s t u d e n t
r e s e a r c h
pr ecious pr oblems
Written by CHRISTINE VASQUEZ and KOREN WETMORE
Research and Clinic projects require exploration of new and interesting problems, creative thinking and teamwork in or- der to achieve solutions. There were many successful projects presented during this year’s Presentation Days (May 2 and 4) and Projects Day (May 3), which represented work in every academic department. A key attribute of the research at HMC is the collaboration of students and faculty, who are partners in the process of discovery. The selection that follows represents a small portion of the many projects performed by more than 200 students under the direction of faculty advisors and, in some cases, external liaisons.
Wax On Working with Insight Surgical In- struments, LLC, HMC students have developed a tool that accurate- ly applies bone wax without block- ing a surgeon’s view.
Bone wax is applied to cut bone
surface to block blood flow during minimally invasive spinal surgery. Currently surgeons use a spatula- like instrument, called a Penfield, which requires them to warm the wax between their fingers before us- ing the Penfield to place it on the bone surface. The students’
prototype con-
tains a heating element to warm the wax and a delivery system that places a precise amount of wax on bone. “Bone can and does heal around the wax, but too much wax can delay the healing process and weaken the bone. So we wanted to reduce the amount of wax used,” said clinic team member Tim Challener ’11.
Students developed a practical and thrifty bone wax applicator.
The device has an angled tip to improve the surgeon’s visibility and a squeezable handle with a spring-loaded hook design and notched rod system that ensures precise wax deliv- ery. Its heating element is powered by a 9-volt battery. About 10 inches in length, it is both sterilizable and disposable, which makes it practical and economical, Challener said. The device is patent-pending. Challener, Annie Jensen ’12, Cassie Nguyen ’11, Vincent Pai
’12, Matthew Phillips ’11, and Kristen Schunter ’12, worked with advisor Elizabeth Orwin, professor of engineering and biol- ogy, to complete the Clinic project.
En Guarde, Film Pirates Swifter than a sword, the right algorithm can battle the peskiest pirate site on the Internet. So when Paramount Pictures needed to assess which bootleg film content sites presented the most risk to their industry, they tasked HMC students with developing a program and browser extension that offered a danger-ranking system. The Computer Science Clinic team developed an algorithm
that presents a weighted average of popularity (number of us- ers accessing a site) and sleekness (how legitimate a site looks in appearance) to designate the risk level of piracy websites. Their study revealed that more than half of the pirate sites were “unsleek,” so they tuned the algorithm to weigh a site’s popularity score as three times more important than sleekness. The method proved successful in accurately as- sessing risk level.
KOREN WETMORE
The team also built a Firefox exten- sion that nabs a screenshot of the sites and identifies the advertisers and ad networks promoted on them. “Much of what you see in search results for keywords such as ‘watch movies online’ are sites containing pirated content,” said team member Dan Ciliske ’12. “Advertising on piracy web- sites, if removed, would make these sites no longer viable.”
Ciliske, Jessica Blevins ’11, Rebecca Green ’11 and Moira
Tagle ’11 worked with advisor Christine Alvarado, assistant professor of computer science, to complete the project.
14 Har vey Mudd College FALL/WINTER 2010 16 SUMMER 2011
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44