Student Awards of the Croatian BME SocietyThe Croatian BME Society (CROMBES) established an annual award for the best graduation (diploma) thesis in the field of medical and biological engineering for students of Croatian Universities. Six diploma theses have been sent in for the contest in the year 2003/2004. The theses covered the full spectrum of medical and biological engineering. A committee of five senior members of CROMBES considered the theses that were submitted for the contest. The submitted theses were as follows: Lara Baticic from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Rijeka, investigated the acid composition of the muscle lipids in the two-banded seabream and their seasonal variations. The meat was analysed using modern chemical analysis methods and the conclusion is that the fatty acid composition varies seasonally but is always a good source of n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids for low fat diets. Mirna Brkljacic at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in Zagreb studied the polymorphism of four microsatellite loci in Croatian Shepherd dogs. Methods of genetic study have been applied on the samples from 45 dogs and some characteristic genetic features of the Croatian Shepherd have been defined. Karin Costas Mady from the Zagreb Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture studied the physical workload of the medical personnel in intensive care units in retirement homes. She used a theoretical dynamic and kinematic model of the persons involved and measured the parameters of the operation during actual work in-situ. She devised quantitative parameters for the assessment of the loading of the medical personnel. Lenka Glavina at the Zagreb Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry studied in her thesis the metabolism of 4-hydroxykonenal in osteosarcoma cells. She described the metabolism of reactive oxygen compounds and forms and methods of assessment of the metabolism. The measurements were performed with a HPLC and the results indicate that elimination of the HNE molecules could be used to assess the metabolism of reactive forms of oxygen. Mario Hrgetic from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in Zagreb designed and constructed a system for the measurement of oxygen dissolved in liquids. The system includes the analogue front end with a Clark cell and complete hardware and software for thus obtained data processing. Fran Supek at the Faculty of Science in Zagreb, Department of Biology, wrote a computer program for interactive codon usage analysis and has applied the program in a study of a variety of prokaryotic organisms. The program features various graphic interactive display possibilities and a neural network algorithm used for gene clustering studies. All the theses that were submitted for the contest are of very good quality and none could be eliminated on the grounds of inferior quality. In addition to the quality, the relevance for direct medical and biological application was taken into account. The Award Committee awarded the first award to Karin Costas-Mady for her thesis entitled "Ergonomics Effort Analysis of Employees in Medical Care Institution for Elderly People" The second award went to Mario Hrgetic for his thesis entitled "Dissolved Oxygen Measurement System" The final conclusion of the award committee was that the scientific work of the youngest generation yields good grounds for optimism.
Branko Breyer, Ph. D.
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