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Under the new ABET accreditation framework, students are expected to demonstrate "an ability to develop and conduct appropriate experimentation, analyze and interpret data, and use engineering judgment to draw conclusions." Traditional, recipe-based labs provide few opportunities for students to engage in realistic experimental design or develop a sense of agency, and research has cast doubt on their pedagogical benefit. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic forced institutions to move to remote learning. We developed a scaffolded series of remote lab activities for an upper-division mechanics of materials course, culminating in a collaborative guided-inquiry experiment design challenge. In the first iteration of the course, we mailed kits to students with basic supplies for the at-home experiments, while in the second students were expected to make use of readily-available household items. We analyzed 36 lab reports from the second iteration of the guided-inquiry lab and identified 25 unique approaches to the design challenge, an indication of a truly open-ended activity. Student outcomes were measured by post-lab surveys of attitudes and self-efficacy, as well as a standardized conceptual learning assessment. The fraction of students endorsing statements related to a sense of agency increased dramatically over the course of the semester: from 53% to 83% for goal-setting and from 63% to 92% for choice of methods. Self-efficacy increased significantly in the primary targeted skills (designing experiments and making predictions), but there was no significant shift in skills not explicitly targeted by the guided-inquiry lab (equitable sharing of labor, expressing opinions in a group, and interpreting graphs).

Background: Sebaceous carcinoma is a rare cancer, and little is known about its current epidemiology and treatment. This is particularly true for sebaceous carcinomas of the trunk and extremities. Objective: We present a database analysis of sebaceous carcinoma cases to further delineate demographics, location, tumor characteristics, and treatment modalities among patients diagnosed with these tumors. Methods: The National Cancer Database was queried for cases of sebaceous carcinoma between 2004 and 2016. 3211 cases were analyzed for descriptive and comparative statistics. Results: Twenty-six percent of sebaceous carcinomas were found on the trunk and extremities. Tumors on the trunk and extremities were more likely to be larger than tumors on the head and neck, with 8% being greater than 50 mm (P

Background: A consistent challenge in educational research is ensuring that published innovations are successfully integrated into the classrooms they aim to improve. The process of integrating new pedagogy into existing classrooms involves both a method of communication (journal articles, workshops, word of mouth, etc.) and faculty motivation to make change. This work characterizes the research-to-practice translation of the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN), a network of higher education institutions invested in the development of entrepreneurial mindset (EM) in engineering students. Results: Through semi-structured interviews with six sustained adopters of EM, we were able to examine faculty members' approaches to adoption and how these approaches correlated with KEEN's approaches to dissemination. We analyzed KEEN's professional development offerings using the Designing for Sustained Adoption Instrument (DSAAI) and described how faculty motivation, as characterized by the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI), may affect their integration of innovations into the classroom. We found that KEEN's offerings largely aligned with the DSAAI's recommendations for sustained adoption--their consistent emphasis on faculty engagement as well as a mix of active and passive professional development strategies were effective in supporting faculty members throughout the adoption process. Faculty members generally expressed interest in and enjoyment of KEEN professional development offerings, saw value in EM education, and were willing to put in effort to adopt related strategies, implying strong intrinsic motivation to adopt EM. However, many faculty members interviewed expressed a low level of competence related to the entrepreneurial mindset. Conclusions: Results of this study suggest that faculty members who successfully adopt EM into their classrooms do so using primarily professional development offerings aligning with the DSAAI's guidelines for sustained adoption. Additionally, successful adopters recognized their own deficiencies in EM and identified KEEN professional development as an opportunity for growth, indicating high intrinsic motivation to make changes in their classrooms.

Process safety remains an area of importance in chemical engineering education. Process safety incidents are tied to individuals' choices that require exercising judgement in weighing competing criteria. While safety is paramount, we need to acknowledge the competing criteria practitioners need to consider (budget, leadership, personal relationships, plant production, and time). Our work examines the relationship between individuals' beliefs versus behavior in process safety decisions, and explores use of a process safety game as an intervention.

Introduction and Objectives: This study aimed to characterize a large cohort of Latinx patients with autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) and analyze clinical outcomes, including biochemical remission, duration of steroid treatment, fibrosis regression, and incidence of clinical endpoints (hepatic decompensation, need for liver transplant, and death). Materials and Methods: This was a retrospective descriptive study of patients with biopsy proven AIH (2009–2019) at a single urban center. Demographics, medical comorbidities, histology, treatment course, biochemical markers, fibrosis using dynamic non-invasive testing (NIT), and clinical outcomes at three months and at one, two, and three years were analyzed. Results: 121 adult patients with biopsy-proven AIH were included: 43 Latinx (35.5%) and 78 non-Latinx (65.5%). Latinx patients were more likely to have metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) (p = 0.004), and had higher Fibrosis-4 (FIB-4) (p = 0.0279) and AST-to-Platelet-Ratio-Index (APRI) (p = 0.005) at one year. Latinx patients took longer to reach biochemical remission than non-Hispanic Whites (p = 0.031) and longer to stop steroids than non-Hispanic Blacks (p = 0.016). There were no significant differences based on ethnicity in histological fibrosis stage at presentation or incidence of clinical endpoints. Conclusions: MASLD overlap is highly prevalent in Latinx AIH patients. Longer time to biochemical remission and worse NITs support that this population may have slower fibrosis regression with standard of care AIH treatment. This may indicate differing response rates due to genetic polymorphisms affecting drug metabolism and immune response among Latinx individuals and is less likely related to AIH/MASLD overlap based on the findings of this study.

Background People living with cystic fibrosis in Denmark had early, universal access to triple modulator treatment with elexacaftor/tezacaftor/ivacaftor. Close monitoring allowed us to assess the impact of treatment on lung function and progression of lung disease in an unselected nationwide cystic fibrosis population from 6 years of age. Methods Data were analysed using linear mixed-effect models to assess changes in levels and annual rates of change (slopes) in percent predicted (pp) forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1), forced vital capacity (FVC) and forced expiratory flow at 25–75% of FVC (ppFEF25–75%) between the 12 months pre-treatment and treatment periods. Subgroup analyses assessed the impact of elexacaftor/tezacaftor/ivacaftor among those with/without previous modulator treatment, normal/mild/moderate/severe lung disease at treatment initiation, children/adults and birth cohorts. Results We included 392 people living with cystic fibrosis with a median (interquartile range) 12 (nine to 15) spirometry measurements per person. The mean (95% CI) improvement in ppFEV1 was 13.0 (11.3–14.6) 12 months after initiation of elexacaftor/tezacaftor/ivacaftor treatment. The annual rate of change improved from −1.4 (−2.1 – −0.6) ppFEV1 in the pre-treatment year to 2.7 (1.8–3.5) ppFEV1 per year during treatment. Similarly, ppFVC increased by 8.0 (7.1–8.9) and FEF25–­75% by 19.5 (17.0–21.9). Conclusions Using high-resolution data from a nationwide real-world setting, our study documents the impact of elexacaftor/tezacaftor/ivacaftor on lung function across subgroups based on age, disease severity and treatment history. These findings point towards a new period of consistent lung function improvement among people living with cystic fibrosis on elexacaftor/tezacaftor/ivacaftor.