Charles E. Bakis, Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics, has been selected as the winner of the American Society for Composites "Award in Composites for 2006". The award is given annually to a distinguished member of the composites community who has made a significant impact on the development of composite materials through applied research, practice, education, service, advocacy, or leadership.

The award presentation will be made at the banquet of the 21st Annual Technical Conference of the American Society for Composites in Dearborn, Michigan, on September 19, 2006.

William Ames, ESM Information Technologist Specialist, has been appointed as an affiliate member of the President's Commission on Racial/Ethnic Diversity. The commission was appointed in 1989 by Penn State President Bryce Jordan as a University-wide advisory body to the president of Penn State in matters relating to racial and ethnic diversity. The commission is dedicated to enhancing the University's climate for diversity at all its locations in the Commonwealth. CORED's activities focus on advancing A Framework to Foster Diversity at Penn State: 1998-2003, Penn State's diversity strategic plan. In May 2001, CORED received an enhanced mandate under this plan.The commission acts on issues raised by the Office of the President, the Office of the Vice Provost for Educational Equity, commission members, and members of the Penn State community.

A team of materials science and medical researchers from the Pennsylvania State University, US, has shown that chiral sculptured thin films (STFs) made of para-chloro-xylene (commercially known as parylene-C) are both biocompatible and bioactive. The scientists grew these nanostructured materials using a one-step combination of physical and chemical vapour deposition techniques, without using lithography or any masking technique.

Using scanning electron and confocal laser microscopies, Demirel et al. found that parylene STFs support fibroblast cell attachment and proliferation over 72-hour periods, far in excess of flat parylene films. These and other findings appear in Journal of Biomedical Materials Research: Part B - Applied Biomaterials (doi 10.1002/jbm.b.30656).

Fibrous integration is crucial to the stability of silicone elastomer arthroplasty of small joints of the hand and feet. These implants currently fail because of soft tissue imbalance and lack of implant integration. Of all the various biomaterials available for reconstruction of the finger joints, elastomeric implants are the "gold standard" within the surgical community. The use of parylene STFs to modify elastomeric prosthetic surfaces appears enticing in light of the Penn State findings. Augmenting fibrous integration of the elastomeric implants will invariably lead to a more durable arthroplasty and a better clinical outcome.

Contact
Melik Demirel and Akhlesh Lakhtakia
212 EES Building
Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA 16802,
US
Tel: +1 814 865 4523, +1 814 863 2270
E-mail: axl4@psu.edu
Web site: http://www.esm.psu.edu/~axl4/

Date announced: 30 Aug 2006
Source: nanotechweb.org: http://nanotechweb.org/yournews/13266

Akhlesh Lakhtakia, distinguished professor of engineering science and mechanics, chaired a three-day conference entitled Nanomodeling II, at the Annual Meeting of SPIE-The International Society for Optical Engineering, held at San Diego, CA, August 13-17, 2006. He co-authored three presentations, with Professor Sergey A. Maksimenko (Belarus State University), Dr. Tom G. Mackay (University of Edinburgh), and Dr. Joseph B. Geddes III (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). He also delivered a Key Lecture entitled "Bragging electrically" at Complex Photonic Media, a conference held concurrently.

Akhlesh Lakhtakia, University Distinguished Professor, has been appointed as the Editor-in-Chief of the SPIE Journal of Nanophotonics*, an electronic journal focusing on the fabrication and application of nanostructures that facilitate the generation, propagation, manipulation, and detection of light from the infrared to the ultraviolet regimes. Topics lying within the scope of the journal include: nanoparticles and nanoparticulate composite materials; quantum dots and other low-dimensional nanostructures; nanotubes, nanowires, and nanofibers; nanowaveguides and nanoantennas; sculptured thin films and nanostructured photonic crystals; quantum optics and spintronics; nanoscale optical electronics; surface plasmons and nanoplasmonics; ultrashort pulse propagation; light-harvesting materials and devices; nanophotonic detectors; nano-optical electromechanical systems; near-field optics, optical manipulation techniques, spectroscopies, and scattering techniques; nanolithography, molecular self-assembly, and other nanofabrication techniques; nanobiophotonics; and nanophotonic concepts and systems that facilitate continued integration of various optical and/or electronic functions. The scope extends to theory, modeling and simulation, experimentation, instrumentation, and application.

Tony Jun Huang, James Henderson Assistant Professor at the ESM Department, along with Prof. James Connor in the Department of Neurosurgery at the Penn State Hershey Medical Center, will be awarded the Grace Woodward Grant for Collaborative Research in Engineering and Medicine for their proposal titled “Nanoporous Polymer Structure-based Biosensor Array for the Detection of RNA-Protein Interactions”.

Tony Jun Huang, James Henderson Assistant Professor at the ESM Department, along with Prof. Chung-Chiun Liu at Case Western Reserve University, Prof. Fraser Stoddart at UCLA, and Prof. William Goddard at Caltech, will receive $1.3 million over the next four years for their joint proposal "NanoElectroMechanical Systems (NEMS) using Light-Driven Molecular Shuttles as Active Nanostructures".