The article explores the influence of unproven specificity of pathogenesis manifested in clinical psychiatry and research. A selected literature review of studies attempting to identify a biological marker is presented. To date, the search for a biological marker to establish a psychiatric diagnosis has been unsuccessful. Clinical settings and programs are described which seem to be driven by psychological issues, one such example being the search for villains. Thus, specific assumptions about etiology affect therapy technique and treatment planning and may (...) be disadvantageous to patient care. Biological and psychological development in all of its phases is subject to a diverse range of perturbations, intrinsic as well as extrinsic. A flexible, balanced view is called for before specificity is extended to general theories, which, in turn, affect therapy and treatment settings. (shrink)

This manuscript reviews recent evidence supporting the utility of telomeres and mitochondrial DNA copy number (mtDNAcn) in detecting the biological impacts of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and outlines mechanisms that may mediate the connection between early stress and poor physical and mental health. Critical to interrupting the health sequelae of ACEs such as abuse, neglect, and neighborhood disorder, is the discovery of biomarkers of risk and resilience. The molecular markers of chronic stress exposure, telomere length and mtDNAcn, represent critical (...) biological links between ACEs and poor health outcomes. We examine how telomeres and mtDNAcn may exacerbate health disparities and contribute to the intergenerational transmission of trauma. Finally, we explore how these molecular markers of early stress exposure may help define the role of resilience and develop effective interventions to moderate ACE health risk impact. (shrink)

People often signal their membership in groups through their clothes, hairstyle, posture, and dialect. Most existing evolutionary models argue that markers label group members so individuals can preferentially interact with those in their group. Here we ask why people mark ethnic differences when interethnic interaction is routine, necessary, and peaceful. We asked research participants from three ethnic groups in southwestern Madagascar to sort photos of unfamiliar people by ethnicity, and by with whom they would prefer or not prefer to (...) cooperate, in a wage labor vignette. Results indicate that southwestern Malagasy reliably send and detect ethnic signals; they signal less in the marketplace, a primary site of interethnic coordination and cooperation; and they do not prefer co-ethnics as cooperation partners in novel circumstances. Results from a cultural knowledge survey and calculations of cultural FST suggest that these ethnic groups have relatively little cultural differentiation. We concur with Moya and Boyd that ethnicity is unlikely to be a singular social phenomenon. The current functions of ethnic divisions and marking may be different from those at the moment of ethnogenesis. Group identities may persist without group conflict or differentiation. (shrink)

The central role of such epistemic concepts as theory, explanation, model, or mechanism is rarely questioned in philosophy of science. Yet, what is their actual use in the practice of science? In this philosophy of science project, we deploy text-mining methods to investigate the usage of 61 epistemic notions in a corpus of full-text articles from the biological and biomedical sciences (N=73,771). The influence of disciplinary context is also examined by splitting the corpus into sub-disciplinary clusters. The results reveal the (...) intricate semantic networks that these concepts actually form in the scientific discourse, not always following our intuitions, at least in some parts of science. The research is published in: Malaterre, Christophe & Martin Léonard. 2023. "Epistemic markers in the scientific discourse", Philosophy of Science. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that social factors are related to health outcomes: much research served to establish correlations between classes of social factors on the one hand and classes of disease on the other hand. However, why and how social factors are an active part in the aetiology of disease development is something that is gaining attention only recently in the health sciences and in the medical humanities. In this paper, we advance the view that, just as bio-markers help (...) trace the causal continuum from exposure to disease development at the biological level, socio-markers ought to be introduced and studied in order to trace the social continuum from exposure to disease development. We explain how socio-markers differ from social indicators and how they can be used in combination with bio-markers in order to reconstruct the mixed mechanisms of health and disease, namely mechanisms in which both biological and social factors have an active causal role. (shrink)

Moral progress may be a matter of time scale. If intuitive measures of moral progress like the degree of physical violence within a society are taken as empirical markers, then most human societies have experienced moral progress in the last few centuries. However, if the development of the human species is taken as relevant time scale, there is evidence that humanity has experienced a global moral decline compared to a small-band hunter-gatherer baseline that represents a lifestyle presumed to largely (...) account for 99% of human history. A counter-argument to such a diagnosis of moral decline is the fact that the living conditions of the modern world that emerged since sedentariness and the beginning of agriculture are completely different compared to those of SBHG due to cultural and technological developments. We therefore suggest that two notions of moral progress should be distinguished: a “biological notion” referring to the inherited capacities typical of the evolutionary niche of mammals and that unfold in a specific way in the human species; and a “cultural notion” that relates moral progress to dealing with an increasing diversity of temptations and possible wrongdoings in a human social world whose complexity accumulates in time. In our contribution, we describe these two different notions of moral progress, we discuss how they interact, how this interaction impacts the standards by which we measure moral progress, and we provide suggestions and justifications for re-aligning biological and cultural moral progress. (shrink)

The ArgumentMany associations have recently been discovered between phenotypic variation and genetic loci, causing some to advocate what Robert Sinsheimer has called “a new eugenics” that would treat genetic “defects” in individuals prone to a disease. The first premise of this vision is that genetic association studies reveal the biological cause of the phenotypic variation. Once the responsible genes are known, the second premise is that we should focus upon changing “nature” rather than “nurture” by correcting the “defective” genes.The first (...) premise is flawed because associations between genetic markers and phenotypes can be spurious, as shown by an example. Moreover, it is shown that using non-causative but associated genetic markers one at a time (the normal practice) can lead to incorrect predictions of disease risk for many individuals. Going from association to causation is a non-trivial step scientifically that has rarely been done in much of the human genetic research.Even when a particular locus does contribute to the phenotypic variation of interest, the first premise remains flawed because phenotypes in general arise from complex interactions among genes and between genes and environments as shown for genes associations with coronary artery disease (CAD). The ability of current molecular genetic tools to “fix” defective genotypes is extremely limited, but even if the technological problems could be overcome, the studies on CAD reveal no obvious “defective” gene to fix because the genetic effects are so context dependent (upon both other genes and environmental factors). Contrary to the second premise of the new eugenics, the more we learn about how different genotypes show variable responses to environments, themoreimportant the environment becomes for individual treatment.The paradigm of a “defective gene” may work for classical Mendelian genetic diseases that are due to loss-of-function mutations. However, such mutations affect only a small portion of humanity. When the focus is changed to common disease and behavioral phenotypes, the “defective gene” paradigm is biologically meaningless and often harmful when applied to individuals. Thus, even when genes clearly do influence common phenotypic variation, the premises of the “new eugenics” are biologically indefensible. (shrink)

This book is the first modern introduction to the logic of infinitary languages in forty years, and is aimed at graduate students and researchers in all areas of mathematical logic. Connections between infinitary model theory and other branches of mathematical logic, and applications to algebra and algebraic geometry are both comprehensively explored.

We here review primary methods used in quantifying and mapping 5‐hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC), including global quantification, restriction enzyme‐based detection, and methods involving DNA‐enrichment strategies and the genome‐wide sequencing of 5hmC. As discovered in the mammalian genome in 2009, 5hmC, oxidized from 5‐methylcytosine (5mC) by ten‐eleven translocation (TET) dioxygenases, is increasingly being recognized as a biomarker in biological processes from development to pathogenesis, as its various detection methods have shown. We focus in particular on an ultrasensitive single‐molecule imaging technique that can detect (...) and quantify 5hmC from trace samples and thus offer information regarding the distance‐based relationship between 5hmC and 5mC when used in combination with fluorescence resonance energy transfer. (shrink)

Advances in genetics may soon make possible the development of ethnic bioweapons that target specific ethnic or racial groups based upon genetic markers. While occasional published reports of such research generate public outrage, little has been written about the ethical distinction (if any) between the development of such weapons and ethnically neutral bioweapons. The purpose of this paper is to launch a debate on the subject of ethnic bioweapons before they become a scientific reality.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an imaging technique with a rapidly expanding application range. This methodology, which relies on quantum physics and substance magnetic properties, is now being routinely used in the clinics and medical research. With the advent of measuring functional brain activity with MRI (functional MRI), this methodology has reached a larger section of the neuroscience community (e.g. psychologists, neurobiologists). In the past, the use of MRI as a biomarker or as an assay to probe tissue pathophysiological condition (...) was limited. However, with the new applications of MRI: molecular imaging, contrast‐enhanced imaging and diffusion imaging, MRI is turning into a powerful tool for in vivo characterization of tissue pathophysiology. This review focuses on the diffusion MRI. Although it only measures the averaged Brownian translational motion of water molecules, using different analysis schemes, one can extract a wide range of quantitative indices that represent tissue morphology and compartmentalization. Statistical and visualization routines help to relate these indices to biologically relevant measures such as cell density, water content and size distribution. The aim of this review is to shed light on the potential of this methodology to be used in biological research. To that end, this review is intended for the non‐MRI specialists who wish to pursue biological research with this methodology. We will overview the current applications of diffusion MRI and its relation to cellular biology of brain tissue. BioEssays 30:1235–1245, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Brain age prediction is a relatively new tool in neuro-medicine and the neurosciences. In research and clinical practice, it finds multiple use as a marker for biological age, for general health status of the brain and as an indicator for several brain-based disorders. Its utility in all these tasks depends on detecting outliers and thus failing to correctly predict chronological age. The indicative value of brain age prediction is generated by the gap between a brain’s chronological age and the predicted (...) age, the brain age gap (BAG). This article shows how the clinical and research use of brain age prediction tacitly pathologizes the states that it is sensitive to. It will be argued that the tacit character of this transformation conceals the need for its explicit justification. (shrink)

During the Notre Dame workshop on Vaught's Conjecture, Hjorth and Kechris asked which Borel equivalence relations can arise as the isomorphism relation for countable models of a first-order theory. In particular, they asked if the isomorphism relation can be essentially countable but not tame. We show this is not possible if the theory has uncountably many types.

We outline the Hrushovsk-Sokolović proof of Vaught's Conjecture for differentially closed fields, focusing on the use of dimensions to code graphs.

The doctrine of double effect has a firm, respected position within Roman Catholic medical ethics. In addition, public debate often incorporates this doctrine when determining the acceptability of certain actions. This essay examines and assesses the application of this doctrine to end-of-life decisions. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 11.1 (Spring 2011): 99–119.

We show that the structure (C,+,·) has no proper non locally modular reducts which contain +. In other words, if $X \subset \mathbf{C}^n$ is constructible and not definable in the module structure (C,+,λ a ) a ∈ C (where λ a denotes multiplication by a) then multiplication is definable in (C,+,X).

Photographs by one of French cinema's most influential and enigmatic artists. Any new film and any new book by French filmmaker Chris Marker is an event. Marker gave film lovers one of their most memorable experiences with La Jetée —a time-travel montage set after a nuclear war that inspired Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys. His still camerawork is not as well known, but Marker has been taking photographs as long as he has been making films. Staring Back presents 200 black-and-white photographs (...) from Marker's personal archives, taken from 1952 to 2006. Some of the photographs are related to his classic films, others are portraits of famous faces, but most are pictures of people Marker has encountered as he has traveled the world. The central section of the book contains a series of photographs documenting political protests Marker has witnessed, including the march on the Pentagon in 1967, the events of May 1968 in Paris, and the tumultuous 2006 demonstrations protesting the French government's proposed employment policies. The photographs are accompanied by several unpublished texts by Marker, including the English language text of The Case of the Grinning Cat and Marker's annotations for some of the photos. The book—which appears in conjunction with an exhibition at the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University—also includes essays by Wexner Center curator Bill Horrigan and art historian Molly Nesbit. (shrink)

Die vorliegenden Beiträge in deutscher und englischer Sprache behandeln begriffliche, normative und empirische Probleme der Demokratie aus Sicht der Analytischen Politischen Theorie. Sie beschäftigen sich mit Themen wie Freiheit und Zwang, Ungleichheit und Ungerechtigkeit, Wahlversprechen und Dirty Hands. Das Motto dieses Sammelbandes ist folglich ‚Einheit in Vielfalt‘: Er gibt einen außergewöhnlichen Einblick in den Facettenreichtum der aktuellen Forschungsdiskussionen im Rahmen der Analytischen Politischen Theorie.

Since its inception in the Middle Ages, the university classroom can be characterized by students gathered around a sage who imparts his or her knowledge. However, the effective classroom of today looks vastly different: First-year engineering students not only learn basic engineering principles, but are also guided to consider their own inner values and motivations as they design and build adaptive devices for people with disabilities; students in a large chemistry lecture work animatedly together in small groups on inquiry-based activities (...) while an instructor and teaching assistants circulate and guide their learning; students learning differential equations practice explicit metacognitive skills while problem-solving in class. Even though educational research, especially research that is targeted at STEM disciplines, demonstrates what most effectively engages students and supports their learning, many of today's classrooms look much like they did a century ago, with a professor delivering a primarily one-way lecture and students passively sitting in seats bolted to the floor. At this juncture in history, colleges and universities face a public call to engage a more diverse representation of students in effective learning, persistence, and degree attainment, and to do so economically and efficiently. It is essential that institutions draw upon methods demonstrated to effectively increase student learning and success. Educational researchers have thoroughly explored the "basic" science in this area, and a body of literature documents effective evidence-based instructional practices, hereafter referred to as EBIPs. (shrink)

"The book version of the legendary science fiction film "--Publisher description.

Physical attractiveness affects how one gets treated, but it is just a single component of one's overall “market value.” One's treatment depends on other markers of market value, including social status, competence, warmth, and any other cues of one's ability or willingness to confer benefits on partners. To completely understand biased treatment, we must also incorporate these other factors.