2. Answer the questions:

1. Who has unveiled the first brain - controlled phosthetic hand, dubbed the Cyber hand?

2. Can the Cyber hand communicate with the body?

3. Does the Cyber hand have five independently moving fingers?

4. How many degrees of freedom does it have?

5. Can the hand pick up even delicate objects?

6. Are the engineers paing close attention to aesthetics?

7. How will the entire mechanism look like?

8. When does Lucia Beccai, the projects manager, expect the Cyberhand to go on sale?

3. Complete these word combinations with a verb. They all appear in the text. Translate the word combinations in to Russian:

1. to … up even delicate objects

2. to … like a real human hand

3. to … by Paolo Dario

4. to … of a microprocessor, electrodes

UNIT 8

Medical Biotechnology

I. Vocabulary focus

1. Useful words for learning:

collaboration - сотрудничество

to encourage - поддерживать

to unify - объединять

to intersect - пересекаться

blood stream - поток крови

graft - пересадка ткани(хирург.)

valve - клапан

interaction - взаимодействие

inflammation - воспаление(мед.)

compatibility - совместимость

implementation - осуществление, выполнение

cancer - рак(мед.)

II. Reading

1. Read and translate the text:

International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering. (The IFMBE is an association of constituent societies and organizations which was established in 1959 to encourage and promote international collaboration in research and practice of the profession as well as in the management of technology and the use of science and engineering in medicine and biology for improving health and quality of life. The mission of the IFMBE is to encourage, support, represent and unify the world-wide Medical and Biological Engineering Community in order to promote health and quality of life through the advancement of research, development, application and management of technology.)

Biomechanics

Mechanics meets biology. Biomechanics was established as an area of study within the Department of Medical Technology at NTNU in 2004.

At the point where biology and mechanics intersect you find the scientific field of biomechanics. Biology is the science of living creatures, while mechanics is a branch within physics that deals within science of how forces affect matter and material systems.

Subcategories. Biology can roughly be divided into the areas of anatomy, physiology, histology, and cell biology. Mechanics deals with deformation and movement analysis of components / systems affected by external loading. Through a mechanical analysis of a system and it’s boundary conditions, the mechanical stresses and strains can be determined. The external loading can originate from pressure, temperature, acceleration, and many other factors.

Interdisciplinary. These two fields have come far as separate disciplines. Even if fundamental problems have still not been solved satisfactorily in the separate disciplines, however, the interdisciplinary nature of biomechanics can contribute to cracking the code and yielding unexpected results.

Examples of successful biomechanical solutions that have become clinically useful are:

• improvements to prostheses (hips, artificial joints)

• blood stream estimates (stenos, aneurisms, by-pass, stunts, grafts, artificial heart valves)

• mechanical interpretations of MR/ultrasound results in connection with cardiovascular diseases.

Medical Biotechnology

Although most human diseases are caused by an interaction of genetic changes and environmental factors, the exact mechanisms are still unknown for most diseases.

The research effort in Medical Biotechnology focuses on DNA repair and gene expression, and acute and chronic inflammation and biocompatibility. Competence within the latter area is often a prerequisite for successful clinical implementation of new medical technology.

Our research themes are:

• Functional genomics of

- cancer

- cardiovascular disease

- host defense

- mechanisms for development of diagnostic, preventive or therapeutic strategies

• Designer antibiotics

• Broad host range expression vectors

• Biocatalysis for pure drug production

• Polysaccharides in medicine

Notes:

boundary - пограничный

prerequisite - предпосылка

to yield - приносить, давать.

stenos - стеноз(мед.)

vascular - сосудистый (анат.)

host - организм, питающий организм(биол.)