The structures of specific chromosome regions, centromeres and telomeres, present a number of puzzles. As functions performed by these regions are ubiquitous and essential, their DNA, proteins and chromatin structure are expected to be conserved. Recent studies of centromeric DNA from human, Drosophila and plant species have demonstrated that a hidden universal centromere‐specific sequence is highly unlikely. The DNA of telomeres is more conserved consisting of a tandemly repeated 6–8 bp Arabidopsis‐like sequence in a majority of organisms as diverse as (...) protozoan, fungi, mammals and plants. However, there are alternatives to short DNA repeats at the ends of chromosomes and for telomere elongation by telomerase. Here we focus on the similarities and diversity that exist among the structural elements, DNA sequences and proteins, that make up terminal domains (telomeres and subtelomeres), and how organisms use these in different ways to fulfil the functions of end‐replication and end‐protection. BioEssays 27:685–697, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

How does talk work, and can we engage the public in a dialogue about the scientific study of talk? This article presents a history, critical evaluation and empirical illustration of the public science of talk. We chart the public ethos of conversation analysis that treats talk as an inherently public phenomenon and its transcribed recordings as public data. We examine the inherent contradictions that conversation analysis is simultaneously obscure yet highly cited; it studies an object that people understand intuitively, yet (...) routinely produces counter-intuitive findings about talk. We describe a novel methodology for engaging the public in a science exhibition event and show how our ‘conversational rollercoaster’ used live recording, transcription and public-led analysis to address the challenge of demonstrating how talk can become an informative object of scientific research. We conclude by encouraging researchers not only to engage in a public dialogue but also to find ways to actively engage people in taking a scientific approach to talk as a pervasive, structural feature of their everyday lives. (shrink)

Over the course of human history, the sciences, and biology in particular, have often been manipulated to cause immense human suffering. For example, biology has been used to justify eugenic programs, forced sterilization, human experimentation, and death camps—all in an attempt to support notions of racial superiority. By investigating the past, the contributors to _Biology and Ideology from Descartes to Dawkins_ hope to better prepare us to discern ideological abuse of science when it occurs in the future. Denis R. (...) class='Hi'>Alexander and Ronald L. Numbers bring together fourteen experts to examine the varied ways science has been used and abused for nonscientific purposes from the fifteenth century to the present day. Featuring an essay on eugenics from Edward J. Larson and an examination of the progress of evolution by Michael J. Ruse, _Biology and Ideology_ examines uses both benign and sinister, ultimately reminding us that ideological extrapolation continues today. An accessible survey, this collection will enlighten historians of science, their students, practicing scientists, and anyone interested in the relationship between science and culture. (shrink)

There has been much first-rate work done in recent years both by way of criticizing Humean assumptions and explicating alter native concepts of causal explanation and non-logical necessity. Roderick Chisholm early showed the inadequacies of neo-Humean views of explanation in his articles on counterfactual inference, and C. J. Ducasse, Sterling Lamprecht, William Kneale, Nicholas Maxwell, Richard Taylor, G. E. M. Anscombe, P. T. Geach, Milton Fisk, Baruch Brody, Peter Alexander, R. Harré, and William Wallace, among others, have articulated interesting (...) alternative views to the Humean ones they have so trenchantly criticized. We will be concerned with the recent work of Harré and Wallace in this study. Harré has not only launched a fresh attack but has also presented what is probably the most fully developed neorealistic [[sic]] alternative. Wallace’s work is basically historical but has an intentional systematic import also. The books of the two authors are mutually supportive. (shrink)

For the last century, economic analysis has been wedded to the idea of equilibrium, in spite of the evident fact that most economic relationships are in flux. The theory of transformational growth in this work replaces equilibrium with history. The role of the market is not to allocate resources, but to generate innovations, which are 'selected' by competition in an evolutionary process. These innovations in turn change the way markets work and how they adjust, thus creating new problems and new (...) kinds of pressures to innovate. Different historical periods can be distinguished with a new one perhaps on the horizon. In each a distinctive style of technology prevails, associated with corresponding institutions and patterns of market behavior. The core relationships provide the foundations for a theory of monetary circulation, which makes possible a revised Keynesian approach, based on Classical foundations. (shrink)

For all humans, sexual orientation and gender identity are essential elements of identity, informing how we plan and live our lives. The historic invisibility of sexual minorities in medicine has meant that these important aspects of their identities as patients have been ignored, with the result that these patients have been denied respect, culturally competent services, and proper treatment. Likely due to historic rejection and mistreatment, there is evidence of reluctance on the part of LGBT patients to disclose their sexual (...) orientation (SO) or gender identity (GI) to their health care providers. There is some perception of risk in sharing SO and GI for many patients who have had bad prior experiences. Despite these risks, we argue that we can improve the quality of care provided this population only by encouraging them to self‐identify and then using that information to improve quality of care.One strategy both to prompt patient self‐identification and to store and use SO and GI data to improve care centers on the use of electronic health records. However, gathering SO and GI data in the EHR requires a workforce that knows both how to obtain and how to use that information. To develop these competencies, educational programs for health professionals must prepare students and educators to elicit and to use sexual orientation and gender identity information to improve care while simultaneously ensuring the safety of patients, trainees, and staff and faculty members as SO and GI become openly discussed and integral parts of ongoing medical discussion and care. As determination of SO and GI demographics becomes more common in health research, we will more fully understand the health risks for all the LGBTIQQ populations. (shrink)

The materialistic premise supposes that a patient’s reduced brain activity indicates that the mind is beginning to approach nonexistence. Such persons may not be brain dead, but they have a life that is close enough to death to allow us to treat them with a certain disregard. For the Catholic, this overlooks the enduring presence of the soul and its two spiritual powers of intellect and will. St. Thomas Aquinas is our best guide to exploring the implications of this view (...) for patients in states of diminished consciousness. The externally observable activity of the brain, even when dramatically lessened, does not represent any loss of the powers of the soul, which continue to function through a combination of natural and divine influences. (shrink)

Carol Bayley’s double-effect reasoning in defense of sex-reassignment surgery fails at the opening. The first condition of the principle is that the act in itself must be morally good or at least neutral. She says, without argument, “the surgery itself is neutral.” How so? The surgery is a direct assault on the physical integrity of a person whose sexual organs are perfectly healthy. Is it reasonable to say that a person who wants to change gender has a body that is (...) in fact seriously deformed or diseased? Where is the evidence? If reality is defined by the mind, then the imagination may freely think of personal identity in any conceivable way. Nature is set aside and in its place is put, at best, a delusion and, at worst, an ideology that seeks to do violence to nature. Catholic hospitals should not participate in this assault upon God’s creation. (shrink)

The current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has created a paradox in the treatment of gender dysphoria, in part by redefining the disorder. The new definition implies that the individual’s body, not his or her mind, is disordered, regardless of whether the body shows any sign of abnormal development. Thus, the manual has created a situation where a perfectly healthy body is considered disordered, while a mind that perceives that healthy body to be wrongly sexed (...) is considered healthy. This leads to erroneous and dangerous treatment of the individual. (shrink)

IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, the advance of modern particle physics and the discovery of an inherent probabilism at the heart of the natural order has thrown scientific determinism into doubt. The central question that issues from such findings in physics is whether nature is inherently indeterminate or simply defectively known. If the answer is the former, then this development calls into question the central theoretical justification for the Kantian project. For although Kant makes rhetorical allusion to Nicholas Copernicus, his theory (...) plainly stands in defense of Sir Isaac Newton’s classical mechanics. (shrink)

In the late 1800s, Charles Darwin and other naturalists supported a blending view of inheritance whereby offspring possess a middling mix of their parents' traits. Many of these naturalists also argued that individuals pass at least some of their acquired characteristics to their descendants. Darwin proposed that acquired characteristics and other environmentally induced changes in a parent's hereditary material account in large part for the inheritable variations that drove evolution. Inspired by the evolutionary theories of his first cousin, Darwin, Francis (...) Galton developed hereditarian notions that helped to lay the foundation for both genetics and eugenics. Eugenics was endorsed by evolutionary geneticists such as August Weismann, Karl Pearson, W. F. R. Weldon, William Bateson, and Hugo de Vries, which, as a result, gave it enormous scientific credibility in America and Europe. This chapter explores the role of biology in the emergence of the eugenics movement in the Anglo-Saxon world. (shrink)

Studies based on the Rankine-Hugoniot relations have classified MHO shock waves as fast, switch-on, intermediate, switch-off, and slow. Any waves found in nature must also: possess steady-state structures and be stable in the presence of small-flow disturbances. In this monograph, Dr. Anderson examines these criteria in relation to plane shocks for which the collision frequency is large compared with cyclotron frequency. It contains a three-dimensional graphic representation of shock end states and presents an exact solution for the shock adiabatic curve (...) in a convenient form. An MIT Press Research Monograph. (shrink)