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Over the past decade the software products available for solid modeling, dynamic, stress, thermal, and flow analysis, and computer-aiding manufacturing (CAM) have become more powerful, affordable, and easier to use. At the same time it has become increasingly important for students to gain concurrent engineering design and systems integration experience. The purpose of this paper is to communicate the dramatic effect that the new software has had on the way that mechanical drawing and engineering design are taught at Daniel Webster College (DWC). The two year design experience at DWC is more extensive than the design experience that students normally have during the first two years of most four-year engineering programs. The evolution of this design experience will be presented. Three of the presenters of this paper are students. Two will present robotic arm projects; the third will present a supersonic gun project. (Contains 22 figures.)

Adipose-derived stem cells (ASCs) are multipotent mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) that show definitive stem cell characteristics such as plastic adherence in culture, ability to maintain multipotency upon in vitro expansion, and self-renewal capacity. ASCs are particularly promising for use in regenerative medicine because they can be harvested easily from adipose tissue by standard liposuction, with minimal donor site morbidity. Since ASCs do not necessitate ex vivo expansion to obtain clinically significant cell numbers, it is critical to identify a standardized method that maximizes the number of ASCs collected. Based on current literature, there is no standardized method to isolate ASCs for clinical application. Furthermore, clinical studies involving ASCs often show inconsistencies in the reported results. Such studies often use research-derived isolation protocols, which are complex, time-consuming, and involve the use of chemical and animal-derived reagents. In this paper, we present an in-depth review of the available data on ASC isolation protocols. Moreover, we describe our isolation protocol that allows the collection of a ready-touse ASC pellet for clinical application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Breast cancer is the most common female cancer in Western populations, affecting 12.5% of women, with 1.38 million patients per year. Breast-conserving surgery followed by postoperative radiotherapy replaced the radical and modified-radical procedures of Halsted and Patey as the standard of care for early-stage breast cancer once the overall and disease-free survival rates of breast-conserving surgery were demonstrated to be equivalent to those of mastectomy. However, excision of >20% of breast tissue, low or centrally located cancer, and large-sized breasts with various grades of breast ptosis, result a in unacceptable cosmetic outcomes. Oncoplastic breast surgery evolved from the breast-conserving surgery by broadening its general indication to achieve wider excision margins without compromising on the cosmetic outcomes. Thus, oncoplastic breast surgery can be defined as a tumor-specific immediate breast reconstruction method that applies aesthetically derived breast reduction techniques to the field of breast cancer surgery and allows for higher volume excision with no aesthetic compromise. However, contralateral breast symmetrization should be regarded as an intrinsic component of the oncoplastic surgery. The main procedures involved are volume-displacement or volume-replacement techniques, which depend on breast size and cancer size/ location. Volume-displacement or reshaping procedures apply the plastic surgery principles to transpose a dermo-glandular flap of breast tissue into the defect site, while volume-replacement techniques use autologous tissues to replace the volume loss that follows tumor resection. Furthermore, these procedures are more complex and time-consuming than those involved in breast-conserving surgery. Based on current literature, the authors analyze the different techniques and indications of the oncoplastic breast surgery, determining its complication rate, in order to help both surgeons and their patients in the decision-making stage of breast reconstruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the efficacy of intraoperative sustained limited expansion (ISLE) by examining the ex vivo biomechanical properties of acutely expanded skin flaps. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Fourteen fresh male cadavers were tested. On both sides of each cadaver, a 4 × 10 cm, the laterally based flap was raised at the external auditory canal of the scalp and a 15 × 8 cm, the proximately based flap was raised at the lateral arm, anterior thorax, and lateral thigh. For each body region, a flap on one side was subject to acute intermittent expansion, while the corresponding contralateral flap served as the control. Both control and acutely expanded flaps underwent stepwise loading to assess their biomechanical properties. RESULTS: No dimensional changes were observed in the acutely expanded flaps when compared to the controls. Mean stiffness and strain values were not significantly different from control values for flaps raised on the scalp, but statistically significant changes were found for those on the lateral arm, anterior thorax and lateral thigh (p < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: ISLE produced statistically significant biomechanical improvements when applied to the flaps raised on the arm, thorax and thigh, leading to a significant gain in compliance. We suggest that the ineffectiveness of ISLE, when applied to scalp flaps, was due to the inelasticity of the galea aponeurotica. Our findings confirm the general effectiveness of acute skin expansion as means of reducing wound-closure tension after large skin excisions; at least in regions other than the scalp. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]