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38520 results in Cambridge Textbooks

Page 1596 of 1926

  • 3 - Biological systems

  • C. Mauli Agrawal, University of Texas, San Antonio, Joo L. Ong, University of Texas, San Antonio, Mark R. Appleford, University of Texas, San Antonio, Gopinath Mani, University of South Dakota
  • Book:
    Introduction to Biomaterials
    Published online:
    01 February 2019
    Print publication:
    07 November 2013, pp 48-73

  • Summary

    Goals

    After reading this chapter, students will understand the following.

  • Key terms such as homeostasis, reductionism, flow, and flux in terms of biological systems.

  • Fick’s first law of diffusion and how it is useful for cellular interaction with biomaterials.

  • The principal functions of the plasma membrane.

  • The major classes and operations of cell junctions.

  • Cell signaling pathways and secondary messengers.

  • Commonly used biological testing techniques in biology–material interactions.

    • The biological environment

    One of the most basic principles of systems biology is the concept of reductionism where behavior of a “whole” can be explained by the corresponding behavior of its “parts.” By successively deconstructing the organism and studying its components, biologists can explain the function of the body in terms of its organ systems, cells, subcellular organelles, macro- and biochemicals, and so forth until we reach fundamental particles. This concept of reductionism is among the most common techniques used to study biomaterials as we explore their influence at the biochemical, protein, cellular, and whole-organism levels. However, great care must be taken as reductionism leads to more and more missing information with each step taken. As an example, in vitro experimentation often lacks the cellular complexity and hormonal control of in vivo behavior and can lead to false or contradictory conclusions. Despite the limitations of reductionism, it is among our best tools for understanding and testing biomaterials when care is taken to identify the assumptions of each experiment and result. In this chapter, we will focus on the communication systems at the cellular level and its implications for biomaterials.

  • 8 - Natural biomaterials

  • C. Mauli Agrawal, University of Texas, San Antonio, Joo L. Ong, University of Texas, San Antonio, Mark R. Appleford, University of Texas, San Antonio, Gopinath Mani, University of South Dakota
  • Book:
    Introduction to Biomaterials
    Published online:
    01 February 2019
    Print publication:
    07 November 2013, pp 198-232

  • Summary

    Goals

    After reading this chapter, students will understand the following.

  • Properties that qualify natural biomaterials for biomedical applications.

  • Different major classifications of natural biomaterials.

  • Properties of various natural biomaterials.

    • What makes natural materials unique and piques the interest of biomaterials scientists, engineers and clinicians? There is a belief that all aspects of materials created naturally have a useful purpose or function. Utilization of such materials thus allows these materials to perform a combination of diverse functions such as intracellular communications and storage. In general, the properties of natural materials are dependent on their composition. For example, the physical–chemical properties of monomers and their sequences determine the properties of polymeric natural biomaterials. Like synthetic materials used for biomedical applications, it is expected that the natural biomaterials should satisfy requirements such as

  • being non-toxic,

  • being non-inflammatory,

  • being non-allergenic,

  • having satisfactory mechanical properties,

  • being capable of inducing cell attachment and differentiation if needed, and

  • having low cost.

    • Natural biomaterials possess most of the above properties because they are found in biological systems and work well within their respective environments. Favorable characteristics of natural materials include facilitating cell attachment, enhancing the mechanical properties of synthetic biomaterials, and their ability to bind and deliver macromolecules. These desirable characteristics allow natural materials to be used in various biomedical applications including tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. With the exception of corals, which are deposits of calcium carbonates, most of the common natural materials are polymeric in nature and are either protein-based or polysaccharide-based materials. Examples of protein-based natural polymers include collagen, gelatin, silk fibroin, fibrin, and elastin, whereas examples of polysaccharide-based natural polymers include chitosan, starch, alginate, hyaluronan, chondroitin sulfate, and dextran. In this chapter, we will discuss some of the natural biomaterials that are commonly used today in the fabrication of medical devices.

  • 11 - Cell–biomaterial interactions

  • C. Mauli Agrawal, University of Texas, San Antonio, Joo L. Ong, University of Texas, San Antonio, Mark R. Appleford, University of Texas, San Antonio, Gopinath Mani, University of South Dakota
  • Book:
    Introduction to Biomaterials
    Published online:
    01 February 2019
    Print publication:
    07 November 2013, pp 295-320

  • Summary

    Goals

    After reading this chapter, students will understand the following.

  • Key components of the extracellular space.

  • Principal proteins and pathways that cells utilize to interact with both cellular and non-cellular environments.

  • Adhesion mechanisms that bind cells to substrates and types of junctions found near biomaterials.

  • The role of this cell matrix environment in the success or failure of biomaterial integration.

    • How do cells, containing the same genetic information, diversify and give rise to so many types of tissue? This fundamental question of cell biology has a surprisingly simple answer: environment. Despite the incredible complexity of internal genetic control, cells rely equally on their surroundings to define their form and function. In the study of cell biology, the plasma membrane traditionally defines the boundary between the functional unit of the cell and its environment. The interactions that occur at this interface represent an exceedingly complex and highly organized series of reactions that permits the cell to send and receive biochemical signals across the membrane. Most eukaryotic cells define their structure and function based on these signals. Even for those cells that are not substrate bound, such as those of the circulating immune system, it is essential to sense and respond to biochemical gradients and interactions in the body. The availability, intensity, and duration of these gradients are the signals which direct cells into their most common activities, that is, migration, division, and differentiation. These activities provide the complexity of all cell response in the body and can specifically define the reaction to any material implanted.

  • Preface

  • C. Mauli Agrawal, University of Texas, San Antonio, Joo L. Ong, University of Texas, San Antonio, Mark R. Appleford, University of Texas, San Antonio, Gopinath Mani, University of South Dakota
  • Book:
    Introduction to Biomaterials
    Published online:
    01 February 2019
    Print publication:
    07 November 2013, pp xvii-xviii

  • Summary

    Preface

    Biomaterials have helped millions of people achieve a better quality of life in almost all corners of the world. Although the use of biomaterials has been common over many millennia, it was not until the twentieth century that the field of biomaterials finally gained recognition. With the advent of polymers, new processing and machining processes for metals and ceramics, and general advances in technology, there has been an exponential growth in biomaterials-related research and development activity over the past few decades. This activity has led to a plethora of biomaterials-based medical devices, which are now commercially available.

    For students in the area of biomaterials, this is an especially exciting time. On the one hand, they have the opportunity to meet and learn from some of the stalwarts and pioneers of the field such as Sam Hulbert, one of the founders of the Society for Biomaterials (SFB). Other greats include Allan Hoffman and Buddy Ratner (biomaterials surfaces), Robert Langer (polymers and tissue engineering), Nicholas Peppas (hydrogels), Jack Lemons (orthopedic/dental implants), Joseph Salamone (contact lenses), and Julio Palmaz (intracoronary stents). Most of these individuals are still active in research and teaching. The authors of this book have been privileged to interact and learn from them in various forums, and students today have the same opportunities. On the other hand, with the current availability of sophisticated processing and characterization technologies, present day students also have the tools to take the field to unprecedented new levels of innovation.

  • 7 - Ceramics

  • C. Mauli Agrawal, University of Texas, San Antonio, Joo L. Ong, University of Texas, San Antonio, Mark R. Appleford, University of Texas, San Antonio, Gopinath Mani, University of South Dakota
  • Book:
    Introduction to Biomaterials
    Published online:
    01 February 2019
    Print publication:
    07 November 2013, pp 165-197

  • Summary

    Goals

    After reading this chapter, students will understand the following.

  • The general definition of a ceramic.

  • Common properties of ceramics.

  • Different classifications used for ceramics.

  • Properties of different bioceramics.

  • Different technologies used for fabricating nanoceramics.

    • The use of ceramics in medicine dates back many centuries, with reports of artificial teeth found in Egyptian mummies. Besides ceramics developed for medical applications, other engineering ceramics include semiconductors, dielectrics, high temperature superconductors, magnets, and piezoelectrics. However, what is a ceramic? In general, a ceramic is defined as an inorganic, non-metallic material that consists of two or more metallic and non-metallic elements. Unlike metals and polymers, which comprise mainly of metallic and covalent bonding, respectively, ceramics are made up of ionic and covalent bonding.

    Depending on the atomic arrangements, ceramics can either exist as amorphous or crystalline structures. An example of an amorphous ceramic is glass, whereas an example of a crystalline ceramic is porcelain. In an amorphous structure, the atoms are arranged randomly or with high degree of short-range order and absence of long-range order. A short-range order refers to the tendency for an ordered atomic arrangement within one or two atom spacings, whereas a long-range order refers to an ordered atomic arrangement over a larger distance. Figure 7.1a shows a schematic drawing of a non-crystalline (glass) silicon dioxide, with random, short-range order atomic arrangement. As an example of the long-range order observed in crystalline ceramics, Figure 7.1b shows a schematic drawing of a crystalline silicon dioxide, with atoms arranged in an ordered pattern.

  • 13 - Tissue engineering

  • C. Mauli Agrawal, University of Texas, San Antonio, Joo L. Ong, University of Texas, San Antonio, Mark R. Appleford, University of Texas, San Antonio, Gopinath Mani, University of South Dakota
  • Book:
    Introduction to Biomaterials
    Published online:
    01 February 2019
    Print publication:
    07 November 2013, pp 341-374

  • Summary

    Goals

    After reading this chapter the student will understand the following.

  • Basic fundamentals of tissue engineering.

  • Different cell types pertinent to tissue regeneration.

  • Typical scaffold fabrication techniques.

  • Techniques used to evaluate scaffolds, cells growing on scaffolds, and neo-tissue.

    • Can cells be used as living materials to engineer organs and tissue? Over the past several decades there has been increasing interest within the biomedical field to develop methodologies to restore the function of damaged tissue or organs without the use of long-term implants. This has led to the advent of the field of tissue engineering, which is often described as “an interdisciplinary field that applies the principles of engineering and life sciences toward the development of biological substitutes that restore, maintain, or improve tissue function or a whole organ.” Initially tissue engineering was considered a sub-field of biomaterials but has now evolved into its own distinct area. Nevertheless, although the role of biological sciences has significantly increased in tissue engineering, the field has stayed closely related to biomaterials.

    Box 13.1

  • Every year thousands of human lives are lost due to a lack of organs available for transplantation. Successful tissue engineering can solve this problem by re-growing the patients’ own organs.

  • Successful tissue engineering can also potentially provide skin for burn victims and repair nerves and restore function to those paralyzed.

  • 4 - Perceiving scenes

  • George Mather, University of Lincoln
  • Book:
    The Psychology of Visual Art
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    24 October 2013, pp 51-67

  • Summary

    Introduction

    During the Italian Renaissance, painters acted partly as interior decorators, creating frescos, murals and easel paintings with which rich patrons decorated the rooms of their grand villas. The aim was to treat the picture frame as a window opening that offered a captivating glimpse of a realistic visual world. In order to achieve the illusion of a window, artists had to solve the problem of projecting a three-dimensional world onto a flat, two-dimensional picture plane. The problem of perspective projection was solved in the early fifteenth century by Fillipo Brunelleschi and Leon Battista Alberti. Leonardo da Vinci described the solution as follows:

    Perspective is nothing else than seeing a place [or objects] behind a plane of glass, quite transparent, on the surface of which the objects behind that glass are to be drawn. These can be traced in pyramids to the point in the eye, and these pyramids are intersected on the glass plane.

    Figure 4.1 illustrates Leonardo’s description. The viewer’s eye is positioned at O, and light rays from the top surface of the cube create a pyramid of sight with its apex at O and base defined by the points ABCD at the corners. A plane surface FGHI (Leonardo’s transparent window) intersects the pyramid to form a perspective projection of the surface, abcd, as a two-dimensional image. The laws of linear perspective define the shape, size and disposition of all the elements in the scene on Leonardo’s window. The image formed on Leonardo’s window corresponds to the image that would be captured by a camera positioned at O (apart from the inversion caused by the camera’s lens). In a sense, therefore, the aim of the representational artist is to create a painting that corresponds to the perspective projection captured by a camera positioned at the eye.

  • Epilogue

  • George Mather, University of Lincoln
  • Book:
    The Psychology of Visual Art
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    24 October 2013, pp 177-178

  • Summary

    The central thesis of this book has been to argue that a full appreciation of visual art requires a detailed consideration of the visual system’s structure, function and evolution. Even before light reaches the retina, the changes brought about by its passage through the cornea and lens can have visible effects on visual art. Once light energy is converted into neural activity in the visual system, the huge complexity of the central nervous system is brought to bear on the problem of making sense of the retinal image. Visual art is intimately linked with the human capacity to sense light and inextricably bounded by its predispositions and limitations, many of which have firm evolutionary origins. There are manifold ways in which the characteristics of neural processes find expression in the spatial, chromatic and dynamic properties of visual art.

    Evolution provides an over-arching theoretical framework for understanding all of human behaviour and offers a reasoned account of the capacity to create and appreciate art. Selection pressure has ensured that the visual system is supremely well adapted to the task of extracting meaning from natural visual images. The demands of optimal tuning and energy conservation have profound consequences for our ability to perceive, retain and appreciate certain spatial details, chromatic variations and dynamic changes in all visual images, including artistic images. Evolution has also equipped humans with a deep interest in nature, in landscape and in biological forms, and this interest finds expression in the enduring preoccupations of visual artists. The impulse to create art may be driven, at least in part, by a desire to advertise genetic quality to potential mates.

  • 5 - Perceiving pictures

  • George Mather, University of Lincoln
  • Book:
    The Psychology of Visual Art
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    24 October 2013, pp 68-87

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Assume, as we did at the beginning of the previous chapter, that the aim of the artist is to create a representational painting, which is as close as possible to the light distribution that would be sent to the viewer by the scene itself; a window onto a virtual scene. Even though the artist may be able to use detailed knowledge of perspective projection and optical devices such as the camera obscura, in every case the painting will fall short of an exact facsimile. Instead, it will be a resemblance or approximation to the scene itself. The viewer is almost always aware of the perceptual characteristics of the picture as a flat surface in itself, such as its shape, size and position. The information carried in a picture is also lacking in several important respects, even when the picture is a photograph captured by the highest resolution camera available today or a painting faithfully copied from such a photograph. Natural objects and surfaces have an inherent spatial scale, which we apprehend when we view real scenes. Redwood trees appear massively tall, while the intricate pattern of lichen growing on a rock surface appears tiny. Pictures of objects and surfaces, on the other hand, can be any size; information about absolute scale is lost. In a closely cropped photograph, it may be impossible to distinguish between small ripples in sand, as seen at one’s feet when standing on a beach, and massive sandbanks viewed from an aeroplane. We are able to appreciate absolute scale in real scenes because they have three spatial dimensions (width, height and depth), which carry information about absolute distance. When one’s gaze shifts between real objects, the lens of the eye adjusts its focus to maintain a sharp image (accommodation, described in Chapter 2) and the two eyes alter their convergence angle so that both are directed at the same object. Changes in focus and convergence angle are brought about by muscles inside the eye itself (which control focus) or those attaching the eye to its socket (which control convergence). Sensory information about the state of tension in these muscles provides the visual system with information about absolute depth, which can be used in judgements of absolute size.

  • 8 - Visual aesthetics and art

  • George Mather, University of Lincoln
  • Book:
    The Psychology of Visual Art
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    24 October 2013, pp 122-136

  • Summary

    Introduction

    During the two millennia before the advent of modern conceptual art, with its emphasis on ideas and intellectual qualities, visual aesthetic pleasure was considered to be a core element of one’s experience when viewing visual art. Indeed, beauty was at the very core of the British Aesthetic Movement in art during the late 1800s. Aesthetic judgements are not, of course, restricted to visual art but are also made about natural visual forms such as faces, landscapes and flowers, and about manufactured forms such as buildings and machines. All of these judgements are closely tied to the sensory qualities of the object: its visual attributes such as shape, texture, colour, movement and so on, as well as other attributes such as smell and touch. Moreover, aesthetic judgements are also central in other art forms such as music, literature, opera and dance. Aesthetic judgement is such a fundamental aspect of human experience that it has been considered from the perspective of many different disciplines including philosophy, cultural studies, history and anthropology. This chapter will focus on the insights that can be gained from the scientific perspectives of modern psychology. It will ask how scientific principles can deepen our understanding of aesthetic appreciation in visual art.

  • 7 - Colour in art

  • George Mather, University of Lincoln
  • Book:
    The Psychology of Visual Art
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    24 October 2013, pp 109-121

  • Summary

    Introduction

    As Chapter 1 made clear, a major function of painting from antiquity to the nineteenth century was the representation of nature. In this regard, colour is traditionally viewed as an essential component because it brings visual art closer to nature. In 1528, the Renaissance courtier Baldassare Castiglione recorded a conversation on the relative merits of the figurative arts as follows:

    And do you think it a trifle to imitate nature’s colours in doing flesh, clothing and all the other things that have colour? This the sculptor cannot do; neither can he render the grace of black eyes or blue eyes, shining with amorous rays. He cannot render the colour of blond hair or the gleam of weapons, or the dark of night, or a storm at sea, or lightning and thunderbolts, or the burning of a city, or the birth of a rosy dawn with its rays of gold and red. In short he cannot do sky, sea, land, mountains, woods, meadows, gardens, rivers, cities, or houses – all of which the painter can do.

    (Quoted in Castiglione, 1528, p. 80.)

    Since the earliest cave paintings 30,000 years ago, artists have used pigments to add natural colour to their work. Prehistoric painters used earth pigments such as charcoal bound with water (or saliva) to create yellow ochre, red ochre and black hues. The Egyptians introduced bright greens and blues using pigments derived from natural minerals, which were washed, ground and bound with gum or animal glue to create a painting medium. They also introduced vegetable dyes. Other colours were created by ancient Chinese, Greek and Roman artisans. Various binding agents were used to hold the pigment together as a painting medium, including wax, resin, water and egg. From the fifteenth century onwards, walnut and linseed oil gradually replaced egg as the binding agent preferred by many artists. Acrylic paints became available in the middle of the twentieth century, in which acrylic resin emulsified with water is used as a binder and thinner.

  • 9 - Visual aesthetics and nature

  • George Mather, University of Lincoln
  • Book:
    The Psychology of Visual Art
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    24 October 2013, pp 137-164

  • Summary

    Introduction

    The previous chapter concluded that aesthetic preference is tied, at least in part, to utility or affordance. If the human aesthetic sense did evolve as part of a reward system for satisfying certain biologically important needs, then it must be closely linked to visual features in the natural environment. Humans evolved not to function in the environment of modern civilisation, which emerged only in the last few thousand years, but in the environment of the Pleistocene era. For two million years humans existed and evolved as Pleistocene hunter–gatherers. Survival depended on foraging for edible plants and hunting animals. It was a relatively mobile, nomadic existence that relied upon the resources available in the local environment. Bands of hunter–gatherers perpetually moved on to new locations with the changing seasons and with the depletion of local resources. The first point of enquiry in the search for the natural origin of visual aesthetics is this ancient environment. Perhaps the demands of this ancestral lifestyle still drive our aesthetic preferences. The artist Henri Matisse remarked that ‘art imitates nature’. The mimetic theory of art described in Chapter 1 views art as an idealised imitation of nature, a distilled essence of natural aesthetic beauty. To what extent does aesthetic appreciation of art spring from judgements about ancient natural forms? This chapter considers the question from the viewpoint of modern research on landscape preference and visual statistics.

Page 1596 of 1926