Browse Topic: Respiratory system
In response to the 42nd (2025) Annual VFS Student Design Competition, the Graduate Student Design Team from the University of Maryland introduces Wyvern, a novel hydrogen-powered electric compound rotor-craft engineered for maximum loiter and operational safety. Named after a mythical dragon that defies convention by not breathing fire, Wyvern only breathes water vapor by forgoing hydrocarbon combustion in favor of the quiet and clean power of hydrogen. This design reflects not only an aeronautical solution to an engineering challenge but a greater aspiration to reshaping how practical and clean vertical flight can be achieved.
University of Texas at Dallas researchers have developed biosensor technology that when combined with artificial intelligence (AI) shows promise for detecting lung cancer through breath analysis.
Cilia, small, slender, hair-like structures present on the surface of all mammalian cells, play a major role in locomotion and are involved in mechanoreception. Ciliary motion in the upper airway is the primary mechanism by which the body transports foreign particulates out of the respiratory system to maintain proper respiratory function.
Researchers from the School of Engineering of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have successfully developed what they believe is the world’s smallest multifunctional biomedical robots. Capable of imaging, high-precision motion, and multifunctional operations like sampling, drug delivery, and laser ablation, the robot offers competitive imaging performance and a tenfold improvement in obstacle detection, paving the way for robotic applications in narrow and challenging channels of the human body, such as the lung’s end bronchi and the oviducts.
Drug-delivery researchers have developed a device with the potential to improve gene therapy for patients with inherited lung diseases such as cystic fibrosis. In cell culture and mouse models, scientists demonstrated a novel technique for the aerosolization of inhalable nanoparticles that can be used to carry messenger RNA, the technology underpinning COVID-19 vaccines, to patients’ lungs.
Recent advances in technology have opened many possibilities for using wearable and implantable sensors to monitor various indicators of patient health. Wearable pressure sensors are designed to respond to very small changes in bodily pressure, so that physical functions such as pulse rate, blood pressure, breathing rates, and even subtle changes in vocal cord vibrations can be monitored in real time with a high degree of sensitivity.
A stretchable system that can harvest energy from human breathing and motion for use in wearable health-monitoring devices may be possible, according to an international team of researchers, led by Huanyu “Larry” Cheng, the Dorothy Quiggle Career Development Professor in Penn State’s department of engineering science and mechanics. The research team, with members from Penn State and Minjiang University and Nanjing University, both in China, recently published its results in Nano Energy.
Researchers at the EPFL have achieved a breakthrough in the treatment of tracheomalacia, a condition characterized by weak tracheal cartilage and muscles that normally keep the airway open for proper breathing. The team, composed of EPFL engineers and CHUV pediatric airway surgeons, has successfully developed a novel adhesive hydrogel patch that can effectively alleviate tracheomalacia, providing hope for improved treatment options for this challenging condition. The proof of concept was recently published in iScience.
Ultrafine particles, in particular solid sub-100 nm particles pose high risks to human health due to their high lung deposition efficiency, translocation to all organs including the brain and their harmful chemical composition; due to dense traffic, the population in urban environments is exposed to high concentrations of those toxic air contaminants, despite these facts, they are still widely neglected. Therefore, the EU-Commission set up a program for clean and competitive solutions for different problem areas which are regarded to be hotspots of such particles. HORIZON AeroSolfd is an EU project, co-funded by Switzerland that will deliver affordable, adaptable, and sustainable retrofit solutions to reduce exhaust tailpipe emissions from petrol engines, brake emissions and pollution in semi-closed environments. VERT, a Swiss based international industry organization, has a long research history in the field of nanoparticle filtration and it is in charge of reducing tailpipe emissions of gasoline vehicles by using the best available retrofit filtration technology (BAT). VERT will apply the newest high-efficient GPF technology in three high mileage fleets, in Germany, Switzerland and Israel. The project will also serve as a platform to continue research on PN emissions as well as on secondary emissions from GDI and PFI petrol engines. In addition, the “high emitter phenomena” will be further analysed with a NPTI testing campaign of 1000 gasoline vehicles, including GDI, PFI and GPF equipped vehicles.
There’s nothing more core to turbomachinery than moving fluid at increasingly high speeds and pressures. Whether we’re talking about industrial turbines, air breathing jet engines, or liquid-rocket space applications, the higher the pressure and the higher the flow rate, the better the performance.
One in 10 adults suffer from the debilitating effects of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Research around a new breathing device developed by pulmonologists at the University of Cincinnati offers promise for improving their lives.
This SAE Aerospace Information Report (AIR) provides general information to aircraft engineers, regarding the types of Protective Breathing Equipment (PBE) configurations which are available, the intended functions of such equipment, and the technical approaches which may be used in accomplishing these functions. The term "PBE" or "Protective Breathing Equipment" has been used to refer to various types of equipment, which are used in a variety of applications. This way of using the terminology has been a source of confusion in the aviation industry. One objective of this AIR is to assist the reader in distinguishing between the types of PBE applications. A further objective is to assist in understanding the technical approaches which can be used in each of the major applications. Principles of PBE design are reviewed briefly. However, discussion of specific performance specifications and information regarding the details of manufacture and testing of such equipment is beyond the scope of this document.
Closed-cycle protective breathing apparatus, commonly referred to as rebreathers, or CCBA provide trained aircrew members or ground personnel with eye and respiratory protection from toxic atmospheres.
Unwanted crops and weeds in California’s Central Valley have been on alert — with residents breathing easier — for the last year thanks to Verdant Robotics. That’s because local tractors have been towing the company’s SprayBox technology: AI robots comprising 50 spray nozzles and a sophisticated computer system that aim to empower farmers with high-fidelity information to improve agricultural yields.
Researchers have developed a technology that can be used to detect a body’s movements and vital information. The new soft transmission lines can be used in clothing or hospital bed sheets to make them capable of monitoring breathing and other vital movements, or in AI-powered textiles that allow robots to interact more safely and intuitively with humans.
Right now there are more than 100,000 people in need of an organ. The long list isn’t just an issue of supply and demand, but of delivery too. When a heart becomes available, a four-hour clock starts ticking — it has to be put on ice, shipped to where it’s needed, and patient, surgeon and support staff have to be summoned. If that takes longer than four hours, the chance of a body accepting the organ diminishes rapidly. By six hours, it’s pretty much too late.
Inhalers are among the most commonly used devices for treating respiratory diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). With each inhalation through the inhaler, the device delivers a specific amount of medication to the lungs. However, it is commonly misused because patients often have problems adopting the correct inhaler technique and thus receive insufficient medication. This leads to poor disease control and increased healthcare costs.
A new kind of fiber called OmniFibers can be made into clothing that senses how much it is being stretched or compressed and then provides immediate tactile feedback in the form of pressure, lateral stretch, or vibration. Such fabrics could be used in garments that help train singers or athletes to better control their breathing or that help patients recovering from disease or surgery to recover their breathing patterns.
Smart speakers have proven adept at monitoring certain healthcare issues at home including detecting cardiac arrest or monitoring babies’ breathing. Now, the speakers can be used to track the minute motion of individual heartbeats in a person sitting in front of the speaker.
Researchers are developing a way for large machines to “breathe” in and out cooling blasts of water to keep their systems from overheating. The process is much like how humans and some animals breath in air to cool their bodies down; however, in this case, the machines would be breathing in cool blasts of water.
At present, the research on fatigue driving at home and abroad mainly has the following three methods: (i) driving behavioral (vehicle-based), (ii) driver behavioral (video-based), and (iii) driver physiological signals measure. The physiology-based methods have the highest recognition result. When drivers are in a state of fatigue, the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) activity will be reflected from the physiological signal. Most of the contact sensors are used to obtain the physiological signal information of the driver. However, the contact sensors will affect the driver's driving operation, so this paper uses the frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radar to collect the physiological signals. A fatigue driving simulation experiment was designed to collect experimental subjects' physiological signal data and separate the steady heartbeat and respiratory signals. Perform heart rate variability (HRV) time domain and frequency domain analysis on the heartbeat signal, and get the time domain derived features: mean of heart rate (AVGHR), heart rate root mean square difference (rMSSD). Frequency domain derived features: heart rate low-frequency (LF), heart rate high-frequency (HF), ratio of heart rate low frequency to high frequency (LF/HF). Using the spectrum estimation to get the respiratory frequency and the mean of breathing, heart rate to breathing ratio are selected as the respiratory signal's time-domain derived features. Finally, a two-class model of fatigue driving is established based on the support vector machine (SVM) theory. The above seven feature indicators are used as feature vectors as the SVM input, and the classification model is trained through the k-fold cross-validation method. The test set is used for classification detection. The accuracy rates of normal and fatigued driving are 88.75% and 84.25%, respectively. We also use Random Forests for comparison experiments. The accuracy of the RF are 96.88% and 95.14% respectively.
The core mechanism of a miniature sensor on a chip incorporates two layers of silicon that overlay each other separated by the space of 270 nanometers — about 0.005 the width of a human hair. They carry a minute voltage. Vibrations from bodily motions and sounds put part of the chip in flux, making the voltage flux and creating readable electronic outputs. In human testing, the chip has recorded a variety of signals from the mechanical workings of the lungs and the heart with clarity — signals that often escape meaningful detection by current medical technology.
Air conditioners guzzle power and spew out millions of tons of carbon dioxide daily and they are not always healthy — constant exposure to central A/C can increase risks of recirculating germs and cause breathing problems. Air conditioners work by cooling down and dehumidifying the air — an expensive and not particularly environmentally friendly proposition. To address these problems, researchers developed the Cold Tube, which works by absorbing the heat directly emitted by radiation from a person without having to cool the air passing over their skin. This achieves a significant amount of energy savings.
Trained dogs can detect many kinds of disease — including lung, breast, bladder, and prostate cancers and possibly COVID-19 — simply through smell. But it takes time to train such dogs and their availability and time is limited. Researchers have come up with a system that can detect the chemical and microbial content of an air sample with even greater sensitivity than a dog's nose. They coupled this to a machine-learning process that can identify the distinctive characteristics of the disease-bearing samples.
The use of alternative fuels, especially oxygenated fuels in automobile engines, has been increasing owing to the stringent global fuel economy and emission regulations. As a result, it is concerned that the emissions of alcohols and aldehydes have increased significantly. Aldehydes, formaldehyde (HCHO) in particular, are non-criteria pollutants that are acutely toxic and/or carcinogenic. Several reports have associated HCHO with potential lung and airway cancers. Therefore, emission regulations for these compounds have already been implemented in several areas worldwide. The conventional measurement (impinger, etc.) methods for HCHO possess advantages and disadvantages. HCHO can be measured with high sensitivity if measured in a batch. However, in real-time measurements, low concentration measurements are challenging. To overcome this challenge, a real-time HCHO analyzer for low concentration measurement of 0.1 ppm resolution in real time of 10Hz was developed in this study based on laser spectroscopic principles. The results in this study highlight the fundamental performance of the method and application to real automobile exhaust gas measurements.
The size and distribution of a vehicle’s tailpipe particulate emissions can have a strong impact on human health, especially if the particles are small enough to enter the human respiratory system. Gasoline direct injection (GDI) has been adopted widely to meet stringent fuel economy and CO2 regulations across the globe for recent engine architectures. However, the introduction of GDI has led to challenges concerning the particulate matter (PM) and particle number (PN) emissions from such engines. This study aimed to compare the particulate emissions of three SI combustion strategies: conventional SI, conventional stoichiometric low-pressure exhaust gas recirculation (LP-EGR), and Dedicated-EGR (D-EGR) at four specific test conditions. It was shown that the engine-out PM/PN for both the EGR strategies was lower than the conventional SI combustion under normal operating conditions. The test conditions were chosen to represent the WLTC test conditions. It was also observed that the particle number measurements were not repeatable due to their high sensitivity to engine inlet conditions. However, the PN measurements were comparable to the engine-out AVL micro soot sensor measurements, confirming that the variation observed in the particle number was a strong function of minor changes in engine operating conditions. Data trends were compared for the three strategies with all strategies being run successively with no engine idle time in between. Furthermore, the impact of injection strategy, the start of injection, and the injection pressure on engine-out PM/PN emissions were also evaluated.
The nitrogen oxide (NOx) emitted by the internal engines is an undesirable pollutant and responsible for the photochemical smog when reacts with ultraviolet light from the sun. This smog can cause eyes and respiratory system irritation as also damage plants. The torch ignition system has been proving to be a viable alternative for reducing NOx emissions, and it is one of the main attractions of the system. NOx formation is closely related to the system’s work temperature. Thus, determining the temperature in the pre-chamber is of fundamental importance, whereas the torch ignition system operating at a temperature above the specified, could lead to an increase in NOx emissions, in the probability of detonation and in the probability of pre-ignition, the possibility of limiting performance, an increase in mechanical efforts and deformation/ breakage. Thus, the purpose of this article is to develop a methodology for determining the combustion gases temperature in the pre-chamber by stratified load. Thereunto, one-dimensional model was created from the mass conservation and the ideal gas equations. Therefore, a lower generation of NOx and less deterioration by oxidation are expected in the pre-chamber at high temperatures.
Researchers have created an individual biocontainment unit (IBU) that uses negative pressure to suction the air from around a patient and filter out viral particles. This prevents environmental contamination and limits exposure to SARS-CoV-2. In addition to guarding against COVID-19, the IBU could be rapidly deployed to isolate patients with any respiratory illness such as influenza, MERS, or tuberculosis.
The use of composite materials is on the rise. Consequently, this guide was developed to provide base-level Bioenvironmental Engineering (BE) personnel with a comprehensive baseline for identifying, evaluating, and controlling occupational and environmental hazards associated with composite fibers and materials.
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