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BW LO 4: Students should be able to describe the structure, function, and interactions of the organs of the human digestive, circulatory and respiratory system. 

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BW LO 4: Students should be able to describe the structure, function, and interactions of the organs of the human digestive, circulatory and respiratory system. 

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NOS: 2, 3, 4, 10
BW: 6, 7
CW: 9

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BC- Being Creative
BL- Being Literate
WWO- Working with Others
C- Communicating
BN- Being Numerate
MI & T- Managing Information & Thinking

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Explanations of links to JCT key skills:

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Explanations of links to JCT key skills:

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PADLET Explanations of links to JCT Key Skills

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Peer reviewed papers on general science pedagogy 

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Peer reviewed papers on general science pedagogy 

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1) Being in the hot spot: a phenomenological study of two beginning teachers’ experiences enacting inquiry science pedagogy

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1) Being in the hot spot: a phenomenological study of two beginning teachers’ experiences enacting inquiry science pedagogy

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2) Addressing the epistemic elephant in the room: Epistemic agency and the next generation science standards

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2) Addressing the epistemic elephant in the room: Epistemic agency and the next generation science standards

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3) Using information and communication technology (ICT) to the maximum: learning and teaching biology with limited digital technologies

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3) Using information and communication technology (ICT) to the maximum: learning and teaching biology with limited digital technologies

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Peer reviewed papers on conceptual issues about the science involved 

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Peer reviewed papers on conceptual issues about the science involved 

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1) Heart Rate Variability and Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Adolescent Boys

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1) Heart Rate Variability and Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Adolescent Boys

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2) A model of mechanical interactions between heart and lungs

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2) A model of mechanical interactions between heart and lungs

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3) Adverse effects of exercise on respiratory system health

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3) Adverse effects of exercise on respiratory system health

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Reflection on the developments in my thinking

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Reflection on the developments in my thinking

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The Components of Blood and Their Importance

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What happens during a heart attack? - Krishna Sudhir

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What happens inside your body when you exercise?

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The complex network of veins that keeps us cool during the heat of summer has inspired engineers to create novel thermal management systems. But replicating the circulatory system, in form or function, has been no easy task. Recently, a team of researchers from Drexel University and North Carolina State University have created a computational platform that could be the key to mimicking the body's evolutionary optimized cooling system. Microvasculature

In a study published in the International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, Ahmad Najafi, PhD, a professor in Drexel's College of Engineering, and his faculty collaborator, Jason Patrick, PhD, from North Carolina State University, report on how a computational technique they developed can quickly produce designs for 3D printing carbon-fiber composite materials with an internal vasculature optimized for active-cooling.

"When you get hot, the body sends a signal to the circulatory system to pump more blood to the surface of the skin -- this is why we sometimes get red in the face" Najafi said. "This is a natural method for dissipating heat that works so well, scientists and engineers have been trying for years to replicate in mechanical cooling systems, like the ones that keep cars and computers from overheating."

Najafi and Patrick's latest paper describes an integrated platform to design and create bioinspired microvascular composites that can do just that.

In minutes, their computer program, coined HyTopS, which is short for hybrid topology/shape optimization, can produce a schematic for a vascular network with the ideal shape, size and distribution of micro-vessels to actively cool a material via liquid circulation -- a trick that took Mother Nature more than a few evolutionary cycles to perfect.

Microvascular fiber-composites are currently being developed to cool everything from electric vehicles to next generation aircraft, where increasingly higher performance is turning up the heat they generate.

"These modern materials could revolutionize everything from hypersonic space vehicles to battery packaging in electric cars and even supercomputer cooling systems. As things move faster, and energy output and computing power continue to increase, an enormous amount of heat is generated that requires new approaches to cooling," Patrick said. "Inspired by circulatory systems in living organisms, internal micro-vasculature provides an effective means to thermal regulation in synthetic materials."

This branch of bioinspired-based research has only been around for a decade or so, but the results it has generated are already quite promising, according to Najafi/Patrick who started their academic careers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign developing microvascular materials for self-healing, active cooling and beyond.

Part of their recent research thrust is to replace more traditional metallic systems that transfer heat via water or air. While it's been a reliable solution, anyone who has carried an air conditioner window unit will surely understand why a different cooling system would be an improvement for any vehicle or component that is trying to cut weight.

"Microvascular composites offer many advantages over existing liquid and air-cooling systems, primarily, they are much lighter with comparable strength, but they are also very durable -- which is important if you consider the widespread effect of corrosion on metallic components," Najafi sad. "And if you consider these among other factors, it's easy to see why they are being sought in aerospace, automotive and energy sectors."

To put their optimization method to the test, the researchers designed and built a microvascular carbon-fiber composite using 3D printing and tested its cooling abilities against a reference design from prior studies. After heating the carbon-composites to a maximum temperature, liquid coolant (similar to the one in your car) was pumped through each vascular network to begin the cooling process.

The HyTopS-optimized carbon-composite was not only cooler, but more uniform in terms of surface temperature distribution, and was able to cool down faster than the reference design.

In addition to superior performance of the optimized material, the advantage the HyTopS method is that it automatically calculates the impact of changes to the diameter and arrangement of the channels, as well as how they are connected to one another. It takes into consideration the material makeup and overall geometry of the system being cooled and corresponding heat transfer characteristics. And it factors in parameters related to the manufacturing process, so the final design is a realistic microvascular material that can be made by 3D printing or other accessible fabrication approaches.

"It's nearly impossible to reproduce the entire complexity of natural microvascular, but our program allows for a great deal of optimization input and considers manufacturing parameters to ensure the design can actually be constructed," Najafi said.

The collaborative team intends to use the HyTopS method to explore other intriguing and interdisciplinary aspects of microvascular composites, including structural mechanics and electromagnetics.

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human biology; medical topics; immune system; thermodynamics; materials science; engineering and construction; artificial intelligence; computers and internet; spintronics research

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Mimicking body's circulatory AC could keep airplanes, cars and computers cooler: Researchers' program designs materials with human-like microvasculature

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The complex network of veins that keeps us cool during the heat of summer has inspired engineers to create novel thermal management systems. But replicating the circulatory system, in form or function, has been no easy task.

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Drinking coffee might keep us up at night, but new research has given us a reason to sleep easy knowing that the popular drink isn't as bad for our arteries as some previous studies would suggest.

The research from Queen Mary University of London has shown that drinking coffee, including in people who drink up to 25 cups a day, is not associated with having stiffer arteries.

The research, led by Professor Steffen Petersen, was presented today at the British Cardiovascular Society (BCS) Conference in Manchester and part-funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF).

Arteries carry blood containing oxygen and nutrients from your heart to the rest of your body. If they become stiff, it can increase the workload on the heart and increase a person's chance of having a heart attack or stroke.

The study of over 8,000 people in the UK debunks previous studies that claimed drinking coffee increases arterial stiffness. Previous suggestions that drinking coffee leads to stiffer arteries are inconsistent and could be limited by lower participant numbers, according to the team behind this new research.

Coffee consumption was categorised into three groups for the study. Those who drink less than one cup a day, those who drink between one and three cups a day and those who drink more than three. People who consumed more than 25 cups of coffee a day were excluded, but no increased stiffening of arteries was associated with those who drank up to this high limit when compared with those who drank less than one cup a day.

The associations between drinking coffee and artery stiffness measures were corrected for contributing factors like age, gender, ethnicity, smoking status, height, weight, how much alcohol someone drank, what they ate and high blood pressure.

Of the 8,412 participants who underwent MRI heart scans and infrared pulse wave tests, the research showed that moderate and heavy coffee drinkers were most likely to be male, smoke, and consume alcohol regularly.

Dr Kenneth Fung, who led the data analysis for the research at Queen Mary University of London, said:

"Despite the huge popularity of coffee worldwide, different reports could put people off from enjoying it. Whilst we can't prove a causal link in this study, our research indicates coffee isn't as bad for the arteries as previous studies would suggest.

"Although our study included individuals who drink up to 25 cups a day, the average intake amongst the highest coffee consumption group was 5 cups a day. We would like to study these people more closely in our future work so that we can help to advise safe limits."

Professor Metin Avkiran, Associate Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation, said:

"Understanding the impact that coffee has on our heart and circulatory system is something that researchers and the media have had brewing for some time.

"There are several conflicting studies saying different things about coffee, and it can be difficult to filter what we should believe and what we shouldn't. This research will hopefully put some of the media reports in perspective, as it rules out one of the potential detrimental effects of coffee on our arteries."

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heart disease; cholesterol; stroke prevention; staying healthy; food and agriculture; beer and wine; food; biology

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Coffee not as bad for heart and circulatory system as previously thought: Coffee does not stiffen your arteries, study shows

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A new study shows that drinking coffee isn't as bad for our arteries as some previous studies would suggest. The research has shown that drinking coffee, including in people who drink up to 25 cups a day, is not associated with having stiffer arteries.

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The heart is divided vertically by a wall called a septum into right (your right) and left parts. The right part is smaller than the left: its muscles only have to pump blood a few inches to the lungs, while the muscles of the left half have to pump blood to the whole body.

The function of the right half of our heart is to receive oxygen-poor blood from the veins of the body. Venous blood empties into the top-right chamber, or right atrium, of the heart, and the right ventricle pumps that oxygen-poor blood (via the pulmonary artery) to the lungs, where the blood, passing through minute capillaries, picks up oxygen.

From the lungs, the oxygen-rich blood flows back into the heart's left atrium via the pulmonary veins; and from the left atrium, the oxygen-rich blood drains into the left ventricle, from whence it is pumped via the aorta to the body.

The blood pumped to the lungs by the right ventricle is oxygen-poor blood; it has given up its oxygen to the cells that need it around the body. But this "used blood" is rich in something else-carbon dioxide. As the body's cells have taken oxygen, they have given up carbon dioxide to the circulating blood. For both oxygen and carbon dioxide, the "carrier" has been hemoglobin , a complex iron-protein substance that is part of our red blood cells.

Capillaries and Alveoli

The pulmonary artery carrying this lung-bound blood soon branches into smaller and smaller vessels, and eventually into microscopic capillaries that reach into every crook and crevice of the lungs.

In the lungs, the walls of the capillaries touch the walls of equally microscopic structures called alveoli (singular, alveolus ). The alveoli are the smallest air sacs of the lungs. These tiny, expandable air cells are the destination of every breath of air we take. Estimates of the total number of alveoli in both our lungs vary between 300 million and a billion-in any case, we normally have several hundred million of them.

Carbon Dioxide and Oxygen Exchange

Where they meet, the membranous walls of both a capillary and an alveolus are both about as thin as any living tissue can be-a thickness that is only the width of one cell. Under such conditions, the carbon dioxide carried by the hemoglobin in our blood to the lungs diffuses (as tiny gaseous "bubbles") across both the wall of a capillary and the wall of an alveolus.

Once inside the sac of the alveolus, carbon dioxide is ready to be exhaled from the body by "breathing out." One indication of just how well this system works is the fact that the air we exhale has roughly 100 times more carbon dioxide than the air we breathe in.

At the same time that hemoglobin dumps carbon dioxide at the interface of the capillary and alveolus walls, it picks up the oxygen made available from inhaled fresh air that has reached the alveoli. The molecular oxygen bubbles cross the membranes in the same way-but in the opposite direction-as the carbon dioxide.

Hemoglobin in the capillaries picks up the oxygen and carries it via veins leading away from the lungs, to the left atrium of the heart.

Essential Role of Moisture

The alveolar membranes are supplied with a thin film of moisture that is absolutely indispensable to the exchange of gases in the lungs.

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The Respiratory System and the Lungs - Interaction between heart and lungs

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The heart is divided vertically by a wall called a septum into right (your right) and left parts. The right part is smaller than the left: its muscles only have to pump blood a few inches to the lungs, while the muscles of the left half have to pump blood to the whole body.

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Múinteoirí eolaíochta a mhúineann trí mheán na Gaeilge a d'aistrigh Eolaíocht Riachtanach. Mar sin, cinntítear an caighdeán is fearr ó thaobh na heolaíochta agus ó thaobh an aistriúcháin do do dhaltaí. Más mian leat Eolaíocht Riachtanach a chur ar do leabharliosta, seol ríomhphost chuig ár bhFoireann Seirbhísí do Chustaiméirí ag info@folens.ie nó glaoigh orainn ag 01 413 7200.

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How many calories are in your favorite foods? How much exercise would you have to do to burn off these calories? What is the relationship between calories and weight? Explore these issues by choosing diet and exercise and keeping an eye on your weight.

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We all know that a poor diet is unhealthy, but a new BYU study finds that stress may just as harmful to our bodies as a really bad diet.

In a new paper published in Nature Scientific Reports, BYU professor of microbiology and molecular biology Laura Bridgewater found that when female mice were exposed to stress, their gut microbiota -- the microorganisms vital to digestive and metabolic health -- changed to look like the mice had been eating a high-fat diet.

"Stress can be harmful in a lot of ways, but this research is novel in that it ties stress to female-specific changes in the gut microbiota," Bridgewater said. "We sometimes think of stress as a purely psychological phenomenon, but it causes distinct physical changes."

Bridgewater and her collaborators at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China took a large group of 8-week-old mice and exposed half of the males and half of the females to a high-fat diet. After 16 weeks, all of the mice were exposed to mild stress over the course of 18 days.

Researchers then extracted microbial DNA from the mice fecal pellets before and after the stress to test how the gut microbiota was affected. They also measured mouse anxiety based on how much and where the mice traveled in an open field arena.

The researchers found fascinating differences between genders: Male mice on the high-fat diet exhibited more anxiety than females on the high-fat diet, and high-fat males also showed decreased activity in response to stress. However, it was only in female mice that stress caused the gut microbiota composition to shift as if the animals were on a high-fat diet.

While the study was only carried out on animals, researchers believe there are could be significant implications for humans.

"In society, women tend to have higher rates of depression and anxiety, which are linked to stress" said Bridgewater, who also serves as Associate Dean of the BYU College of Life Sciences. "This study suggests that a possible source of the gender discrepancy may be the different ways gut microbiota responds to stress in males vs. females."

BYU's Chenhong Zhang served as an author on the paper. Liping Zhao, Shengtian Li, Jing Wang, Qianpeng Zhang, Weiwei Hu and Yanqui Wu of Shanghai Jiao Tong University also contributed to this study.

Journal Reference:

Laura C. Bridgewater, Chenhong Zhang, Yanqiu Wu, Weiwei Hu, Qianpeng Zhang, Jing Wang, Shengtian Li, Liping Zhao. Gender-based differences in host behavior and gut microbiota composition in response to high fat diet and stress in a mouse model. Scientific Reports, 2017; 7 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-11069-4

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diet and weight loss; obesity; nutrition; anxiety; dieting and weight control; stress; mice; rodents; genetically modified

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Stress might be just as unhealthy as junk food to digestive system: Study with mice shows stress causes digestive microorganisms to behave similar to how they act with high-fat diet

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We all know that a poor diet is unhealthy, but a new BYU study finds that stress may just as harmful to our bodies as a really bad diet.

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Food's incredible journey (Video)

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Explanation of use of these peer reviewed papers

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Explanation of use of these peer reviewed papers

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Explanations of use of these peer reviewed papers 

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Explanations of use of these peer reviewed papers 