Regenerative engineering and bionic limbs

Amputations of the upper extremity are severely debilitating, current treatments support very basic limb movement, and patients undergo extensive physiotherapy and psychological counseling. There is no prosthesis that allows the amputees near normal function. With increasing number of amputees due to injuries sustained in accidents,natural calamities, and international conflicts, there is a growing requirement for novel strategies and new discoveries. Advances have been made in technological, material,and in prosthesis integration where researchers are now exploring artificial prosthesis that integrate with the residual tissues and function based on signal impulses received from the residual nerves. Efforts are focused on challenging experts in different disciplines to integrate ideas and technologies to allow for the regeneration of injured tissues,recording on tissue signals and feedback to facilitate responsive movements and gradations of muscle force. A fully functional replacement and regenerative or integrated prosthesis will rely on interface of biological process with robotic systems to allow individual control of movement such as at the elbow, forearm, digits, and thumb in the upper extremity. Regenerative engineering focused on the regeneration of complex tissue and organ systems will be realized by the cross-fertilization of advances over the past 30 years in the fields of tissue engineering, nanotechnology, stem cell science, and developmental biology. The convergence of toolboxes crated within each discipline will allow interdisciplinary teams from engineering, science, and medicine to realize new strategies, mergers of disparate technologies,such as biophysics, smart bionics, and the healing power of the mind. Tackling the clinical challenges, interfacing the biological process with bionic technologies, engineering biological control of the electronic systems, and feedback will be the important goals in regenerative engineering over the next two decades.     

A materials research paradigm driven by computation

Computational approaches in materials science and engineering have progressed significantly in recent decades and are shifting the materials research paradigm to the integration of computation, processing, and characterization. This paper presents a brief overview of the state-of-the-art of computational approaches and their power in enhancing research and development of commercial materials.     

Biological issues in materials science and engineering: Interdisciplinarity and the bio-materials paradigm

Biological systems and processes have had, and continue to have, important implications and applications in materials extraction, processing, and performance. This paper illustrates some interdisciplinary, biological issues in materials science and engineering. These include metal extraction involving bacterial catalysis, galvanic couples, bacterial-assisted corrosion and degradation of materials, biosorption and bioremediation of toxic and other heavy metals, metal and material implants and prostheses and related dental and medical biomaterials developments and applications, nanomaterials health benefits and toxicity issue, and biomimetics and biologically inspired materials developments. These and other examples provide compelling evidence and arguments for emphasizing biological sicences in materials science and engineering curricula and the implementation of a bio-materials paradigm to facilitate the emergence of innovative interdisciplinarity involving the biological sciences and materials sciences and engineering. Enhanced for the Web This article appears on the JOM web site (www.tms.org/JOMPT) in html format and includes links to additional on-line resources.     

高职院校焊接专业建设跨学科技术创新团队的探索与实践

高校是原始性创新的重要源头,高校科技创新团队是科技自主创新的一支主要生力军.跨学科技术团队可以极大地推动学科间的交叉融合、科研资源的合理配置、科研信息的充分利用、科研人员的优势互补以及科研成果的集成创新.焊接专业方向与材料科学、电力电子和先进机械制造工程领域紧密相关,具有极强的交叉学科特点.在阐述技术创新团队的内涵和建...     

Evolution of a Materials Data Infrastructure

The field of materials science and engineering is writing a new chapter in its evolution, one of digitally empowered materials discovery, development, and deployment. The 2008 Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) study report helped usher in this paradigm shift, making a compelling case and strong recommendations for an infrastructure supporting ICME that would enable access to precompetitive materials data for both scientific and engineering applications. With the launch of the Materials Genome Initiative in 2011, which drew substantial inspiration from the ICME study, digital data was highlighted as a core component of a Materials Innovation Infrastructure, along with experimental and computational tools. Over the past 10 years, our understanding of what it takes to provide accessible materials data has matured and rapid progress has been made in establishing a Materials Data Infrastructure (MDI). We are learning that the MDI is essential to eliminating the seams between experiment and computation by providing a means for them to connect effortlessly. Additionally, the MDI is becoming an enabler, allowing materials engineering to tie into a much broader model-based engineering enterprise for product design.     

Design framework for the integration of cognitive functions into intelligent technical systems

The integration of cognitive functions will enable mechatronic systems to be superiorly embedded into their environment and to follow their system objectives independently. The intention is to develop self-optimizing systems, which can optimize their behavior by themselves to become more flexible, robust and user-friendly. Numerous challenges, however, become apparent on the way to such intelligent technical systems. The development is characterized by an increasing involvement of non-technical disciplines like cognitive science, higher mathematics or neurobiology. Existing design methodologies are focusing technical disciplines on the one hand and non-technical disciplines on the other hand. For instance, there is a lack of a systematic coupling of those disciplines, which are relevant for the exploration of cognitive functions, with the general engineering approach in product development. To rise to these challenges, the integration of cognitive functions has already to be supported with some kind of methodology. Focus of the methodology must be the early stages of the development. Within this design phases the developer have to modify the principle solution in common. Hence, important requirements occur in terms of the intensified interdisciplinarity of the development and the increasing system complexity. Therefore, a design framework for the integration of cognitive functions into self-optimizing systems has been developed which integrates both, existing and newly developed methods in a well-structured procedure. For this purpose, in section two, we will introduce the concept of self-optimizing systems and the operator-controller-module. Afterwards we will describe the need of action in section three and the state of the art: “design framework for cognition” in section four. In section five, we present our developed design framework for the integration of cognitive functions into intelligent technical systems. Therefore, we will explain the procedure model and a specification technique to describe self-optimizing systems. In addition, we will present a uniform type of solution patterns for the reuse of once successfully implemented knowledge and the solution pattern knowledge base for the tool support. To conclude, we will sum up the major points and give a short outlook on our future work.     

ICME at GE: Accelerating the insertion of new materials and processes

The accelerated insertion of materials (AIM) initiative provides the opportunity to reduce the materials development cycle time by up to 50% and thereby lessen the lead time required for new materials and processes. The program was founded to revolutionize the way designers and materials engineers interact, to achieve a leap forward in the application of computational materials science and integration with design engineering tools, and to create an environment where the design/materials team can learn from and build on previous developments. The centerpiece of the AIM system is the designer knowledge base, which provides a framework for managing experimental data, executing linked models describing processing, microstructure, properties, and producibility, and calculating confidence bounds for system predictions.     

Integrating Materials and Life Sciences Toward the Engineering of Biomimetic Materials

Research in the field of biological and biomimetic materials constitutes a case study of how traditional research boundaries are becoming increasingly obsolete. Positioned at the intersection of life and physical sciences, it is becoming more and more evident that future development in this area will require extensive interaction between materials and life scientists. To highlight this cross-talking, we provide a brief overview of the field, intended to illustrate how these disciplines can be integrated. We start with a short historical perspective, emphasizing the role of biologists in initiating early studies in the field. In the second part of the paper, a summary of important biochemical concepts and techniques relevant to biological materials is presented, with the goal of guiding nonspecialists towards the relevant techniques and knowledge required to investigate potential model systems. In the third part, we describe two case studies that emphasize the critical role of biosynthesis in understanding structure–function–property relationships in biological materials. We conclude with some remarks related to our own perception of how integration of materials and life sciences will lead to future developments in the field.     

再论现代表面工程

在以往研究成果的基础上,本文进一步完善和发展了表面工程学的内涵。提出了近代技术与传统工艺相结合,形成了近代表面技术．包括表面改性技术、薄膜技术与涂层技术,并详尽归纳了其内容。这三大技术再加上表面科学基础理论,表面涂(膜)层材料及加工技术．表面检测技术,表面质量控制以及表面工程设计及其管理,形成了一门完整的新兴的边缘学科——表面工程学。     

The development of the ICME supply-chain: Route to ICME implementation and sustainment

Over the past twenty years, integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) has emerged as a key engineering field with great promise. Models simulating materials-related phenomena have been developed and are being validated for industrial application. The integration of computational methods into material, process and component design has been a challenge, however, in part due to the complexities in the development of an ICME “supply-chain” that supports, sustains and delivers this emerging technology. ICME touches many disciplines, which results in a requirement for many types of computational-based technology organizations to be involved to provide tools that can be rapidly developed, validated, deployed and maintained for industrial applications. The need for, and the current state of an ICME supply-chain along with development and future requirements for the continued pace of introduction of ICME into industrial design practices will be reviewed within this article.     

Biomedical production of implants by additive electro-chemical and physical processes

Biomanufacturing integrates life science and engineering fundamentals to produce biocompatible products enhancing the quality of life. The state-of-the-art of this rapidly evolving manufacturing sector is presented and discussed, in particular the additive electrical, chemical and physical processes currently being applied to produce synthetic and biological parts. This fabrication strategy is strongly material-dependent, so the main classes of biomaterials are detailed. It is explained the potential to process composite materials combining synthetic and biological materials, such as cells, proteins and growth factors, as well the interdependences between materials and processes. The techniques commonly used to increase the bioactivity of clinical implants and improve the interface characteristics between biological tissues and implants are also presented.     

Corrosion informatics: an integrated approach to modelling corrosion

Materials informatics is based on the integration of tools for generating, classifying, analysing and disseminating knowledge in the domain of materials science and engineering, a subset of which includes corrosion science. The purpose of integration is to decrease costs and time associated with research and development. In the context of corrosion, it is proposed that informatics can produce superior decision making tools, decrease risks of failure and improve asset management. An integrated approach is necessary for corrosion because of the multiphysics nature of its contributing mechanisms that include processes at the megascale, materials deformation, electrochemical reactions and fluid dynamics. A hierarchy is introduced that combines models from these subdisciplines with models at more fundamental scientific levels (thermodynamics, microstructural, quantum mechanical and density functional theory/atomistics) and methods for treating uncertainty (Bayesian inference, Monte Carlo and reliability methods). To demonstrate the multiphysics approaches currently available for corrosion prediction, applications are drawn from the recent literature and categorised by topic: general corrosion, localised corrosion and passivity, environmentally assisted cracking, and coatings and inhibitors. Opportunities for integration in each of these subthemes are suggested. Some remarks concerning the integration of probabilistic with deterministic models are made because of the importance of attaching uncertainties to the predictions made by corrosion models, and applying a time-invariant scientific approach to the interpretation of a time-dependent historical record. Finally, a strategy for implementing the integrated approach to corrosion modelling is presented, under the name ‘corrosion informatics’.     

Computational materials science and engineering education: A survey of trends and needs

Results from a recent reassessment of the state of computational materials science and engineering (CMSE) education are reported. Surveys were distributed to the chairs and heads of materials programs, faculty members engaged in computational research, and employers of materials scientists and engineers, mainly in the United States. The data was compiled to assess current course offerings related to CMSE, the general climate for introducing computational methods in MSE curricula, and the requirements from the employers’ viewpoint. Furthermore, the available educational resources and their utilization by the community are examined. The surveys show a general support for integrating computational content into MSE education. However, they also reflect remaining issues with implementation, as well as a gap between the tools being taught in courses and those that are used by employers. Overall, the results suggest the necessity for a comprehensively developed vision and plans to further the integration of computational methods into MSE curricula.     

Construction of a pulse-coupled dipole network capable of fear-like and relief-like responses

The challenge for neuroscience as an interdisciplinary programme is the integration of ideas among the disciplines to achieve a common goal. This paper deals with the problem of deriving a pulse-coupled neural network that is capable of demonstrating behavioural responses (fear-like and relief-like). Current pulse-coupled neural networks are designed mostly for engineering applications, particularly image processing. The discovered neural network was constructed using the method of minimal anatomies approach. The behavioural response of a level-coded activity-based model was used as a reference. Although the spiking-based model and the activity-based model are of different scales, the use of model-reference principle means that the characteristics that is referenced is its functional properties. It is demonstrated that this strategy of dissection and systematic construction is effective in the functional design of pulse-coupled neural network system with nonlinear signalling. The differential equations for the elastic weights in the reference model are replicated in the pulse-coupled network geometrically. The network reflects a possible solution to the problem of punishment and avoidance. The network developed in this work is a new network topology for pulse-coupled neural networks. Therefore, the model-reference principle is a powerful tool in connecting neuroscience disciplines. The continuity of concepts and phenomena is further maintained by systematic construction using methods like the method of minimal anatomies.     

高等学校科学与人文契合论

科学与人文，并非是天然对立的，相反，从它们的起源、形成以及真正内涵来看，它们具有同一性。高等教育要实现全面发展的、完整的人的目标，必须通过科学与人文化人的机理，以完整的教育培养完全的人。从价值角度看，科学教育与人文教育在高等学校的契合包括三个层面：学科融合、课程综合、素质养成。以“科学和人文同体互补”的理念指导三个层面实践的融合，才能完成科学教育与人文教育的契合。     

Structural biological materials: Overview of current research

Through specific biological examples this article illustrates the complex designs that have evolved in nature to address strength, toughness, and weight optimization. Current research is reviewed, and the structure of some shells, bones, antlers, crab exoskeletons, and avian feathers and beaks is described using the principles of materials science and engineering by correlating the structure with mechanical properties. In addition, the mechanisms of deformation and failure are discussed.     

Introduction to integrative production technology

Production technology is a highly interdisciplinary field of research. It comprises different production domains (cutting, welding, forming, assembly, etc.), industry-sectors, materials and scales. Moreover, production has strong interdependencies with other scientific disciplines such as product development, materials engineering, business economics, information and communication technology, social science and natural science. Integrative Production Technology aims to develop a deep technology spanning perception to offer products matching customer and societal demands at competitive prices and to quickly adapt to market and societal changes while assuring constant and predictable product properties. The Cluster of Excellence (CoE) “Integrative Production Technology for High-Wage Countries” has initiated this special issue to present some of the newest results in the field. For a wider summary of results, the reader may refer to the recently published book of the CoE (Brecher and Özdemir, Integrative production technology: theory and applications. Springer, Cham, 1).     

Expertensysteme für den Korrosionsschutz

Expert systems for corrosion protection technology Corrosion science is a very interdisciplinary special subject, which involves parts of the classic disciplines chemistry, metallurgy and mechanical engineering. Solving of corrosion problems needs the recognition of relations between the different subjects as well as empirical and heuristical knowledge. These are reasons for the loss of 50 billion DM in Germany caused by corrosion damages. By applying existing corrosion control practices 20% per year could be saved. Corrosion experts are very rarely or it is impossible to obtain the required guidence on corrosion. Expert systems are suitable tools for the mentioned problems. In 1985, members of the Laboratory of Corrosion Protection Technologies at the Fachhochschule Hagen started with the development of the expert system CORROS. The domain of CORROS is the corrosion behaviour of corrosion system water/metallic materials.     

智能材料的发展

智能材料的研制是一个迅速发展的新领域，它吸引着诸如医学，生物材料，航空航天，材料科学以及计算机工程等众多学科研究者的关注。智能材料也是一种由传感器、信息处理器和驱动器构成的新型复合材料，它能够感知外界的刺激并改变自身的特性来适应环境的变化。从概念上智能材料的基础是材料科学和计算机工程先进成就的结合，它使人们去探索利用材料复合的非线性效应来创造新型材料，本文讨论了几类智能材料的构成模式及其工程应用前