Students routinely learn how separate properties comprising the functional state of the cardiovascular system will individually affect blood pressure, cardiac output, and tissue perfusion. The challenge is learning to integrate such compartmentalized understanding to interpret how the overall state adjusts based upon observed changes in dependent hemodynamic variables. A simple lab exercise facilitates integration of compartmentalized learning. A student rides a stationary bike while the workload is increased in steps with heart rate and blood pressure measured at each step. Students must then apply their knowledge of vascular hemodynamics and cardiac load to estimate changes in cardiac output and peripheral resistance from the observed changes in heart rate and blood pressure. They next explain how arteriolar vascular tone must be altered so as to maintain relatively stable diastolic arterial pressure while meeting the need for increased perfusion to the working muscle, followed by discussion of the expected changes in myocardial contractility and venous capacitance necessary to support increased circulatory flow. Control of state properties by autonomic reflexes is then discussed. As the intended outcome, students gain insight into the orchestrated changes in system properties that must occur as the body adjusts to moderate exercise, by predicting the new system state based upon observed changes in heart rate and blood pressure.

Much attention is paid to the process of how new storage services are deployed into production that the challenges therein. Far less is paid to what happens when a storage service is approaching the end of its useful life. The challenges in rationalising and de-scoping a service that, while relatively old, is still critical to production work for both the UK WLCG Tier 1 and local facilities are not to be underestimated.