Media Watch

University of California, Irvine biomedical engineering researchers have uncovered a previously unknown source of two key brain waves crucial for deep sleep: slow waves and sleep spindles. Traditionally believed to originate from one brain circuit linking the thalamus and cortex, the team’s findings, published in Scientific Reports, suggest that the axons in memory centers of the hippocampus play a role. Read More

Kyriacos Athanasiou, a biomedical engineering professor at the University of California, Irvine, said it was because TMJ disorders are more prevalent among women that they were historically dismissed as neither serious nor complex, slowing research into the cause and treatment. The resulting dearth of knowledge, which is glaring when compared with other joints, has been "a huge disservice" to patients, Athanasiou said. In a 2021 study he co-authored, researchers found that the knee, despite being a much simpler joint, was the subject of about six times as many research papers and grants in a single year than the jaw joint. Watch More

A team led by researchers at UC Irvine has won a $904,000 grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research for a four-year project to uncover the multiscale architectural features and functions of the exoskeletons of two beetle species. The goal of the work is to reveal new designs that provide robust mechanical properties while exhibiting such other characteristics as thermal stability. The group, led by David Kisailus, UCI professor of materials science and engineering, will work to translate “blueprints” from the creatures’ bodies to develop high-performance, multifunctional engineered materials useful in national defense, aerospace and other applications. Read More

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research, under its Defense University Research Instrumentation Program, has granted materials scientists at UC Irvine $1.5 million for the acquisition of sophisticated nanomechanical and chemical characterization equipment for biomaterial analysis and a 3D printing platform to be used for biomimetic processing. Combined with existing tools in the laboratory of principal investigator David Kisailus, UCI professor of materials science and engineering, these new instruments will facilitate high-speed nanomechanical testing of materials under extreme temperatures (from cryogenic to ultrahot), nanometer-resolution Fourier transform infrared mapping via an atomic force microscope and a high-resolution, direct-ink-write multimaterial printer. Read More