Looking backwards, looking forward: hopes for bioethics' next twenty-five years

I reflect on the past, present, and future of the field of bioethics. In so doing, I offer a very situated overview of where bioethics has been, where it now is, where it seems to be going, where I think we could do better, and where I dearly hope the field will be heading. I also propose three ways of re-orienting our theoretic tools to guide us in a new direction: (1) adopt an ethics of responsibility; (2) explore the responsibilities of various kinds of actors and relationships among them; (3) expand the types of participants engaged in bioethics.     

Aspects of audit. 5: Looking forward to audit.

Whatever the misgivings of individual doctors, the formal support being given by professional bodies suggests that medical audit will become established in Britain. It is therefore appropriate to heed the advice of pioneers in the field in choosing methods and topics for audit. Practical problems can be anticipated because of the inadequacy of medical records, retrieval systems, and comparable information on practice patterns and evaluation of traditional processes of patient care. The criterion system of audit may provide a common standard for effective review. This can be used for any group of patients with some characteristic in common. It requires good records and a good records staff. Whatever method is adopted, central support should come from the royal colleges, with community physicians and clinical tutors assisting clinicians at the local level.     

Looking forward, looking back

Amgen's retrospective sortie into personalized Vectibix treatment poses some difficult questions for regulators concerning the oversight of companion diagnostics.     

Looking forward to seeing calcium

From molecules, single cells and tissues to whole organisms, our insights into Ca2+ signalling and the corresponding physiological phenomena are growing exponentially. Here, we describe the improvements that have been made in the development of the probes and instrumentation that are used for Ca2+ imaging and the expanding applications of Ca2+ imaging in basic and applied research.     

Journal of Systematics and Evolution: Looking forward

Systematics and evolution are the most comprehensive fields in biological sciences,and unify all areas of biology by providing a conceptual framework for interpreting biological diversity.Journal of Systematics and Evolution (JSE),established in 1951 as Acta Phytotaxonomica,has a long history of publishing papers on plant taxonomy.In 1954 (Vol.3),the journal name was changed to Acta Phytotaxonomica Sinica.Half a century later,in 2008,the current name was approved and used and the journal became all-English in 2009,with the expanded scope to include molecular evolution,evolutionary genomics,evolutionary developmental biology,evolutionary ecology,biogeography,and other related fields,beyond the core area of plant taxonomy.     

Looking forward to EphB signaling in synapses

Eph receptors and their ligands ephrins comprise a complex signaling system with diverse functions that span a wide range of tissues and developmental stages. The variety of Eph receptor functions stems from their ability to mediate bidirectional signaling through trans-cellular Eph/ephrin interactions. Initially thought to act by directing repulsion between cells, Ephs have also been demonstrated to induce and maintain cell adhesive responses at excitatory synapses in the central nervous system. EphB receptors are essential to the development and maintenance of dendritic spines, which accommodate the postsynaptic sites of most glutamatergic excitatory synapses in the brain. Functions of EphB receptors are not limited to control of the actin cytoskeleton in dendritic spines, as EphB receptors are also involved in the formation of functional synaptic specializations through the regulation of glutamate receptor trafficking and functions. In addition, EphB receptors have recently been linked to the pathophysiology of Alzheimer's disease and neuropathic pain, thus becoming promising targets for therapeutic interventions. In this review, we discuss recent findings on EphB receptor functions in synapses, as well as the mechanisms of bidirectional trans-synaptic ephrin-B/EphB receptor signaling that shape dendritic spines and influence post-synaptic differentiation.