IMPORTANT INFORMATION

There will be a cloze test on the below items Thursday at lunch recess. (Some key words will be deleted; students must fill in the blanks.) Cloze tests require the ability to understand context and vocabulary in order to identify the correct words or type of words that belong in the deleted passages of a text. The test is not a competition, and you will not receive a grade. You will take this test to show yourself and your teammates that you are serious about your team membership.

The judges are looking for:

n  There is BALANCE between Core Values, Research Project, and Robot. One is not more important than the others.

n  Team engages OTHERS in GENUINE enthusiasm and fun in a POSITIVE, fun way.

n  Team members can cite multiple SPECIFIC examples from everyday life for each of the core values (at school, at sports, at your place of worship).

n  There is a process for making decisions by members of the team.

n  Time management and role identification (Remember mission leaders were team members who took home the robot.)

n  STUDENT INITIATIVE (students identify what needs to be done and do it independently).

n  Balanced involvement and respect for ALL ideas from ALL members of the team.

n  ALL members are respectful to their teammates and other teams – even in the most difficult situations.

n  Gracious Professionalism is including all members of your team at all times, respecting your teammates and others, and cooperation.

(The judges will be looking for the above components in your team problem-solving session, as well as asking for evidence of these components from your team’s season.)

Be able to answer the following questions aloud: (Talk to your teammates at recess, on the bus, etc. if you need help.)

n  How is your robot able to withstand the rigors of competition without much repair?

n  How did your team streamline parts and need for changes during each heat?

n  Is your robot’s speed, force, and accuracy predictable?

n  Does your robot achieve its purpose every time?

n  Are your programs easy to follow for new team members? Can you explain them to others? Are your ideas easily teachable?

n  How/ why do you use jigs?

n  How did your team design multiple robots/appendage/program and then test, choose best option, and move forward?

n  How and why were the missions developed? How were the tasks grouped into missions?

n  What are the unique or unexpected (innovative) features of your robot or programming?

n  What are all of the Core Values of FLL?

n  How did your team incorporate the FLL Core Values in programming and mechanics?

Use ‘WE’, not ‘I’ or ‘Mr. Tseng’. J

Monday: We will make new posters and practice your presentation.

Tuesday: We practice a teamwork task and practice your presentation.

Wednesday: We practice a teamwork task and practice your presentation.

Thursday: Cloze Quiz on Judge’s Criteria and Verbal Quiz on Programming/ Mechanics.

Friday: Final rehearsal of your presentation and more judging practice.

A Cheesy Inspiration

Lazytown Teamwork Song

At the 26th second mark:

Teamwork. Do it together.
Millerbots. Team forever.
We're all for one.
And one for all.
We'll help each other stand tall.

Millerbots 2 Research (Help!) -- Know this

We need more research on Chemotherapy and Radiation: How do they help cure leukemia? How do they harm the body?

Our team researched the cutting-edge world of Biomedical Engineering to find out how nanobots might repair bone marrow in children with leukemia.  At the very beginning of this Robotics season, our team voted to research a topic having to do with the skeletal system.  One of our research searches led us to nanorobots  in medicine.  We’ll tell you more about that in a bit.  We also voted to write a song about our research.

The problem we identified is “How can Biomedical Engineering heal leukemia?”

To find out what doctors are currently doing to heal leukemia, we read books, scoured the internet and met with graduate students, David Lai and Dana Begun, from the University of Michigan Biomedical Engineering department.  We gathered lots of information. Bill Nye videos on the Skeletal System

Discovery Channel’s “How Will Nanobots Help Cure Cancer?”

The Incredible Human Body.  Directed by Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon.  National Geographic.  2002

Colombo, Luann. Uncover the Human Body. Bellevue Publishers Group, 2002.

Cox, Alexander. Body Science. New York: Ling, 2009.                    Ganeri, Anita. Body Basics: Bones. New York: ___, 2009.

Lindsay, Mary. The Visual Dictionary of the Human Body. New York: Kindersley, 1991.

Simon, Seymour. Bones: Our Skeletal System. New York: HarperCollins, 2000.

We learned about:

Bones

Ÿ  Bones function to move, support, and protect all of the organs in the body.

Ÿ  Bones contain fibers.

Ÿ  The largest bone in the body is the thigh bone, the Femur.

Bone Marrow

Bone marrow is a flexible tissue found in the hollow interior of the bones.  In the big bones of adults, the marrow produce blood cells.  Bone marrow also prevents the back flow of lymph, working as an important part of the lymphatic system.

Leukemia

Cancer of the blood is called leukemia.  About 90% of leukemia is diagnosed.  The word leukemia means white blood cells.  Most forms of leukemia are treated with pharmaceutical medications. Leukemia is cancer.

We learned about current treatments for leukemia and Nanorobotics:

Current treatments of leukemia

The best cure for leukemia is getting a bone marrow transplant.  Patients are given transplants so they can be given higher doses of a drug that helps fight leukemia.  If they don’t get transplants, they can’t have enough of the cure they need.  The drug destroys cancer cells but also destroys good cells and is harmful to your body.  The new marrow can make up the cells it lost.

Nanorobotics

Nanorobotics is an emerging field that deals with the controlled manipulation of objects with nanometer scale dimensions. 

Then we devised with Nan robots:

Our innovative solution is:

The use of nanobots to deliver healthy bone marrow to leukemia patients. The nanobots would also remove the damaged marrow from the bone.

The nanobots would be injected by a shot and travel through the bloodstream to complete their job. Then, the nanobots would travel to the vena cava where there would be a filter. From there, doctors would make a small cut and remove the nanobots.

These nanobots, themselves, are not expensive to make; they are simply small pieces of metal guided through the body by magnetic fields controlled by doctors.

Nanobot bone marrow repair is preferred over today’s surgery methods because it’s less painful, leaves no scars, less chance of infection or death, and chemotherapy kills cells all over the body – not just cancer cells. Nanobots are BETTER!

In addition to this solution, we sang the song that you just heard to the students at our school, to children at our local library, and people at the Walton Woods retirement community. There, people pledged to eat at least ten calcium-rich foods or drinks during the next week. Eating calcium-rich foods makes bones stronger, and strong bones are less likely to break.

<We at the hospital

Nanobots are movin

Through the blood… through through the blood>

Millerbots 1 Research (Know this)

Millerbots  Research (Titanium Bone Foam)

Our team researched the cutting-edge world of Biomedical Engineering to find out how surgeons repair badly broken bones. At the very beginning of this Robotics season, our team voted to research the topic having to do with the skeletal system. One of our earliest research searches led us to bone foam. We will tell you more about that in a moment. We also voted to write a song about our research.

The problem we identified is “How do surgeons repair badly broken bones?” We know that biomedical engineering goes back to ancient times. Archeologists in Egypt found a mummy with an artificial toe that is 3,000 years old. We also know that amputation (cutting and removing of a human appendage) was a widely used practice.

To find out what doctors are currently doing to repair badly broken bones, we read books, scoured the Internet, and met with graduates students from the University of Michigan Biomedical Engineering department David Lai and Dana Begun. We gathered a lot of information.

Videos:

Bill Nye  “Bones”

Skeleton. Directed by David Hutt. Eyewitness, 1994.

The Incredible Human Body. Directed by Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon. National Geographic, 2002.

Books:

Colombo, Luann. Uncover the Human Body. Bellevue Publishers Group, 2002.

Cox, Alexander. Body Science. New York: Ling, 2009.                

Ganeri, Anita. Body Basics: Bones. New York: ___, 2009.

Lindsay, Mary. The Visual Dictionary of the Human Body. New York: Kindersley, 1991.

Simon, Seymour. Bones: Our Skeletal System. New York: HarperCollins, 2000.

We Learned about Bones

            General:

1. Bones function to move, support, and protect all of the organs in the body.
2. Organs found on bones are marrow, endosteum, periosteum, nerves, blood vessels, and cartilage.
3. Bones contain fibers.
4. The largest bone in the body is the thigh bone, called the femur.
5. Calcification is the process by which calcium helps to strengthen bones.

Strength:

Bones are a compound material; the solid is calcium and the gel is collagen, which makes bones strong and lightweight. Bone strength is from vitamin D, calcium, and the physical activity you do.

To make bones strong, a person needs to have vitamin C, vitamin D, and physical activity. If you don’t have these things, your bones are not going to be very strong.

Osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is caused by poor bone density and can trigger disabilities caused by severely weakened bones like compression fractures of the spine and hip fractures. Some treatments you can get to resolve or lessen the impact of osteoporosis are parathyroid hormone, calcitonin, and taloxifene. There are no early symptoms that you can identify for osteoporosis.

Types of Breaks

There are four main types of bone breaks: displaced, nondisplaced, open, and closed. In a displaced bone break, the bones break into more than two pieces. In a nondisplaced break, the bone breaks all the way through or cracks either part of the bone, but it does not move and it maintains its alignment. In an open break, the bone comes through the skin. In a closed break, the bone stays inside the skin.

            We learned about titanium bone foam and other ways doctors are currently repairing badly broken bones.

Bone Foam: What Is It?

Germany’s Fraunhofer Research Group made a bone-replacing material called resabone, then they made something better called titanium foam (bone foam). Bone foam is like a metal sponge. Recent bone foam was invented by Afsaneh Rabiei of North Carolina State University. Bone foam is the bones’ “favorite” kind of replacement.

Titanium bone foam helps bodies heal after traumatic injuries and bone breaks.

Other Ways Doctors Fix Bones

There are many ways a doctor can heal a broken bone. One way is a cast. A cast keeps the bones held together until the bone heals itself.

           

            We also researched nanorobotics. Nanorobotics is an emerging field that deals with the controlled manipulation of objects with nanometer scale dimensions.

            Then we devised this new adaptation of bone foam delivery with nanorobots. Our innovative solution is:

The use of nanobots to deliver titanium bone foam to patients with traumatic bone breaks.

The nanobots, loaded with molecules of titanium bone foam, would be injected by a shot and travel through the bloodstream to complete their job. Then, the nanobots would travel to the capillaries in the small intestine, where the bad marrow and nanobots would “get in line” to be excreted.

These nanobots, themselves, are not expensive to make; they are simply small pieces of metal guided through the body by magnetic fields controlled by doctors.

Nanobot bone marrow repair is preferred over today’s surgery methods because it’s less painful, leaves no scars, less chance of infection or death, and chemotherapy kills cells all over the body – not just cancer cells. Nanobots are BETTER!

In addition to this solution, we sang the song that you just heard to the students at our school, to children at our local library, and people at the Walton Woods retirement community. There, people pledged to eat at least ten calcium-rich foods or drinks during the next week. Eating calcium-rich foods makes bones stronger, and strong bones are less likely to break.

<I eat good food because I want strong bones

But if they break

How to they make       new bones?

Nanobots are shot with new bone foam

I’ll keep my real bones

I’ll take my Flintstones>