Penn State University - La Vie Yearbook (University Park, PA)

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Dubois has wildlife studies Fayette had grown incredibly fast and educates, Hazelton's on a mountain of flowers and garden gales. Over half of McKeesport's students work in town for pay, Mont Alto's famous for forestry and field day. New Kensington's ratio of students to staff is 23 to one; Schuylkill brags of friendly small college atmosphere, Shenango Valley covers 10 acres and enrolls students - 727, University Park has 30,000, the Nittany Lions of State College and is the closest to Heaven! Wilkes Barre has 600 students and stands near State College, Worthington-Scranton is snuggly nestled in Lackawanna Valley. York's campus is expanding quickly now, Hershey med-center is five years old and WOW! Pennsylvania is polkadotted with places to learn, So stir up a feeling, discover and yearn Clockwise from left: Berks Campus, McKeesport Campus, Capitol Campus, Capitol Campus, Shenango Campus. m 27

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RESEARCH: The Human Body A new rechargeable cardiac pacemaker, expected to last twenty years between replacements, has been developed by Dr. G. Frank O. Tyers. surgeon at Hershey Medical Center, and Robert Brownlee, electrical engineer at Penn State. The pacemaker will last longer, cost less and is smaller than pacemakers now in use. The unit can be kept fully charged by placing a coil device against the chest for 20 minutes each week. Although weekly recharging is recommended, the pacemaker could operate for up to 3Vi years between charges. The only other rechargeable unit now in use requires 90 minutes of recharging each week and would stop in six weeks if not recharged. Since conventional pacemakers must be replaced every two years, the Tyers-Brownlee unit could save the approximately 80,000 yearly recipients of pacemakers hospital expenses, scar tissue from repeated surgery, and emotional trauma of repeated hospitalization. The new pacemaker is only about half as thick as conventional non-rechargeable units and consumes only about 25 microwatts of electrical power. The common pocket transistor radio requires approximately 250,000 microwatts. In a recently patented process called Replamineform, two Penn State faculty members and a California doctor are casting artificial human bones in molds of South Pacific coral, and synthetic arteries in the projecting spines of sea urchins. Work began four years ago when materials scientist Eugene W. White and marine geologist |on Weber observed that coral samples Weber had collected from the Pacific Ocean had a unique pore structure. Coral samples were found to have the microscopic honeycomb of interconnecting pores, from 100 to 400 microns in diameter, thought to be best for bone tissue ingrowth. In implanted bone replacement parts, natural tissue ingrowth is important since it locks implanted parts in place. In the process patented by Eugene and Rodney White and |on Weber, coral is machined to the shape needed for a bone or joint replacement, or formed into screws, pins or other replacement parts. It is impregnated with liquid wax and dissolved in hydrochloric acid. From the wax negative that remains, a positive is made in plastic, ceramic or metal. To obtain ingrowth of soft tissue for the artery application, sea urchins, with a porosity of 15 to 30 microns in diameter, are used. The microstructures of their spines are replicated in various biomedical soft polymers. The synthetic blood vessels are especially promising for coronary bypass surgery, according to Dr. Rod White, now a second year resident surgeon at Harbor General Hospital in Los Angeles.