This book discusses the ways in which science, the touchstone of reliable knowledge in modern society, changed dramatically in the second half of the 20th century, becoming less trustworthy through excessive competitiveness and conflicts of interest.

Interdisciplinary work is intractable because the search for knowledge in different fields entails different interests, and thereby different values too; and the different possibilities of knowledge about different subjects also lead to different epistemologies. Thus differ ences among practitioners of the various disciplines are pervasive and aptly described as cultural ones, and interdisciplinary work requires transcending unconscious habits of thought. The more those unconscious habits are explicated and the more we under stand how the disparate characteristics of the various intellectual (...) cultures are related to the necessarily different interests, values, and epistemologies, the more feasible becomes the goal of transcending thought habits. Two sorts of interdisciplinary effort seem to have been successful: specific, delimited problems have been solved by teams in what is actually multidisciplinary rather than interdisciplinary work, and new disciplines have sprung up at the intersections of existing ones. STS fits neither of those patterns. Can it nevertheless be viable? (shrink)

A major challenge for The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) Project is solving the high level of genetic and epigenetic heterogeneity of cancer. For the majority of solid tumors, evolution patterns are stochastic and the end products are unpredictable, in contrast to the relatively predictable stepwise patterns classically described in many hematological cancers. Further, it is genome aberrations, rather than gene mutations, that are the dominant factor in generating abnormal levels of system heterogeneity in cancers. These features of cancer could significantly (...) reduce the impact of the sequencing approach, as it is only when mutated genes are the main cause of cancer that directly sequencing them is justified. Many biological factors (genetic and epigenetic variations, metabolic processes) and environmental influences can increase the probability of cancer formation, depending on the given circumstances. The common link between these factors is the stochastic genome variations that provide the driving force behind the cancer evolutionary process within multiple levels of a biological system. This analysis suggests that cancer is a disease of probability and the most‐challenging issue to the TCGA project, as well as the development of general strategies for fighting cancer, lie at the conceptual level. BioEssays 29:783–794, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Modern biology has been heavily influenced by the gene‐centric concept. Paradoxically, this very concept – on which bioresearch is based – is challenged by the success of gene‐based research in terms of explaining evolutionary theory. To overcome this major roadblock, it is essential to establish new theories, to not only solve the key puzzles presented by the gene‐centric concept, but also to provide a conceptual framework that allows the field to grow. This paper discusses a number of paradoxes and illustrates (...) how they can be addressed by the genome‐centric concept in order to further resynthesize evolutionary theory. In particular, methodological breakthroughs that analyze genome evolution are discussed. The multiple interactions among different levels of a complex system provide the key to understanding the relationship between self‐organization and natural selection. Darwinian natural selection applies to the biological level due to its unique genetic and heterogeneous features, but does not simply or directly apply to either the lower non‐living level or higher intellectual society level. At the complex bio‐system level, the genome context (the entire package of genes and their genomic physical relationship or genomic topology), not the individual genes, defines the system and serves as the principle selection platform for evolution. (shrink)

Fluorescent in situ hybridization technology is one of the most exciting and versatile research tools to be developed in recent years. It has enabled research to progress at a phenomenal rate in diverse areas of basic research as well as in clinical medicine. Fluorescent in situ hybridization has applications in physical mapping, the study of nuclear architecture and chromatin packaging, and the investigation of fundamental principles of biology such as DNA replication, RNA processing, gene amplification, gene integration and chromatin elimination. (...) This review highlights some of these areas and provides source material for the reader who seeks more information on a specific field. (shrink)

Originally published by Ballinger, this book is a result of an Atlantic Council study of U.S. international relationships on energy. It examines the uncertainties of a political, strategic, economic, and technological nature that are involved in energy supply, as well as the unavoidable certainty of finite resources.

The ASBH Core Competencies Update Task Force (Tarzian and ASBH Core Competencies Update Task Force 2013) provides useful information for individual consultants performing case consultations. A grow...

We explored whether children’s suggestion-induced omission errors are caused by memory erasure. Seventy-five children were instructed to remove three pieces of clothing from a puppet. Next, they were confronted with evidence falsely suggesting that one of the items had not been removed. During two subsequent interviews separated by one week, children had to report which pieces of clothing they had removed. Children who during both interviews failed to report that they had removed the pertinent item completed a choice reaction time (...) task. In this task, they were presented with different clothing items. For each item, children had to indicate whether or not they had removed it. Significantly more errors were made for those removed items that children failed to report than for those they had not removed. This indicates that children’s suggestion-based omission errors are not due to erasure of memories. (shrink)