Fifty-eight years in science--a commentary

After 58 years in science, mostly in pharmacology, one gains perspective. Mine is that there have been important changes over this time, some good and some questionable. In this commentary, I try to reveal how I got to this stage, partially explaining my biases, and possibly helping others learn from my experiences including mistakes. Changing from seeking an M.D. to cellular biology and then to pharmacology early in my career were the best moves I made. The next best move was migration to Canada, away from the McCarthy-McCarran hysteria. Arriving at a time after the end of World War II when science in Canada was expanding was very good luck. I had an excellent opportunity to enjoy both the administration (as Chair of the first independent Department of Pharmacology at the University of Alberta) and the practice of pharmacology (as a practitioner of research on smooth muscle in health and disease). For me, the practice of research has always won over administration when a choice had to be made. Early on, I began to ask questions about educational practices and tried to evaluate them. This led me to initiate changes in laboratories and to seek nondidactic educational approaches such as problem-based learning. I also developed questions about the practice of anonymous peer review. After moving to McMaster in 1975, I was compelled to find a solution for a failed "Pharmacology Program" and eventually developed the first "Smooth Muscle Research Program". Although that was a good solution for the research component, it did not solve the educational needs. This led to the development of "therapeutic problems", which were used to help McMaster medical students educate themselves about applied pharmacology. Now these problems are being used to educate pharmacology honours and graduate students at the University of Alberta. The best part of all these activities is the colleagues and friends that I have interacted with and learned from over the years, and the realization that many of them have collaborated with me again in this volume.     

Balancing teaching and research experiences in doctoral training programs: lessons for the future educator

While a variety of alternative careers has emerged for Ph.D. life scientists in industry, business, law, and education in the past two decades, the structure of doctoral training programs in many cases does not provide the flexibility necessary to pursue career experiences not directly related to a research emphasis. Here I describe my efforts to supplement my traditional doctoral research training with independent teaching experiences that have allowed me to prepare myself for a career that combines both into a combined educational program. I describe the issues I have come across in finding and taking part in these endeavors, how these issues have affected my work in pursuing my Ph.D., and how my experiences translate into my hopes for a future education-based career in molecular and cell biology.     

How does visual thinking work in the mind of a person with autism? A personal account

My mind is similar to an Internet search engine that searches for photographs. I use language to narrate the photo-realistic pictures that pop up in my imagination. When I design equipment for the cattle industry, I can test run it in my imagination similar to a virtual reality computer program. All my thinking is associative and not linear. To form concepts, I sort pictures into categories similar to computer files. To form the concept of orange, I see many different orange objects, such as oranges, pumpkins, orange juice and marmalade. I have observed that there are three different specialized autistic/Asperger cognitive types. They are: (i) visual thinkers such as I who are often poor at algebra, (ii) pattern thinkers such as Daniel Tammet who excel in math and music but may have problems with reading or writing composition, and (iii) verbal specialists who are good at talking and writing but they lack visual skills.     

Resituating the Place of Educational Discourse in Anthropology

This critical essay examines the place of educational discourse in contemporary anthropology. I address the growing influence of "cultural studies" frameworks in anthropology—especially in research on popular culture, media, and identity—and the corresponding neglect of specifically educational discourses and practices, in and out of schools. To illustrate, I briefly examine recent research by four noted cultural anthropologists who mention the effects of schools at their field sites but pay insufficient attention to complex educational discourses and practices. Then I address the reasons why most contemporary anthropologists outside the subfield of "anthropology of education" ignore or downplay the role of modern schools in structuring identities and power relations, both locally and globally. I end with a programmatic synthesis: to recognize and account for the continuing power of schools in most contemporary ethnographic sites, even as we broaden our vision of "education" and extend our analytic tools well beyond schools. This resituating of educational discourse in anthropology might accomplish two important things. First, it could arrest the trend toward subfield specialization and provide a more unifying research program. Second, it would promote anthropology's renewed engagement with some of the most pressing problems of democracy and public policy, fostering an organic link between our multiple roles as teachers, researchers, and institutional actors, [education, identity, cultural studies, ethnographyJ     

The 'physical prophet' and the powers of the imagination. Part II: a case-study on dowsing and the naturalisation of the moral, 1685-1710

In the first paper of this pair, I argued the importance of theories of the imagination in debates on divination [Vermeir, K. (2004). The 'physical prophet' and the powers of the imagination. Part I: A case-study on prophecy, vapours and the imagination (1685-1710). Studies in History and Philosophy of Science C, 35, 561-591]. In the present article, I will rely on these results in order to unearth the role of the imagination in a discussion on dowsing. References to the imagination were often implicit because of its negative associations, but I show in detail how the imagination was used to negotiate between the material and the spiritual, and between the natural, the supernatural and the moral. Natural philosophers, theologians and moralists all struggled for authority over divinatory phenomena. The debate evolved around the questions whether moral states could be naturalised and whether subtle material vapours could have moral qualities.     

The Political Coherence of Educational Incoherence: The Consequences of Educational Specialization in a Southern Moroccan Community

This article is based on an ethnographic study I conducted in southern Morocco during 2004. I explore the historical, ideological, and cultural background behind educational specialization among Moroccan university students. I describe how French colonial educational policies and postindependence Moroccan national schooling ideologies have created a national system of double standards that: (1) privileges French-educated urban middle- and upper-class students, (2) emphasizes the Arabization of the national education system, and (3) discriminates against Arabized, largely rural students, which have exacerbated regional educational and socioeconomic inequalities. I finally contend that educational specialization in noncompetitive degrees such as Arabic language and literature, Islamic studies, geography, and general law is the result of an ideological matrix I have termed political coherence of educational incoherence. Political coherence of educational incoherence naturalizes the reliance of certain disfranchised regional groups on a traditional preschool Islamic education that is largely based on memorization and inefficient pedagogy and is unsuitable for the modern educational requirements.  [Islamic education, school ethnography, Arabization, school failure, minority education]     

Coming Unstuck: Thinking Otherwise about "Studying Up"

This article extends arguments that seek to account for the paucity of research on "studying up," suggesting that to foster a more congenial climate in which such studies can he undertaken, received discourses in educational research that assume fixed/stable identities for researcher and subjects need to be rethought. I argue that poststructuralist perspectives help us "think otherwise" on matters of power and subjectivity in research. By allowing for an inquisitorial rather than an adversarial stance to studying the workings of power, such perspectives allow a different conceptualization of research that could ease the process of doing ethnographic research with the powerful and broaden the approaches currently available to studying up in educational research.     

The future of the past in the present: biodiversity informatics and geological time

The biological and palaeontological communities have approached the problem of informatics separately, creating a divide between communities that is both technological and sociological in nature. In this paper we describe one new advance towards solving this problem - expanding the Scratchpads platform to deal with geological time. In creating this system we have attempted to make our work open to existing communities by providing a webservice of geological time data via the GBIF Vocabularies site. We have also ensured that our system can adapt to changes in the definition of geological time intervals and is capable of querying datasets independently of the format of geological age data used.     

The sociocultural context of nursing in Japan

Both by the standards of American nurses and in the eyes of the Japanese public, nurses in Japan appear subservient. In this paper I explore this situation from three perspectives. Most Japanese nurses lack a sense of professionalism which the nursing elite in Japan as well as sociological theory attributes to the low educational levels of the nurses. The second perspective investigates the nurses' functional role as intermediary between the medical world and the many patients who regard physicians as socially distant. Thirdly, Japanese nurses might be considered the housewives of the hospital in terms not only of their physical duties but also of their caretaking role. If the housewife analogy holds, the values, behavior, and attitudes that give Japanese housewives their satisfaction and their autonomy would considerably alter the role of the nurse in the delivery of cosmopolitan medical care.     

Authentic teaching and learning through synthetic biology

Synthetic biology is an emerging engineering discipline that, if successful, will allow well-characterized biological components to be predictably and reliably built into robust organisms that achieve specific functions. Fledgling efforts to design and implement a synthetic biology curriculum for undergraduate students have shown that the co-development of this emerging discipline and its future practitioners does not undermine learning. Rather it can serve as the lynchpin of a synthetic biology curriculum. Here I describe educational goals uniquely served by synthetic biology teaching, detail ongoing curricula development efforts at MIT, and specify particular aspects of the emerging field that must develop rapidly in order to best train the next generation of synthetic biologists.     

The ‘physical prophet’ and the powers of the imagination. Part I: a case-study on prophecy,vapours and the imagination (1685–1710)

I argue that the imagination was a crucial concept for the understanding of marvellous phenomena, divination and magic in general. Exploring a debate on prophecy at the turn of the seventeenth century, I show that four explanatory categories (God, demons, nature and fraud) were consistently evoked and I elucidate the role of the imagination in each of them. I introduce the term ‘floating concept’ to conceptualise the different ways in which the imagination and the related ‘animal spirits’ were understood in diverse discourses. My argument is underpinned with a general discussion of the imagination, after which I focus on a (now little known) unorthodox tradition which attributed special powers to this internal faculty. Many physicians had explained psychosomatic phenomena by referring to the influence of the imagination on the human body; but some philosophers held that the imagination could also exert power over external objects. During the renaissance these theories acquired negative associations and became linked with illicit magic. Furthermore, I show that the relation between both animal spirits and imagination, and the power of the latter over external bodies, points to the importance of a ‘history of vapours’; and this suggests an adjustment to Keith Hutchison’s argument on occult qualities in mechanical philosophy. The accompanying paper (Vermeir, 2005) gives more evidence of these claims and elaborates on the relation between the natural and the moral.     

Deconstructing Pregnancy: RU486, Seeing "Eggs," and the Ambiguity of Very Early Conceptions

This article deconstructs previous notions of pregnancy. Using empirical data from French women's experience with RU486 for medical abortion, I demonstrate that very early and unwanted conceptions have an ambiguous quality. I illustrate an understanding of pregnancy as a reproductive continuum: these women understand pregnancy to include a stage where "eggs," and not fetuses, are present. I discuss how the use of RU486 creates new ways of knowing about the fetus, and I compare an understanding of the fetus by women using RU486 with previous understandings from ultrasound images, in utero photography, and the imagination. I demonstrate that women's embodied knowledge can expand the parameters of fetal discourse. [RU486, fetal discourse, embodied knowledge, abortion, reproductive technology]     

Functional analysis of the yeast genome

Just as Saccharomyces cerevisiae itself provides a model for so many processes essential to eukaryotic life, we anticipate that the methods and the mindset that have moved yeast biological research "beyond the genome" provide a prototype for making similar progress in other organisms. In this review I describe the experimental processes, results and utility of the current large-scale experimental approaches that use genomic data to provide a functional analysis of the yeast genome. Electronic Publication     

The Limits of Authenticity in Vietnamese Consumer Markets

In this article, I address the saliency of the concept of "authenticity" in contexts of international law and anthropological inquiry. Using my research findings in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Vietnam, I show that although Vietnamese shoppers distinguish between what they term real and fake goods, they do not share with foreign corporations and international trade organizations a preoccupation with product and brand authenticity. To make this point, I describe four types of goods—model goods, mimic goods, real goods, and fake goods—employed by shoppers in HCMC, and discuss why they have little in common with notions of "authenticity" and "ownership" inherent in international standards of intellectual property. I argue that these conceptual differences in the commercial sphere challenge claims about the universal applicability of intellectual property rights laws and also encourage anthropologists to ask whether authenticity is always a useful tool of cross-cultural understanding.     

An Ethnography of Dementia

Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry - The experiences of dementia sufferers have rarely been examined in sociological literature. This article seeks to describe the experiences of one Alzheimer's...     

落叶松人工林群落生物生产力的研究

本文对黑龙江省帽儿山地区海拔300—350m的24年生,四种结构类型的兴安落叶松(Larix gmelini)人工林的群落学特性、生物量和生产量进行了测定和研究。按平均标准木法和样方收获法分别调查了乔木层、幼树下木层,草本地被物层及枯枝落叶层的生物量。结果表明：人工落叶松林乔木层不同组合的分布格局,形成了不同的群落结构特征及生物生产力。四种结构群落总平均生物量为159.445t／ha,净生产量为12.237t/ha·a;其中乔木层平均生物量为149.560t／ha,净生产量为9.627t／ha·a。乔木层盖度制约着群落的空间结构,使群落叶量及叶面积指数等叶的数量指标产生差异从而影响群落的生物生产力及光能利用率。在一定范围内,乔木层郁闭度由0.9减少至0.7,其叶面积指数由3.07增加到6.66,整个群落总的累积叶面积指数由3.315增加到9.220群落平均净生产量增加了105.28%,乔木层的平均净生产量增加了39.89%。     

Cloning and characterization of class I Mhc genes of the zebrafish,Brachydanio rerio

The zebrafish (Brachydanio rerio) offers many advantages for immunological and immunogenetic research and has the potential for becoming one of the most important nonmammalian vertebrate research models. With this in mind, we initiated a systematic study of the zebrafish major histocompatibility complex (Mhc) genes. In this report, we describe the cloning and characteristics of the zebrafish class I A genes coding for the chains of the heterodimer and thus complete the identification of all four classes and subclasses of the Mhc in this species. We describe the full class I cDNA sequence as well as the exon-intron organization of the class I A genes, including intron sequences. We identify three families of class I A genes which we designate Bree-UAA,-UBA, and -UCA. The three families originated about the time of the divergence of cyprinid and salmonid fishes. All three families are members of an ancient lineage that diverged from another, older lineage also represented in cyprinid fishes before the radiation of teleost orders. The fish class I A genes therefore evolve differently from mammalian class I A genes, in which the establishment of lineages and families mostly postdates the divergence of orders.The nucleotide sequence data reported in this Papershave been submitted to the EMBL/GenBank nucleotide sequence databases and have been assigned the accession numbers Z46776–Z46779     

Nominal versus variable approaches for understanding group differences

ABSTRACT

What produces and sustains inequality in socioeconomic position and integration across immigrant groups? Luthra, Soehl and Waldinger engage with this core sociological question in their book “Origins and Destinations”. They argue that nominal approaches, which compare and contrast whole national origin groups, are insufficient. Rather, they implement a variable approach. They use data on second generation immigrants living in New York and Los Angeles in the late 1990s to explore empirically what it is about immigrant groups that confers advantages and disadvantages to their offspring in the United States. Rather than comparing whole groups, they use measured data about each group’s characteristics and circumstances to help explain group differences. I describe their innovative approach and provide suggestions for how future research might build on it, such as by accounting for more variation in the context of reception, or by extending the temporal dimensions of inquiry across three or more generations.     

Yogi Berra, Forrest Gump, and the discovery of Listeria actin comet tails

In 1988, eminent cell biologist Lew Tilney and newly appointed Assistant Professor of Microbiology Dan Portnoy met at a picnic and initiated a collaboration that led to a groundbreaking paper published in Journal of Cell Biology entitled "Actin filaments and the growth, movement, and spread of the intracellular bacterial parasite, Listeria monocytogenes." The paper has been cited more than 800 times, the most of any publication in the careers of both investigators. Using an electron microscope from the Sputnik era, they assembled a stunning collection of micrographs that illustrated how L. monocytogenes enters the host cell and exploits a host system of actin-based motility to move within cells and into neighboring cells without leaving the host cell cytosol. This research captured the imagination of cell biologists and microbiologists alike and led to novel insights into cytoskeletal dynamics. Here, Portnoy provides a retrospective that shares text from the original submission that was deleted at the time of publication, along with reviewers' comments ranging from "It is really just a show and tell paper and doesn';t have any meat" to "the finding will have major impact in cell biology and in medicine. Potentially, the paper will be a classic."