Rate of Convergence to Barenblatt Profiles for the Fast Diffusion Equation

We study the asymptotic behaviour of positive solutions of the Cauchy problem for the fast diffusion equation near the extinction time. We find a continuum of rates of convergence to a self-similar profile. These rates depend explicitly on the spatial decay rates of initial data

The Development and Growth of Empathy Among Engineering Students

Discourse on empathy is growing globally, as is its focus within the engineering community. In the context of engineering, scholars have depicted this interpersonal phenomenon as a necessary skill for effectively communicating, a core component of ethical reasoning, and a key technique for designing to meet the needs of users. However, literature regarding its development within engineering is rather limited, and the literature that does exist is disconnected. Even literature outside of engineering tends to focus on childhood development as opposed to adult development. While the developmental literature may tend to focus on earlier ages (likely because this is when an individual most rapidly develops), the endeavor of empathic growth and development need not be abandoned within post-secondary education. Rather, it indicates that we lack an understanding of the ideal means for empathic development later in one’s life. Given the growing emphasis on the necessity of empathy to thrive as an engineer, engineering educators need to understand the constellation of existing tools and pedagogical techniques to foster empathy within the engineering curriculum. This synthesis piece highlights a variety of educational contexts and pedagogical techniques, each of which we posit are equally salient and mutually supportive for the development of engineering students’ empathic skills, abilities, or dispositions. We draw from literature from a wide variety of fields, including counselling, psychology, moral philosophy, psychotherapy, neuropsychology, and engineering education. In sum, we describe five educational contexts and a myriad of techniques that we posit, when used effectively and spread across engineering curricula, will be effective means towards the development of empathy among engineering students

Exploring the Manifestation of Empathy within Engineering Innovation and Design

poster abstractThe study of empathy within engineering has potential to improve the education of innovative and ethically-oriented engineers through the application of empathically guided engineering principles and processes. However, the collective understanding of the role of empathy within engineering is minimal. Hence, the purpose of these two distinct but aligned investigations was to understand how empathy manifests within engineering innovation and design. Specifically, the guiding research questions included: (1) “In what manner and to what extent does empathy predict innovative behavioral tendencies?”, and (2) “In what ways does empathy manifest throughout design?” To address the initial research question, we disseminated two validated instruments (the Interpersonal Reactivity Index and Innovative Behavioral Scales) to students at a large, public, mid-western university. Through a series of multiple regression analyses, we found that that cognitive empathy types (e.g., perspective-taking, fantasy) showed a more pronounced relationship with innovative behavioral tendencies (e.g., questioning, idea networking, observation) than affective empathy types (e.g., empathic concern, personal distress). To address the second research question, we thematically analyzed a set of critical events extracted from eight videos that featured nine STEM students who participated in a three-week service-learning course at the same university. Through our analysis, we found four categories with 12 underlying themes that represented empathically-oriented techniques designers utilized to develop a user-centric empathic understanding, as well as how these informed their creation of design criteria, outcomes, and evaluation of those outcomes. Taken together, the results indicate that empathy is highly salient within engineering, and that emphasizing this salience throughout engineering programs and organizations could change broader societal images to demonstrate the relevance of empathy to engineering design and innovation. This, in turn, might attract more empathically-inclined students to engineering

In Their Shoes: Student Perspectives on the Connection between Empathy and Engineering

An emerging body of literature highlights the importance of empathy within engineering work and explores how engineering students develop empathic tendencies and utilize empathy during design. Still, more work needs to be done to better understand how engineering students conceptualize empathy and view its role in engineering practice. In this study, we explored the ways that engineering students described empathy and its application in their engineering work. Eight engineering students, from seven different majors, ranging from juniors to doctoral students, participated semi-structured interviews focused on the empathy in engineering. Using thematic analysis we uncovered three themes revealing engineering students’ experiences with empathy (understanding others’ feelings, important in everyday life, generally outside the scope of engineering) and four themes revealing potential uses for empathy in engineering work (team settings, problem contextualization, human-centered design, individual inspiration). These findings highlight existing gaps between students’ perceptions of empathy as compared to scholarly literature on the role of empathy in engineering and perceptions from engineering faculty and practicing engineers. For example, the themes demonstrate that students are often generally aware of certain potential uses of empathy, but have not necessarily experienced those uses in their own work. In the paper, we discuss how alignments or discrepancies between student and expert perceptions both extend our notions of the role of empathy in engineering and identify areas that can be better supported through engineering instruction

Exploring the Role of Empathy in a Service-Learning Design Project

The emergence of empathic design has inspired growing discourse on the role of empathy within design. While research on empathic design acknowledges the presence of empathy in design practice, little attention has been paid to its underlying mechanisms and how these mechanisms operate within the designer’s mind throughout the design process. In this study, we used the service-learning data set to develop an emergent empathic design model. We collected and analyzed any instances in which designers evidenced empathy for the end users. We kept empathy loosely defined due to the exploratory intent of this study and the recognition that empathy by designers for users may show itself only subtly in designers’ reflections on interactions with users. Through thematic analysis of over 100 critical instances during the 8 service-learning videos, we discovered 4 higher level themes with 12 underlying patterns of empathy in the design process. These themes included (a) developing understanding - design behaviors oriented towards identifying and comprehending the perspectives of potential users, (b) identifying criteria and constraints - employing an empathic understanding of the user to set design goals and parameters, (c) generating design concepts - designers’ empathic understanding of the user inspires new design concepts, and (d) evaluating design concepts - using empathy to determine the appropriateness of specific design concepts for the users. These themes, their underlying patterns, and 5 additional patterns associated with empathy but not considered empathic, were mapped to depict an empathic design model

Critical Incidents in Ways of Experiencing Ethical Engineering Practice

Background: Ethics is a required outcome for engineering education programs, but few studies focus on how workforce experiences lead to changes in how engineers experience ethics in practice. By identifying what incidents influence the ways that engineers come to experience ethical engineering practice, we can more effectively design post-secondary pedagogy based on these experiences. Purpose: We address the research question, What types of critical incidents influence engineers ways of experiencing ethical engineering practice? By identifying and categorizing critical incidents, we aim to provide the engineering education community with strategies and stories that they can embed in post-secondary engineering ethics curriculums. Design/Method: We employed a semi-structured interview protocol to solicit experiences with ethical engineering practice among 43 engineers from a variety of engineering disciplines and who were all currently working in the health products industry. While the interviews focused on ways of experiencing ethical engineering practice, many participants discussed critical change-inducing incidents therein. Thus, we used critical incident technique to identify and synthesize influential workforce experiences in their ethical practice. Results We identified 106 critical incidents, or workforce experiences that led to a change in how engineers viewed or practiced ethical engineering. We grouped incidents into 17 critical incident types, which represent patterns of events or behaviors that led to a change or reinforcement in ethical practice. We grouped incident types into five categories: (1) Cultural Immersions, (2) Interpersonal Encounters; (3) Ethical Actions, (4) Ethical Failures, and (5) Mentorship Events. Conclusion: This study can inform educational change efforts by ensuring that such efforts are grounded in and based on the lived experiences of practicing engineers. We found that Cultural Immersions was the most prominent type of critical incident among participants, and thus we emphasize the import of supporting student awareness of organizational culture, including how it informs ones ethical views and practices. Based on the range of incident types, we also emphasize how instructors might consider and build the multitude of incident types and categories to implement pedagogy aligned with workforce experiences

Eculizumab is a safe and effective treatment in pediatric patients with atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome

Atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome (aHUS) is caused by alternative complement pathway dysregulation, leading to systemic thrombotic microangiopathy (TMA) and severe end-organ damage. Based on 2 prospective studies in mostly adults and retrospective data in children, eculizumab, a terminal complement inhibitor, is approved for aHUS treatment. Here we prospectively evaluated efficacy and safety of weight-based dosing of eculizumab in eligible pediatric patients with aHUS in an open-label phase II study. The primary end point was complete TMA response by 26 weeks. Twenty-two patients (aged 5 months-17 years) were treated; 16 were newly diagnosed, 12 had no prior plasma exchange/infusion during current TMA symptomatology, 11 received baseline dialysis, and 2 had prior renal transplants. By week 26, 14 achieved a complete TMA response, 18 achieved hematologic normalization, and 16 had 25% or better improvement in serum creatinine. Plasma exchange/infusion was discontinued in all, and 9 of the 11 patients who required dialysis at baseline discontinued, whereas none initiated new dialysis. Eculizumab was well tolerated; no deaths or meningococcal infections occurred. Bone marrow failure, wrist fracture, and acute respiratory failure were reported as unrelated severe adverse events. Thus, our findings establish the efficacy and safety of eculizumab for pediatric patients with aHUS and are consistent with proposed immediate eculizumab initiation following diagnosis in children

Applying Phenomenography to Develop a Comprehensive Understanding of Ethics in Engineering Practice

This Work-in-Progress Research paper describes (1) the contemporary research space on ethics education in engineering; (2) our long-term research plan; (3) the theoretical underpinnings of Phase 1 of our research plan (phenomenography); and (4) the design and developmental process of a phenomenographic interview protocol to explore engineers' experiences with ethics. Ethical behavior is a complex phenomenon that is complicated by the institutional and cultural contexts in which it occurs. Engineers also have varied roles and often work in a myriad of capacities that influence their experiences with and understanding of ethics in practice. We are using phenomenography, a qualitative research approach, to explore and categorize the ways engineers experience and understand ethical engineering practice. Specifically, phenomenography will allow us to systematically investigate the range and complexity of ways that engineers experience ethics in professional practice in the health products industry. Phenomenographic data will be obtained through a specialized type of semi-structured interview. Here we introduce the design of our interview protocol and its four sections: Background, Experience, Conceptual, and Summative. We also describe our iterative process for framing questions throughout each section