The school also features a "high-bay materials lab" -- a building within a building where civil engineering students can test substances and structures.
This considerably reduced both the number of experimental animals and the quantity of test substances required, and also decreased the labour involved.
The team then screened all the possible combinations for sensitivity to four different test substances -- as vapors -- that differed significantly in their structural and electronic properties.
The experiments showed that the test substances were effective at limiting the growth of melanoma cells and nontoxic to healthy blood cells used as a control.
Future directions for this kind of research might test substances other than caffeine for similar effects on patient performance during psychological treatment.
In these studies, large doses of a test substance (a pharmaceutical, industrial chemical, pesticide, or household product) are pumped into animals' bodies, slowly poisoning them.