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Bouyant and beautiful

Residents of Laurel, Delaware, will have a new water feature to check out this year - a floating wetlands structure designed to improve water quality in the town park.

The device was designed by five University of Delaware engineering students - Danielle Gerstman of Chalfont, Pa., Sarah Hartman of Wilmington, Del., Erica Loudermilk of Lothian, Md., Mark White of Wilmington, Del., and recent graduate Megan Doyle - and can be placed in rivers, ponds and areas that are not part of a natural structure.

Plantings for the six-sided structure are chosen for the way they interact with water - removing nitrogen and phosphorus with both high efficiency and beauty.

The team worked with faculty advisors Dustyn Roberts and Kurt Manal, with participation from UD’s Sustainable Coastal Communities Initiative and Delaware Sea Grant, Andrew Hayes and landscape design expert Jules Bruck of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

Helping wheelchair racers get their zooooooooom on

To win the race you have to train often and train well. If wheelchair racing is  your sport, you need a way to roll as fast as possible while building strength and stamina. A team of University of Delaware engineering students took up that challenge for racers in Ghana, sponsored by the “Go Get Dem” wheelchair racing club there in collaboration with MossRehab in Philadelphia and the racing team it sponsors, Global Abilities.

The UD team - Sarah Peden of Dennis, Mass., Marjelle Scheffers of Amersfoort, The Netherlands, Gnanadesikan “Desik” Somasundaram of Wilmington, Del., and Dylan Wergelis-Isaacson of Cheltenham, Pa. - worked with faculty advisor Sarah Rooney to design a safe, portable and inexpensive device that would provide appropriate resistance and the opportunity for high-intensity training. The goal was to develop something that could be assembled from readily available materials and used on any surface by racers in Ghana.

Some early designs were too heavy, too long, not stable enough, not angled properly, too noisy, too complicated.The breakthrough came after Desik and Dylan visited an elite wheelchair training facility at the University of Illinois, talked with athletes there and examined what the top trainers did. The team revised its prototype again and an athlete tested it at MossRehab in December. The team plans to refine the design further and then get things rolling to Ghana, where they hope their work gives new traction to wheelchair athletes.

Simulated colostomy care has real benefit for patients

Thousands of people have bowel problems that require a colostomy - a surgical procedure that removes solid waste through an abdominal opening instead of through the usual digestive tract. Such problems may include cancer, diverticulitis, Crohn’s disease, gunshot wounds, incontinence and bowel obstructions. And though colostomies are not always permanent, they all require regular cleaning, component changes and sensitive contact that is hard to teach by textbook, video or plastic manikin.

It’s that kind of procedure that University of Delaware nurse educator Amy Cowperthwait has targeted in her innovative line of SimUCare products, all  equipped with electronic sensors, realistic materials and the components necessary to provide “hands-on” training with such things as tracheostomies, catheter placement and drawing blood. The devices are designed to be worn by another person - sometimes actors, sometimes other students. That person gets signals - vibrations - to cue specific patient responses. Sometimes it is pain or discomfort when procedures are done incorrectly. Other times, it is pain relief. The interactions help the trainee develop communication skills while completing psychomotor skills essential to the profession.

A team of four engineering students - Christopher Bresette of Greenville, S.C., El Grasso of Shelburne, Vt., Kevin MacMillan of Needham, Mass., and Olivia Smith of Wilmington, Del. - developed the colostomy simulator, which allows trainees to practice cleaning the “stoma” site (the opening in the abdominal wall), listen to bowel sounds and get used to the smells and patient-teaching skills that are required when they care for a person with a colostomy.

Clinicians who have tested the prototype are excited about it, Kevin said. Some said their first encounter with colostomies was with a patient in a hospital, which can be overwhelming if you are not prepared for what you will  see, smell and feel. Patients often have traumatic emotions and difficulty accepting their "new normal" and need an empathetic caregiver who can help them talk about it.

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Greetings from the International Space Station as they celebrate Engineers Week 2017 with us! –DiscoverE on Youtube