Synthetic biology: ensuring the greatest global value

Synthetic biology (SynBio) has tremendous, transformative potential. Like other technologies, it can be used for good or ill. Currently, the structure of the allocation of potential benefits and risks is biased in favor of richer countries. The underlying problem is simple: most risks from SynBio are universal and affect both the rich and the poor with equal force; but benefits from SynBio can be expected to accrue chiefly to the rich. The risk/benefit balance is therefore skewed in a way that may lead to inefficient and unfair decisions. One potential solution is presented in this paper, using the principles that underlie the Health Impact Fund (HIF). The HIF is designed to reward companies based on assessed health impact, no matter where it occurs in the world, so that extending the life of a poor person is as profitable as extending the life of a rich person. This paper considers both the potential benefits and costs of SynBio; examines how the current global pharmaceutical industry is structured; introduces the HIF proposal; and finally explores how the principles underlying the HIF could be used productively with SynBio for global health.     

Interactive learning and action: realizing the promise of synthetic biology for global health

The emerging field of synthetic biology has the potential to improve global health. For example, synthetic biology could contribute to efforts at vaccine development in a context in which vaccines and immunization have been identified by the international community as being crucial to international development efforts and, in particular, the millennium development goals. However, past experience with innovations shows that realizing a technology’s potential can be difficult and complex. To achieve better societal embedding of synthetic biology and to make sure it reaches its potential, science and technology development should be made more inclusive and interactive. Responsible research and innovation is based on the premise that a broad range of stakeholders with different views, needs and ideas should have a voice in the technological development and deployment process. The interactive learning and action (ILA) approach has been developed as a methodology to bring societal stakeholders into a science and technology development process. This paper proposes an ILA in five phases for an international effort, with national case studies, to develop socially robust applications of synthetic biology for global health, based on the example of vaccine development. The design is based on results of a recently initiated ILA project on synthetic biology; results from other interactive initiatives described in the literature; and examples of possible applications of synthetic biology for global health that are currently being developed.     

包容性治理：中国国家公园治理新思路

模式的选择在自然保护地有效治理过程中起着关键作用,适宜的治理模式是实现自然保护地生态、社会、经济和文化综合效益最优化的重要途径。包容性治理在建立多元共治、全民共享的国家公园治理体制、促进社会公平和容纳边缘群体等方面具有独特优势,是对保护地治理模式的优化与创新,拥有广阔的应用空间。系统总结了全球保护地治理模式,对不同治理模式进行了比较和评价,重点从理论和实践背景阐述了包容性治理的源起;从边缘性和公平性视角两方面分析了现阶段中国国家公园进行包容性治理的必要性与可行性;并对中国国家公园包容性治理框架进行了阐释,提出了中国国家公园包容性治理建议和思考。以治理主体多元化、主体间的合作、促进社会公平、容纳全体社会成员自由发展,尤其是确保边缘群体的利益为特征的包容性治理,可以成为中国国家公园协调保护和当地发展的新思路、新选择。     

Junk or functional DNA? ENCODE and the function controversy

In its last round of publications in September 2012, the Encyclopedia Of DNA Elements (ENCODE) assigned a biochemical function to most of the human genome, which was taken up by the media as meaning the end of ‘Junk DNA’. This provoked a heated reaction from evolutionary biologists, who among other things claimed that ENCODE adopted a wrong and much too inclusive notion of function, making its dismissal of junk DNA merely rhetorical. We argue that this criticism rests on misunderstandings concerning the nature of the ENCODE project, the relevant notion of function and the claim that most of our genome is junk. We argue that evolutionary accounts of function presuppose functions as ‘causal roles’, and that selection is but a useful proxy for relevant functions, which might well be unsuitable to biomedical research. Taking a closer look at the discovery process in which ENCODE participates, we argue that ENCODE’s strategy of biochemical signatures successfully identified activities of DNA elements with an eye towards causal roles of interest to biomedical research. We argue that ENCODE’s controversial claim of functionality should be interpreted as saying that 80 % of the genome is engaging in relevant biochemical activities and is very likely to have a causal role in phenomena deemed relevant to biomedical research. Finally, we discuss ambiguities in the meaning of junk DNA and in one of the main arguments raised for its prevalence, and we evaluate the impact of ENCODE’s results on the claim that most of our genome is junk.     

Four notions on the qualities of cooperating music teachers

This article develops criteria for the selection, professional development, and assessment of cooperating teachers through four “notions.” These notions suggest that cooperating teachers might (1) possess knowledge of educational theory and practice; (2) understand the importance of context in education; (3) understand narrative's role in the process of learning to teach; and (4) critically reflect on teaching practice. We explore these notions as qualities that may guide cooperating teachers’ work in facilitating student teachers’ development. We discuss specific ideas and strategies for mentoring and modeling within various theoretical frameworks and selected research that supports each notion. Throughout the article, we outline policy and practice implications for music teacher preparation programs, including aligning them with current accreditation standards and assessments.     

The Coevolution of Secrecy and Stigmatization

We propose a coevolutionary model of secrecy and stigmatization. According to this model, secrecy functions to conceal potential fitness costs detected in oneself or one’s genetic kin. In three studies, we found that the content of participants’ distressing secrets overlapped significantly with three domains of social information that were important for inclusive fitness and served as cues for discriminating between rewarding and unrewarding interaction partners: health, mating, and social-exchange behavior. These findings support the notion that secrecy functions primarily as a defense against stigmatization by suppressing information about oneself or one’s kin that evolutionarily has been devalued in mating and social exchange.     

‘A place for training,not for competition’: negotiations of competition and agency among long-distance runners in Kenya

Kenyan long-distance runners have for decades famously dominated international athletic competitions. Most of the aspiring runners live and train in the highlands of northwest Kenya, in Elgeyo Marakwet County, where they have access to competitive peer groups of budding athletes and an elaborate infrastructure of camps, coaches, and managers. The most promising and successful ones travel abroad to take part in international races, only to quickly return and continue training in the ‘county of champions’. Meanwhile, Kenya is undergoing a rapid transformation, envisioned by the government's development plan, which promises to transform it into a ‘globally competitive and prosperous country’. On the surface, competition is a self-explanatory notion that drives the transnational sports industry and the state's development plan. However, ethnography of the county's capital, Iten, and its community of athletes reveals tensions: Kenyans take up, negotiate, appropriate, and challenge meanings of competition offered by the state and the sports industry on ecological, gendered, and moral grounds. Ethnography of ideologies of competition in Iten, conceptualized as moral, aesthetic, and gendered projects, complicates accounts of competition as a tool for global neoliberal governance. It also provides an alternative to analyses of African subjects’ agency in global circulation of capital, people, and ideas, namely analyses subsumed under signs of marginality, dependence, and subjection.     

XPC: Going where no DNA damage sensor has gone before

XPC has long been considered instrumental in DNA damage recognition during global genome nucleotide excision repair (GG-NER). While this recognition is crucial for organismal health and survival, as XPC’s recognition of lesions stimulates global genomic repair, more recent lines of research have uncovered many new non-canonical pathways in which XPC plays a role, such as base excision repair (BER), chromatin remodeling, cell signaling, proteolytic degradation, and cellular viability. Since the first discovery of its yeast homolog, Rad4, the involvement of XPC in cellular regulation has expanded considerably. Indeed, our understanding appears to barely scratch the surface of the incredible potential influence of XPC on maintaining proper cellular function. Here, we first review the canonical role of XPC in lesion recognition and then explore the new world of XPC function.     

大尺度区域生态环境治理及国家生态安全格局构建的技术途径和战略布局

陆地生态系统是地球生物圈系统的核心组分,是人类生活、生产及社会经济活动的场所。然而,人类文明发展和科学技术进步在不断地扩大对资源的利用规模和强度,也导致了严重威胁社会可持续发展的全球气候变化、生物多样性丧失、环境污染、资源枯竭、生态系统退化等环境问题。社会公众期望生态学研究能够为区域、大陆及全球尺度的生态系统的利用和保护、维持人类社会可持续发展提供科学理论及系统性的解决方案。本研究以服务中国生态文明建设、生态安全格局构建、区域生态环境治理,以及宏观生态系统科学发展为目标,回顾了中国的区域生态环境治理成效及经验;分析了我国生态文明建设对大尺度生态系统科学研究的科技需求与时代特征,提出了利用基于自然的宏生态系统途径的新思路提升区域生态环境治理及安全格局构建的设想。在此基础上,讨论了中国的大尺度区域安全格局构建及生态环境治理的新思路、战略布局、技术途径与科技支撑体系,为中国安全、健康和美丽的国土空间利用及生态文明建设进步提供理论参考。     

Between global citizenship and Qatarization: negotiating Qatar's new knowledge economy within American branch campuses

Over the last decade, the Gulf state of Qatar has invested billions of dollars in American branch campuses as part of its development as a ‘knowledge-based economy’. A knowledge economy will allow Qatar to diversify from petroleum wealth and reduce the country's reliance on foreign labour by introducing more citizens into the workforce, a process called ‘Qatarization’. While intended to bolster nativism, branch campuses are organized around certain Western liberal norms, such as meritocracy, egalitarianism and multiculturalism. These manifest in several ways, including English education, gender integration and a student body that is composed of more non-citizens than Qatari nationals. In this article, I explore how non-citizen students in particular, many of who were born and raised in Qatar, interact with Qatar's new knowledge economy, paying particular attention to the seemingly contradictory models of ‘global citizenship’ on the one hand and ‘Qatarization’ on the other – one a philosophy that is open and inclusive, and the other specifically closed and exclusive.     

A special report on India's biotech scenario: Advancement in biopharmaceutical and health care sectors

India's biotechnology industry has been growing towards new heights in conjunction with the recent economic outburst. The country has the potential to revolutionize biopharmaceutical and healthcare sectors. In this review, we have highlighted the achievements of India's biotechnology industry, especially biopharmaceutical and healthcare sectors that include therapeutics, diagnostics, stem cell research, human healthcare related bioinformatics and animal health care. We have also described regulatory mechanisms involved in India's health care biotech including manpower development.     

Informed Consent in Health Research: Challenges and Barriers in Low‐and Middle‐Income Countries with Specific Reference to Nepal

Obtaining ‘informed consent’ from every individual participant involved in health research is a mandatory ethical practice. Informed consent is a process whereby potential participants are genuinely informed about their role, risk and rights before they are enrolled in the study. Thus, ethics committees in most countries require ‘informed consent form’ as part of an ethics application which is reviewed before granting research ethics approval. Despite a significant increase in health research activity in low‐and middle‐income countries (LMICs) in recent years, only limited work has been done to address ethical concerns. Most ethics committees in LMICs lack the authority and/or the capacity to monitor research in the field. This is important since not all research, particularly in LMICs region, complies with ethical principles, sometimes this is inadvertently or due to a lack of awareness of their importance in assuring proper research governance. With several examples from Nepal, this paper reflects on the steps required to obtain informed consents and highlights some of the major challenges and barriers to seeking informed consent from research participants. At the end of this paper, we also offer some recommendations around how can we can promote and implement optimal informed consent taking process. We believe that paper is useful for researchers and members of ethical review boards in highlighting key issues around informed consent.     

Functional landscapes in cities: a systems approach

Human enterprise and endeavour increasingly influence global processes of change, from the planetary scale down to the very local. Cities are hubs of human activity, and as the places where the majority of the world’s population live we must, when looking into an uncertain future, consider how we think about urban design. Cities are densely inhabited, lived-in landscapes where human presence and perceptions are deeply enmeshed with biophysical and built infrastructures. As such, they present complex mosaics of different habitats and competing uses, ever changing in response to human and physical drivers. If designed properly, green infrastructure can contribute many important functions to a city. Efforts to strategically make use of green infrastructure can benefit considerably from a systems perspective where linkages and cross-boundary dynamics are at the very least as important as individual components. Design, planning and governance of requirements for green infrastructure also extend far beyond biophysical elements and components. Recognition of interconnections between individual green spaces, green infrastructure and the built environment, the physical environment and diverse actors, and formal and informal governance arrangements—as outlined in the four design principles in this article—is a first important step towards a more comprehensive and inclusive approach, not least to green infrastructure planning and design.     

Review: Sustainability of crossbreeding in developing countries; definitely not like crossing a meadow…

Crossbreeding, considering either terminal or rotational crossing, synthetic breed creation or breed replacement, is often promoted as an efficient strategy to increase farmers’ income through the improvement of productivity of local livestock in developing countries. Sustainability of crossbreeding is however frequently challenged by constraints such as poor adaptation to the local environment or lack of logistic support. In this review, we investigate factors that may influence the long-term success or the failure of crossbreeding programs, based on the scientific literature and country reports submitted for The Second Report on the State of the World’s Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. Crossbreeding activities vary widely across species and countries. Its sustainability is dependent on different prerequisites such as continual access to adequate breeding stock (especially after the end of externally funded crossbreeding projects), the opportunity of improved livestock to express their genetic potential (e.g. through providing proper inputs) and integration within a reliable market chain. As formal crossbreeding programs are often associated with adoption of other technologies, they can be a catalyst for innovation and development for smallholders. Given the increasing global demand for animal products, as well as the potential environmental consequences of climate change, there is a need for practical research to improve the implementation of long-term crossbreeding programs in developing countries.     

Placing Well-Being: A Maori Case Study of Cultural and Environmental Specificity

Studies of well-being have been dominated by perspectives that stem from Western, health-science notions of individual’s health and psychological development. In recent times, however, there has been a developing sensitivity to the cultural and place-specific contexts affecting the health and well-being of contrasting populations in different environments. Drawing on these advances, this article explores the potential in conceptualizing a place-based notion of well-being that recognizes the cultural and environmental specificity of well-being for specific populations in a given setting. We argue that a geographical approach to well-being enables the linking of culture and environment for future indigenous research into both ecosystems and human health. Taking the case of an indigenous population, we identify the contexts that affect Maori well-being and we argue that key sociocultural and environmental dimensions need to be integrated for a culturally appropriate approach to Maori well-being.     

You are welcome here: A practical guide to diversity,equity, and inclusion for undergraduates embarking on an ecological research experience

As we build a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture in the ecological research community, we must work to support new ecologists by empowering them with the knowledge, tools, validation, and sense of belonging in ecology to succeed. Undergraduate research experiences (UREs) are critical for a student''s professional and interpersonal skill development and key for recruiting and retaining students from diverse groups to ecology. However, few resources exist that speak directly to an undergraduate researcher on the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) dimensions of embarking on a first research experience. Here, we write primarily for undergraduate readers, though a broader audience of readers, especially URE mentors, will also find this useful. We explain many of the ways a URE benefits undergraduate researchers and describe how URE students from different positionalities can contribute to an inclusive research culture. We address three common sources of anxiety for URE students through a DEI lens: imposter syndrome, communicating with mentors, and safety in fieldwork. We discuss the benefits as well as the unique vulnerabilities and risks associated with fieldwork, including the potential for harassment and assault. Imposter syndrome and toxic field experiences are known to drive students, including students from underrepresented minority groups, out of STEM. Our goal is to encourage all students, including those from underrepresented groups, to apply for UREs, build awareness of their contributions to inclusion in ecology research, and provide strategies for overcoming known barriers.     

The Practical Application of Narrative Medicine at Mayo Clinic: Imagining the Scaffold of a Worthy House

American health care institutions increasingly recognize narrative medicine as a means to developing quality patient care. More commonly applied in health care professional development settings, narrative medicine is less overtly employed with patient populations. In this article, we describe the application of various narrative practices in the patient care and medical education programs of a major health care center in Minnesota. We discuss the impact of these programs on their participants in relation to the evidence based in current scholarship. Further, we examine narrative externalization of illness in Katherine Butler Hathaway’s disability memoir “The Little Locksmith,” a text which implicates the work of metaphor-making as a transformative step in healing. While several reports demonstrate that patients can find creative writing during times of illness to be therapeutic, there are many for whom the practice is problematic or unattractive, obstacles to practice implementation that the authors discuss. However, based on the experience of our institution, for health care institutions seeking to build a legacy of leadership in empathic patient care, narrative—employed in mentoring physicians in training and in establishing strong, dialogic relationships with patients and colleagues—should serve as a central strategy, or scaffold.     

Tracking evolution of urban biogeochemical cycles: past,present, and future

This overview and synthesis paper focuses on the evolution of urban biogeochemical cycles across time. We synthesize empirical data and review existing literature, including papers in this special issue, and we propose the concept of “urban evolution.” The built environment often changes quickly in response to human activities, thus contributing to an urban evolution that affects structure, function, and ecosystem services of human settlements over time. Depending upon management, these changes can result in rapid losses of ecosystem functions/services or progress towards restoration. We explore urban evolution through empirical examples such as: (1) land development and nitrogen inputs within a metropolitan region over half a century; (2) watershed drainage by different forms of stormwater management over decades; (3) human-accelerated weathering in urbanized watersheds over decades; and (4) global salinization of freshwater across urbanizing landscapes over a century. We also synthesize concepts relevant to studying urban evolution of infrastructure and ecosystems including: (1) urban watersheds have challenged our whole notion of the “watershed approach” due to complex hydrologic boundaries and flow paths over time; (2) the urban hydrologic cycle evolves due to changing infrastructure and human water use over time; (3) the importance of extending research beyond individual sites using an urban watershed approach over space and time; (4) salinization as a universal tracer of watershed urbanization over time; (5) human-accelerated weathering of concrete and construction materials contributing to an “urban karst” over time; (6) human alteration of the carbon cycle in urban watersheds over time; and (7) detecting distinct biogeochemical signatures across cities globally over time. Our synthesis and this special issue suggest that urban biogeochemical cycles have exerted a major influence on the elemental composition of the Earth’s surface from local to global scales. A new global research agenda is needed to track the evolution of urban biogeochemical cycles as land development proceeds and infrastructure/management changes so we can better evaluate potential losses in ecosystem services, set realistic watershed and river restoration goals, and formulate effective environmental policy for Earth’s growing urban population.     

Evaluating the risks of public health programs: Rational antibiotic use and antimicrobial resistance

Existing ethical frameworks for public health provide insufficient guidance on how to evaluate the risks of public health programs that compromise the best clinical interests of present patients for the benefit of others. Given the relevant similarity of such programs to clinical research, we suggest that insights from the long‐standing debate about acceptable risk in clinical research can helpfully inform and guide the evaluation of risks posed by public health programs that compromise patients’ best clinical interests. We discuss how lessons learned regarding the ethics of risk in one context can be fruitfully transferred to the other, using the example of a so‐called ‘rational antibiotic use’ guideline that limits antimicrobial prescribing in order to curb antimicrobial resistance.