A. James Clark School of Engineering

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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.

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    Opportunity Denied
    (2024-08-01) Anand, Davinder K.
    After a considerable amount of discussion, I decided to touch on a topic mostly ignored in the engineering curriculum. That is the participation of Black people in the areas of engineering and technology. The issue of Black Lives Matter and the widespread protests in 2020 have forced us to examine the long-standing opportunities in technology denied to this community. In this paper I review a brief history of how we got to this point and the challenges inherent in the educational system. At the end I discuss some deeply ingrained and difficult-to-change issues and present some final thoughts on this very complex situation. - Davinder K. Anand.
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    UTILIZATION OF PNEUMATIC ARTIFICIAL MUSCLES TO STUDY EFFECTS OF LOAD HISTORY ON THE INTERVERTEBRAL DISC
    (2015) Russell, Joseph; Hsieh, Adam H; Bioengineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Degenerative disc disease is commonly linked with low back pain, a major musculoskeletal disorder contributing to an annual socioeconomic impact of over $100 billion. The intervertebral disc (IVD) plays a critical role in spinal load bearing and many of the mechanisms of its degeneration are still unknown. This study focused on eliciting gene expression changes of the Nucleus Pulposus (NP), the inner region of the IVD critical to load support using an in vivo rat model. First, pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs) were calibrated and integrated into a small loading device as an actuation mechanism. Next, various load histories were then applied on IVDs and gene expression was determined by qRT-PCR. Results show that discs with increased intradiscal pressure led increased expression of genes common to the NP. This study contributes to the better understanding of how load history alters IVD health and validates a device for future long term studies.