All thumbs?

In this otherwise insightful line of investigation, some aspects of rules of thumb (RoT) remain underspecified: their evolution and function, how they are selected for a task, how they are learned, and the dependence of their apparent simplicity on their embodiment and context. Theories of operant and respondent conditioning may serve as the theoretical framework required to flesh out those details.     

One For All,All For One? Collective Representation in Healthcare Policy

Healthcare collectives, such as patient organizations, advocacy groups, disability organizations, professional associations, industry advocates, social movements, and health consumer organizations have been increasingly involved in healthcare policymaking. Such collectives are based on the idea that individual interests can be aggregated into collective interests by participation, deliberation, and representation. The topic of collectivity in healthcare, more specifically collective representation, has only rarely been addressed in (Western) bioethics. This symposium, entitled: “Collective Representation in Healthcare Policy” of the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry draws attention to this understudied topic from a variety of disciplines, within a variety of socio-cultural contexts. We draw attention to important ethical, cultural, and social questions, and into the practices, justifications for, and implications of collective representation of patients in healthcare policy.     

All signaling is local?

The mechanism of signal transmission following ligand stimulation of receptor tyrosine kinases in living cells is poorly understood. Recent studies have visualized the spatio-temporal pattern of EGF signaling, indicating that receptor density is an important factor in the mechanism of lateral propagation of local EGF signaling.     

MicroRNAs: All Gone and Then What?

MicroRNAs are abundant gene regulatory factors whose function in animal development and homeostasis is poorly understood. A new study reports the genetic elimination of miRNA function on a full genomic scale and identifies a subfamily of miRNAs involved in brain morphogenesis.     

Brain Evolution: Getting Better All the Time?

Recent studies on bats, goats and hominids suggest that some mammalian brains may have undergone dramatic evolutionary reductions in size. These studies emphasise the importance of selective pressures upon mammalian brain evolution and the need to integrate studies of neuroanatomy, neurophysiology and behaviour.     

FAMCS： Finding All Maximal Common Substructures in Proteins

Finding the common substructures shared by two proteins is considered as one of the central issues in computational biology because of its usefulness in understanding the structure-function relationship and application in drug and vaccine design. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm called FAMCS （Finding All Maximal Common Substructures） for the common substructure identification problem. Our method works initially at the protein secondary structural element （SSE） level and starts with the identification of all structurally similar SSE pairs. These SSE pairs are then merged into sets using a modified Apriori algorithm, which will test the similarity of various sets of SSE pairs incrementally until all the maximal sets of SSE pairs that deemed to be similar are found. The maximal common substructures of the two proteins will be formed from these maximal sets. A refinement algorithm is also proposed to fine tune the alignment from the SSE level to the residue level. Comparison of FAMCS with other methods on various proteins shows that FAMCS can address all four requirements and infer interesting biological discoveries.     

Should Health Professionals Screen All Women for Domestic Violence?

BACKGROUND TO THE DEBATE: The US and Canadian task forces on preventive health recently declared that there is not enough evidence to recommend for or against routine universal screening of women for domestic violence. Yet some experts argue that routine enquiry is justified.     

Dispersal Ecology: Where Have All the Seeds Gone?

How effective are different animals at dispersing seeds? A new study has traced seeds sampled in faeces to their mother of origin and concluded that carnivorous mammals can be better dispersers than birds.     

Stem Cell Epigenetics: Is It All Downhill from Here?

In this issue of Cell Stem Cell, Fasano et al. (2007) investigate the role of Bmi-1 in neural stem cells in vitro and in vivo. They find a progressively increasing requirement for Bmi-1 function in stem cells during development that, surprisingly, seems to involve regulation of the cell-cycle inhibitor p21.