Mapping the moral boundaries of biological engineering

The following essay was written by a sophomore undergraduate student majoring in Bioengineering at the University of Maryland, Mr. Zachary Russ. Mr. Russ was one of 174 students who submitted a 1000–1200 word essay to the 4th Annual Bioethics Contest sponsored by the Institute of Biological Engineering (IBE). A group of professionals in Biological Engineering assessed and ranked the essays in a blinded process. Five semi-finalists were invited to present their essays at a session at the annual meeting of IBE in Santa Clara, CA on March 21, 2009. Five judges scored all the presentation at the annual meeting and selected Mr. Russ's contribution as the overall winner (1st Place).     

Four suggestions for addressing public concern regarding synthetic biology

The following essay was written by Mr. Alex Hatch, a junior undergraduate student majoring in Biological Engineering at Utah State University. Mr. Hatch submitted a 1000-1200 word essay to the 5^th Annual Bioethics Contest sponsored by the Institute of Biological Engineering (IBE). A group of professionals in Biological Engineering assessed and ranked the essays in a blinded process. Five semi-finalists were invited to present their essays at a session at the annual meeting of IBE in Cambridge, MA on March 6, 2010. Five judges scored all the presentations and selected Mr. Hatch's contribution as the overall winner (first place).     

Grand challenges for biological engineering

Biological engineering will play a significant role in solving many of the world's problems in medicine, agriculture, and the environment. Recently the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE) released a document "Grand Challenges in Engineering," covering broad realms of human concern from sustainability, health, vulnerability and the joy of living. Biological engineers, having tools and techniques at the interface between living and non-living entities, will play a prominent role in forging a better future. The 2010 Institute of Biological Engineering (IBE) conference in Cambridge, MA, USA will address, in part, the roles of biological engineering in solving the challenges presented by the NAE. This letter presents a brief outline of how biological engineers are working to solve these large scale and integrated problems of our society.     

In-vitro evaluation of Polylactic acid (PLA) manufactured by fused deposition modeling

October 10th, 2016 marked the 9th anniversary for the Journal of Biological Engineering (JBE), the official journal of Institute of Biological Engineering (IBE), published by BioMed Central. We are entering into the 10th year of its exciting and productive history. In this editorial, a brief history of JBE is summarized, along with a series of analyses on average number of citations, breakdown of topical subjects, geographical representations and so forth for all published articles in JBE. Future prospects and new directions of JBE are also described in this editorial.     

Erratum

The Table of Contents in the January 1997 issue, AJPA 102:1, did not differentiate between articles published as part of an edited symposium, and other research papers published in that issue. Five of the first six articles (pp. 1-77) in volume 102:1 were originally presented at the 63rd AAPA annual meeting (1994) as part of a symposium entitled “Social and Political-Economic Perspectives in Biological Anthropology.” The organizers of the symposium, and its counterpart published in AJPA 102:1, were T.L. Leatherman and A.H. Goodman.     

Stem cells by the shore: Meeting summary of the 2008 MDI Stem Cell Symposium

A diverse group of stem cell biologists converged on the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory (MDIBL) on August 8th and 9th, 2008 for the seventh annual Mount Desert Island Stem Cell Symposium co-hosted by the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory and the Jackson Laboratory. The focus of this year’s meeting was epigenetics, a timely topic given the remarkable progress in the area of nuclear reprogramming.     

Distinguished Lecture: Anthropology and the Theoretical and Paradigmatic Significance of the Collapse of Soviet and East European Communism

This essay was delivered as the Distinguished Lecture at the 90th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, November 23,1991, in Chicago, Illinois.     

Distinguished Lecture: Archeology and Anthropology

This essay was delivered as the Distinguished Lecture to the 86th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, November 21, 1987, at Chicago, Illinois.     

Distinguished Lecture: The Hotel Kwilu—A Model of Models

This essay was delivered as the Distinguished Lecture at the 87th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, November 20, 1988, in Phoenix, Arizona.     

Distinguished Lecture: Recent Work in the Decipherment of Palenque's Hieroglyphic Inscriptions

This essay was delivered as the Distinguished Lecture at the 89th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, December 1, 1990, in New Orleans, Louisiana.     

Distinguished Lecture: Facing Power—Old Insights, New Questions

This essay was delivered as the Distinguished Lecture at the 88th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, November 19, 1989, in Washington, D.C.     

Stem cells shine in Shanghai

From November 6 to 9, 2007, more than 500 scientists from 20 countries and regions gathered in Shanghai, China, to attend the 2007 Shanghai International Symposium on Stem Cell Research. This dynamic meeting was jointly organized by the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR), the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (SIBS/CAS), and other institutes in China. For the first time, the ISSCR added its name to a conference other than its own annual meeting, embracing this opportunity to learn more about research that is happening in China and providing a platform for local researchers who do not always have the opportunity to travel internationally to the ISSCR annual meetings. Here we present a sampling of the diverse research presented by the local and international participants during the science-packed 4 day meeting.     

The A.M.A. Meeting,June 25-30, 1961, New York City

This “news and comment” report on the recent annual meeting of the American Medical Association was written by Mr. Ed Clancy, director of public relations of the California Medical Association.     

Genomics,molecular imaging,bioinformatics, and bio-nano-info integration are synergistic components of translational medicine and personalized healthcare research

Supported by National Science Foundation (NSF), International Society of Intelligent Biological Medicine (ISIBM), International Journal of Computational Biology and Drug Design and International Journal of Functional Informatics and Personalized Medicine, IEEE 7th Bioinformatics and Bioengineering attracted more than 600 papers and 500 researchers and medical doctors. It was the only synergistic inter/multidisciplinary IEEE conference with 24 Keynote Lectures, 7 Tutorials, 5 Cutting-Edge Research Workshops and 32 Scientific Sessions including 11 Special Research Interest Sessions that were designed dynamically at Harvard in response to the current research trends and advances. The committee was very grateful for the IEEE Plenary Keynote Lectures given by: Dr. A. Keith Dunker (Indiana), Dr. Jun Liu (Harvard), Dr. Brian Athey (Michigan), Dr. Mark Borodovsky (Georgia Tech and President of ISIBM), Dr. Hamid Arabnia (Georgia and Vice-President of ISIBM), Dr. Ruzena Bajcsy (Berkeley and Member of United States National Academy of Engineering and Member of United States Institute of Medicine of the National Academies), Dr. Mary Yang (United States National Institutes of Health and Oak Ridge, DOE), Dr. Chih-Ming Ho (UCLA and Member of United States National Academy of Engineering and Academician of Academia Sinica), Dr. Andy Baxevanis (United States National Institutes of Health), Dr. Arif Ghafoor (Purdue), Dr. John Quackenbush (Harvard), Dr. Eric Jakobsson (UIUC), Dr. Vladimir Uversky (Indiana), Dr. Laura Elnitski (United States National Institutes of Health) and other world-class scientific leaders. The Harvard meeting was a large academic event 100% full-sponsored by IEEE financially and academically. After a rigorous peer-review process, the committee selected 27 high-quality research papers from 600 submissions. The committee is grateful for contributions from keynote speakers Dr. Russ Altman (IEEE BIBM conference keynote lecturer on combining simulation and machine learning to recognize function in 4D), Dr. Mary Qu Yang (IEEE BIBM workshop keynote lecturer on new initiatives of detecting microscopic disease using machine learning and molecular biology, http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/servlet/opac?punumber=4425386) and Dr. Jack Y. Yang (IEEE BIBM workshop keynote lecturer on data mining and knowledge discovery in translational medicine) from the first IEEE Computer Society BioInformatics and BioMedicine (IEEE BIBM) international conference and workshops, November 2-4, 2007, Silicon Valley, California, USA.     

Sergei G. Kryzhanovsky (1891-1961)

This essay about the outstanding Russian embryologist and ichthyologist is not time to any date of his life. The cause for its appearance was an unexpected meeting with Elena N. Disler, whom I did not see almost 60 years. When I worked at the Biological Station "Glubokoe ozero" (Deep Lake), there were also biologists N.N. Disler and his wife E.F. Eremeeva with their children Lena and Vitya. At the same time, as usual, S.G. Kryzhanovsky worked at the station, who lived in Moscow in the same apartment with the Dislers. After the death of this lone scientists, his archive, mostly epistolary, was in the care of the Dislers. And Elena N. Disler (that girl Lena) proposed for me to have a look at this archive.     

Characterization of IBE 2254 Binding to Alpha - Adrenergic Receptors on Intact DDT Smooth Muscle Cells: Comparison with Membrane1 Binding and Correlation with Phosphoinositides Breakdown

Abstract

The binding of the antagonist IBE 2254 (IBE) to α -adrenergic receptors was characterized on intact DDT smooth muscle cells. IBE binding was rapid, reversible, stable and saturable: Bmax = 113000±13000 recetors/cell, K = 110±13 pM (n = 25). Saturation and competition experiments analysed by non linear curve fitting indicated a single population of binding sites with a pharmacological profile typical for α-adrenergic receptors. Antagonists competed for IBE binding sites in the following order: prazosin > phentolamine = phenoxybenzamine > yohimbine. The rank order for agonists was clonidine > epinephrine > norepinephrine > phenylephrine. There was a significant correlation between IBE binding to intact cells, DDT₁ membranes and rat cortex membranes. Neither agonists nor antagonists showed noticeable changes in their affinity for IBE binding on either system. There was also a good correlation between IBE binding and breakdown of phosphoinositides (PI) measured in intact cells.     

Change is necessary in a biological engineering curriculum

Success of a Biological Engineering undergraduate educational program can be measured in a number of ways, but however it is measured, a presently successful program can translate into an unsuccessful program if it cannot adjust to different conditions posed by technical advances, student characteristics, and academic pressures. Described in this paper is a Biological Engineering curriculum that has changed significantly since its transformation from Agricultural Engineering in 1993. As a result, student numbers have continued to climb, specific objectives have emerged, and unique courses have been developed. The Biological Resources Engineering program has evolved into a program that emphasizes breadth, fundamentals, communications skills, diversity, and practical engineering judgment.     

Partitioning the effects of isolation by distance,environment, and physical barriers on genomic divergence between parapatric threespine stickleback

Genetic divergence between populations is shaped by a combination of drift, migration, and selection, yielding patterns of isolation‐by‐distance (IBD) and isolation‐by‐environment (IBE). Unfortunately, IBD and IBE may be confounded when comparing divergence across habitat boundaries. For instance, parapatric lake and stream threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) may have diverged due to selection against migrants (IBE), or mere spatial separation (IBD). To quantitatively partition the strength of IBE and IBD, we used recently developed population genetic software (BEDASSLE) to analyze partial genomic data from three lake‐stream clines on Vancouver Island. We find support for IBD within each of three outlet streams (unlike prior studies of lake‐stream stickleback). In addition, we find evidence for IBE (controlling for geographic distance): the genetic effect of habitat is equivalent to geographic separation of ～1.9 km of IBD. Remarkably, of our three lake‐stream pairs, IBE is strongest where migration between habitats is easiest. Such microgeographic genetic divergence would require exceptionally strong divergent selection, which multiple experiments have failed to detect. Instead, we propose that nonrandom dispersal (e.g., habitat choice) contributes to IBE. Supporting this conclusion, we show that the few migrants between habitats are a nonrandom subset of the phenotype distribution of the source population.     

1 July 1858 and the 1844 essay: what Lyell and Hooker decided; and what Darwin did not want and did not know

Two ‘papers’ of Darwin's were read at the famous 1 July 1858 meeting of the Linnean Society: an excerpt from his 1844 essay and a summary of his theory, enclosed in an 1857 letter to Asa Gray. Quite apart from not selecting the essay excerpt, Darwin's letters appear to indicate that he definitely did not want, and hence did not expect, an excerpt from his 1844 essay to be included (and that he did not learn of its inclusion until some 2 weeks after the meeting). As a result, we refine Darwin's role in ‘the delicate arrangement’, as well as the basis for Hooker's and Lyell's. In particular, why did they choose an essay excerpt to be presented contrary to Darwin's wishes? In direct opposition to the popular view, the essay excerpt was the afterthought, the last‐minute add‐on, not the enclosure to the Gray letter.