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A project-based course is where students engage in a series of projects, which help lead students to a defined level of skill as specified in the course goals. Unlike a traditional lecture course where students are given examinations to assess the level of student knowledge and understanding, a project-based course may not include any formal examination. The assessment of student progress is often based on the quality of course projects. For this research, students in project-based courses were given a formal exam at the end of the course. The objective of the exam was to determine if there was a discrepancy between student performance on the exam and their projects. While the majority of students performed remarkably similarly on their exam and projects, a number of students (25%) did perform quite differently. This study demonstrated that examinations are still a critical tool for assessing student skill level in project-based courses.

The ability to extract somatic cells from a patient and reprogram them to pluripotency opens up new possibilities for personalized medicine. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have been employed to generate beating cardiomyocytes from a patient's skin or blood cells. Here, iPSC methods were used to generate cardiomyocytes starting from the urine of a patient with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). Urine was chosen as a starting material because it contains adult stem cells called urine-derived stem cells (USCs). USCs express the canonical reprogramming factors c-myc and klf4, and possess high telomerase activity. Pluripotency of urine-derived iPSC clones was confirmed by immunocytochemistry, RT-PCR and teratoma formation. Urine-derived iPSC clones generated from healthy volunteers and a DMD patient were differentiated into beating cardiomyocytes using a series of small molecules in monolayer culture. Results indicate that cardiomyocytes retain the DMD patient's dystrophin mutation. Physiological assays suggest that dystrophin-deficient cardiomyocytes possess phenotypic differences from normal cardiomyocytes. These results demonstrate the feasibility of generating cardiomyocytes from a urine sample and that urine-derived cardiomyocytes retain characteristic features that might be further exploited for mechanistic studies and drug discovery.

Pluripotent stem cells provide a potential solution to current epidemic rates of heart failure (1) by providing human cardiomyocytes to support heart regeneration (2). Studies of human embryonic-stem-cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hESC-CMs) in small-animal models have shown favourable effects of this treatment (3-7). However, it remains unknown whether clinical-scale hESC-CM transplantation is feasible, safe or can provide sufficient myocardial regeneration. Here we show that hESC-CMs can be produced at a clinical scale (more than one billion cells per batch) and cryopreserved with good viability. Using a non-human primate model of myocardial ischaemia followed by reperfusion, we show that cryopreservation and intramyocardial delivery of one billion hESC-CMs generates extensive remuscularization of the infarcted heart. The hESC-CMs showed progressive but incomplete maturation over a 3-month period. Grafts were perfused by host vasculature, and electromechanical junctions between graft and host myocytes were present within 2 weeks of engraftment. Importantly, grafts showed regular calcium transients that were synchronized to the host electrocardiogram, indicating electromechanical coupling. In contrast to small-animal models (7),nonfatal ventricular arrhythmias were observed in hESC-CM-engrafted primates. Thus, hESC-CMs can remuscularize substantial amounts of the infarcted monkey heart. Comparable remuscularization of a human heart should be possible, but potential arrhythmic complications need to be overcome., Human pluripotent stem cells have indisputable cardiomyocyte-generating abilities and have been extensively investigated for repair of the injured heart (3,4,6,10). These stem cells are derived either from developing blastocytsts (human [...]

Byline: James K. Fugate, Robert J. Vokurka World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) specifications of cascading style sheets (CSS) have the intention of providing a mechanism for separating styling information from the structure of an HTML document. Such a separation simplifies web page design and maintenance. By surveying prominent websites, this paper will determine to what extent and by what means this forward step in web page design has been achieved. These results will serve the interests of web page design professionals and instructors in web page design courses by showing what techniques are successful in separating style from structure. Successful techniques cannot necessarily be inferred by reference to W3C documents; indeed, the findings of this survey are contrary to some of these recommendations.

Byline: James K. Fugate, Robert J. Vokurka The rapid evolution of web page standards, new tools for creating web pages, and ancillary features like scripts and plug-ins make the effective teaching of web page design a moving target. By analysing a cross section of 108 web pages, this paper details current practice in professionally designed web pages in order to provide insights into what should be emphasised and what can be safely ignored in teaching web page creation. In addition, a clear indication of the usefulness and acceptance of new features would benefit the continuing evolution of web page standards.