Virtual Cardiology Lab
Looking for a supplemental hands-on activity with cardiology in your course?Try the FREE online interactive Cardiology Virtual Lab from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.It covers these concepts:Symptoms of a selection of heart diseases, to serve as examples of what kinds of things can go wrong with the heart. How are symptoms detected and why?Tools and techniques used for diagnosis. What can the different techniques detect and how do they work?Principles of pedigree analysis.What can we use from this in teaching undergraduate A&P?Link to this virtual lab activity from your online s...
Source: The A and P Professor - June 15, 2015 Category: Physiology Authors: Kevin Patton Source Type: blogs
A Brain-Lymphatic Connection
Existing dogma in neuroscience states that the brain does not possess the classical lymphatic drainage system found in other parts of body. However, a recent letter in the journal Nature reports the discovery of lymphatic vessels lining the dural sinuses in mice. These were shown to drain immune cells and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) into the deep cervical lymph nodes. Although more work is yet to be done in humans, this discovery will cause neuroscientists to revisit a number of concepts related to CSF and lymphatic drainage, as well as immune functions in the brain.What can we use from this in teaching undergraduate A&P...
Source: The A and P Professor - June 3, 2015 Category: Physiology Authors: Kevin Patton Source Type: blogs
Testing as a Learning Tool | UPDATE
I radically changed my approach to testing my A&P students about 13 years ago. It was was one of those experiments that had me questioning my sanity leading up to its roll-out. That's because in some fundamental ways, it challenged my experience of how I and others had always thought about the role of testing in the learning process.But when it did finally roll out in the first set classes in which I tried it, my new method of using tests as learning tools was a phenomenal success. The class averages on my exams went up by a whole letter grade! Students were working harder—but grumbling less. And student attitudes, w...
Source: The A and P Professor - May 19, 2015 Category: Physiology Authors: Kevin Patton Source Type: blogs
Mechanism of Cracking Knuckles
It never fails—somebody always asks about what's going on when knuckles crack when we get to the topic of articulations.Recently, researchers used modern MRI techniques to demonstrate exactly what is happening—a process first described in the 1940s. As joint surfaces separate, the changing tension in the synovial fluid causes a vapor pocket or "air bubble" to form in a process called cavitation.The recent research proved that the popping sound typical of cracking a knuckle is produced as the vapor pocket forms. It also disproved the theory that the popping occurs when the bubble collapses.What can we use from thi...
Source: The A and P Professor - April 15, 2015 Category: Physiology Authors: Kevin Patton Source Type: blogs
Cytotoxic T Cell Horror Flick
Liven up your A&P class with a great video showing a gruesome attack by a killer T cell on a cancer cell. It's a fantastic bit of video microscopy produced by Cambridge University.Okay, with the oddly soothing music score instead of a more appropriate score for the graphic violence shown in this video, it's not much of a horror flick. Especially when you consider that it's the "bad guy" cell getting whacked. But it is graphic and dramatic and impressive.Just the thing to liven up a discussion of adaptive immunity, which (let's face it) can often cause a catatonic state in many students. It's a free resource...
Source: The A and P Professor - February 9, 2015 Category: Physiology Authors: Kevin Patton Source Type: blogs
Virtual Immunology Lab
Looking for a supplemental hands-on activity with the immune system in your course?Try the FREE online interactive Immunology Virtual Lab from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.It covers these concepts:The basis of humoral immunity The foundation for ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay)Potential errors in conducting an ELISASensitivity and specificity of a diagnostic testWhat can we use from this in teaching undergraduate A&P?Link to this virtual lab activity from your online syllabus, course web page, or LMS (or in an email or tweet to students)If you want to give course points for the lab, consider ...
Source: The A and P Professor - February 2, 2015 Category: Physiology Authors: Kevin Patton Source Type: blogs
Rhinovirus Replicates Best in the Nasal Cavity
It's that time of year, eh? Cold and flu season. And this week we have news from researchers giving us a bit more insight into the rhinoviruses that cause the common cold.The unsurprising new discovery is that rhinoviruses replicate more efficiently—and therefore cause colds more effectively—in the nasal cavity than in the lungs because of a temperature difference. In mice, the animals used in the recent study, the immune mechanisms that fight off rhinoviruses work better in the warmer environment of the lung than in the cooler environment of the nasal cavity.This phenomenon may be why a cold generall...
Source: The A and P Professor - January 6, 2015 Category: Physiology Authors: Kevin Patton Source Type: blogs
Fat Cells in Skin Kill Bacteria
Scientists reported today that adipocytes in mouse and human skin produce an antimicrobial peptide (AMP) called cathelicidin is response to Staph aureus infections, including MRSA. Experimental animals that were deficient in the AMP were more susceptible to skin infections. Adipocytes may recognize S. aureus by detecting bacterial peptides with toll-like receptors (TLRs), but more work is needed to fully understand the mechanisms.This finding adds more to our understanding of human skin as a vital part of our body's defenses against infection. It also opens the door to understanding how diabetes, metabolic syndrome, ...
Source: The A and P Professor - January 2, 2015 Category: Physiology Authors: Kevin Patton Source Type: blogs
5 Useful Features of The A&P Professor Blog That You May Have Missed
Okay, the title is a bit misleading because a some of the five features you may have missed are new, so it may just be too early to have noticed them yet. But there are some that have been around a while and you may not have given them much thought until now.Top menu bar. I recently added a menu bar to the top of the blog page, just under the blog description. You can link to the Home Page, Site Map, Subscription and various off-blog resources. Explore each one to see if it's useful to you.Site Map. This new feature is a table of contents that lists blog posts in alphabetical lists by topic. ...
Source: The A and P Professor - December 8, 2014 Category: Physiology Authors: Kevin Patton Source Type: blogs
5 Useful Features of The A & P Professor Blog That You May Have Missed
< div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;" > < a href="http://my-ap.us/1A6u0KB" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" > < img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c6/Swiss_army_knife_open_20050612.jpg/320px-Swiss_army_knife_open_20050612.jpg" / > < /a > < /div > < br / > Okay, the title is a bit misleading because a some of the five features you may have missed are new, so it may just be too early to have noticed them yet. & nbsp;But there are some that have been around a while and you may not have given them much thought until now. ...
Source: The A and P Professor - December 7, 2014 Category: Physiology Authors: Kevin Patton Source Type: blogs
Your Textbook is a Mitten, Not a Glove
How well does the textbook you use in your course fit? What I mean by that is:Have you looked at whether the reading style is geared toward the students you typically encounter? Is the text written for beginners or experts?Have you compared your actual expectations (objectives & expected outcomes) to the content available in the textbook?Is the textbook organized in way that facilitates learning by both reading and raiding?Of course, no textbook is going to fit you, your students, and your course like a glove. Even if you create your own, or edit a custom version of existing text material, the fit will chan...
Source: The A and P Professor - November 17, 2014 Category: Physiology Authors: Kevin Patton Source Type: blogs
Shepherd's Apps for Teaching Physiology
Here are some computer-based activities that help students learn specific concepts of physiology produced by veteran professor Pete Shepherd. Dr. Shepherd has been developing over the course of many years based on his extensive teaching experience.A while back, I told you about the Life Science Teaching Resource Community and its archive of free teaching and learning resources. Here's an example of a collection of resources from that archive that your students can use to "play around with" physiological conditions to see what changes occur in the body as a result. All of them can either be used in the cla...
Source: The A and P Professor - November 11, 2014 Category: Physiology Authors: Kevin Patton Source Type: blogs
Protein Mechanism in Neurodegenerative Diseases
HuntingtinHuntingtin, the abnormal protein that produces clumps characteristic of Huntington disease (HD), can spread from one neuron to another. That's what a recent study has uncovered. Because such protein clumping is observed in other neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer disease (AD) and Parkinson disease (PD), some scientists hope that understanding this newly discovered mechanism of transmission within brain tissue may lead to possible treatments or preventive strategies.If you want to read more about it, check out the resources I've provided below.What can we use from this in teaching undergraduate A&P?...
Source: The A and P Professor - November 3, 2014 Category: Physiology Authors: Kevin Patton Source Type: blogs
RNA Interference. Again.
Five years ago, I extolled the virtues of teaching a little bit about RNA interference (RNAi) in undergraduate A&P courses. But for a while it looked like the promise of RNAi in basic and clinical research might be sputtering. However, a recent article by Eric Bender called The Second Coming of RNAi shows that RNAi "the gene-silencing technique [now] begins to fulfill some of its promises."I recommend reading the entire article at my-ap.us/1BbxvB9 Before you read it, allow me to reprise my reasons of five years ago supporting my proposal to include RNAi in your course.What can we use from this in...
Source: The A and P Professor - October 13, 2014 Category: Physiology Authors: Kevin Patton Source Type: blogs
Nobel Prize 2014: Super-resolved fluorescence microscopy
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2014 toEric BetzigJanelia Farm Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, VA, USA,Stefan W. HellMax Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, and German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, GermanyandWilliam E. MoernerStanford University, Stanford, CA, USA“for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy”Surpassing the limitations of the light microscopeFor a long time optical microscopy was held back by a presumed limitation: that it would never obtain a better resolution than half the ...
Source: The A and P Professor - October 8, 2014 Category: Physiology Authors: Kevin Patton Source Type: blogs
