Note: This document is hosted here for archival purposes only. It does not necessarily represent the values of the Iron Warrior or Waterloo Engineering Society in the present day. 1 THE NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO ENGINEERING SOCIETY VOLUME 32 ISSUE 10 | WEDNESDAY, JULY 20, 2011 South Sudan Becomes Nortel Patents Sell for $4.5 Billion The Nuclear Power Debate World’s Newest Country Page 3 Page 4 Page 9 twitter.com/theironwarrior http://iwarrior.uwaterloo.ca WEC Challenges Students: Winners off to OEC ANGELO ALAIMO quired to prepare their results overnight 4A ELECTRICAL for their presentations the next morning. Everyone seemed to have dark rings under On Friday night, over 160 competitors their eyes due to lack of sleep as the teams and volunteers converged on campus to returned to RCH at 7:00 am. participate in the spring iteration of the Presentations in front of faculty and in- Waterloo Engineering Competition. Un- dustry judges finished up around noon, dergraduate competitors, in teams of four, and the winners were announced shortly are given a previously unreleased engineer- thereafter. The teams that placed first in ing problem and are challenged to come up each category will represent the University with a solution within the night. at the Ontario Engineering Competition in In Junior Team Design, students had to Toronto next February, where if they place create a device in four hours to deploy an in the top two positions, they will progress emergency road across an “earthquake- to the Canadian Engineering Competition damaged” roadway. The challenge proved next March in Vancouver. doable but difficult for participants, espe- Congratulations to this term’s winners: cially since the road was required to de- In Senior Team Design, Shahid Haider - ploy with only a single touch from a team Systems Design Engineering, Benjamin member. Tan - Systems Design Engineering, Yil- In Senior Team Design, the problem ing Wang - Systems Design Engineering, statement took a more light-humoured ap- Martin Lui - Systems Design Engineer- proach as each team pretended to be “fresh ing. In Junior Team Design, Kumar Singh out of Waterloo Engineering” grads with a - Electrical Engineering, Ayush Kapur heavy student debt. The goal was to create - Mechatronics Engineering, Drupandh a contraption within 6 hours capable of re- Manjunath - Chemical Engineering. In trieving riches from the side of mountains Consulting Engineering, Amir Taleghani - in order to repay their loans. Many teams, Civil Engineering, Caitlin Speicher - Civil citing problems with the materials given, Engineering, Matthew Casswell - Civil were able to have a contraption which Engineering, Stuart Pearson - Civil Engi- moved, but few were able to retrieve many neering. gems. The Waterloo Engineering Competition Lastly, in Consulting Engineering, teams is held twice each year in the spring and were “hired” by the Government of On- fall terms. The competition is organized by tario to investigate ways to reduce energy undergraduate engineering students from consumption from commercial and indus- the Engineering Society with sponsorship trial buildings. It was a very open-ended from the Society itself and the Sandford and difficult topic for the competitors who Fleming foundation. The Waterloo Engi- were required to generate a 15+ page re- neering Competition is the University’s port and a 15-20 minute presentation with- qualifier to send competitors to the On- in 5 hours. tario Engineering Competition to compete Angelo Alaimo After completing their projects late Fri- against other engineering schools from The winning teams of the Waterloo Engineering Competition. day night, competitors were further re- across Ontario. From the top: Consulting, Junior Design, and Senior Design categories. From Build-a-Bear to Build-an-Organ FARZI YUSUfaLI The scaffold used to house the cells that cine are as follow. For one, regenerated were seeded onto it, the tissue was kept in 2B NanOTECHNOLOGY eventually became the new trachea was organs could be grown at a much faster the shoebox-sized bioreactor in much the built by a research team led by Alexander rate than the time it takes to find a suit- same way one keeps chicken on a rotis- With the recent push towards tissue en- Seifalian, a professor at the University able organ from a donor. Also, since the serie. To seed the cells, a solution of stem gineering and related research, it is sur- College London. The “InBreath” bioreac- engineered organs are usually made with cells and nutrients from the patient would prising that no significant breakthroughs tor used to house the cells was provided by the target patient’s own cells, rejection be poured onto the trachea scaffold, after have been made despite the amount of Harvard Bioscience. The cells taken from should not be a major issue, meaning the which the scaffold was rotated to keep attention the field is getting. This was the patient’s bone marrow were placed on need for immunosuppressant drugs would the cells sterile and warm. Along with the the state of affairs until a revolutionary the polymer scaffold and kept at an opti- be greatly reduced. nutrients included with the stem cell solu- surgery was successfully completed last mal temperature and environment within To create the scaffold, the team at the tion, it was imperative that hormones and month that showcased the power of regen- the bioreactor. The scaffold was rotated University College London used a poly- other biological chemicals were included erative medicine. for a period of two weeks within the bio- mer structure with millions of tiny pores to help the cells differentiate into tracheal Swedish surgeon Paolo Macchiarini reactor so that the cells would grow into to allow the patient’s stem cells to hold on cells. The entire effort would take two from Karolinska University Hospital in the fully-functioning organ. to the structure. First, CT scans were taken weeks with only just two days required Stockholm successfully transplanted an For the first time, stem cells have been of the patient’s trachea. Using these scans, to actually grow the cells into the full tra- artificial, tissue-engineered trachea into a used to grow replacement organs for use a glass mould was made. Strips of poly- cheal tissue. man suffering from the later stages of tra- in the body, which has been the aim of mer were then wrapped around the glass Needless to say, this surgery is a break- cheal cancer. The trachea was constructed regenerative medicine since research in structure to resemble the structural carti- through in the field of regenerative medi- entirely in the lab using a scaffold made this field began. While an organ has been lage rings of the trachea. Next, the model cine, which has been suffering from a with a porous polymer. The tracheal tissue engineered from essentially scratch, the was dipped into a liquid mixture of the number of general setbacks in terms of was grown from the patient’s own stem organ’s function was only structural since polymer mixed with salt. To set the liq- general research goals. After this mas- cells that were kept inside a bioreactor. the trachea is essentially used as a channel uid polymer on the mould, the contraption sive breakthrough in tissue engineering This controlled the surroundings of the for air. Therefore, building more compli- was washed in a solution that dissolved research, all we need now is to wait for cells and promoted cell growth. The pa- cated organs would be far more demand- the salts, thereby causing the polymer to someone to grow more complicated or- tient receiving the new trachea has made ing in comparison to this successful en- congeal into a spongy mass that resembles gans and progress towards being able to a full recovery and has been discharged deavour. the shape of the trachea. grow needed appendages at a moment’s from hospital as of July 8th. Some advantages to regenerative medi- Once the scaffold was built and the cells notice. THE IRON WARRIOR 2 | Editorial WEDNESDAY, JULY 20, 2011 Letter from the Editor Reflections on Lessons Learned The Newspaper of the University of Waterloo Engineering Society and staff as a resource to temper my opin- with not only fellow students, but also MIKayLA ions. There are articles found within the with administration and advertisers (many Editor-in-Chief MICOMONACO pages of the five issues of this term which thanks to my amazing advertising man- Mikayla Micomonaco EDITOR-IN-CHIEF never would have seen the light of day had ager, Kate Heymans). On one hand, I’m a others not pushed me to print them or to student trying to get through 4A, and on Assistant Editors give an author a second (or third) chance to the other, I’m running the newspaper. I’ve Chris Letnick This term has gone by amazingly quick- rewrite an article. had to vastly improve my time manage- Roy Lee ly. Suddenly, I find myself facing my last Another challenge has been working ment skills in order to balance two very issue of the term (not to mention my 4th with a variety of people who have very dif- demanding responsibilities. I’ve also had Layout Editors year project deadline). In my last Editorial ferent priorities than me. While I do have to improve my people skills. I’m not natu- Hans Bernard Tee of the term, I’m taking the time to reflect my staff writers, I still get a lot of content rally someone who deals well with manag- Krishna Iyer on the things I’ve learned from holding this coming from people not directly involved ing groups of people; I’m much more com- position. with The Iron Warrior. They don’t neces- fortable sitting in a corner of the office with Copy Editors One of my major challenges this term sarily respect my deadlines and because I a laptop and yelling at them about their Kate Heymans has been censorship.