Preface, or the Truth Revealed

The truth revealed was when a young man, Nick Kostovic, made public his findings about the power of the Universe, the achieved knowledge he performs in the healing systems of our days. Doctors, patients, and common people thought of him as a magician who penetrated from the clouds to announce a new truth. And this is what it was-a new truth. The community of coastal Los Angeles became stunned when terminally sick people began to feel better, when invalids began to walk, when memories returned to Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s-diseased patients. For the past thirty years, Kostovic has conducted research on the effects of neurological disorders on human beings and spent the last fifteen years working on several projects in connection with bioenergetic physical therapy.

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Linear Quadratic Tracking Control of Smooth Pursuit Eye Movements

Conventional feedback control models of the oculo motor system fail to account for the destabilizing effects of neural transmission delays. To address this shortcoming, a linear quadratic tracking algorithm used to control smoothly pursuing eye movements of various target trajectories is presented.

Based on the type of input to the system, it is shown that stability, in the presence of large motor feedback delays, can be maintained by modulating weighting factors intrinsic to the model. Conditions, such as the initial orientation of the eye relative to the location of where a target first becomes salient and the possible oscillatory nature that the reference trajectory may present, play important roles in determining the optimal cost to go motor control strategy at the onset of a tracking movement.

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Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation as a Graduation Requirement for Biomedical Engineering Students

At the end of a mountain road in Austria during the summer of 2003, I waited for a boat with my family on a dock at a large lake. Suddenly I saw a man fall to the sidewalk. His skin had turned that ashen blue color, andit was clear to me that he was in cardiac arrest. There was a crowd of more than 75 persons just standing and looking at him. I knew what to do when there was no detectable pulse or breathing. 

Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) chest compressions were started immediately. His skin color returned to nearly normal. After a few minutes, a single bystander came up and said they knew how to do breaths. At that time, recommendations were for intermittent breathing as well as chest compressions. The stricken person made it alive to the EMSvehicle that took nearly 30 minutes to arrive. While I do not know the eventual outcome, I do know he was successfully resuscitated using an Automated External Defibrillator (AED). Furthermore with the quick application of CPR, he likely had a full recovery. Unfortunately, from the crowd response at that time, there were not enough people trained to act in this emergency situation where seconds really count.

Stimuli-Responsive Hydrogels Bearing αamino acid Residues

Vinyl hydrogels bearing α-aminoacid residues have been explored as platforms for the treatment of cancer, glaucoma and mood disorder therapies. Ionic/ionizable groups of the L-valine, L-phenylalanine and L-histidine residues are able to modify the swelling properties of the hydrogel on the basis of their thermodynamic characteristics. 

Greater basicity constants of functional groups improve a greater loading of the drug and a longer sustained-release pattern. The pH and the temperature affect the swelling ofthe hydrogel and increase ‘on demand’ the drug availability. A further stimulus based on alternating magnetic fields can be applied on hydrogels containing embedded magnetic nanoparticles used for site-specific controlled drug delivery. 

The diffusion process for the in vitro release of the drug (cisplatin, doxorubicin, pilocarpine, trazodone, citalopram and paroxetine) from the drugloaded hydrogels is mainly controlled by the drug-polymerinteraction, that in the meanwhile preservs it’s bioactivity. The different interaction strength between the drug and the polymer may be a strategy to develop suitable capsules for long-term therapies.