Esther I. Brown
dynamic, detail-oriented creativeC-VILLE Issue #18.12
Issue #18.12 :: 03/21/2006 – 03/27/2006
Inventions we love
A Pacemaker for your gut
New invention will really make your stomach turn
Each year UVA researchers patent hundreds of new, potentially lucrative technologies through the UVA Patent Foundation. Here’s a recent patent, this one aimed at the morbidly obese.
Robert Ross, president of two companies and a former electrical engineering research scientist at UVA, has patented a pacemaker for the stomach. Although Ross’ Implantable Gastrointestinal Pacemaker still awaits approval from the Food and Drug Administration, one potential use for it would be to treat morbid obesity as an alternative to gastric bypass surgery, says Alan Bentley, associate director of the UVA Patent Foundation. Each year, about 45,000 grossly overweight people turn to surgery to help them lose weight.
The device “uses multiple points of stimulation to treat gastrointestinal motility disorders, which are basically problems of movement in the stomach,” says Ross. When an individual suffers from a gastrointestinal motility disorder, Ross says, his stomach doesn’t generate the coordinated contractions of a normally functioning stomach. As a result, he can’t digest food or absorb nutrients properly. The hope, Ross says, is that electrical pacing will be just as effective in the regulation and coordination of stomach contractions as it has been in regulating the beating of the heart.
—Esther Brown
Can you pass the SOLs?
Adventures in stuff you’ll never use in real life
Each spring, many of Virginia’s public school students (most third, fifth, and eighth graders, as well as most high school students) must pass untimed subject-based standardized tests, called the Standards of Learning (SOLs). Like them or not, the SOLs are likely here to stay, which has us wondering: Could you pass them? Get out your #2 pencil, answer these five grade-school questions correctly and, lucky you, it’ll be time for recess.
1. The original Ferris Wheel introduced at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago had a diameter of 20 feet. Which is the closest to the distance a person who rode this wheel traveled in one complete revolution?
A 393 ft
B 785 ft
C 1,570 ft
D 49, 063 ft
2. Which of these belongs in the outermost shell (energy level) of an atom?
A Electrons
B Protons
C Neutrons
D Photons
3. Two ships leaving the same marina at the same time are 3.2 miles apart after sailing 2.5 hours. If they continue at the same rate and direction, how far apart will they be two hours later?
A 2.56 mi
B 3.52 mi
C 5.76 mi
D 6.08 mi
4. The Indian subcontinent is separated from the rest of Asia on the north by the—
A Eastern Ghats
B Himalayas
C Deccan Plateau
D Brahmaputra River
5. The process of DNA replication is necessary before a cell—
A makes a protein
B codes for RNA molecules
C divides into two cells
D modifies lysosome enzymes
Answer Key:
1. B
2. A
3. C
4. B
5. C
