Masters Projects 09
This year two Masters students in the School of Materials will be working on research projects under Prof. Derby’s supervision. Caroline Simon will be characterising damage on glass surfaces and Phil Sewell will be studying the mechanical properties of nanowires. Both students will give a brief overview of their projects in this week’s group meeting; Thursday 14th May 2009 at 3 PM in Room B4.
Nanoindentation Meeting
This week’s group meeting will be on Thursday 7th May 2009 in Room B4 at 3 PM. Alastair Selby will discuss a nanoindentation meeting he attended last week at the University of Leicester. The meeting was entitled ‘Advances in Nanomechanical Measurements’ and was the Agilent UK and Ireland User Meeting 2009.
SLA for Tissue Engineering
This week’s group meeting will be on Tuesday 28th April 2009 in Room B4 at 3 PM. Mandy Wong will talk about her Undergraduate Final Year Project on Stereolithography for Tissue Engineering.
Cell Sheet Engineering
The weekly group meetings will be resuming tomorrow, Thursday 23rd April 2009, after the Easter break. Sadiya Saeed will talk about her Undergraduate Final Year Project on Cell Sheet Engineering at 3 PM in Room B6.
Inkjet Printing of Cellular Sheets
This week, Dr Rachel Saunders will talk about ‘Inkjet printing of cellular sheets and gelation mechanisms’ in the Group Meeting. The meeting will be in Room B4 at 3 PM on Thursday 2nd April 2009.
Fluid Mechanics of the Direct-Write Process
This week’s group meeting will be in Room B4 at 3 PM on Friday 27th March 2009. This week we have a guest speaker, Dr Sebastian Ubal (School of Chemical Engineering & Analytical Science). His talk is entitled ‘Modelling of the Fluid Mechanics of the Direct-Write Process’.
Group Meeting 19/03/09
Our group meeting this week will be on Thursday 19th March 2009 in Room C17 at 3.00 PM. The speaker is Dr Tianming Wang and he will speak on ‘Inkjet Printing Glucose Oxidase for Biosensor Applications’.
Group Meeting 06/03/09
This week’s group meeting will be on Friday 6th March 2009 in Room B4 at 3.30 PM. Bojun Xu will be talking about ‘Low Curing Temperature Silver Tracks from Soluble Inks’.
Vietnam Cycle Ride
Not too long ago we heard of the sad news of Matt Barwick passing away after suffering from brain cancer. Matt completed his PhD in the School of Materials and was married to Oriel Barwick nee Goodman, who was a former member of the Derby Group. Oriel’s Phd work characterised damage on glass surfaces using SAM and nanoindentation. Oriel will be cycling around Vietnam to raise money for the hospice that looked after Matt during his final days. Please donate generously!
http://www.justgiving.com/orielandcaroline
Oriel using the Scanning Acoustic Microscope during her PhD
Nanoindentation of Histological Specimens
Our work using nanoindentation to characterise the micromechanical properties of blood vessels has been published in this month’s special issue of Journal of Materials Research: Indentation Methods in Advanced Materials Research. The reference and abstract are below:
“Nanoindentation of histological specimens: Mapping the elastic properties of soft tissues”. R. Akhtar, N. Schwarzer, M.J. Sherratt, R.E.B. Watson, H.K. Graham, A.W. Trafford, P.M. Mummery, B. Derby, J. Mat. Res. 24, 638-646 (2009).
Although alterations in the gross mechanical properties of dynamic and compliant tissues have a major impact on human health and morbidity, there are no well-established techniques to characterize the micromechanical properties of tissues such as blood vessels and lungs. We have used nanoindentation to spatially map the micromechanical properties of 5 µm thick sections of ferret aorta and vena cava and to relate these mechanical properties to the histological distribution of fluorescent elastic fibers. To decouple the effect of the glass substrate on our analysis of the nanoindentation data, we have used the extended Oliver and Pharr method. The elastic modulus of the aorta decreased progressively from 35 MPa in the adventitial (outermost) layer to 8 MPa at the intimal (innermost) layer. In contrast, the vena cava was relatively stiff, with an elastic modulus >30 MPa in both the extracellular matrix-rich adventitial and intimal regions of the vessel. The central, highly cellularized, medial layer of the vena cava, however, had an invariant elastic modulus of ~20 MPa. In extracellular matrix-rich regions of the tissue, the elastic modulus, as determined by nanoindentation, was inversely correlated with elastic fiber density. Thus, we show it is possible to distinguish and spatially resolve differences in the micromechanical properties of large arteries and veins, which are related to the tissue microstructure.
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