Ariel - Volume 9 Number 3

Executive Editor Emily Wofford Business Manager Fredric Jay Matlin University News John Patrick Welch World News George Robert Coar Editorials Editor Steve Levine Features Mark Rubin Brad Feldstein Photo Rick Spaide Circulation Victor Onufreiczuk Lee Wugofski Graphics and Art Steve Hulkower Commons Editor Brenda Peterso

Ariel - Volume 9 Number 1

Executive Editor Emily Wofford Business Manager Fredric Jay Matlin University News John Patrick Welch World News George Robert Coar Editorial Editor Steve Levine Feature Brad Feldstein Mark Rubin Graphics Steve Hulkower Photo Rick Spaide Circulation Lee Wugofsk

A preliminary analysis of healthcare disparities curriculum at WPI

Introduction: Undergraduate bioengineering and biomedical sciences curriculum is currently lacking the inclusion of healthcare disparities education. This has recently been highlighted by current social injustice movements, as well as the American Medical Association declaring race as an urgent public health threat, as unequal treatment in the healthcare field is becoming even more prominent. It is imperative to educate future healthcare professionals as early in their career as possible in order to mitigate these disparities in their later work. The purpose of this study was to look at the degree and manner in which students have intersected with healthcare disparities. Specifically, the study looks at where they get their information from, the extent to which they learned it, and their perceived importance of healthcare disparities as it relates to their major. Another focal point of the study was to examine the effectiveness of an educational module administered to students taking courses in biomedical sciences, bioengineering, and adjacent disciplines. Methods: The group designed a presentation that introduces the fundamentals of healthcare disparities, examples, and the ethical theories associated with the healthcare disparities. After presenting the guest lecture, the students were given a case study which highlighted a specific bias, tailored to the students' field of study, via anecdotal evidence and analysis. In doing so the students were essentially “role playing” in a healthcare disparity which elicits the reflective learning techniques recommended by teaching professionals. The biases were not explicitly stated in the case study which provoked the students to relate the case study’s scenario to the learned topics in the previously lectured material. Following the case study, smaller groups of 3-6 students were given discussion questions and intermittently moderated. These prompts asked students to identify where they see healthcare disparities and to develop potential solutions to the identified disparity in the case study. The discussion section was an opportunity for students to review healthcare disparities through a more complete scope of the topic and its application. Results: The data showed that BME students find healthcare disparities a more important topic in their field than their non-BME counterparts. The self reported data from n=461 students found that 79.9% of BME students found healthcare disparities “very important” in their field of study, while only 49.9% of non-BME students reported the same. These results were statistically significant. The data also showed that 72.1% of all n=461 students had not received any form of healthcare disparities education at all, while 73.4% of n=144 BME students reported the same. The data was analyzed concerning the relationship between students’ perception of importance and their exposure to healthcare disparities education. It was found that 26.3% of n=144 BME students reported receiving any coverage on healthcare disparities in courses, despite 79.9% of that population having reported healthcare disparities being “very important”. The data also showed that there are insignificant increases in students’ awareness and knowledge of healthcare disparities across class years. Using a paired t-test to compare responses from the Class of 2024 and Class of 2021, p=0.91, showing there is no statistical significance correlated to class year. Conclusion: Our findings supported the hypothesis that undergraduate students in biomedical engineering are not educated enough on healthcare disparities at WPI. Due to ABET section 1.3 criterion 2 and 4, “an ability to recognize ethical and professional responsibilities in engineering situations” and the importance of addressing healthcare disparities in undergraduate education, this deficit in biomedical engineering curriculum must be addressed

Why American Elections are Flawed (And How to Fix Them)

Concern about how American elections work has risen since 2000 and has been exacerbated by events during the 2016 campaign. To understand these issues, the first section examines several major challenges facing U.S. elections, including deepening party polarization over electoral procedures, the vulnerability of electronic records to hacking, and the impact of deregulating campaign spending, compounding the lack of professional standards of electoral management. For a broader perspective, section 2 clarifies the core concept and measure of 'electoral integrity', the key yardstick used in this report to evaluate the performance of American contests. Section 3 compares cross-national evidence from expert surveys, finding that recent US elections have the worst performance among two-dozen Western democracies. Section 4 considers pragmatic reforms designed to strengthen U.S. electoral laws and procedures, recommending expanding secure and convenient registration and balloting facilities, improving the independence and professional standards of electoral management, monitoring performance, and strengthening impartial dispute resolution mechanisms. The conclusion summarizes the core argument and the reforms

Autophagy Provides Nutrients but Can Lead to Chop-dependent Induction of Bim to Sensitize Growth Factor–deprived Cells to Apoptosis

Tissue homeostasis is controlled by the availability of growth factors, which sustain exogenous nutrient uptake and prevent apoptosis. Although autophagy can provide an alternate intracellular nutrient source to support essential basal metabolism of apoptosis-resistant growth factor–withdrawn cells, antiapoptotic Bcl-2 family proteins can suppress autophagy in some settings. Thus, the role of autophagy and interactions between autophagy and apoptosis in growth factor–withdrawn cells expressing Bcl-2 or Bcl-xL were unclear. Here we show autophagy was rapidly induced in hematopoietic cells upon growth factor withdrawal regardless of Bcl-2 or Bcl-xL expression and led to increased mitochondrial lipid oxidation. Deficiency in autophagy-essential gene expression, however, did not lead to metabolic catastrophe and rapid death of growth factor–deprived cells. Rather, inhibition of autophagy enhanced survival of cells with moderate Bcl-2 expression for greater than 1 wk, indicating that autophagy promoted cell death in this time frame. Cell death was not autophagic, but apoptotic, and relied on Chop-dependent induction of the proapoptotic Bcl-2 family protein Bim. Therefore, although ultimately important, autophagy-derived nutrients appear initially nonessential after growth factor withdrawal. Instead, autophagy promotes tissue homeostasis by sensitizing cells to apoptosis to ensure only the most apoptosis-resistant cells survive long-term using autophagy-derived nutrients when growth factor deprived

Open data from the first and second observing runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo

Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo are monitoring the sky and collecting gravitational-wave strain data with sufficient sensitivity to detect signals routinely. In this paper we describe the data recorded by these instruments during their first and second observing runs. The main data products are gravitational-wave strain time series sampled at 16384 Hz. The datasets that include this strain measurement can be freely accessed through the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center at http://gw-openscience.org, together with data-quality information essential for the analysis of LIGO and Virgo data, documentation, tutorials, and supporting software