Students are presented with a hypothetical scenario in which they are biomedical engineers asked to design artificial hearts. Using the engineering design process as a guide, the challenge is established and students brainstorm to list everything they might need to know about the heart in order to create a complete mechanical replacement (size, how it functions, path of blood etc.). They conduct research to learn the information and organize it through various activities. They research artificial heart models that have already been used and rate their performance in clinical trials. Finally, they analyze the data to identify the artificial heart features and properties they think work best and document their findings in essay form.

Biology is designed for multi-semester biology courses for science majors. It is grounded on an evolutionary basis and includes exciting features that highlight careers in the biological sciences and everyday applications of the concepts at hand. To meet the needs of today’s instructors and students, some content has been strategically condensed while maintaining the overall scope and coverage of traditional texts for this course. Instructors can customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom. Biology also includes an innovative art program that incorporates critical thinking and clicker questions to help students understand—and apply—key concepts.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Describe the structure of the heart and explain how cardiac muscle is different from other musclesDescribe the cardiac cycleExplain the structure of arteries, veins, and capillaries, and how blood flows through the body

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Describe the structure of the heart and explain how cardiac muscle is different from other musclesDescribe the cardiac cycleExplain the structure of arteries, veins, and capillaries, and how blood flows through the body

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Rapamycin is a promising candidate as an anti-aging drug. Normally used to fight cancer, rapamycin has been shown to extend the lifespan of mice. But what about humans? To find out, researchers monitored the effect of rapamycin on test tubes of human coronary artery endothelial cells. These cells are integral to the structure and homeostasis of blood vessels in the heart but tend to harden with age, posing a looming threat to older individuals. Experiments showed that while rapamycin suppressed the expression of certain senescence-related proteins, it actually promoted endothelial cell differentiation into mesenchymal cells through morphological changes by activating autophagy, causing a functional modification. Because heart function is supported by the vascular network, induction of the endothelial–mesenchymal transition can drive the pathogenesis of heart disease..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.