Penn Researchers Show that Cells’ Perception of Stiffness is a Matter of Time
The relative stiffness of a cell’s environment is known to have a large effect on that cell’s behavior, including how well the cell can stick or move. Now, a new study by University of Pennsylvania researchers demonstrates the role timing plays in how cells perceive this stiffness.
Penn Engineers’ Gold Nanorods Key to Measuring Materials’ Squishiness at the Nanoscale
Rheology is the science of studying how soft materials and complex fluids deform and flow under stress. These materials are everywhere in biology, and since their relative stiffness or squishiness is relevant to diseases, such as cancer, there is a need to accurately measure just how squishy they are. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s […]
Penn Engineers Test Drug Transfer Using Placenta-on-a-Chip
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science have demonstrated the feasibility of their “organ-on-a-chip” platform in studying how drugs are transported across the human placental barrier.
Penn Engineering Research Gives Optical Switches the ‘Contrast’ of Electronic Transistors
Current computer systems represent bits of information — the 1’s and 0’s of binary code — with electricity. Circuit elements, such as transistors, operate on these electric signals, producing outputs that are dependent on their inputs. As fast and powerful as computers have become, Ritesh Agarwal, professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in the University of […]
New Network Model of the Musculoskeletal System Can Predict Compensatory Injuries
Network science examines how the actions of a system’s individual parts affect the behavior of the system as a whole. Some commonly studied networks include computer chip components and social media users, but University of Pennsylvania engineers are now applying network science to a much older system: the human body.
Adding a Twist Makes 3D-Printed Structures Tougher
Some mantis shrimp kill their prey with a hammer-like appendage called a dactyl club. Despite being an organism only a few inches long and weighing about as much as a deck of playing cards, the shrimp can throw shell-shattering punches at more than 50 miles per hour. If human engineers were to design a hammer […]
Penn Engineers: Bone Marrow Transplant Stem Cells Can ‘Swim’ Upstream
When a cancer patient receives a bone marrow transplant, time is of the essence. Healthy stem cells, which can restart the production of blood cells and immune system components after a patient’s own are compromised, need to make their way from the circulatory system into the bones as quickly as possible. To do that, they […]