Open Educational Resources | Pao Yue-kong Library, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Video

How Light Technology Is Changing Medicine

It's an increasingly common sight in hospitals around the world: a nurse measures our height, weight, blood pressure, and attaches a glowing plastic clip to our finger. Suddenly, a digital screen reads out the oxygen level in our bloodstream. How did that happen? Sajan Saini shows how pairing light with integrated photonics is leading to new medical technologies and less invasive diagnostic tools.

Subjects:: Biomedical Engineering, Electronic and Information Processing, and Health Sciences
Keywords:: Medical technology Diagnosis
Resource Type:: Video

Video

A Mathematical Model for Predicting Parkinson's

What if we looked at Parkinson's as an neurological electrical problem? Brain researcher Eleftheria Pissadaki and her team study dopamine neurons, the neurons that selectively die during Parkinson's. They discovered that the bigger a neuron is, the more vulnerable it becomes because it simply requires more energy. This new insight is reframing the disease -- and by "finding the fuse box for each neuron" and figuring out how much energy it needs, may help us neuroprotect our brain cells.

Subjects:: Health Sciences and Mathematics and Statistics
Keywords:: Brain -- Diseases -- Research Brain -- Mathematical models
Resource Type:: Video

Video

Math Can Help Uncover Cancer's Secrets

Irina Kareva translates biology into mathematics and vice versa. She writes mathematical models that describe the dynamics of cancer, with the goal of developing new drugs that target tumors. "The power and beauty of mathematical modeling lies in the fact that it makes you formalize, in a very rigorous way, what we think we know," Kareva says. "It can help guide us to where we should keep looking, and where there may be a dead end." It all comes down to asking the right question and translating it to the right equation, and back.

Subjects:: Health Sciences and Mathematics and Statistics
Keywords:: Cancer -- Mathematical models Cancer cells -- Mathematical models
Resource Type:: Video

Video

How Fast Is The Speed of Thought?

Your mortal enemy has captured you and hooked you up to a bizarre experiment. He's extended your nervous system with one very long neuron to a target about 70 meters away. At some point, he's going to fire an arrow. If you can then think a thought to the target before the arrow hits it, he'll let you go. So who wins that race? Seena Mathew examines the speed of thought.