Japan budget. Winners, losers abound as reforms kick in.
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Biology↗
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Results for “Biological Science Disciplines”
Explore indexed PubMed citations for clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health research. Read source abstracts and follow each citation to its original PubMed record.
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[Biology yesterday, today and tomorrow].
Throughout the history of the biological disciplines from the 18th to the 20th centuries, there has been a succession of predominating fields of interest: morphology, physiology, genetics, biochemistry, ecology and ethology, while statistics, biometry and computer sciences were developing as powerful means of imposing rigor on research. In all sciences, there is a fundamental empiricism which has often been criticized as prescientific. However, it is unavoidable, especially in biology owing to the unusual wealth and complexity of the facts to be reported. Explaining in the natural sciences first requires the discovery of relationships between facts. Biological explanation has many levels. One of the main avenues leading to true explanation is the multidisciplinary approach, which is in reality an attempt at synthesis. Another characteristic of biological work is the equilibrium between pragmatism and idealism, usually expressed as a balance between application and theory. Both modalities are necessary because of their complementarity. The emergence of ecology demonstrates this duality in the recent past. The equilibrium between theory and application should be decided by the biologists themselves, not by the funding public agencies, although competent administrators are necessary for the welfare of researchers. Applied and theoretical research should be kept separate to a large extent, even though they remain interdependent. In biology, theoretical work has suffered considerable neglect as compared to the situation in physics and chemistry. Biology has few explanatory theories and the few it possesses have often been put forward by physicists in the field of biophysics.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Biology↗
[Ethical evaluation of biomedical research].
Every human behaviour, therefore also biomedical research, implies a reference, either implicit or explicit, to ethic values. The expression "biomedical research" attains to the domain of two distinct fields, the scientific and the technical one and this distinction is important for its ethic implications. In fact, it was the great progress in the biotechnologies that in the early 70's stimulated the birth of a new discipline known as bioethics, that from its very start was meant to be the meeting point between culturers of the biological sciences and those of human sciences. Among the paradigms adopted by bioethics, those of Beauchamp and Childress, which refer to the principles of "beneficence" (well doing), "non maleficence" (not wrong doing), autonomy and justice, are still of great importance. Bioethics proposed to establish an inequivocal and shared language and to develop adequate and rigorous procedures of analysis. So, at various levels, international, national and local, those interesting tools of the trade, which are the ethics committees, have arose. In order for an ethic committee to function, one must guarantee from the start, the conditions of autonomy and representativeness of different knowledges and cultural options that characterize our complex society. It is also necessary that an ethics committee, rather than assuming a prescriptive role, should promote attention and reflection on the ethical aspects of biomedical research.
Bioethics↗
"A system biology" approach to bioinformatics and functional genomics in complex human diseases: arthritis.
Human and other annotated genome sequences have facilitated generation of vast amounts of correlative data, from human/animal genetics, normal and disease-affected tissues from complex diseases such as arthritis using gene/protein chips and SNP analysis. These data sets include genes/proteins whose functions are partially known at the cellular level or may be completely unknown (e.g. ESTs). Thus, genomic research has transformed molecular biology from "data poor" to "data rich" science, allowing further division into subpopulations of subcellular fractions, which are often given an "-omic" suffix. These disciplines have to converge at a systemic level to examine the structure and dynamics of cellular and organismal function. The challenge of characterizing ESTs linked to complex diseases is like interpreting sharp images on a blurred background and therefore requires a multidimensional screen for functional genomics ("functionomics") in tissues, mice and zebra fish model, which intertwines various approaches and readouts to study development and homeostasis of a system. In summary, the post-genomic era of functionomics will facilitate to narrow the bridge between correlative data and causative data by quaint hypothesis-driven research using a system approach integrating "intercoms" of interacting and interdependent disciplines forming a unified whole as described in this review for Arthritis.
Animals↗
Family medicine: a medical care alternative for Latin America.
This paper presents the experience of a residency in family medicine organized 7 years ago by the medical school of the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Mexico. The residency aims to prepare physicians to provide primary health care. In efforts to teach graduate students the social as well as the biological causes of diseases most commonly reported at the primary care level, graduate students take courses in clinical disciplines, social and behavioral sciences and public health. In its training methodology the program combines teaching, service and research. By now, the department of family medicine has graduated five classes of specialists, all of whom are working in the field of family medicine at the primary level. This fact is particularly worth noticing in a country where there are thousands of unemployed/underemployed physicians. It is suggested that family physicians are satisfying an unmet medical demand of many thousands of Mexicans, and that the care provided by them is less expensive and of better quality than the same care provided by other specialists.
Curriculum↗
Early assembly of cellular life.
Popular hypotheses that attempt to explain the origin of prebiotic molecules and cellular life capable of growth and division are not always agreed upon. In this manuscript, information on early bacterial life on Earth is examined using information from several disciplines. For example, knowledge can be integrated from physics, thermodynamics, planetary sciences, geology, biogeochemistry, lipid chemistry, primordial cell structures, cell and molecular biology, microbiology, metabolism and genetics. The origin of life also required a combination of elements, compounds and environmental physical-chemical conditions that allowed cells to assemble in less than a billion years. This may have been widespread in the subsurface of the early Earth located at microscopic physical domains.
Adaptation, Physiological↗
From molecules to mind. Stress, individual differences, and the social environment.
The social and physical environments in which we live have an enormous impact on our physiology and behavior and influence the process of adaptation, or "allostasis." Genes, early development, adult experiences, life style, and stressful life experiences all contribute to the way the body adapts to a changing environment; and these factors all help to determine the cost to the body, or "allostatic load." Studies of these processes involve the disciplines of biology and psychology, but they are incomplete without the input from other fields, such as cultural anthropology, economics, epidemiology, political science, and sociology. These fields provide a description and analysis of the social and cultural institutions and economic forces that affect individual human health. Specific examples of shared concepts and terminology are given to illustrate progress towards consilience in the study of socioeconomic determinants of health.
Adaptation, Physiological↗
[Basic trends in general human pathology and principles of its teaching in higher medical education].
The paper considers the current trends in the development of biological and medical sciences: their subject, tasks, methods, and place of General Human Pathology among other subjects, its value for the clinical discipline. It defines and analyzes the most topical and disputable directions of General Human Pathology, primarily including those which form the bases for the pathology theory. Arguments are advanced for the necessity of introducing the subject General Pathology of Man into the curriculum of higher medical educational establishments at various faculties. Consideration is given to the specific features of this subject teaching at the faculty training researchers and research pedagogical personnel, at the Pharmaceutical and Higher Nurse Training Faculties of the I. M. Sechenov Moscow Medical Academy. A proposal is given to consider and to discuss the most important problems of General Pathology and its teaching, which are listed in the paper.
Education, Medical↗
Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802).
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Biological Evolution↗
[New disciplines in medical studies].
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Audiovisual Aids↗
Oral biology and the early introduction of clinical dentistry in the dental curriculum.
For the past nine years students entering the Dental School in the University of Western Australia have participated in an introductory clinical dentistry program closely integrated with oral biology. This paper outlines the content of the program and discusses its educational advantages. Changing attitudes in Australian universities toward the appointment of full professors in clinical disciplines also are discussed, and reference is made to the way in which these appointments are helping to achieve a closer correlation between basic science and clinical dentistry.
Anatomy↗
Reflections on the epistemology of psychiatry.
A re-examination of the theoretical basis of our practice of psychiatry (that is, its epistemology) reveals the insufficiency of the empirical, inductive approach which we have come to regard, too myopically, as the sine qua non of our science. Traditionally in psychiatry, the discipline of philosophy, of which epistemology is one of its major fields of endeavour, has generally come to be regarded as irrelevant or unreliable as a source of true knowledge. But an objective look at our variegated practice of psychiatry--roughly divided into two groups--the biological on the one side and the psychosocial on the other--reveals a glaring lack of integration, cohesion, or synthesis in basic theory. While analysis is the prime modus operandi of science, synthesis is the main objective of philosophy. While we subscribe to various operational theories to explain how our various procedures work, we lack an overarching, unified, general theory to subsume them. Hence we lack a truly holistic concept of the person who is our patient. In this we are much in need of the discipline of philosophy, which promotes clarity of thought, breadth of comprehension, and systematic (logical) reasoning. Psychiatrists acquire more of this philosophic expertise through collaboration with professional philosophers (epistemologists in particular) and through the introduction into our graduate psychiatric training programs of some specific course content from the literature of philosophy. As a preliminary suggestion for this, an "Annotated Reading List" is appended.
Canada↗
Securing the future of nutritional sciences through integrative graduate education.
The new millennium has ushered in unprecedented opportunities for research and discovery in the nutritional sciences. These have arisen from major advancements in the social and biological sciences, notably genetics, genomic technologies, computational statistics, and behavioral sciences. The most exciting academic challenges and employment opportunities for nutritional sciences graduates interface with other disciplines, and doctoral training programs in the nutritional sciences must respond to the wealth of these emerging opportunities. The American Society for Nutritional Sciences (ASNS) Graduate Nutrition Education Committee suggests that three major challenges face the nutritional sciences: (a) to train doctoral students to be full and active participants in interdisciplinary research and discovery, and (b) to achieve this goal while maintaining nutrition's unique academic identity and (c) fostering a cohesive academic community. The committee proposes that these objectives are best engaged at the level of graduate education and that the future of ASNS will be secured by strengthening graduate nutrition programs. This manuscript reviews educational strategies that address these challenges and advocates that ASNS actively engage graduate doctoral programs in nutritional sciences.
Education, Graduate↗
Evidence-based toxicology: a comprehensive framework for causation.
This paper identifies deficiencies in some current practices of causation and risk evaluation by toxicologists and formulates an evidence-based solution. The practice of toxicology focuses on adverse health events caused by physical or chemical agents. Some relations between agents and events are identified risks, meaning unwanted events known to occur at some frequency. However, other relations that are only possibilities--not known to occur (and may never be realized)--also are sometimes called risks and are even expressed quantitatively. The seemingly slight differences in connotation among various uses of the word 'risk' conceal deeply philosophic differences in the epistemology of harm. We label as 'nomological possibilities' (not as risks) all predictions of harm that are known not to be physically or logically impossible. Some of these nomological possibilities are known to be causal. We term them 'epistemic'. Epistemic possibilities are risks. The remaining nomological possibilities are called 'uncertainties'. Distinguishing risks (epistemic relationships) from among all nomological possibilities requires knowledge of causation. Causality becomes knowable when scientific experiments demonstrate, in a strong, consistent (repeatable), specific, dose-dependent, coherent, temporal and predictive manner that a change in a stimulus determines an asymmetric, directional change in the effect. Many believe that a similar set of characteristics, popularly called the 'Hill Criteria', make it possible, if knowledge is robust, to infer causation from only observational (nonexperimental) studies, where allocation of test subjects or items is not under the control of the investigator. Until the 1980s, medical decisions about diagnosis, prevention, treatment or harm were often made authoritatively. Rather than employing a rigorous evaluation of causal relationships and applying these criteria to the published knowledge, the field of medicine was dominated by authority-based opinions, expressed by experts (or consensus groups of experts) relying on their education, training, experience, wisdom, prestige, intuition, skill and improvisation. In response, evidence-based medicine (EBM) was developed, to make a conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in deciding about the care of individual patients. Now globally embraced, EBM employs a structured, 'transparent' protocol for carrying out a deliberate, objective, unbiased and systematic review of the evidence about a formally framed question. Not only in medicine, but now in dentistry, engineering and other fields that have adapted the methods of EBM, it is the quality of the evidence and the rigor of the analysis through evidence-based logic (EBL), rather than the professional standing of the reviewer, that leads to evidence-based conclusions about what is known. Recent studies have disclosed that toxicologists (individually or in expert groups), not unlike their medical counterparts prior to EBM, show distressing variations in their biases with regard to data selection, data interpretation and data evaluation when performing reviews for causation analyses. Moreover, toxicologists often fail to acknowledge explicitly (particularly in regulatory and policy-making arenas) when shortcomings in the evidence necessitate reliance upon authority-based opinions, rather than evidence-based conclusions (Guzelian PS, Guzelian CP. Authority-based explanation. Science 2004; 303: 1468-69). Accordingly, for answering questions about general and specific causation, we have constructed a framework for evidence-based toxicology (EBT), derived from the accepted principles of EBM and expressed succinctly as three stages, comprising 12 total steps. These are: 1) collecting and evaluating the relevant data (Source, Exposure, Dose, Diagnosis); 2) collecting and evaluating the relevant knowledge (Frame the question, Assemble the relevant (delimited) literature, Assess and critique the literature); and 3) Joining data with knowledge to arrive at a conclusion (General causation--answer to the framed question, Dose-response, Timing, Alternative cause, Coherence). The second of these stages (which amounts to an analysis of general causation), is addressed by an EBM-styled approach (adapted for the infrequent availability of human experimental studies in environmental toxicology). This involves assembling literature (through documented algorithms for database queries), excluding irrelevancies by use of delimiters as filters, and ranking and rating the remaining articles for strength of study design and for quality of execution gauged by application of either a ready-made quality assessment instrument or a custom designed checklist or scale. The results of this systematic review (including a structured review of relevant animal and in vitro studies) are then themselves systematically used to determine which causation criteria are fulfilled. Toxicology is maturing from a derivative science largely devoted to routinized performance and interpretation of safety tests, to a discipline deeply enmeshed in the remarkable advances in biochemistry and molecular biology to better understanding the nature and mechanism of adverse effects caused by chemicals. It is time for toxicologists, like scientists in other fields, to formalize a method for differentiating settled toxicological knowledge of risk from mere nomological possibility, and for communicating their conclusions to other scientists and the public. It is time for EBT.
Animals↗
[The history of modern andrology].
The beginning of the history of modern Andrology as a clinical science can be located at the mid-century of 1900. The term itself of "Andrology" was first proposed in 1951. At that time, basic scientists coming from different cultural backgrounds - the main roots were urology, endocrinology and in some cases dermatology - "discovered" their common interest in the field of the male reproductive system, whose pathology and even physiology have been for a long time ignored or disregarded, often considered a shame more than a clinical entity. Very soon, many other specialists joined the team; among these biologists, genetics, psychologists etc., under, for the first time in history, the common definition of "Andrologists". They organized themselves in National and International Societies whose members, at the moment, are more than 8,000; holding national and international Meeting Workshops and Conventions all around the world and editing Textbooks and Journals. On the educational ground, pre - and post graduated courses are held in several Countries, both for medical students and doctors. Although a melting-pot of different cultural basis, today Andrology can be defined an unitary medical discipline dealing with the pathophysiology of the male reproductive system during all the life course of the male subject, from development to maturity and senescence. Shortly, and according to the WHO definition, it deals with male reproductive health. Quite similar to what is Gynecology for the female subject. The late arrival of the andrological discipline on the stage of modern medicine gave it the advantage of utilizing all the modern achievements of basic and clinical science, from molecular biology to ultrastructure, to genetic etc., reaching levels of high quality. Today, modern andrology, according to the principles of Evidence-Based Medicine, and although much is left to do, can effectively manage all the main pathologies of the male organism, form infertility to erectile dysfunction, but taking care of problems of puberty and senescence ("andropause") as well; giving to the male subject the "quality of life" that must be granted to every human being.
History, 20th Century↗
[Molecular epidemiology of cancers and precancerous conditions].
For many years the molecular biology has been one of the most promising fields of science and its several methods have been used in practice. These new methods of molecular biology made impression on epidemiology and developed a new discipline, called molecular epidemiology. The molecular and predictive epidemiology play more and more important roles in the prevention of cancers. Early biomarkers could identify the high risk population to have the possibilities of primary preventive interventions. It uses both molecular biological methods and the elements of epidemiology. Its specificity is not high enough to establish the diagnosis but it can be used to follow the "minimal residual disease" and with markers of individual susceptibility, to assess the risk of tumors. As to the practice there are many problems because of the limited therapeutic possibilities, but the molecular and predictive epidemiology becomes an important part of medicine in the future.
Biomarkers, Tumor↗
Applied nanotechnology for the management of breakthrough cancer pain.
Pain, often considered the 5th vital sign, plays a significant role in the pathophysiology of cancer. Often addressed as an afterthought, untreated or under-treated cancer-related pain can have deleterious effects on a patient's physical and psychological well-being. Additionally, patients with breakthrough cancer pain tend to have more intense and more frequent background pain than patients without breakthrough pain. Currently, only oral transmucosal fentanyl citrate (OTFC) has reached the market for the treatment of cancer-related breakthrough pain. OTFC is an excellent first step in addressing the unmet need for symptomatic relief of breakthrough cancer pain; however, there is much room for improvement. Nanoscale science and engineering advancements have the long-term potential to bring revolutionary changes in society and across virtually all physical, biological and engineering disciplines, particularly medicine. Nanotechnology offers the potential to address multiple, major unmet problems in the diagnosis, treatment and symptom management of a large variety of diseases and conditions, including cancer. Nanotechnology can engender transformational progress in crucial aspects of the fight against cancer, spanning the continuum that ranges from prevention, to early detection, screening and monitoring, to innovative diagnostics and therapeutic modalities in the era of patient-centered, molecular medicine. Specifically, the authors will discuss their current research in the field of biomedical nanotechnology and its application to the management of breakthrough cancer pain.
Animals↗
Technological trends in clinical laboratory science.
OBJECTIVE: This article will review the advancements and new developments being made in (1) advanced computers, (2) microtechnology, (3) advanced immunodiagnostics, (4) neural networks, and (5) molecular biology. The influence of these technologies and their products on clinical laboratories is also discussed. CONCLUSION: Significant evolutionary and revolutionary technological changes are occurring in a number of scientific and engineering disciplines that impact the medical profession. As a consequence of this era of rapid change, the discipline of Clinical Laboratory Science is undergoing a "technological explosion" which is having a significant and profound effect on how clinical laboratories of today and tomorrow are and will be staffed, equipped, and operated.
Chemistry, Clinical↗