Today, we find millions of new drugs in the market that are products of use of medicine engineering combined with the knowledge derived from biotechnology. Medicine engineering has not stopped here.
There are a number of new drugs coming up or are in the pipeline, which is considered to be one of the greatest gifts of medicine engineering to the human society.
Evolution and development is never static and it is also in the case of medicine engineering. Technology has grown so fast that, today you can diagnose or check on a thousand drug discovery processes in almost no time using the same medicine engineering methods.
For example, take the re-growth of tissues, which is the main concern of medicine engineering over the years.
This aspect is now affectively addressed by making the natural healing process take place faster than what medicine engineering used to experience earlier.
Rapid Prototyping Practical Applications
Rapid Prototyping (RP) technologies, also known as Desktop Manufacturing (DM), Layer Manufacturing Technologies (LMT), or Solid Freeform Fabrication (SFF), has taken the industrial segment by storm with its revolutionary and remarkable production techniques, having applications in several industries, namely, aerospace, biomedical, architecture, education, automotive, appliances, jewelry, consumer electronics, packaging and printing industries.
Rapid Prototyping applications can be broadly grouped into three heads, namely, applications in design; applications in engineering, analysis and planning; and applications in manufacturing and tooling.
The applications in design concern with CAD-model verification with respect to the design specification, the ability to visualize objects, as a physical proof of the mental concept, and as a marketing and presentation model.
The applications in engineering, analysis and planning concern with form and fit models, flow analysis, analysis of stress distribution, pre-series parts, diagnostic and pre-surgical operation planning, and design and fabrication of custom prostheses and implants.
Nanomaterials
Nanomaterials are small-sized materials. The typical dimension spans from subnanometer to several hundred nanometers. A nanometer (nm) is one billionth of a meter, or 10-9m. One nanometer is approximately the length equivalent to 10 hydrogen or 5 silicon atoms aligned in a line.
Small features permit more functionality in a given space, but nanotechnology is not a simple continuation of miniaturization from micron meter scale down to nanometer scale.
Materials in the micrometer scale mostly exhibit physical properties the same as that of bulk form; however, materials in the nanometer scale may exhibit physical properties distinctively different from that of bulk.
Materials in this size range exhibit some remarkable specific properties; a transition from atoms or molecules to bulk form takes place in this size range.
In order to explore the novel physical properties and phenomena and realize the potential applications of nanomaterials, the ability to fabricate and process nanomaterials and nanostructures is the first corner stone in nanotechnology.
Solid Freeform Fabrication
Solid Freeform Fabrication (SFF) is an approach to fabricating mechanical components that is additive vs. subtractive, such as machining. SFF is also known as Rapid Prototyping (RP).
In SFF, multiple layers of material, each representing a cross section of a desired three-dimensional structure, are deposited one at a time to form a laminated stack.
By using hundreds or even thousands of such layers, extremely complex, freeform, three-dimensional shapes can be produced. SFF technologies in commercial use include StereoLithography (SL), Three-Dimensional Printing (3D P), Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) and Laminated Object Manufacturing (LOM), to name a few.
SFF technologies are characterized by a number of significant features. First, they are extremely versatile, producing extremely complex shapes (including shapes having internal features that would be impossible to produce by subtractive methods).
Second, they typically involve a fixed process with just a few simple process steps repeated again and again to form each layer, and so can easily be implemented in a single process tool and be automated.
Use of EGR to reduce emissions in automotive engineering
For some years, the automotive manufacturers are strongly looking on vehicles pollution. Concerning the diesel engine, one of the most constraining problems is the NO2 emission, which has to drastically reduce.
One manner to reduce this emission is the EGR (Exhaust Gas Recirculation) system. EGR injects a portion of the exhaust gas back into the cylinder, so it mixes with the fuel and air (Note that the exhaust adds to the fuel and air; it does not replace any of it).
The added mass in the cylinder is harder to heat up, so the combustion events have lower temperatures (600oC instead of more than 1300oC with no EGR system).
Considering that above 1300oC oxygen and nitrogen rejoin to make nitrogen oxides (NO, NO2, etc…), the EGR system reduces drastically the NO2 emission.
Nanomotors in nanotechnology
Currently, no man-made nanomotor exists that can impact nanotechnology in the way that the steam engine defined the industrial revolution.
However, while the first prototypes of synthetic nanomotors are studied, nature provides us with a wide range of biological nanomotors, which have evolved to perform a wide range of functions with an amazing efficiency.
While the center stage is occupied by motor proteins such as myosin, which is, for example, responsible for muscle contraction, biological motor designs include motors based on ribonucleic acid (RNA) pulling on double-stranded deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) to package it into the protein shell of a virus; ribosomes moving along RNA while synthesizing a new protein; or even a membrane protein aiding the process of hearing.
Nanoemulsions
Just as colloidal dispersions of solid nanoscale particulates have received considerable attention, colloidal dispersions of deformable nanodroplets — nanoemulsions — are beginning to receive significant attention.
Although many basic principles of emulsification are already known for isolated droplets in relatively mild shear flows, the new principles of emulsification that govern nanodroplet rupturing and coalescence in extreme shear at high ø are still being discovered.
Quantitative theoretical predictions of droplet size distributions that include the combination of these two effects are sorely needed. Once formed, nanoemulsions can be manipulated and controlled in very precise ways.
Ultracentrifugal fractionation provides model monodisperse dispersions of nanoscale droplets in the size range from roughly a = 10 to 100 nm.
Scanning Tunneling and Atomic Force Microscope
Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) was invented by Binnig and introduced in 1985 by Binnig, Quate and Gerber as an offshoot from the Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM).
While the STM is an ingenious instrument, which has shattered many paradigms about how to access the world of single atoms, the actual device is quite simple and grants an instructive appreciation of the concepts of atomic-scale imaging.
The AFM is somewhat more complicated and the additional challenges faced by AFM show up clearly in a direct comparison. STM and AFM have stimulated a revolution in surface science.
These techniques can image the surface of many materials with atomic resolution and provide information about the structure and organization of atomic and molecular adsorbates on surfaces.
The tip and its associated force or field can also be used to manipulate atoms and molecules to form unique structures.
Nanomedicine
Burgeoning interest in the medical applications of nanotechnology has led to the emergence of a new field called nanomedicine. Most broadly, nanomedicine is the process of diagnosing, treating, and preventing disease and traumatic injury, of relieving pain, and of preserving and improving human health, using molecular tools and molecular knowledge of the human body.
It is most useful to regard the emerging field of nanomedicine as a set of three mutually overlapping and progressively more powerful technologies. First, in the relatively near term, nanomedicine can address many important medical problems by using nanoscale-structured materials with biological systems.
Nanostructured materials and devices hold great promise for advanced diagnostics and biosensors, targeted drug delivery and smart drugs, and immunoisolation therapies.
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