Matching Items (4)
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- All Subjects: BME
- All Subjects: Obesity
- Creators: Caplan, Michael
Description
The use of saliva sampling as a noninvasive way for drug analysis as well as the monitoring systems within the body has become increasingly important in recent research. Because of the growing interest in saliva, this project proposes a way to analyze sodium ion concentration in a saliva solution based on its fluorescence level when in the presence of a sodium indicator dye and recorded with a smartphone camera. The dyed sample was placed in a specially designed housing to exclude all ambient light from the images. A source light of known wavelength was used to excite the fluorescent dye and the smartphone camera images recorded the emission light wavelengths. After analysis of the images using ImageJ, it was possible to create a model to determine the level of fluorescence based on sodium ion concentration. The smartphone camera image model was compared to readings from a standard fluorescence plate recorder to test the accuracy of the model. The study found that the model was accurate within 5 % as compared to the fluorescence plate recorder. Based on the results, it was concluded that the method and resulting model proposed in this study is a valid was to analyze saliva or other solutions for their sodium ion concentration via images recorded by a smartphone camera.
ContributorsSmith, Catherine Julia (Author) / Antonio, Garcia (Thesis director) / Caplan, Michael (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Harrington Bioengineering Program (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
The action/adventure game Grad School: HGH is the final, extended version of a BME Prototyping class project in which the goal was to produce a zombie-themed game that teaches biomedical engineering concepts. The gameplay provides fast paced, exciting, and mildly addicting rooms that the player must battle and survive through, followed by an engineering puzzle that must be solved in order to advance to the next room. The objective of this project was to introduce the core concepts of BME to prospective students, rather than attempt to teach an entire BME curriculum. Based on user testing at various phases in the project, we concluded that the gameplay was engaging enough to keep most users' interest through the educational puzzles, and the potential for expanding this project to reach an even greater audience is vast.
ContributorsNitescu, George (Co-author) / Medawar, Alexandre (Co-author) / Spano, Mark (Thesis director) / LaBelle, Jeffrey (Committee member) / Guiang, Kristoffer (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Harrington Bioengineering Program (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
It is presently believed that brown adipose tissue (BAT) is an important tissue in the control of obesity because it has the propensity to increase energy expenditure. The purpose of this study was to attempt to quantify the thermogenesis of BAT when four rats were exposed to a progression of low-fat to high-fat diet. Exogenous norepinephrine (NE) injections (dose of 0.25 mg/kg i.p.) were administered in order to elicit a temperature response, where increases in temperature indicate increased activity. Temperatures were measured via temperature sensing transponders that had been inserted at the following three sites: interscapular BAT (iBAT), the abdomen (core), and lower back (reference). Data showed increased BAT activity during acute (2-3 weeks) high fat diet (HFD) in comparison to low fat diet (LFD), but a moderate to marked decrease in BAT activity during chronic HFD (6-8 weeks) when compared to acute HFD. This suggests that while a HFD may initially stimulate BAT in the short-term, a long-term HFD diet may have negative effects on BAT activation.
ContributorsSivak, Hanna (Author) / Sweazea, Karen (Thesis director) / Herman, Richard (Committee member) / Caplan, Michael (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / College of Integrative Sciences and Arts (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
Adaptive thermogenesis is an innate mechanism that assists the body in controlling its core temperature that can be stimulated in two ways: cold and diet. When adaptive thermogenesis is stimulated through diet, the metabolic rate of the body should increase and the metabolic efficiency of the body should decrease. This activation should, theoretically, help to control weight gain. A protocol was developed to study four male Sprague-Dawley rats throughout a fourteen week period through the measurement of brown adipose tissue blood flow and brown adipose tissue, back, and abdomen temperatures to determine if diet induced thermogenesis existed and could be activated through norepinephrine. The sedative used to obtain blood flow measurements, ketamine, was discovered to induce a thermal response prior to the norepinephrine injection by mimicking the norepinephrine response in the sympathetic nervous system. This discovery altered the original protocol to exclude an injection of norepinephrine, as this injection would have no further thermal effect. It was found that ketamine sedation excited diet induced thermogenesis in periods of youth, low fat diet, and early high fat diet. The thermogenic capacity was found to be at a peak of 2.1 degrees Celsius during this time period. The data also suggested that the activation of diet induced thermogenesis decreased as the period of high fat diet increased, and by week 4 of the high fat diet, almost all evidence of diet induced thermogenesis was suppressed. This indicated that diet induced thermogenesis is time and diet dependent. Further investigation will need to be made to determine if prolonged high fat diet or age suppress diet induced thermogenesis.
ContributorsJayo, Heather Lynn (Author) / Caplan, Michael (Thesis director) / Herman, Richard (Committee member) / Chemical Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12