This lesson contains background about the blood vascular system and the heart. Also, the different sizes of capillaries, veins, and arteries, and how they affect blood flow through the system. We will then proceed to talk about the heart's function in the blood vascular system. This will lead into a discussion of heart valves, how they work and what might cause them to fail. Then we will discuss prosthetic heart valves.

This course elaborates on the application of the principles of energy and mass flow to major human organ systems. It discusses mechanisms of regulation and homeostasis. It also discusses anatomical, physiological, and pathophysiological features of the cardiovascular, respiratory, and renal systems. There is emphasis on those systems, features, and devices that are most illuminated by the methods of physical sciences.

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:

"A healthy heart is one that stays in shape—literally. Remodeling of the heart’s structure is both a cause and an effect of heart disease. One molecule that could help fortify the heart against harmful reshaping is STING. STING is a signaling molecule that triggers a fleet of protective chemicals during infection, but recent studies suggest STING could also play a role in heart injury. To explore this role, researchers monitored STING in mouse models of heart remodeling. Mice experiencing heart remodeling showed elevated levels of STING. To isolate the effects of STING, certain mice were genetically altered to overexpress the molecule. Compared with unmodified mice, these high-STING mice showed smaller changes in heart size and better overall heart function. Cell experiments revealed that STING could provide these protective effects by combating autophagy. Autophagy is the process of degrading and recycling parts of the cell and is the driver of heart remodeling..."

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

In this lesson the students will learn how the heart functions. Students will be introduced to the concept of action potential generation. The lesson will explain how action potential generation causes the electrical current that causes muscle contraction in the heart. Students will be introduced to the basic electrical signal generated by the heart; P, QRS, and T waves. The lesson will approach the heart from an engineering standpoint and encourage students to design ways to improve heart function. Students will also learn the basic steps of the engineering design process.

Students are presented with the unit's grand challenge problem: You are the lead engineer for a biomaterials company that has a cardiovascular systems client who wants you to develop a model that can be used to test the properties of heart valves without using real specimens. How might you go about accomplishing this task? What information do you need to create an accurate model? How could your materials be tested? Students brainstorm as a class, then learn some basic information relevant to the problem (by reading the transcript of an interview with a biomedical engineer), and then learn more specific information on how heart tissues work their structure and composition (lecture information presented by the teacher). This prepares them for the associated activity, during which students cement their understanding of the heart and its function by dissecting sheep hearts to explore heart anatomy.

Students learn how to take blood pressure by observing a teacher demonstration and then practicing on fellow classmates in small groups. Once the hands-on component of this activity is completed, the class brainstorms and discusses how blood pressure might affect a person's health. This activity acts as hook for the second lesson in this unit, in which blood pressure is presented in detail, as well as how variances in blood pressure can affect a person's cardiovascular system.

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:

"Heart attacks, or myocardial infarctions, are a major cause of death globally and can leave survivors with severe, lingering symptoms. Exercise is a key rehabilitation tool, but exactly how it helps patients recover is not yet known. The microbes in our gut directly impact our health in other ways, but could they play a role in exercise-related recovery after heart attacks? To test this possibility, a team of researchers used a mouse model of myocardial infarction (MI). First, they demonstrated that exercise training reduced cardiac dysfunction after MI and that exercise after MI altered the gut microbial richness and community structure. Depleting the microbiota prior to MI blocked the protective effects of exercise, suggesting that the benefits were dependent upon the microbiota. Further, transplanting the gut microbiota from exercised post-MI mice conferred cardiac benefits to recipient mice..."

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