WHICH BENEFITS OF RESEARCH PARTICIPATION COUNT AS ‘DIRECT’?

It is widely held that individuals who are unable to provide informed consent should be enrolled in clinical research only when the risks are low, or the research offers them the prospect of direct benefit. There is now a rich literature on when the risks of clinical research are low enough to enroll individuals who cannot consent. Much less attention has focused on which benefits of research participation count as ‘direct’, and the few existing accounts disagree over how this crucial concept should be defined. This disagreement raises concern over whether those who cannot consent, including children and adults with severe dementia, are being adequately protected. The present paper attempts to address this concern by considering first what additional protections are needed for these vulnerable individuals. This analysis suggests that the extant definitions of direct benefits either provide insufficient protection for research subjects or pose excessive obstacles to appropriate research. This analysis also points to a modified definition of direct benefits with the potential to avoid these two extremes, protecting individuals who cannot consent without blocking appropriate research.     

Effects of sampling on paleoecologic and taphonomic analyses in high-diversity fossil accumulations: an example from the Eocene Gosport Sand, Alabama

Paleoecological studies requiring taxonomic information beyond presence/absence data (i.e. relative abundance) must demonstrate that the sampling regime employed to collect such data adequately fits the faunas under investigation. A study of dense shell beds of the Middle Eocene Gosport Sand of Alabama indicates that, for localities with high abundance and diversity and little internal structure, diversity-abundance data derived from standard-sized samples vary significantly and cannot be used to develop consistent species-level distributional patterns. Based on this result and the additional observation that different species show different patterns of occurrence, we propose an operational approach for determining what sample size will yield reliable distributional data for different proportions of the fauna. In the Gospon, samples of 3–5***1 yield reliable data on the approximately 25% of the species that are most common and abundant; samples of 35–40 I would be necessary to yield similarly reliable data on the next 15-10% the remainder of species are too rare ever to be realistically examined quantitatively in bulk samples. □ Sampling, paleoecology, taphonomy, Mollusks, Gosport Sand, Eocene.     

No Story Is Ever Just a Story

The 41 films at the 2004 Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival showcased a multiplicity of styles and approaches, thus widening the perspective of "what counts" as ethnographic film. The two main events—A Tribute to Jean Rouch and Native Voices—epitomized the festival's commitment to diversity and creative talent. Despite the festival's awkward location in the American Museum of Natural History, the films tackled challenging political subjects and directly addressed questions of representation. Postscreening musical performances, informational panels, and audience–director discussion sessions shaped the festival itself as an ethnographic experience, as well as being a venue for the year's best documentary films. Festival highlights were Raven Tales: How Raven Stole the Sun (2004), Mr. Patterns (2004), and Beauty Academy of Kabul (2004).     

Characterization of new SSR‐EST markers in cod,Gadus morhua

For years, fishermen have noted that cod (Gadus morhua) within the Georges Bank Atlantic fishery spawn multiple times annually with peaks in the spring and in the fall. To evaluate the hypothesis that these differences in reproductive behaviour reflect genetically different spawning populations, we identified eight polymorphic simple sequence repeats within expressed sequence tags (ESTs). Previously, only a few genetic markers have been informative for distinguishing between cod populations of the Northwest Atlantic. The development of additional markers from ESTs will be a valuable tool to improve our understanding of population structure in this commercially important species.