Research and Writings
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Item Open Access Preparing Ethical Engineers for the Future: Integrating Modern Case Studies and Design Fiction in Biomedical Engineering EthicsKim, CameronNumerous studies and philosophies underscore the importance of cultivating ethical attitudes and social responsibility in engineering formation. Despite public welfare being central to the Codes of Ethics for most engineering societies (e.g., NSPE, BMES, ASME, ASCE), it comes as a shock that current education practices often diminish engineering undergraduates’ sentiments towards serving humanity. Erin Cech’s seminal work highlights the ‘culture of disengagement’ across diverse undergraduate engineering programs, with students deriving less value and identity towards serving the public welfare compared to before entering college. This indicates a pressing need to reform pedagogy to develop more socially aware engineers. Subsequent work continues to stress the deficiency of ethical and social dimensions in engineering graduates. How we teach ethics to engineers remains a contested question for our community. While this author embraces an embedded ethics model, many universities still rely on a capstone-focused or a stand-alone general engineering ethics class that cover the principal canons of public safety and welfare. General engineering ethics textbooks emphasize professional conduct and risk, with a particular focus on historical case studies that may not share the same relevance to the current generation of engineers. For example, the Ford Pinto case study is heavily discussed in these classes, but current estimates of American teenagers driving sit at under 40 percent compared to 64 percent in 1995, which lowers the relevancy of this scenario to future professional practice. Therefore, it is important to develop relevant case studies in engineering ethics classrooms that acknowledge the complex present and disruptive future that emergent technologies possess. I have developed a major-specific ethics course in biomedical engineering ethics that covers the foundational philosophical schools of consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics directly applied to the discipline. This occurs while adopting modern case studies in biomedical engineering that emphasize the role of ethical foresight in emergent and emerging technologies. Students are confronted with ethical futures in human genome editing and brain-computer interfaces, while facing the emerging technologies of machine learning and artificial intelligence in health care decision making and stem cell technologies. Biomedical engineering students strengthen their argumentative writing skills, as is often emphasized in ethics courses but gain experience in creative expression through an exercise called design fiction. Also known as speculative design, students creatively explore ethical dilemmas by imagining utopian and dystopian technological futures, deepening their understanding of how today’s engineering decisions shape tomorrow’s world. This paper will address how ethical foresight, design fiction, and modern case studies in emergent biomedical engineering technologies fosters an improved sense of reasoning in past, present, and future ethical dilemmas. Examples of successful strategies in discipline-specific ethics courses augment the need for both general and specific knowledges applied to professional practice, formation of ethical engineers, and an improved awareness of ethical decision making connected to technical knowledge. By incorporating modern case studies and speculative design, this course provides biomedical engineers with the critical thinking and ethical reasoning skills necessary to navigate the challenges of emergent technologies in professional practice, and can be adapted to any engineering discipline.Item Open Access . "Abdominal Wall Pain." Musculoskeletal Pain. Springer, Cham, 2025. 393-400.Carruyo, Alejandro; Yi, Peter; Ackerman, RobertItem Open Access . "Soft Tissue Pain." Musculoskeletal Pain (2025): 133-157Carruyo, Alejandro; Yi, Peter; Ackerman, RobertItem Open Access Knowledge and perceptions of the COVID-19 pandemic among patients with myasthenia gravis: follow up survey(RRNMF Neuromuscular Journal, 2020) Li, Yingkai; Harada, Yohei; Cobbaert, Marjan; Juel, Vern; Hobson-Webb, Lisa; Raja, Shruti; Gonzalez, Natalia; Guptill, JeffreyIntroduction We previously conducted a survey study in April 2020 at the beginning of the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic to understand how it affected patients with myasthenia gravis (MG). Since then, significant advances have occurred in the following areas: knowledge about the SARS-CoV-2 virus, infection risk mitigation, patient management, risks for MG patients, and a global vaccination program. We conducted a follow-up survey in February 2021 to assess how these advances impacted the care and perception of MG patients. Methods We conducted a prospective online survey study of MG patients at a large academic practice in the Duke Health System. Results Seventy-eight patients participated in the survey including 55 from previous survey and 23 newly identified patients. The top reported change in the interaction with healthcare providers was an increase in telemedicine visits (74%). The median satisfaction score (0-100 scale) for telemedicine visits was 74. Ninety-six percent of survey participants expressed concern about pandemic and nearly half of participants showed anxiety based on Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 score. The top 3 concerns related to COVID-19 were getting hospitalized (62%), exacerbation (62%) and death (53%). Discussion Although the results of follow-up survey were overall similar to the previous study, most of patients switched from in-person clinic visits to telemedicines. The overwhelmingly large portion of patients continue to have concern and anxiety for pandemic but the patients with severe symptoms have higher anxiety scores. Conclusion This follow-up survey demonstrated the adjustment of MG patients to new methods of communication, significant psychological impact of COVID-19 on them and their good healthcare literacy.Item Open Access Add Another Year to Physician Residency Training? Be Careful What We Wish for!(emergency Physicians Monthly Magazine, 2025-06-01) Severance, HarryThe explosion of necessary medical knowledge and procedural skill needs causes consideration for increases in Residency training time. But - other healthcare forces may see things otherwise.Item Open Access How do patient and in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycle characteristics impact blastulation rates? an analysis of 70,968 blastocyst cycles from the SART registry(Fertility and Sterility, 2017-09) Acharya, KS; Jones, C; Keyhan, S; Acharya, CR; Muasher, SJItem Open Access The Fine Art of Persuasion: Corporate Advertising Design, Nation, and Empire in Modern Japan(2025) Weisenfeld, GSCommercial art is more than just mass-produced publicity; it constructs social and political ideologies that impact the public’s everyday life. In The Fine Art of Persuasion, Gennifer Weisenfeld examines the evolution of Japanese advertising graphic design from the early 1900s through the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, a pivotal design event that rebranded Japan on the world stage. Through richly illustrated case studies, Weisenfeld tells the story of how modern corporations and consumer capitalism transformed Japan’s visual culture and artistic production across the pre- and postwar periods, revealing how commercial art helped constitute the ideological formations of nation- and empire-building. Weisenfeld also demonstrates, how under the militarist regime of imperial Japan, national politics were effectively commodified and marketed through the same mechanisms of mass culture that were used to promote consumer goods. Using a multilayered analysis of the rhetorical intentions of design projects and the context of their production, implementation, and consumption, Weisenfeld offers an interdisciplinary framework that illuminates the importance of Japanese advertising design within twentieth-century global visual culture.Item Open Access Preface(2023-01-01) Charbonneau, P; Marinari, E; Mézard, M; Ricci-Tersenghi, F; Sicuro, G; Zamponi, FItem Open Access Aging and neuroplasticity(2024-01-01) Merenstein, JL; Howard, CM; Madden, DJNeuroimaging techniques have been invaluable to studying the structural and functional properties of the brain that are associated with neuroplasticity in aging. The application of these techniques suggest that neuroplasticity differs from compensation and brain resilience in the context of healthy aging. Evidence from neuroimaging studies also suggests that aspects of neuroplasticity are similar in healthy aging and in age-related cognitive impairment and dementia, whereas neuroplasticity in other major neurological disorders exhibits a different set of features. Important future directions include the examination of differences in structural versus functional properties of neuroplasticity in aging, and whether neuroplasticity continues into advanced age.Item Open Access Aging and neuroplasticity(2025) Merenstein, Jenna L; Howard, Cortney M; Madden, David JItem Open Access Revisiting Vine Deloria's Support for Unrecognized Tribes in a Time of Environmental Crises(2024-04-16) Emanuel, RyanOf Living Stone: Perspectives on Continuous Knowledge and the Work of Vine Deloria, Jr. is a collection of new essays on the legacy of Vine Deloria, Jr., one of the most influential thinkers of our time.Item Open Access What the CHAMELEON Framework Taught Us About Equitable and Adaptable Pedagogy(2025-01-01) Davies, L; Davies, JThe CHAMELEON framework, although stimulated by COVID-19, has transformed the English for academic purposes (EAP) practices at a Sino–foreign joint venture university. The framework’s guiding principles are to show compassion and empathy to foster equitable and adaptable conditions for teaching and learning. Tangible examples of transformative practice include the creation of a working group to develop EAP-related artificial intelligence (AI) policy, the formation of EAP micro-teams to facilitate professional development and personal support, and increased undergraduate and graduate EAP synergy. Taking generative AI as an example, the CHAMELEON framework has been fundamental in developing an empathic, rather than punitive, pedagogical approach and associated policy to better understand students’ (mis)use of AI tools. This chapter will extrapolate on how the CHAMELEON framework informed transformative EAP practices in ways that are transferable to a wide range of higher education practitioners involved with writing, assessment, pedagogy, and generative AI.Item Open Access Review of Faithful Disobedience: Writings on Church and State from a Chinese House Church Movement, by Wang Yi and others, ed. Nannah Nation and J. D. Tseng (IVP Academic, 2022)(Ching Feng: A Journal on Christianity and Chinese Religion and Culture, 2025-11-01) Chen, MariaItem Open Access Inotrope Selection Patterns and Time Interval-based Outcomes after Left Ventricular Assist Device Surgery: Secondary Analysis of a Single-Center Clinical TrialGhadimi, KamrouzInotrope Selection Patterns and Time Interval-based Outcomes after Left Ventricular Assist Device Surgery: Secondary Analysis of a Single-Center Clinical TrialItem Open Access Rethinking Load Growth: Assessing the Potential for Integration of Large Flexible Loads in US Power Systems(2025-02-11) Norris, Tyler; Profeta, Timothy; Patino-Echeverri, Dalia; Cowie-Haskell, AdamItem Open Access GDP’s Wicked Spell(The Chronicle of higher education) Philipsen, Dirk; Philipsen, DirkItem Open Access Private gain must no longer be allowed to elbow out the public good(Aeon, 2020-04-24) Philipsen, DirkThis essay critiques the dominance of private profit over collective well-being, arguing that economic systems prioritizing growth and individual wealth accumulation have undermined public goods, social equity, and environmental sustainability. Philipsen examines how essential resources—education, healthcare, and even democracy—have been subordinated to market interests, deepening inequality and eroding the commons. Philipsen calls for a fundamental shift toward an economy that values shared prosperity, sustainability, and the common good over private accumulation, asserting that true progress requires redefining success beyond mere financial gain.Item Open Access Poverty is not Permanent(Aeon, 2025-02-10) Philipsen, Dirk; Krishna, AnirudhIn *Poverty is not Permanent*, Anirudh Krishna and Dirk Philipsen challenge the conventional view of poverty as a static condition, arguing instead that it is a fluid state shaped by structural forces and individual circumstances. Drawing on research from diverse global contexts, they highlight how people frequently move in and out of poverty due to factors like illness, economic shocks, and policy decisions. They critique traditional poverty measures, which fail to capture this dynamic reality, and advocate for policies that address both the causes of downward mobility and the supports needed for sustained escape. Poverty, they argue, is not an inherent trait but a condition that societies can actively reshape.Item Open Access Why? On our Failures of Imagination to Accomplish Dignity for All(Virtues and Vocations, 2024-11-12) Philipsen, DirkThis essay argues that the persistent inability to ensure universal human dignity stems from a catastrophic failure of imagination. Despite unprecedented global wealth and expertise, societies remain entrenched in paradigms of exponential growth and individualism, jeopardizing the planet and human well-being. Philipsen contends that achieving a future where every individual thrives requires reimagining our values and systems, moving beyond the pursuit of endless growth to embrace collective stewardship and shared prosperity.Item Open Access