I returned to school in hopes of being able to develop an instrument that could monitor a large number of biomarkers that, over the course of time, would do early disease detection. Unlike electronics, I found bioengineering lacked a standardized tool set from which to work from. Thus, I began developing a new tool set. Here, I present the foundation of this set of components, a system called Multifluidic Evolutionary Components (MECs). "Multifluidic" conveys the wide range of fluid volumes MECs operate upon (from nanoliters to milliliters). "Multi" also reflects the multi-disciplinary nature of the system (not only fluidics but also electronics, optics, and mechanics). "Evolutionary" refers to the design principles that guided the component development, enabling the library of MEC parts to easily grow and adapt to a wide range of applications. Many of the MEC "building blocks" perform fundamental functions that are commonly found in biological or chemical instruments; functions such as: valuing, pumping, mixing, controlling, and sensing. Along with the physical hardware, an equally powerful and flexible piece of software was developed for the control of these instruments. The development of this multidisciplinary tool set was challenging, so I recruited interns from all areas of engineering, opening the TEC (Technology Evolution & Component) Center. The TEC Center evolved into a multidisciplinary "learn by doing" environment, where real world problems were addressed. The Center is product based. Students enter the program lacking many necessary skills, so training became an integral part of our Center.

For each MEC component a unique symbol is linked to a physical definition. When developing an instrument, a student begins by creating a MEC multidisciplinary schematic, and then uses this to efficiently fabricate a system. As proof-of-concept, we use MEC methodology to build a variety of multidisciplinary schematics, components and instruments, which are discussed in this work. One example; the development of an analytical bioreactor, could be considered a model for implementing STEM education. We look not just at the final instrument but how it evolved, since it is the product development/evolution of these instruments where the critical lessons were to be learned.

Behavioral and pharmacological testing in mice has been revamped following the development of new tools for the manipulation of genetic information. We present the results from the peak procedure, an operant test that assesses the capacity to perceive, remember, and act upon temporal information. We studied the basic timing abilities in two different strains of mice, the C57Bl/6J and C3H/HeJ, and their response to psychoactive substances. Scopolamine and high doses of d-amphetamine disrupted performance by increasing response variability. The effect of d-amphetamine was particularly clear in C3H mice. Whereas scopolamine did not seem to affect the location of the response, the effect of a low dose of d-amphetamine, a leftward shift, was consistent with the hypothesis that it accelerates the internal time keeping mechanism. Physostigmine alone improved performance by reducing variability between trials without affecting the response location. Pretreatment with physostigmine partially blocked the deleterious effects of scopolamine. Methylphenidate did not have major effects on timing behavior in C57 but in the highest dose shifted the response of C3H mice to the left. The higher sensitivity of the C3H strain to the effects of d-amphetamine and methylphenidate support its value as an animal model of attention deficit disorder. The performance of mice in this temporal task was comparable to that observed in rats and pigeons, and seemed exquisitely sensitive to pharmacological manipulation.