The A&P Professor Science & Education Updates - Issue #149

Life Science

On a good day, things exit through the anus. But in rodents and pigs in respiratory distress, oxygen can be absorbed by tissues in the rectum, helping the animals recover, a new study suggests.

The scientists behind the research propose that flushing oxygen into the rectum could one day help save human lives if conventional ventilation methods are unavailable. What's not clear is whether the scientists making this suggestion had oxygen in their rectums at the time.

With a colleague, he created a miniaturized defibrillator that could be implanted inside patients suffering from potentially fatal arrhythmia.

The road to developing safe, reliable, mass-producible lipid nanodelivery-bots turned out to be rockier than anyone anticipated.

Data from fitness trackers and treadmill tests challenge ideas about what drives speed.

Since omicron became the dominant coronavirus variant, reinfections are on the rise – but it is unclear how long people can expect to be protected between bouts of covid-19

Omicron relatives called BA.4 and BA.5 are behind a fresh wave of COVID-19 in South Africa, and could be signs of a more predictable future for SARS-CoV-2.

Study shows that infections in very young children doubled during the Omicron wave.

Teaching & Learning

My class never did generate data to test their hypotheses. Instead, we finished the semester reading about and discussing scientific failure. I hope the handful of students who go on to graduate school will learn from the experience and bring an awareness with them that success doesn’t always come easy. I trust this knowledge will help my other students as well, wherever they go.

It doesn’t matter how well organized and carefully crafted your assessment system is: Inevitably, something will happen that you didn’t plan for. A student needs an accommodation, and you have no policy to handle it. Well-intentioned requirements are unintentionally blocking a student’s progress. Something just seems off and you need to address it.

Today, I’ll identify some helpful general principles that can guide your reasoning and help you make sensible decisions when you don’t know what to do.

TAPP News & Notes

What to Do When Flooded with New Learning? | Transparency About Models, Analogies, and Color Codes in Science | Should We Extend Deadlines?