The role of professional knowledge in case-based reasoning in practical ethics.

The use of case-based reasoning in teaching professional ethics has come of age. The fields of medicine, engineering, and business all have incorporated ethics case studies into leading textbooks and journal articles, as well as undergraduate and graduate professional ethics courses. The most recent guidelines from the National Institutes of Health recognize case studies and face-to-face discussion as best practices to be included in training programs for the Responsible Conduct of Research.

Implications of vehicle roll direction on occupant ejection and injury risk.

Vehicle roll direction and occupant position have been shown to affect occupant kinematics. Data from NASS-CDS were analyzed for risk of serious or greater injuries and ejection with respect to the position of the occupant (near side or far side). The risk of AIS 3+ injuries was higher for unrestrained occupants, for ejected occupants, for occupants involved in rollovers with higher numbers of quarter turns, and for far side occupants.

Changes in the biaxial viscoelastic response of the urinary bladder following spinal cord injury.

In order to gain a deeper understanding of bladder function, it is necessary to study the time-dependent response of the bladder wall. The present study evaluated and compared the viscoelastic behaviors of normal and spinal cord injured (SCI) rat bladder wall tissue using an established rat model and planar biaxial stress relaxation tests. Bladders from normal and spinalized (3 weeks) rats were subjected to biaxial stress (either 25 or 100 kPa in each loading direction) rapidly (in 50 ms) and subsequently allowed to relax at the constant stretch levels in modified Kreb's solution (in the absence of calcium; with no smooth muscle tone) for 10,000 s.

Biaxial mechanical properties of muscle-derived cell seeded small intestinal submucosa for bladder wall reconstitution.

Bladder wall replacement remains a challenging problem for urological surgery due to leakage, infection, stone formation, and extensive time needed for tissue regeneration. To explore the feasibility of producing a more functional biomaterial for bladder reconstitution, we incorporated muscle-derived cells (MDC) into small intestinal submucosa (SIS) scaffolds. MDC were harvested from mice hindleg muscle, transfected with a plasmid encoding for beta-galactosidase, and placed into single-layer SIS cell culture inserts.

Passive biaxial mechanical properties of the rat bladder wall after spinal cord injury.

Purpose: Changes in the mechanical properties of the bladder wall after spinal cord injury can alter bladder compliance and wall tension, leading to changes in afferent nerve activity and to abnormal reflex mechanisms. To our knowledge we report the first application of biaxial mechanical testing to the normal bladder wall and demonstrate how these properties change after spinal cord injury.

Materials And Methods: Whole bladders were harvested from mature female Sprague-Dawley rats weighing 250 to 300 gm.