Study of Animal Urination Could Lead to Better-Engineered Products

A new Georgia Institute of Technology study investigated how quickly 32 animals urinate. It turns out that it’s all about the same. Even though an elephant’s bladder is 3,600 times larger than a cat’s (18 liters vs. 5 milliliters), both animals relieve themselves in about 20 seconds. In fact, all animals that weigh more than 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds) urinate in that same time span.

Engineering a Better Way to Rebuild Bone Inside the Body

Traumatic bone injuries such as blast wounds are often so severe that the body can’t effectively repair the damage on its own. To aid the recovery, clinicians inject patients with proteins called growth factors. The treatment is costly, requiring large amounts of expensive growth factors. The growth factors also disperse, creating unwanted bone formation in the area around the injury.

Researchers Convert Discoveries in MSE to Real-World Applications

When scientists and engineers use the word materials, they mean any naturally occurring substance manipulated by humans to make things. Beginning with the first metals, discovered by trial and error thousands of years ago, the drive to develop materials that better serve human needs has played a central role in the rise of complex societies.

Modern researchers have moved past haphazard experimentation. Today they examine materials at every level – from the nanoscale to the visible and tangible macroscale – to understand why a material behaves as it does.