Keith W. Moored: A fin-tastic model

Someday, underwater robots may so closely mimic creatures like fish that they’ll fool not only the real animals themselves but humans as well. That ability could yield information ranging from the health of fish stocks to the location of foreign watercraft.

Such robots would need to be fast, efficient, highly maneuverable, and acoustically stealthy. In other words, they would have to be very much like bottlenose dolphins or killer whales.

Hannah Dailey: An inside look at bone healing

Broken bones have a unique capacity to heal. The new bone that forms along the fracture line, called callus, starts out as a soft tissue and, over time, it hardens into bone that is just as strong—or stronger—than before the break.

But in some cases, the healing process goes awry. This failure to heal is called a nonunion, a painful and often debilitating condition that requires further medical intervention.

Astronaut Terry Hart ’68 ’88H to deliver 2020 Commencement address

Former NASA astronaut and mechanical engineering and mechanics professor Terry Hart ’68 ’88H will deliver the address at Lehigh’s 152nd spring commencement on Monday, May 18. 

Hart was a member of NASA’s “Group 8”—the first selection of space shuttle astronaut candidates in nine years—and later joined NASA’s 11th space shuttle mission aboard the STS 41-C Challenger, launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 6, 1984.

Lesley Chow: A better way to rebuild cartilage

If you’re able to walk without pain, give a silent shout-out to your cartilage. 

Every time you take a step, this flexible tissue absorbs the load and transfers it to the bone, allowing you to move freely. But unlike bone, if cartilage gets damaged—by injury, wear and tear, or inflammation—it can’t regenerate. Over time, the damaged tissue degrades, and walking becomes progressively more painful as the bones come in contact with each other.

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