Recommendations

This will be my final blog. I would like to present some recommendations for information seekers for similar subjects.

First of all I would like to list databases. In many of my classes I have used the Carlson databases and they have been wonderful sources of information, specifically the Academic Complete and Worldcat databases.

I used Clusty.com a number of times for finding articles. Clusty searches several top search engines, combines the results, and generates an ordered list based on rankings. This gives great results in a small amount of time. I found several articles this way.

The CV of my scientist led me to lots of information: graduate students, colleagues, meetings, symposiums, committees, research, grants, honors, and even a listing of publications both current and yet to be published. I found that on his website at CalTech.

I also found that a simple Google search can come up with quite a bit of information. I know a lot of professionals look down on internet searching but I would not have found half the information I needed without it.

The articles I read also led me to more information through the reference section at the end. I could see which articles he referenced and thus found more information.

This is the way I did most of my searches to find information. I found that most of these led me on to find even more related information. if I were a starting scientist or someone doing information seeking this is definitely where I would start.

New Ideas

This will be my last post before the grand finale post. I just wanted to real quick go through a couple things that Dabiri has been kicking around. I was reading an article that discusses the fact that he not only wants to work on new ways of using jellyfish locomotion to help hearts but also for green technology. He believes there are ways to utilize wind and water technology to help find green sources of power. He also wants to find a way to make a flexible motor that would be more efficient. I believe what has interested me most about this scientist is his lack of ego and willingness to help others. He was quoted as saying, "My interest is to give people a blueprint and let them go out and build things. The downside is that we won’t make any money off their inventions, but we can impact a lot more people that way.” This is truly what a scientist does. They aren't there to make money, they are there to advance science in a bid to help humanity. Hats of to you Dr. Dabiri, and your jellyfish.

Closing In

I found this photo while going through the facilities Dabiri used. It perfectly captures what he is studying. The blue image underneath the jellyfish is the "vortex flow" and the image shows how the jellyfish's movement creates this flow. I was just taking a look at the CalTech website once again and noticed that John Dabiri will be doing a free public talk at the University titled, "Jellyfish-Inspired Engineering." The talk is free to the public and it will be recorded and free to view by anyone from their website.

I also wanted to address and quickly answer the questions we were introduced to at the beggining of this project.
Dabiri's research can be found on his websit at CalTech, the literature he uses is all directly connected back to his projects with Biology, jellyfish, vortex flow, and engineering.
He could serendipitously scan for material but it seems to work better for him to find all his material from direct sources (networking, scholalrly articles, research).
There are many interdisciplinary aspects to his work but most are at least somewhat related: Biomechanics, Biology, Bioengineering. I doubt this would complicate his research; if anything it would be an asset.
Dabiri does alot of networking. Not only does he attend various symposiums and conferences but he also has a number of colleagues in related sciences that he keeps in touch with regularly, not to mention the graduate students that work with him and help him with projects and research.
The majority of the articles I have found by Dabiri were open access. i found many of them at our very own Carlson databases and some at Clusty.com.

The answers to these questions points to a man with many resources to pull from in various areas, and a willingness to share information to push forward his research.

Research

As we are moving closer to the end of this project I thought I should go over Dabiri's research. He is currently working on six projects, along with the help of his Graduate assistants. I have taken the basic objectives of the research and summarized them here.

1. Fluid Dynamic Efficiency of Unsteady Propulsion- The objective of this project is to develop general metrics for fluid dynamic efficiency that are sufficiently robust to facilitate quantitative comparison between engineering and biological propulsion systems.

2. Fluid Dynamic Energy Conversion- The goal of this project is to understand the mechanisms of fluid dynamic energy conversion by studying biological systems that are known to regularly accomplish this feat.

3. Lagrangian Analysis of Fluid Transport in Vortex Flows- This project is concerned with the application of theoretical methods of Lagrangian analysis to empirically measured flows.

4. Jellyfish Biomechanics- Medusae in the phylum Cnidaria are an integral component of ocean ecology and working with them provide studies aimed at uncovering design principles that have led to the success of more complex biological propulsion systems.

5. Optimal Vortex Formation- This research is aimed at developing a generic, quantitative framework in which to observe and characterize optimal vortex formation in biological fluid transport systems.

6. Biological Flow Velocimetry/Dynamometry- Effective flow visualization is essential to the analysis of biological propulsion systems. The flow patterns generated by jellyfish are used as a canonical application of the newly developed experimental methods.

The full description of this research can be found on Dabiri's CalTech webpage.

ISI Web of Knowledge and some more

I did an ISI Web of Knowledge search on John Dabiri and I only found two articles, one on jellyfish eating as they move and another on estimations on wake forces from swimming and flying. Both were published by J. Dabiri and the one on eating was co-published by two people from his list of collaborators. These were professors from a number of other colleges. I thought it was very interesting to see the people he was working with and the degrees they had.

1. Professor Joel Burdick-Mechanical Engineering/BioEngineering at California Institute of Technology

2. Dr. Sean Colin-Biology and Marine Biology at Rogers William University

3. Professor John Costello-Biology at Providence College

4. Professor Paul Krueger-Mechanical Engineering at Southern Methodist University

5. Professor George Lauder-Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University

6. Professor Jerrold Marsden-Engineering and Control & Dynamical Systems

All six of these scientists that J. Dabiri regularly collaborates with have some tie in with his research, specifically Geroge Lauder. He runs the Lauder Labratory, which is currently doing research in kinematics and hydrodynamics of fish locomotion. This is surely something he and dabiri could have long discussions on. The websites that each of these scientists have are very interesting as well and worth taking a look at.

Hearts and Jellyfish

I ran across another article that was posted on the Caltech website. It was kind of like an interview style article. The reason I mention it instead of jumping right into my ISI research was because a) it mentioned that Dabiri doesn't really like swimming and in fact is almost afraid to go into the water even though he studies jellyfish. More interestingly was a part of the article that discusses how in 2006 Dabiri and colleagues published a paper in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They discussed their efforts "to use ultrasound imaging to diagnose heart disease by creating an extremely detailed picture of the jet of blood as it squirts through the cardiac left ventricle. The jet forms as blood passes from the left atrium to the left ventricle during diastole—the heart-filling phase of the cardiac cycle." Their related studies of vortices demonstrates how heart valves should look when they’re performing most efficiently. They are currently attempting to find funding for human testing.

Mixing with Peers

I found that the conferences portion led to an interesting social mix. Dabiri would easily be able to mix with his peers at many of these conferences. many of them seem tailor made for speaking with his fellows about specifically projects he was working on with jellyfish and aquatic vortex propulsion: American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics Meeting, American Society of Limnology and Oceanography Aquatic Sciences Meeting, and International Symposium on Aqua Bio-mechanisms. The conference proceedings, some of which are viewable, clearly show that there is a sharing of information and networking at these meetings and symoposiums. I'm sure that Dabiri could bounce ideas of peers, find new ideas, and even get his graduate assisstants involved more at these proceedings.