Exciting times ahead for all at the MicroG Centre, here in Porto Alegre, Brazil as the final stages are neared in the development of the first Manpowered Human Centrifuge (HC) not only in Brazil, but quite probably in Latin America.

The work is the produce of our very own Albuquerque brothers – both engineers and currently completing their MSc’s under my supervision. Marcelo Albuquerque is responsible for the building of the centrifuge itself, whilst his brother Eduardo has been creating the control and monitoring system for the performance of the HC, including rpm, angular velocity/acceleration and G-force, as well as physiological variables of volunteers.

The HC will be rotate entirely by manpower in one of three ways: a volunteer in a lying down position on the centrifuge arm will pedal; a volunteer positioned on an external bicycle attached to the drive system of the HC will pedal; two volunteers will pedal simultaneously from the HC and the external bicycle.

The MicroG Centre Manpowered Human Centrifuge is designed to achieve a maximum of 5Gs (z axis) and will eventually be used to train both experienced and student pilots, demonstrating the cardiovascular and neurological signs and symptoms of Gz+ exposure, such as grey-out, black-out and G-LOC.

Completion of the main structure of the centrifuge is expected by the end of March 2012, with the final tweaking of the control system to follow soon after.  Many exciting new possibilities for future studies in space physiology, aviation medicine and aerospace biomechanics research lie in front of us, and close links between the MicroG Centre and The Centre of Human & Aerospace Physiological Sciences (CHAPS) at King’s College, London should see future MSc students from King’s also benefiting from the possibilities of new research projects.

Well done to the Albuquerque brothers and pedal hard to the finishing line!
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3D Clinostat
Once more I am off on my travels and so here I am, currently in the USA for a couple of weeks. Sadly though only for a little pleasure and for a lot of work!

Next week I will be in the ‘Big Apple’ – more commonly known as New York for meetings at New York University (NYU) to give a couple of lectures, and to establish a research co-operation so they can use the 3D clinostat developed by the Microgravity Centre.

And what is a 3D clinostat you might be asking?

Well, very simply put it is a device for simulating microgravity on Earth for cells, very small animals and plants, through rotation. The rotations takes place simultaneously along two different axes and the combined rotations disorient so that whatever is being turned can no longer perceive the gravitational force of the Earth. 
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