This article is part of a For-Discussion-Section of Methods of Information in Medicine about the paper "Biomedical Informatics: We Are What We Publish", written by Peter L. Elkin, Steven H. Brown, and Graham Wright. It is introduced by an editorial. This article contains the combined commentaries invited to independently comment on the Elkin et al. paper. In subsequent issues the discussion can continue through letters to the editor.

Postnatally, heart muscle cells almost completely lose their ability to divide, which makes their loss after trauma irreversible. Potential repair by cell grafting or mobilizing endogenous cells is of particular interest for possible treatments for heart disease, where the poor capacity for cardiomyocyte proliferation probably contributes to the irreversibility of heart failure. Knowledge of the molecular mechanisms that underly formation of heart muscle cells might provide opportunities to repair the diseased heart by induction of (trans) differentiation of endogenous or exogenous (...) cells into heart muscle cells. We briefly review the molecular mechanisms involved in early development of the linear heart tube by differentiation of mesodermal cells into heart muscle cells. Because the initial heart tube does not comprise all the cardiac compartments present in the adult heart, heart muscle cells are added to the distal borders of the tube and within the tube. At both distal borders, mesodermal cell are recruited into the cardiac lineage and, within the heart tube, muscular septa are formed. In this review, the relative late additions of heart muscle cells to the linear heart tube are described and the potential underlying molecular mechanisms are discussed. BioEssays 26:248–261, 2004. Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In light of the careful work of Joshua Benson who argues that the De reductione is the second part to Bonaventure's inception sermon, this article will date the De reductione by determining when he incepted. This is not an easy task because the date of his inception has been a point of confusion within Bonaventurian scholarship. Scholars date it as early as 1248 and as late as 1257. Within (...) those nine years they assign various scenarios regarding his status as regent master. For example, the most common scenario has Bonaventure incepting in 1253 or 1254 and assuming the Franciscan Chair in theology, but only teaching in the Franciscan convent, unrecognized by the university until either 1256 or 1257.My thesis is that Bonaventure incepted in April 1254 to replace William of Middleton who relinquished the Franciscan chair in the wake of the Lenten riot of 1253. To argue this thesis, the paper divides into three parts. The first will briefly present the various dating for Bonaventure's inception. The second will examine all the thirteenth and fourteenth century sources that are used for determining Bonaventure's chronology so as to establish the evidence for calculating his inception. And third, building upon the evidence gleaned from those witnesses, I will present a narrative chronology that details events surrounding Bonaventure's inception in April 1254.I. Various Dating of Bonaventure's inception as MasterScholars assign various dates to his inception, which has caused much confusion. The Quaracchi editors of the Opera omnia, Robinson, Gilson, Moorman, and Crowley claim Bonaventure incepted in 1248; Robson alone gives a 1252 date; Callebaut, Longpré, the Spanish editors of the Obras de San Buenaventura, Abate, Bonafede, the earlier Brady, the later Hayes, and Hammond give a date of 1253; Pelster, Glorieux, the Quaracchi editors of the Opera theologica selecta, Veuthey, the earlier Bougerol, Cousins, Schlosser and Delio opt for 1253 or 1254; the later Bougerol, Quinn, the earlier Hayes, Noone, Hauser, and Cullen hold for a 1254 date; the later Brady posits a 1255 date; Bettoni and Dufeil push the inception back to 1257.Table 1 highlights the disparity between the last two studies that focus specifically on Bonaventure's chronology during his time at Paris. Click for larger viewTable 1. Disputed dates in Bonaventure's ChronologyAt least the two studies have one date in common, and with that one fixed date of 1257, we turn to examine the thirteenth and fourteenth century witnesses so as to dispel the disparity.II. Examining the SourcesEven though the dating for Bonaventure's inception spans nine years, there are only seven sources that scholars can use to calculate those dates. More specifically, the majority of scholars support a 1253 or 1254 dating, with the year discrepancy likely deriving from how they calculate the dates in the sources according to medieval/modern calendars. Thus, to sort through the tangle of dating, all the evidence will first be presented in full. Then, in light of all the evidence, a scenario for dating Bonaventure's inception can be advanced.The thirteenth and fourteenth century sources fall into four groups: the Chronica fratris Salimbene de Adam ; the two independent, short lists of General Ministers: Series Magistrorum Generalium Ordinis Fratrum Minorum , and Chronicon Abbreviatum de Successione Generalium Ministrorum ; the three interdependent texts of the Catalogus Generalium Ministrorum,Catalogus XV Generalium , and the Chronica XXIV Generalium , which contain significant variances from one another; and the Chronica Franciscis Fabrianensis . As will become clear, scholars who advance a 1248 date read Salimbene in light of Fabriano, while those who favor 1253 or 1254 read Salimbene in light of the Catalogus Generalium Ministrorum and related texts. Those who favor a 1257 dating, seem to.. (shrink)

Scholars have long been captivated by the parallels between birdsong and human speech and language. In this book, leading scholars draw on the latest research to explore what birdsong can tell us about the biology of human speech and language and the consequences for evolutionary biology. They examine the cognitive and neural similarities between birdsong learning and speech and language acquisition, considering vocal imitation, auditory learning, an early vocalization phase, the structural properties of birdsong and human language, and the striking (...) similarities between the neural organization of learning and vocal production in birdsong and human speech. After outlining the basic issues involved in the study of both language and evolution, the contributors compare birdsong and language in terms of acquisition, recursion, and core structural properties, and then examine the neurobiology of song and speech, genomic factors, and the emergence and evolution of language. Contributors: Hermann Ackermann, Gabriël J.L. Beckers, Robert C. Berwick, Johan J. Bolhuis, Noam Chomsky, Frank Eisner, Martin Everaert, Michale S. Fee, Olga Fehér, Simon E. Fisher, W. Tecumseh Fitch, Jonathan B. Fritz, Sharon M.H. Gobes, Riny Huijbregts, Eric Jarvis, Robert Lachlan, Ann Law, Michael A. Long, Gary F. Marcus, Carolyn McGettigan, Daniel Mietchen, Richard Mooney, Sanne Moorman, Kazuo Okanoya, Christophe Pallier, Irene M. Pepperberg, Jonathan F. Prather, Franck Ramus, Eric Reuland, Constance Scharff, Sophie K. Scott, Neil Smith, Ofer Tchernichovski, Carel ten Cate, Christopher K. Thompson, Frank Wijnen, Moira Yip, Wolfram Ziegler, Willem Zuidema. (shrink)

In the United States, food banks served an estimated 46 million people in 2015. A combination of government policy reforms and political economic trends contributed to the rising numbers of individuals relying on private food assistance in the US, the United Kingdom and other high-income countries. Although researchers frequently map urban food environments, this project is one of the first to map private food assistance and potential need at the census-tract scale. We utilize Geographic Information Systems, demographic data, and food (...) assistance locations to develop a rapid assessment tool that could support food banks, pantries, soup kitchens, and government agencies that seek to answer the question of whether people with the greatest need have food distribution sites in close proximity. We define access based on distance and then calculate potential food insecurity using either poverty rates or a food insecurity index. We apply these methods in a case study analysis of Santa Clara County, California. Our findings suggest that food assistance distribution locations match the areas of potential need in more than 80% of urban census tracts. However, there are several potentially underserved locations and populations that could benefit from new food assistance operations. The poverty and index-based approaches show significant spatial overlap in mapped areas of high food insecurity and low access. The poverty only approach produces a higher estimate of food insecurity rates, is easier to calculate, and draws attention to the need to address poverty as a root cause of hunger. (shrink)

Two and a half thousand years ago Greek philosophers "looked up at the sky and formed a theory of everything." Though their solutions are little credited today, the questions remain fresh. Early Greek thinkers struggled to come to terms with and explain the totality of their surroundings, to identitify an original substance from which the universe was compounded, and to reconcile the presence of balance and proportion with the apparent disorder of the cosmos. M. R. Wright examines cosmological theories of (...) the "natural philosophers" from Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes to Plato, the Stoics and the NeoPlatonists. The importance of Babylonian and Egyptian forerunners is also emphasized. Cosmology in Antiquity is a comprehensive introduction to the cosmological thought in ancient times. (shrink)

Information may be defined as the conceptual or communicable part of the content of mental acts. The content of mental acts includes sensory data as well as concepts, particular as well as general information. An information system is an external (non-mental) system designed to store such content. Information systems afford indirect transmission of content between people, some of whom may put information into the system and others who are among those who use the system. In order for communication to happen, (...) the conceptual systems of the originators and users of the information must be sufficiently similar. A formal conceptual framework that can provide the basis for exchange of information is termed an ontology. In its most fundamental form, ontology studies the most basic constituents of reality. Traditionally, ontology seeks to reflects structures that are independent of thought and cognition. The term ontology is used more broadly in artificial intelligence and software engineering, to refer to the conceptual basis for an information system. (shrink)

I argue on the basis of extensive empirical research that perception and emotion are more deeply entangled than we might have thought. This evidence strongly suggests that we should expand our conception of perception to include emotional elements, and our conception of emotion to include perceptual ones. This expansion poses a challenge to our current taxonomic practices. In the face of this challenge, I advocate principled pluralism about psychological kinds. This view holds that, depending on our explanatory purposes, psychological processes (...) can be legitimately classified in more than one way. (shrink)

Ontology has been proposed as a solution to the 'Tower of Babel' problem that threatens the semantic interoperability of information systems constructed independently for the same domain. In information systems research and applications, ontologies are often implemented by formalizing the meanings of words from natural languages. However, words in different natural languages sometimes subdivide the same domain of reality in terms of different conceptual categories. If the words and their associated concepts in two natural languages, or even in two terminological (...) traditions within the same language, do not have common referents in the real world, an ontology based on word meanings will inherit the 'Tower of Babel' problem from the languages involved, rather than solve it. In this paper we present evidence from a preliminary comparison of landscape terms in English with those in the Yindjibarndi language of northwestern Australia demonstrating that this problem is not just hypothetical. Some possible solutions are suggested. (shrink)

The considerable attention to financial interests in clinical research has focused mostly on academic medical centers, even though the majority of clinical research is conducted in community practice settings. To fill this gap, this article maps the practices and policies in 73 community hospitals and several hundred specialized facilities around the country for reviewing clinical investigators’ financial relationships with research sponsors. Community hospitals face a substantially different mix of issues than academic medical centers do because their physician researchers are usually (...) not employees, and more of their studies are later-phase, multicenter trials. Accordingly, community physicians stand to benefit personally from per capita payments, but they tend to have less direct influence over research findings when compared with their academic peers. These and other contrasts require separate guidance for community-based organizations that takes into account their particular needs, circumstances, and institutional capacities. (shrink)