THE DEVELOPMENT OF ARTIFICIAL SKIN

I arrived on the Stanford University campus in September of 1958. The first two years there all engineering students pretty much took the same courses. According to this historic view of the Stanford Chemical Engineering Department, in 1960, Professor David Mason got a Ford Foundation grant to begin the program. Those below have served as department chair:

Mason was chairman of the department when in our junior year he rushed into one of our ChE classes and proudly announced that we had gained accreditation. First, I did not know that I was in the very first class, and second, I always thought we were already accredited. Same for the rest of my classmates. Informally, there were 75 or so of us who had selected chemical engineering as their major in our freshman year. When I graduated in 1962, there were only 8 of us. Ten years later, Stanford ranked #1 in all the chemical engineering departments of the country. For the record, U.S. News and World Report still has Stanford (and CalTech) at #2, with MIT as #1. And 65 years ago I almost went to CalTech instead of Stanford.

In that top photo-list towards the bottom right is now 53-year old Zhenan Bao, who was featured in the March issue of Stanford. She was born in Nanjing, China and got her PhD at the University of Chicago. She first joined Lucent Technologies at Bell Labs, where she was involved in a field that is leading to electronic paper. Joined Stanford in 2004. From research in organic subconductors and carbon nanotubes, she developed the background for electronic skin. Bao has since co-founded two companies, Nano and PyrAmes Health in Silicon Valley. She is married with two children.

In this Stanford article:

She is leading a team that in time will have for sale a smart bandage that painlessly falls away from the skin with the application of a little heat.
Maybe more importantly, though, this bandage tracks recovery and infection resulting in 25% faster healing and less scarring.

This is just one of a range of re-imagined medical devices, including:

Heart sensors that adhere like a postage stamp to the beating organ to locate atrial fibrillation.
Wireless sensors to monitor tumor growth.
Implantable sensors tucked into the brain and gut to measure dopamine and serotonin levels.
Stick-on sensors to measure skin conductivity, heart rate variance and cortisol levels for anxiety and stress. This application will deal with depression.

Her work with other colleagues will someday lead to:

Conductive polymers to treat epilepsy.
Electronic skin.
A tattoo on the skin that will provide your information now carried in a wallet.
Artificial intelligence for a spray on skin so you can type information without a keyboard.

How many of you have kept up with this esoteric development of artificial skin? To close, as mentioned yesterday, 15 Craigside featured a special Independence day lunch I first warmed up the food in some butter. Then watched that CNN 6-hour July 4th marathon with this July 4th feast.

Earlier in the week, pork tonkatsu with ahi sashimi. Note the sea asparagus and sea grapes. Then artichoke with miso soup while watching Jeopardy. No rice for weight maintenance.

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicio...

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for...

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These a...

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