Biological engineers apply engineering methods to biological systems. There is a current interest in revising or establishing new biological engineering curriculums and courses. This paper gives a philosophy from which biological engineering curriculums can emerge. Biological engineering should have the conceptual framework of a broad, fundamental, and integrative discipline. Biological engineers should be capable of synthesizing their creations from many disparate sources and of communicating with practitioners from many distinct disciplines. Hierarchical competencies are given to distinguish all college graduates, all engineering graduates, and all biological engineering graduates. Basic engineering concepts and basic biology concepts are sometimes conflicting, but must nevertheless be incorporated in undergraduate courses. Specific required courses will vary from university to university, but all biological engineering curriculums must include courses on engineering topics, life sciences topics, and courses that integrate the two. Issues of interfaces between biological engineers and biologists, and with potential employers are also considered. This paper was intended to guide the establishment of new or revised biological engineering programs.
Accurate evaluation of turbulent velocity statistics in pulsatile flows is important in estimating potential damage to blood constituents from prosthetic heart valves. Variations in the mean flow from one cycle to the next can result in artificially high estimates. Here we demonstrate a procedure using a digital, low-pass filter to remove the cycle-to-cycle variation from turbulence statistics. The results show that cycle-to-cycle variations can significantly affect estimates of turbulent Reynolds stress and should be either eliminated or demonstrated to be small when reporting pulsatile flow results.
A multidiscipline group was established at The Pennsylvania State University to design and evaluate mechanical circulatory assist devices and the artificial heart. The group has designed a left ventricular to aortic assist system which consists of a sac-type pump, a synchronization unit, a pneumatic power unit, and appropriate monitoring apparatus. The assist system has been evaluated for long-term circulatory assistance in a series of ten calves. The assist pump was placed in the paracorporeal position. The longest period of continuous pumping was over eight months. The last four calves have had synchronized assist pumping which has permitted prolonged ventricular decompression and assist pump flow rates as high as 10 L/min. Three of these four calves had no evidence of thromboemboli. Additional animal studies will be required before clinical use of such an assist pump system can be safely undertaken.
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