From coffee beans flowing in a chute to cells remodelling in a living tissue, a wide variety of close-packed collective systems— both inert and living—have the potential to jam. The collective can sometimes flow like a fluid or jam and rigidify like a solid. The unjammed-to-jammed transition remains poorly understood, however, and structural properties characterizing these phases remain unknown. Using primary human bronchial epithelial cells, we show that the jamming transition in asthma is linked to cell shape, thus establishing in that system a structural criterion for cell jamming. Surprisingly, the collapse of critical scaling predicts a counter-intuitive relationship between jamming, cell shape and cell–cell adhesive stresses that is borne out by direct experimental observations. Cell shape thus provides a rigorous structural signature for classification and investigation of bronchial epithelial layer jamming in asthma, and potentially in any process in disease or development in which epithelial dynamics play a prominent role.

Nursing professional development practitioners have the responsibility to find creative and innovative ways to teach and provide learners with the education needed to practice safely in the hospital setting. This article describes an interactive game-based learning experience as a way to engage and empower both nurse residents and experienced nurses.

When cellular contractile forces are central to pathophysiology, these forces comprise a logical target of therapy. Nevertheless, existing high-throughput screens are limited to upstream signalling intermediates with poorly defined relationships to such a physiological endpoint. Using cellular force as the target, here we report a new screening technology and demonstrate its applications using human airway smooth muscle cells in the context of asthma and Schlemm's canal endothelial cells in the context of glaucoma. This approach identified several drug candidates for both asthma and glaucoma. We attained rates of 1000 compounds per screening day, thus establishing a force-based cellular platform for high-throughput drug discovery.

Patients with cystic fibrosis have increased risk of pulmonary infections, and reducing spread of microorganisms is critical. To improve hospital-staff adherence to infection control guidelines, we implemented brightly colored Safe Zone floor decals, staff compliance contracts, and an infection control in-service video. Audits of staff adherence conducted pre and postintervention demonstrated an increased and sustainable improvement among each group (P < .05). These effective measures may be implemented to improve infection control compliance elsewhere.