Jenkins is co-author of a research paper that recounts the research history of cardiac pacemakers. Electromagnetic waves from microwave ovens could falsely signal pacemakers that hearts were beating regularly, and cause them to cut off, leading to cardiac arrest. Jenkins and other researchers at Georgia Tech made major contributions to the development of the current standardized testing methodology required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The test method consists of exposing a pacemaker to radiated fields or conducted currents while immersed in a saline solution with electrical characteristics similar to those of body tissues and fluids. Researchers apply interfering signals and track pacemaker pulse-amplitude, width and rate using bronze screen electrodes submerged in the solution and connected to monitoring equipment.
Manufacturers now enclose the devices in stainless steel or titanium cases to reduce interference.
Tech researchers are studying a tiny, fluorescing aquatic organism that won't keep them in the dark about water pollution. Dr. Terry Snell, colleagues and students are measuring concentrations of toxicants in water samples by watching the glow of rotifers, tiny herbivores that eat unicellular freshwater and marine algae. Measuring the ingestion rates and enzyme activities of rotifers is faster and cheaper than traditional tests that expose microscopic animals to polluted water samples and then track their mortality rates or study how their reproduction is inhibited. To study the ingestion rates of rotifers, researchers exposed them to samples of water with varying concentrations of the toxicants pentachlorophenol, copper and cadmium. The animals then ingested fluorescent labelled latex spheres.