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Dear Reader,

I hope you are doing okay and having a lovely working week. Its almost the weekend and here is another of Michael's perspectives to hopefully liven your weekend and challenge you.

This week, I am reflecting on the following:

1. World cup of Shocks
2. Next-generation stents
3. Behind the Scenes at CM Videos: Trello and Ideation
4. Quote of the Week: The Human Drive of Caring

Let us get into the newsletter.

World Cup of Shocks

I have been enjoying the World Cup and in particular the different shocks that we have been experiencing. Some have described the world cup as a world cup of shocks. Imagine Saudi Arabia winning against Argentina; Belgium and Germany failing to get out of the group and Japan beating European giants - Germany and Spain. This makes me wonder again about last week's reflection on predictive modellers trying to predict what would happen in the world cup. I guess they never saw these shocks coming, hence why I feel predictive modelling should always be reserved to deterministic things.

Next generation stents - my recent publication

This week, I got the official confirmation letter from the publisher that our recent paper on stent has become publicly available. It is open source so you should be able to download it and read if you so wish.

Here are the highlights of the paper:

1. Bioresorbability is a reality: This is a feature for next-generation stents which allows stents to dissolve in the body within 18 months of their insertion to the site of blockage in the artery. This is important as traditional metallic stents do not show this dissoluble properties and so permanently cage the arteries for ever - leading to patients to live on medications to manage the condition. Our recent paper shows that bioresorbability is a reality.
2. 3D Printing is emerging force in stent manufacture: We showed in this paper the possibility of producing sub-centimetre-sized stents using 3D Printing technology according to the Fused Deposition Modelling technique. It is proving an exciting avenue for manufacture of such stents and with ongoing revolutionary work with 3D printing refinements, it is only a matter of time 3D printing production processes will be standard protocol in clinical settings.
3. Bespoke designs of stents: The unique feature of polymer-based stents is that they will often have to have higher strut thicknesses in comparison with metallic based ones. Therefore, bespoke designs of such stents were generated in this paper. The view is always to make such stents capture similar features as their metallic counterparts but beyond those also be 3D printable. Strut sizes below 50 microns are not practically printable using the Fused Deposition Modelling approach used in this work. So, we develop new stent geometries to avoid this problem.
4. What can we do without virtual testing: Due to the size of these stents and the need to quickly predict their response in the arteries, it is not always possible to test them effectively physically. Therefore, the invaluable tool of virtual testing as a computational modelling tool was used in this paper to generate realistic stent mechanics during deployment (inflation), hold and deflation (recoil) stages of the stent mechanics. Incredible insights were gained from these, and findings used to rank stents and material behaviour with a view to making an optimal choice for what stents is suitable a given stent deployment procedure.
5. Novel material development: We also created new materials that can be used as filaments for the 3D printing workflow. These materials were developed based on insights gained from their viscoelastic and thermomechanical responses. Knowledge of these properties and also the thermodynamics of material response through the nozzle of the 3D printer helped the researchers identify the optimal properties to ensure effective 3D printed products at such sub-centimetre dimension.
6. Cytotoxicity and durg-release mechanicsm: We know these stents will ultimately be used in the body in form of drug-eluting stents. So, we explored the in situ mechanisms of drug-loading and drug-release for the stents to understand if the expected threshold for drug loading and released were met. Also, cytotoxicity measurements were taken to ensure safety of stents when deployed in the body.

All these point to a really exciting future in development of next-generation stents that can dissolve in the body. Here is the citation to the paper for your reference:

Behind the Scenes at CM Videos: Trello and Ideation

Creatives like author, programmers, content creators and entrepreneurs, have one thing in commmon: they like to create new things where none existing. To do this, all these creatives have one critical component that drive them and steer them in the direction of productive work: the Ideation component. This is about coming up with ideas of what content to make and it can be quite obsessive.

To keep on top of your ideas, it makes sense for you to record them somewhere. This is where Trello (not sponsored) comes in. According to the company behind Trello, here is how they describe it:

So, here at CM Videos, I have lots of ideas of videos to make, and also ideas from you as well as even ideas of high-ranking videos that is worth making in this niche of computational modelling. I manage all of these using trello. If you are not aware of it, then you should try using them.

Currently, below are some of the boards (content pools) that make up my Trello Workspace called YouTube topics. The green-coded entries are videos filled and published. The Yellow ones are researched on and shortlisted for filming at a near future date while the white-colour-coded entries are ideas being researched on.

You can try using the same system to manage your research. I found that having a framework for managing the ideation phase of your creativity is critical for success.

Quote for the Week: The Human Drive of Caring

The focus of my quote for the week is on insights I gained from reading Brendon Bourchard's excellent book titled The Charge. This week, I am focussing on the concept of caring. A lot of time, when we read about caring, we think of the medical profession and similar care givers as nurses. We often do not associate our jobs as content creators, PhD student, research leader, marketing executive or even research assistant as requiring of the adjective of 'caring.'

However, according to Brandon, to become trully happy and successful in whatever endeavour we get involved in, we must tick the element of caring because where you do not care about the quality of your work, then the quality of your output will be mediocre making you not to win in the already competitive business of living.

As I read about this, I started reviewing my life to see fragments of it where the attribute of caring has been attached. I realized that indeed I do care about my work. In fact, infused in what I do, and how I go about doing is is the fragrance of caring.

For example:

• I care about the quality of content I post via this newsletter so I subscribed to one of the newsletter creating organizations called ConvertKit to help me do so. I could have used the most basic but because I care for you, I want you to have the best.
• I do care about the quality of videos I make and although other players in this computational modelling (ABAQUS) niche in Youtube do not go for the sort of editting that I used in my videos, I did not mind. I wanted the videos to be something I am proud of and truly care that they come out well hence my investment in learning how to use video editing tools.
• I do care about you my audience and that is why I try to respond as regularly as I can to every query and comment I receive on my videos. Some of my answers might be deemed excessive but that a student is asking a question is enough reason for me to painstakingly and patiently answer such students. It is a human drive of caring driving me on.

I know I might be sounding too self-adulating here but that is not the intention. I wanted you to reflect on your work and your life and see if you truly care about the quality of output you generate. Remember Brendon's thoughts: only the truly ... caring ... among us ever become number one at any endeavour or truly happy for that matter. You might not meet the objective of becoming number one in your endeavour, but I hope you do certainly strive to be truly happy.

Thank you again for your patience and dedication to reading these newsletters. I have received some really amazing comments from readers abou how they feel about these newsletter and would share those in future.

I wish you a wonderful weekend. Sai anjima (meaning See you later or bye bye in Hausa, a local Nigerian dialect)

Let us catch up again next week and God bless you.