Facilities and Labs
Students within the School of Integrated Health Sciences have access to many laboratories in which to complete department-specific laboratory procedures or research studies.
Spectroscopy Laboratory
This laboratory contains three high-purity germanium gamma ray detection systems and a 16-channel alpha spectroscopy system. The gamma spectroscopy systems allow quick and accurate identification and quantification of any gamma ray emitting radionuclides at environmental levels.
Liquid Scintillation Laboratory
In addition to housing a brand-new low-level alpha/beta discriminating liquid scintillation counter, this laboratory has two Oxford automated gross alpha/beta proportional counters and three gas flow proportional counters. The liquid scintillation counter is particularly useful in determining levels of 3H, 14C, 32P, 35S, or 90Sr in samples in a liquid matrix.
Environmental Radiochemistry Laboratory
In the Environmental Radiochemistry Laboratory, soil, water, vegetation, and air filter samples are prepared for counting. Special equipment includes cation and anion separation columns, drying ovens, furnaces, various environmental shakers, and radiochemical fume hoods.
Radiochemistry and Environmental Health Physics Laboratory
This lab, located in the Science, Engineering and Technology Building, contains three hoods—one for radioactive work and two for nonradioactive use. This facility is ideally suited for performing radiochemical separations and analyses.
Hot Sample Preparation Laboratory
This laboratory contains facilities used to prepare moderately radioactive environmental samples and radioactive standards and tracers.
Survey Instrument Laboratory
The Survey Instrument Laboratory serves primarily as an undergraduate teaching laboratory. It contains a fume hood designed to handle radioactive samples, miniscaler workstations, and a variety of portable proportional, Geiger-Muller, and scintillation detectors.
Tissue Culture Laboratory
This laboratory contains all necessary equipment for tissue culturing, including hoods, incubators, centrifuges, microscopes, refrigerators, and freezers. This lab also contains a number of portable diode lasers, which are used for cancer cell irradiation.
Radiography Imaging Laboratories
These labs contain three fully equipped diagnostic x-ray units (two film and one digital), a film processing room, a screen-film mammography unit, and a C-arm.
The Kinesiology and Nutrition Sciences department has well-equipped laboratories used for teaching and research.
Biomechanics Laboratory
The Biomechanics Laboratory is housed in the 3,000-square-foot Sports Injury Research Center facility on the 51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ campus. Co-Directors John Mercer, Ph.D., and Janet Dufek, Ph.D., share a research focus on lower-extremity function and injury prevention, which fosters a collaborative research environment for faculty and students.
Exercise Physiology Laboratory
The Exercise Physiology Laboratory comprises three rooms that focus on human performance, exercise biochemistry, and body composition. Equipment for evaluating human performance includes a Precore treadmill, Precore elliptical machine, Hammer Strength Iso-lateral High Row machine, Maxicam bench press, Quinton electrocardiogram machine, and AEI Moxus metabolic measurement system.
Equipment for exercise biochemistry includes an Epoch 96-well microtiter plate reader, Beckman refrigerated centrifuge, Eppendorf micro centrifuge, Revco -80 freezer, Air Science ductless fume hood, Precision reciprocal shaking water bath, Genesys Gamma-1 RIA gamma counter, and Barnstead Mega Pure water system.
Equipment used for determining body composition includes an underwater weighing system, BOD POD, and Dual-Energy X-ray Absorptiometry (DEXA).
Motor Performance and Learning Laboratory
Housed in the Paul McDermott Physical Education Building, the Motor Performance and Learning Lab consists of a testing room, work and meeting space, and a storage area. The lab is equipped with a stabilometer (stability platform), portable force platform, ski simulator, Bassin anticipation timer, reaction time measurement devices, and video camera. The testing room contains a putting green, driving range golf mat, catch net, and ball machine for experiments that require swinging, batting, or throwing motions.
Physical Activity Policy Research Laboratory
The Physical Activity Policy Research Lab is located in the McDermott Physical Education Complex (MPE), Room 330. Research in this lab focuses on examining physical activity in relation to policy and the environment in a variety of active living domains, including schools, workplaces, community recreation venues, and transportation.
Athletic Training Teaching Lab
This teaching lab, located in Bigelow Health Sciences, Room 449, enables athletic training students to practice their skills and provides the tools they will frequently use for the evaluation and treatment of injuries and illnesses, including taping stations, treatment tables, heating/cooling and electrical modalities, injury evaluation tools, injury rehabilitation tools, and emergency management tools. This room is used throughout the Athletic Training and Integrated Health Sciences curriculums.
The physical therapy department uses the following laboratories:
Gait and Balance Lab
Designed primarily for gait, posture, and balance assessments, the Gait and Balance Lab is equipped with the NeuroCom Smart Equitest portable deweighting harness, overground nondeweighting harness system, and instrumented rehabilitation treadmill. The NeuroCom Smart Equitest balance assessment tool is capable of performing sensory organization testing (visual, vestibular, and somatosensory), dynamic stability with unexpected perturbations, and limits of stability. Additional equipment can assess vestibular-ocular reflexes for assessment of the vestibular system functioning.
Diagnostics Lab
The Diagnostics Lab contains much of the program’s diagnostic testing equipment, such as handheld dynamometers, pain pressure algometers, goniometers, and blood lactate chemistry analyzers, as well as a Biosound Esaote MyLab25 Gold unit diagnostic ultrasound with a variable 2.5 to 6.6 MHz, 60 mm curvilinear array that can assess soft tissue up to 9 cm in depth.
Pediatrics Lab
The Pediatrics Lab contains assessment equipment for motor development as well as treatment equipment for clinical studies, including a pediatric treadmill with an overtreadmill portable deweighting harness system.