Do transgenic plants affect rhizobacteria populations?

Plant genetic manipulation has led to the development of genetically modified plants (GMPs) expressing various traits. Since their first commercial use in 1996, GMPs have been increasingly used, reaching a global cultivating production area of 114.3 million hectares in 2007. The rapid development of agricultural biotechnology and release of GMPs have provided many agronomic and economic benefits, but has also raised concerns over the potential impact these plants might have on the environment. Among these environmental concerns, the unintentional impact that GMPs might have on soil‐associated microbes, especially rhizosphere‐inhabiting bacteria or rhizobacteria, represents one of the least studied and understood areas. As rhizobacteria are responsible for numerous key functions including nutrient cycling and decomposition, they have been defined as good indicator organisms to assess the general impact that GMPs might have on the soil environment. This minireview summarizes the results of various experiments that have been conducted to date on the impact of GMPs on rhizobacteria. Both biological and technical parameters are discussed and an attempt is made to determine if specific rhizobacterial responses exist for the different categories of GMPs developed to date.     

The Treaty of Waitangi and Research Ethics in Aotearoa

Researchers, when engaging with Māori communities, are in a process of relationship building and this process can be guided by the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, partnership, participation and protection. The main concerns for many indigenous peoples in research revolve around respect for their indigenous rights, control over research processes and reciprocity within research relationships to ensure that equitable benefits are realised within indigenous groups. Māori have identified similar issues and these concerns can be aligned with the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. The relevance of the Treaty of Waitangi to research ethics is discussed and this paper suggests a revised interpretation of the treaty principles to incorporate the range of ethical issues that Māori have expressed as important.     

Biodegradation and removal of pharmaceuticals and personal care products in treatment systems: a review

Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) have been the focus of much recent research as concerns rise about their occurrence in bodies of water worldwide. In an effort to characterize the risk and determine the prevalence of these micropollutants in lakes and rivers, many researchers are examining PPCP removal from impaired water during wastewater treatment and water recycling (soil passage) processes. Biodegradation studies and projects considering combinations of biodegradation and other removal processes have been conducted over a wide range of compound categories and therapeutic classes, as well as across different systems and scales of study. This review summarizes the extent of PPCP removal observed in these various systems.     

转基因植物的环境生物安全：转基因逃逸及其潜在生态风险的研究和评价

转基因作物的商品化生产和大规模环境释放在带来巨大利益的同时,也引起了全球对其生物安全问题的广泛关注和争议,其中转基因通过花粉介导的基因漂移逃逸到非转基因作物及其野生近缘种,进而导致的潜在环境和生态风险就是备受争议的生物安全问题之一。转基因植物的环境生物安全涉及两方面关键问题：如何科学评价转基因植物商品化种植以后带来的环境和生态影响;如何利用环境生物安全的研究成果来制定科学有效的风险监测和管理措施。对转基因逃逸及其潜在生态风险的科学评价应包括三个重要环节：（1）检测转基因的逃逸的频率;（2）检测转基因逃逸后的表达和遗传规律;（3）确定逃逸后的转基因对野生近缘种群体适合度的影响及其进化潜力,本文将围绕对转基因逃逸及其潜在环境风险的科学评价,以转基因水稻为案例来对转基因逃逸带来生态影响的研究好评价的进展进行简要介绍,并对目前依据风险评价研究成果制定的各种管理策略进行了讨论。只有提高对转基因生物环境安全研究和评价的水平,并制定有效的风险监测和管理措施,才能为我国转基因技术的发展和转基因产品的商品化应用保驾护航。     

People's concerns about biotechnology: some problems and some solutions

Pharmaceuticals and vaccines made by genetic engineering are well accepted all over the world. In contrast, there are many people, particularly in Europe, who are worried that food, made by the same new technology, may harm their health or cause damage to the environment. This is despite the growing evidence that genetically modified crops have the potential to improve world food security and the fact that there have, as yet, been no adverse results of their use in the food chain. Because of these worries and the mechanisms of politics, agricultural biotechnology has become the target of concerns about food safety (BSE, Foot & Mouth Disease), along with globalisation and the power of multinational companies. These concerns will, hopefully, be overcome by a more open and well-informed dialogue between scientists, opinion leaders, educators and the public. If judiciously applied, genetically modified crops will help increase sustainability and the fight against hunger in the world.     

Moving beyond bioethics: history and the search for medical humanism

From both within and without bioethics, growing criticism of the predominant methods and practices of the field can be heard. These critiques tend to lament an emphasis on logically derived rules and philosophical theories that inadequately capture how and why people have the moral attitudes they do, and they urge the use of more empirically grounded social sciences--history, sociology, and anthropology--to draw attention to the complex factors behind such attitudes. However, these critiques do not go far enough, as they do not question why debate over ethical categories should have such a central role in voicing concerns about medicine. The importance of using other forms of inquiry, especially that of history, to examine aspects of medical practice and the emergence of bioethics itself is not simply to refine bioethical moral analysis. Instead, history can be employed to counter the preoccupation with translating concerns about medicine into moral terms and to move towards what is more sorely needed: a true medical humanism.     

Addressing ethical issues in H3Africa research – the views of research ethics committee members

In June 2014, the H3Africa Working Group on Ethics organised a workshop with members of over 40 research ethics committees from across Africa to discuss the ethical challenges raised in H3Africa research, and to receive input on the proposed H3Africa governance framework. Prominent amongst a myriad of ethical issues raised by meeting participants were concerns over consent for future use of samples and data, the role of community engagement in large international collaborative projects, and particular features of the governance of sample sharing. This report describes these concerns in detail and will be informative to researchers wishing to conduct genomic research on diseases pertinent to the African research context.     

Comparison of models for nucleotide substitution used in maximum- likelihood phylogenetic estimation

Using real sequence data, we evaluate the adequacy of assumptions made in evolutionary models of nucleotide substitution and the effects that these assumptions have on estimation of evolutionary trees. Two aspects of the assumptions are evaluated. The first concerns the pattern of nucleotide substitution, including equilibrium base frequencies and the transition/transversion-rate ratio. The second concerns the variation of substitution rates over sites. The maximum-likelihood estimate of tree topology appears quite robust to both these aspects of the assumptions of the models, but evaluation of the reliability of the estimated tree by using simpler, less realistic models can be misleading. Branch lengths are underestimated when simpler models of substitution are used, but the underestimation caused by ignoring rate variation over nucleotide sites is much more serious. The goodness of fit of a model is reduced by ignoring spatial rate variation, but unrealistic assumptions about the pattern of nucleotide substitution can lead to an extraordinary reduction in the likelihood. It seems that evolutionary biologists can obtain accurate estimates of certain evolutionary parameters even with an incorrect phylogeny, while systematists cannot get the right tree with confidence even when a realistic, and more complex, model of evolution is assumed.      

Politics,Science, and Species Protection Law: A Comparative Consideration of Southern and Atlantic Bluefin Tuna

The southern and Atlantic bluefin tunas are highly valuable and heavily fished, such that there are concerns over the biomass of each species. While sharing some similarities, the species are managed in different geographical, political, and socioeconomic contexts. This article examines the complexities of managing these highly migratory species, recognizing that developments in science, most notably in ocean tracking, have a significant potential to improve management. Notwithstanding such developments, the critical element in management of bluefin tuna species remains political commitments to sustainable catches.     

Live immunisation against Theileria parva: containing or spreading the disease?

Although a live vaccine against Theileria parva has been available for over 30 years, concerns that vaccine strains can become established in resident tick populations have impeded its uptake in endemic areas. Recently, Oura et al. have examined the persistence of vaccine strains in immunised cattle using polymorphic genomic markers. They confirm that elements of the vaccine establish a carrier state in vaccinated animals and present evidence that alleles associated with vaccine strains emerge in co-grazing non-vaccinated cattle. However, the epidemiological impact of these observations might be tempered by extensive recombination of co-ingested strains in the tick vector.     

Power calculations for selective genotyping in QTL mapping in backcross mice

Selective genotyping concerns the genotyping of a portion of individuals chosen on the basis of their phenotypic values. Often individuals are selected for genotyping from the high and low extremes of the phenotypic distribution. This procedure yields savings in cost and time by decreasing the total number of individuals genotyped. Previous work by Darvasi et al. (1993) has shown that the power to detect a QTL by genotyping 40-50 % of a population is roughly equivalent to genotyping the entire sample. However, these power studies have not accounted for different strategies of analysing the data when phenotypes of individuals in the middle are excluded, nor have they investigated the genome-wide type I error rate under these different strategies or different selection percentages. Further, these simulation studies have not considered markers over the entire genome. In this paper, we present simulation studies of power for the maximum likelihood approach to QTL mapping by Lander & Botstein (1989) in the context of selective genotyping. We calculate the power of selectively genotyping the individuals from the middle of the phenotypic distribution when performing QTL mapping over the whole mouse genome.     

EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES AND DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: STEM CELL RESEARCH REGULATION AND ARGENTINA

Given its intimate relationship with the human body and its environment, biotechnology innovation, and more particularly stem cell research innovations as a part thereof, implicate diverse social and moral/ethical issues. This paper explores some of the most important and controversial moral concerns raised by human embryonic stem cell research (and the closely associated field of cloning), focusing on concerns relating to the wellbeing of the embryo and the wellbeing of society (the collective). It then considers how and whether these concerns are dealt with in regulatory instruments in Argentina, a southern developing country, examining in particular whether the values underlying these concerns have been translated into practical and effective rules reflective of the primary moral positions advanced. It concludes that Argentina's current state of stem cell research governance fails to consistently reflect the moral positions that have formed and is inadequate given Argentina's activity in this field.     

"Taming tradition": medicalized female genital practices in western Kenya

This article considers the question of female genital practices at the hands of health workers in western Kenya. Recent articles in Medical Anthropology Quarterly have critically engaged with the biomedical arguments condemning such practices. This article studies the case of medicalized circumcision in which biomedical concerns over health risks have become incorporated in their vernacular practice. Although some suggest that medicalization may provide a harm-reduction strategy to the abandonment of the practice, research in one region challenges this suggestion. It argues that changing and conflicting ideologies of gender and sexuality have led young women to seek their own meaning through medicalized practice. Moreover, attributing this practice to financial motivations of health workers overlooks the way in which these "moral agents" must be situated within their social and cultural universe. Together, these insights challenge the view that medicine can remain neutral in the mediation of tradition.     

Researchers’ Individual Publication Rate Has Not Increased in a Century

Debates over the pros and cons of a “publish or perish” philosophy have inflamed academia for at least half a century. Growing concerns, in particular, are expressed for policies that reward “quantity” at the expense of “quality,” because these might prompt scientists to unduly multiply their publications by fractioning (“salami slicing”), duplicating, rushing, simplifying, or even fabricating their results. To assess the reasonableness of these concerns, we analyzed publication patterns of over 40,000 researchers that, between the years 1900 and 2013, have published two or more papers within 15 years, in any of the disciplines covered by the Web of Science. The total number of papers published by researchers during their early career period (first fifteen years) has increased in recent decades, but so has their average number of co-authors. If we take the latter factor into account, by measuring productivity fractionally or by only counting papers published as first author, we observe no increase in productivity throughout the century. Even after the 1980s, adjusted productivity has not increased for most disciplines and countries. These results are robust to methodological choices and are actually conservative with respect to the hypothesis that publication rates are growing. Therefore, the widespread belief that pressures to publish are causing the scientific literature to be flooded with salami-sliced, trivial, incomplete, duplicated, plagiarized and false results is likely to be incorrect or at least exaggerated.     

Will You Accept the Government's Friend Request? Social Networks and Privacy Concerns

Participating in social network websites entails voluntarily sharing private information, and the explosive growth of social network websites over the last decade suggests shifting views on privacy. Concurrently, new anti-terrorism laws, such as the USA Patriot Act, ask citizens to surrender substantial claim to privacy in the name of greater security. I address two important questions regarding individuals'' views on privacy raised by these trends. First, how does prompting individuals to consider security concerns affect their views on government actions that jeopardize privacy? Second, does the use of social network websites alter the effect of prompted security concerns? I posit that prompting individuals to consider security concerns does lead to an increased willingness to accept government actions that jeopardize privacy, but that frequent users of websites like Facebook are less likely to be swayed by prompted security concerns. An embedded survey experiment provides support for both parts of my claim.     

Cellular and molecular events after in vitro fertilization and intracytoplasmic sperm injection

Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) has heralded an era of tremendous improvements in treating male infertility leading to the births of thousands of babies. However, recent concerns over possible long-term effects of ICSI on offspring has prompted the development of a preclinical, nonhuman primate model to assess the safety of ICSI. Fluorescent imaging of rhesus macaque IVF zygotes revealed that this species shares many similarities with humans in terms of cytoskeletal and chromatin dynamics during fertilization. However, rhesus monkey zygotes fertilized by ICSI resulted in abnormal nuclear remodeling leading to asynchronous chromatin decondensation in the apical region of the sperm head, delaying the onset of DNA synthesis. The persistence of the acrosome and perinuclear theca on the apex of sperm introduced into the oocyte by ICSI may constrict the DNA in this region. Despite these differences, normal rhesus monkey ICSI embryos have been produced and have lead to several births after transfer. The irregularities described in this paper raise concerns that the ICSI procedure may result in chromatin damage during DNA decondensation and further highlight the need for devising improved pre-clinical assessment prior to global acceptance of this, and other, novel methods of assisted reproduction.     

Activation rules: the two-signal theories of immune activation

Two-signal theories of lymphocyte activation have evolved considerably over the past 35 years. In this article, we examine the contemporary experimental observations and theoretical concerns that have helped to forge the most influential variants of the theory. We also propose that more-rigorous quantitative methods are required to sustain theoretical development in the future.     

Biomechatronics--assisting the impaired motor system

Biomechatronics concerns the interdisciplinary field of interaction with the human neuromuscular-skeletal system with the objective to assist impaired human motor control. In this field technology is developed that integrates neuroscience, robotics, interface and sensor technology, dynamic systems and control theory. The primary issue in this field concerns the concepts of assisting impaired human motor function. The secondary, derived, issue concerns possible methods of interfacing with the human body at all hierarchical levels of the human motor system. The application of motor assist systems may serve several goals: it can take over part of the affected motor control, enable the physiological motor system to perform the desired function or aid in training the impaired physiological system. The progress in these issues are reviewed and their potential implications for assistance of the impaired human motor system are discussed.     

Changes in phenology and abundance of suction-trapped Diptera from a farmland site in the UK over four decades

1. Recently documented insect declines have caused major concerns and an increased interest in studies using long-term population-monitoring data. 2. Samples from a 12.2-m suction trap were used to examine trends in phenology and abundance of Diptera over four decades. 3. The timing of peak flight has advanced by an average of 17 days, from 23 July in 1974 to 6 July in 2014. 4. The abundance of flies has decreased by 37% over the studied period (from April to September), and peak abundance has decreased by 48%. The flight period has started earlier in recent years, and in 2014, the number of flies was higher in spring until the 31st of May than in 1974. Possible causes and impacts of these changes are discussed.