FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - The work of two teams of undergraduate biological engineering students from the University of Arkansas could improve lives, and even save lives, in the future.

The teams were both recognized for designing and building prototypes that could be developed into high-tech, life-saving products. The teams took first and second place at the Gunlogson Student Design Competition in Portland, Ore., July 10. The event was part of the annual international meeting of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. The top three teams from schools nationwide were invited to present their designs.

The first-place team members  - Chase Darr from Alexander, Ark.; Andy Riester from Greenwood, Ark.; and Sterling Powers from El Dorado, Ark. - designed a mobile child’s feeding tube device. 

The team of Matt Graham from Pinopolis, S.C., and John Leach and James McCarty from Little Rock, Ark., took second place for designing a high-tech device to monitor a  football player’s body temperature while he’s on the field. 

“Personally, this award is important because it is recognition for all the work we put into the project throughout the last year, really the last four years,” said Darr.

 His team was inspired by a phone call from an Arkansas mother whose 3-year-old son’s medical condition requires him to be attached to an external feeding device that continuously pumps nourishment from a bag directly into his stomach. It’s a rare condition, but he is not unique. A small number of children, with various medical problems, must also use an external feeding system.

The current feeding apparatus available to patients, installed on a moveable intravenous pole, is designed primarily for bedside use. It only functions in an upright position, and severely restricts daytime mobility, especially for young children. 

Wanting to improve the quality of life for these children, the UA team developed a new feeding system that places the food bag, along with a pump and battery pack, on a vest that the child can wear. The parts are lightweight and distributed evenly in the front and back of the vest to help balance the device.

The design includes rechargeable lithium AA batteries that last for 12 hours, and a miniature peristaltic pump. The feed tube is routed  through the pump where rollers squeeze the tube to push the food to the stomach, like squeezing a tube of toothpaste from the bottom up. The pump can be programmed to release the food at any flow rate needed by the child.

The pump works while the child sits, walks, plays or even falls. There are no external cords or tubing either, so the child has greater mobility and comfort.

The students hope to work with a clinical research team that can take their device and produce a prototype for patients to test, but first they want to add some final touches.  Their original design plans included alarms on the vest to alert a parent or other adult to problems such as tube blockage, loose tubing or an empty food bag. According to Darr, the team is getting in touch with patent lawyers in the near future.

Matt Graham, John Leach, (James McCarty not pictured)

The second-place team’s design deals with a much more common health problem: heat stress. Football players are especially at risk from high temperatures during the summer months of football practice and early season games. The players are not alone: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report hundreds of heat-related deaths every year.

Heat exhaustion can set in when a person’s internal body temperature goes up to 100.9 degrees Fahrenheit; if it reaches 104.9 degrees a person can suffer a potentially fatal heat stroke. In the case of football players, the design team realized that if coaches and trainers had the ability to monitor players’ body temperatures, the problems from intense heat could be avoided.

The students designed a modified football helmet, embedding the padding with miniature wireless sensors and a transmitter to monitor a player’s body temperature on the field. The sensor is positioned to rest against the temporal artery, on either side of the forehead, to register the core body temperature. 

“Body temperature readings from the temporal artery are more practical than eardrum temperature readings for real-time monitoring of an athlete,” said Tom Costello, associate professor of biological and agricultural engineering and faculty sponsor of the design teams. He predicts that there will soon be more products on the market that use temporal artery measurements.

Inside the player’s helmet the temperature reading from the sensor is converted by a special chip, amplified, changed from an analog reading to a digital reading, and sent by a wireless transmitter to a laptop computer. The system is capable of monitoring dozens of sensors simultaneously, providing graphic displays of different players’ temperatures, and even sounding alarms if a player’s body temperature reaches a danger level. 

The design has applications beyond football. It could be adapted to monitor body temperatures of firemen, welders and others exposed to severe temperatures. Both designs have undergone basic testing with real people. The University of Arkansas Institutional Review Board approved both teams’ test protocols before they tested their inventions on people.

Darr said the feeding tube vest was fitted to children without a medical condition to test comfort and balance, without actually pumping food through the tube to the child.

“Only one kid came back with anything negative,” Darr said. “He said the shoulder strap was loose. But the vest was built for toddlers size three to five and this kid was a toddler size two.”

Matt Graham said his team’s body heat monitor was tested on runners who wore the helmet while running a mile, so changes in their temperature could be tracked.

For more information about the student designs visit the biological and agricultural engineering Web site at www.baeg.uark.edu. The written design report for each design, as well as student-produced videos, will be available soon on the Web site. The biological and agricultural engineering program is multidisciplinary with professors and researchers contributing from the College of Engineering, the Division of Agriculture and the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences.