Design-thinking, making, and innovating: Fresh tools for the physician\u27s toolbox

Medical school education should foster creativity by enabling students to become \u27makers\u27 who prototype and design. Healthcare professionals and students experience pain points on a daily basis, but are not given the tools, training, or opportunity to help solve them in new, potentially better ways. The student physician of the future will learn these skills through collaborative workshops and having dedicated \u27innovation time.\u27 This pre-clinical curriculum would incorporate skills centered on (1) Digital Technology and Small Electronics (DTSE), (2) Textiles and Medical Materials (TMM), and (3) Rapid Prototyping Technologies (RPT). Complemented by an on-campus makerspace, students will be able to prototype and iterate on their ideas in a fun and accessible space. Designing and making among and between patients and healthcare professionals would change the current dynamic of medical education, empowering students to solve problems in healthcare even at an early stage in their career. By doing so, they will gain empathy, problem-solving abilities, and communication skills that will extend into clinical practice. Our proposed curriculum will equip medical students with the skills, passion, and curiosity to impact the future of healthcare

Universal quasiparticle decoherence in hole- and electron-doped high-Tc cuprates

We use angle-resolved photoemission to unravel the quasiparticle decoherence process in the high-$T_c$ cuprates. The coherent band is highly renormalized, and the incoherent part manifests itself as a nearly vertical ``dive'' in the $E$-$k$ intensity plot that approaches the bare band bottom. We find that the coherence-incoherence crossover energies in the hole- and electron-doped cuprates are quite different, but scale to their corresponding bare bandwidth. This rules out antiferromagnetic fluctuations as the main source for decoherence. We also observe the coherent band bottom at the zone center, whose intensity is strongly suppressed by the decoherence process. Consequently, the coherent band dispersion for both hole- and electron-doped cuprates is obtained, and is qualitatively consistent with the framework of Gutzwiller projection.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Molecular Evolution of the Substrate Utilization Strategies and Putative Virulence Factors in Mosquito-Associated Spiroplasma Species

Comparative genomics provides a powerful tool to characterize the genetic differences among species that may be linked to their phenotypic variations. In the case of mosquito-associated Spiroplasma species, such approach is useful for the investigation of their differentiations in substrate utilization strategies and putative virulence factors. Among the four species that have been assessed for pathogenicity by artificial infection experiments, Spiroplasma culicicola and S. taiwanense were found to be pathogenic, whereas S. diminutum and S. sabaudiense were not. Intriguingly, based on the species phylogeny, the association with mosquito hosts and the gain or loss of pathogenicity in these species appears to have evolved independently. Through comparison of their complete genome sequences, we identified the genes and pathways that are shared by all or specific to one of these four species. Notably, we found that a glycerol-3-phosphate oxidase gene (glpO) is present in S. culicicola and S. taiwanense but not in S. diminutum or S. sabaudiense. Because this gene is involved in the production of reactive oxygen species and has been demonstrated as a major virulence factor in Mycoplasma, this distribution pattern suggests that it may be linked to the observed differences in pathogenicity among these species as well. Moreover, through comparative analysis with other Spiroplasma, Mycoplasma, and Mesoplasma species, we found that the absence of glpO in S. diminutum and S. sabaudiense is best explained by independent losses. Finally, our phylogenetic analyses revealed possible recombination of glpO between distantly related lineages and local rearrangements of adjacent genes

Supporting technology for the development of Controlled Ecological Life Support Systems (CELSS)

To support the development of Controlled Ecological Life Support Systems (CELSS) in the space program, a metabolic simulator has been selected for use in a closed chamber to test functions of the CELSS. This metabolic simulator is a catalytic reactor which oxidizes the methyl acetate to produce carbon dioxide and water vapor. In this project, kinetic studies of catalytic oxidation of methyl acetate were conducted using monolithic and pellet catalysts with 0.5% (by weight) platinum (Pt) on aluminum oxide (Al2O3). The reaction was studied at a pressure of one atmosphere and at temperatures varying from 160 C to 420 C. By-products were identified at the exit of the preheater and reactor. For the kinetic study with the monolithic catalyst, a linear regression method was used to correlate the kinetic data with zero-order, first-order and Langmuir-Hinshelwood models. Results indicate that the first-order model represents the data adequately at low concentrations of methyl acetate. For higher concentrations of methyl acetate, the Langmuir-Hinshelwood model best represents the kinetic data. Both rate constant and adsorption equilibrium constants were estimated from the regression. A Taguchi orthogonal array (L(sub 9)) was used to investigate the effects of temperature, flow rate, and concentration on the catalytic oxidation of methyl acetate. For the monolithic catalyst, temperature exerts the most significant effect, followed by concentration of methyl acetate. For the pellet catalyst, reaction temperature is the most significant factor, followed by gas flow rate and methyl acetate concentration. Concentrations of either carbon dioxide or oxygen were seen to have insignificant effect on the methyl acetate conversion process. Experimental results indicate that the preheater with glass beads can accomplish thermal cracking and catalytic reaction of methyl acetate to produce acetic acid, methanol, methyl formate, and 1-propanol. The concentration of all by-products was measured in ppmv (parts per million by volume). At higher temperatures, greater amounts of these products are produced, as expected. In all cases, methanol was the predominant concentration detected, followed by methyl formate. At temperatures lower than 320 C for the P-type monolithic catalyst, methanol, acetic acid, and acetone were detected, whereas, for the E-type monolithic catalyst, only methanol was detected at 160 C. Both P and E types of the monolithic catalyst were specified with the same substrates (ceramic), washcoat (Al2O3), and promoter (Pt). However, the manufacturing and treatment procedures were quite different. It was therefore concluded that the performance of the E-type monolithic catalyst is superior to that of the P-type for oxidation of methyl acetate. At higher reaction temperatures, e.g., above 420 C, all reactants and byproducts were completely oxidized using these two types of monolithic catalyst to produce carbon dioxide and water vapor. A complex heterogenous catalytic reaction mechanism was proposed to explain the formation of the byproducts (methanol, acetic acid, and methyl formate) as the methyl acetate traveled through the preheater packed with glass beads. The by-product, 1-propanol, may be formed only through a homogeneous reaction, since it is difficult to develop a reasonable sequence of heterogeneous reaction steps to explain its formation. The homogeneous thermal decomposition of methyl acetate to form free radicals was proposed to explain the formation of 1-propanol, and also methanol, in the preheater. A dual-site catalytic reaction mechanism was proposed for the oxidation of methyl acetate over Pt/Al2O3 monolithic catalyst. The dual-site mechanism describes the chemisorption of oxygen molecules as well as a physical adsorption of methyl acetate on the active sites. On the active sites, methyl acetate is oxidized rapidly to form carbon dioxide and water vapor. A rate equation derived from this mechanism gives the Langmuir-Hinshelwood rate formula which has been observed from the experimental data obtained in this project for high methyl acetate concentration (greater than 1000 ppmv) over a monolithic catalyst. If the oxygen concentration is very high and methyl acetate concentration is very low, the reaction rate equation is then reduced to a first-order with respect to methyl acetate concentration. The first-order model has also been observed from the experimental data obtained in this project for low methyl acetate concentration (less than 1000 ppmv)