Is it a revolution?

Jablonka and Lamb's claim that evolutionary biology is undergoing a ‘revolution’ is queried. But the very concept of revolutionary change has uncertain application to a field organized in the manner of contemporary biology. The explanatory primacy of sequence properties is also discussed.

Donor Perspectives on Issues Associated with Donation of Genetic Samples and Information: An Australian Viewpoint

This paper provides a legal overview of key issues associated with donation of genetic samples and information from a donor perspective. In particular, it addresses the property status of samples as well as issues in respect of consent, privacy, commercialisation and benefit sharing. The paper highlights the need for appropriate protection and safeguards for individuals, but also, importantly, for understanding what donors actually think and want in terms of genetic research and the use of their samples and information. The paper seeks to emphasise the importance of transparency and accountability in the conduct of research in order to maximise donor participation and confidence and public trust in general.

Organ and tissue safety workshop 2007: advances and challenges

A workshop in June 2005 (“Preventing Organ and Tissue Allograft-Transmitted Infection: Priorities for Public Health Intervention”) identified gaps in organ and tissue safety in the US. Participants developed a series of allograft safety initiatives. “The Organ and Tissue Safety Workshop 2007: Advances and Challenges” assessed progress and identified priorities for future interventions. Awareness of the challenges of allograft-associated disease transmission has increased. The Transplantation Transmission Sentinel Network will enhance communication surrounding allograft-associated disease transmission. Other patient safety initiatives have focused on adverse event reporting and microbiologic screening technologies. Despite progress, improved recognition and prevention of donor-derived transmission events is needed. This requires systems integration across the organ and tissue transplantation communities including organ procurement organizations, eye and tissue banks, and transplant infectious disease experts. Commitment of resources and improved coordination of efforts are required to develop essential tools to enhance safety for allograft recipients.

Navigating Diagnoses: Understanding Mind–Body Relations, Mental Health, and Stigma in Nepal

Anthropologists and psychiatrists traditionally have used the salience of a mind–body dichotomy to distinguish Western from non-Western ethnopsychologies. However, despite claims of mind–body holism in non-Western cultures, mind–body divisions are prominent in non-Western groups. In this article, we discuss three issues: the ethnopsychology of mind–body dichotomies in Nepal, the relationship between mind–body dichotomies and the hierarchy of resort in a medical pluralistic context, and, finally, the role of mind–body dichotomies in public health interventions (biomedical and psychosocial) aimed toward decreasing the stigmatization of mental illness. We assert that, by understanding mind–body relations in non-Western settings, their implications, and ways in which to reconstitute these relations in a less stigmatizing manner, medical anthropologists and mental health workers can contribute to the reduction of stigma in global mental health care.

The strategy of “The strategy of model building in population biology”

In this essay, I argue for four related claims. First, Richard Levins’ classic “The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology” was a statement and defense of theoretical population biology growing out of collaborations between Robert MacArthur, Richard Lewontin, E. O. Wilson, and others. Second, I argue that the essay served as a response to the rise of systems ecology especially as pioneered by Kenneth Watt. Third, the arguments offered by Levins against systems ecology and in favor of his own methodological program are best construed as “pragmatic”. Fourth, I consider limitations of Levins’ arguments given contemporary population biology.

Objects limit human comprehension

This paper demonstrates that the human visual system, the primary sensory conduit for primates, processes ambient energy in a way that obligatorily constructs the objects that we ineluctably perceive. And since our perceptual apparatus processes information only in terms of objects (along with the properties and movements of objects), we are limited in our ability to comprehend ‘what is’ when we move beyond our ordinary world of midsize objects—as, for example, when we address the micro microworld of quantum physics.

Predictive performance modelling of parallel component compositions

Large-scale scientific computing applications frequently make use of closely-coupled distributed parallel components. The performance of such applications is therefore dependent on the component parts and their interaction at run-time. This paper describes a methodology for predictive performance modelling and evaluation of parallel applications composed of multiple interacting components. In this paper, the fundamental steps and required operations involved in the modelling and evaluation process are identified—including component decomposition, component model combination, M×N communication modelling, dataflow analysis and overall performance evaluation. A case study is presented to illustrate the modelling process and the methodology is verified through experimental analysis.

Legal Rights in Human Bodies, Body Parts and Tissue

This paper outlines the current common law principles that protect people’s interests in their bodies, excised body parts and tissue without conferring the rights of full legal ownership. It does not include the recent statutory amendments in jurisdictions such as New South Wales and the United Kingdom. It argues that at common law, people do not own their own bodies or excised bodily material. People can authorise the removal of their bodily material and its use, either during life or after their death, for medical or scientific purposes. Researchers who acquire human bodies, body parts or tissue pursuant to such an authority have a right to possess and use them according to the authorisation they have been given, but their rights fall short of full ownership because they are limited in the way that they can use the material. The legal rights of researchers who develop intellectual property and biological products from excised human tissue can be adequately protected by existing common law principles without the need for a new legal principle that people own body parts and tissue removed from their bodies.

Realistic threshold policy with hysteresis to control predator–prey continuous dynamics

This paper introduces a threshold policy with hysteresis (TPH) for the control of one-predator one-prey models. The models studied are the Lotka–Volterra and Rosenzweig–MacArthur two species density-dependent predator–prey models and the Arditi–Ginzburg nondimensional ratio-dependent model. The proposed policy (TPH) changes the dynamics of the system in such a way that a bounded oscillation is achieved confined to a region that does not allow extinction of either species. The policy can be designed by a suitable choice of so called virtual equilibrium points in a simple and intuitive manner.

Personal Experience of Schizophrenia and the Role of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Danwei</Emphasis>: A Case Study in 1990s Beijing

Danwei as a cornerstone of Chinese urban society has received great research attention. The relationship between the Danwei and psychiatric patients, however, remains unclear. This article aims to shed light on the subject with an integrated micro–macro approach. It introduces a historical understanding of mental health in urban China under the “economic state in transition” framework. A detailed case study in clinical sociology is provided to reveal the many social factors affecting the experience of a schizophrenic patient and his significant others. A changing role of the Danwei is hypothesized and validated with qualitative data. The Danwei was shown to have changed significantly before the mid-1990s, yet it still played a major role in urban workers’ lives, including those of psychiatric patients, and even more so in people’s expectations. This lends support to the need for a more responsive public policy to address various social issues brought about by economic reform, with the learning of worldwide experiences including “community care,” “social support” and “social rehabilitation.” Implications for social research, policymaking and professional practice are discussed.

Informatics-guided procurement of patient samples for biomarker discovery projects in cancer research

Modern cancer research for biomarker discovery program requires solving several tasks that are directly involved with patient sample procurement. One requirement is to construct a highly efficient workflow on the clinical side for the procurement to generate a consistent supply of high quality samples for research. This undertaking needs a network of interdepartmental collaborations and participations at various levels, including physical human interactions, information technology implementations and a bioinformatics tool that is highly effective and user-friendly to busy clinicians and researchers associated with the sample procurement. Collegial participation that is sequential but continual from one department to another demands dedicated bioinformatics software coordinating between the institutional clinic and the tissue repository facility. Participants in the process include admissions, consenting process, phlebotomy, surgery center and pathology. During this multiple step procedures, clinical data are collected for detailed analytical endpoints to supplement logistics of defining and validating the discovery of biomarkers.

Caught in the Psychiatric Net: Meanings and Experiences of ADHD,Pediatric Bipolar Disorder and Mental Health Treatment Among a Diverse Group of Families in the United States

Based on a 13-month ethnographic meaning-centered study of the lived experience of behavioral and emotional disorders among children and families living in the United States, this article highlights the range of orientations to mental health problems and treatment among families from diverse backgrounds. Detailed case portraits of three families are presented to illustrate the various meanings that psychiatric diagnoses and mental health treatments take on within families, with medicalized perspectives holding less salience among African-American families relative to Euro-Americans in the study. The diverse orientations to problems among families in the study suggest that, despite the dominance of biochemical and neurological explanations for behavioral and emotional distress in contemporary U.S. culture, and especially U.S. psychiatry, nonpathological interpretations have not been wholly eclipsed by broad trends toward biologization and medicalization. Families’ experiences are positioned to reveal the allure, as well as the limitations, of biopsychiatric approaches to behavioral and emotional problems.

The Social Impacts of Nanotechnology: an Ethical and Political Analysis

This paper attempts some predictions about the social consequences of nanotechnology and the ethical issues they raise. I set out four features of nanotechnology that are likely to be important in determining its impact and argue that nanotechnology will have significant social impacts in—at least—the areas of health and medicine, the balance of power between citizens and governments, and the balance of power between citizens and corporations. More importantly, responding to the challenge of nanotechnology will require confronting “philosophical” questions about the sort of society we wish to create and the role that technology might play in creating it. This in turn will require developing institutions and processes that allow the public to wield real power in relation to technological trajectories. My ultimate contention is that the immediate task established by the likely social impacts of nanotechnology is not so much to develop an ethics of nanotechnology as to facilitate an ethical conversation about nanotechnology.

Adaptationism and the adaptive landscape

Debates over adaptationism can be clarified and partially resolved by careful consideration of the ‘grain’ at which evolutionary processes are described. The framework of ‘adaptive landscapes’ can be used to illustrate and facilitate this investigation. We argue that natural selection may have special status at an intermediate grain of analysis of evolutionary processes. The cases of sickle-cell disease and genomic imprinting are used as case studies.

Hierarchical analysis of piecewise affine models of gene regulatory networks

A key point in the analysis of dynamical models of biological systems is to handle systems of relatively high dimensions. In the present paper we propose a method to hierarchically organize a certain type of piecewise affine (PWA) differential systems. This specific class of systems has been extensively studied for the past few years, as it provides a good framework to model gene regulatory networks. The method, shown on several examples, allows a qualitative analysis of the asymptotic behavior of a PWA system, decomposing it into several smaller subsystems. This technique, based on the well-known strongly connected components decomposition, is not new. However, its adaptation to the non-smooth PWA differential equations turns out to be quite relevant because of the strong discrete structure underlying these equations. Its biological relevance is shown on a 7-dimensional PWA system modeling the gene network responsible for the carbon starvation response in Escherichia coli.

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Capacity-Building for Natural Resource Management: Lessons from the Health Sector

This paper examines capacity-building measures used by the health sector relevant to natural resource management (NRM) using the delivery of two programs in Australia through its recently formalized 56 community-based regional NRM Boards as a reference point. The delivery of NRM outcomes through devolved governance arrangements has been hampered by inadequate capacity in other countries (e.g., New Zealand, Canada). The inherent complexities of NRM, coupled with professional “comfort zones,” often limit actors from looking to other sectors confronting similar issues. This paper summarizes findings from ∼70 sources in health reviewing nine major capacity-building measures. The outcomes of research evaluating the relative benefits and disbenefits of applying these measures are discussed. The paper identifies several opportunities to trial some of these measures in NRM.

Forty Years of ‘The Strategy’: Levins on Model Building and Idealization

This paper is an interpretation and defense of Richard Levins’ “The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology,” which has been extremely influential among biologists since its publication 40 years ago. In this article, Levins confronted some of the deepest philosophical issues surrounding modeling and theory construction. By way of interpretation, I discuss each of Levins’ major philosophical themes: the problem of complexity, the brute-force approach, the existence and consequence of tradeoffs, and robustness analysis. I argue that Levins’ article is concerned, at its core, with justifying the use of multiple, idealized models in population biology.