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PubMed1995

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↗

PubMed2004

[Spanish scientific output in medicine in the years 1994-1999].

OBJECTIVES: A study through bibliometric indicators of the 1994-1999 Spanish international medical scientific output is presented. METHOD: The international bibliographic databases Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index were used as data source. RESULTS: The Spanish production in Health Sciences rose in the period studied to 53,878 documents, distributed between Basic Medicine (54%), Clinical Medicine (53%) and Social Medicine (2.7%). Among the Spanish communities with greater production Madrid (31%) and Catalonia (29%) pointed out, followed by Andalusia (12%) and Valencia (9%). The principal institutional sectors involved in research were hospitals (51%) and university (44%). An important increase in the publications from foundations and companies was observed. The disciplines of Biochemistry/Molecular biology, Internal/General medicine and Pharmacology/Pharmacy pointed out by their high production. With regard to the centers of greater production its increase during the period studied, the clinical or basic character of research and the average impact factor of their documents shown to detect centers of excellence. CONCLUSIONS: The analysis carried out shows the growth of clinical and social Medicine, makes possible to identify the principal actors in Health Sciences, detect centers of excellence in the disciplines, and analyze the specialization of Spain in the European context. The publications are more abundant in the journals of the first quartile of each specialty.

Bibliometrics↗

PubMed2004

Can behavioral evolution be measured on a staircase? A commentary.

The serious, comparative study of behavioral complexity that Greenberg et al. advocate is a progressive direction for the field, but their proposal to separate comparative psychology from its roots in evolutionary biology seems regressive. Modern evolutionary theory has been broadened within biology to include development and paleontology alongside natural selection, making closer integration with that discipline particularly timely. Such an integrated evolutionary approach in psychology would offer a useful alternative to the adaptationism popularized by evolutionary psychology. Although the differences between comparative psychologists and biologists may be blurred in the process, the behavioral sciences will be better served by a rich biological approach to evolution than by a uniquely psychological approach.

Animals↗

PubMed2004

The Society for the Study of Addiction (SSA).

The Society for the Study of Addiction (SSA) is a learned society which is a company limited by guarantee with charitable status, an independent organization promoting the cause of research, public policy and treatment of addiction. Founded in London in 1884 with the aim of promoting a research-based understanding of inebriety, it is the oldest society of its kind. The pursuit and enhancement of evidence-based policy and treatment informed its work in the early days and has remained its organizing principle throughout its history. Led initially by medical political interests, the Society has grown to encompass a broader disciplinary base, reflecting the expansion of interest in addiction from biological, psychological and social science into nursing, social work, probation, other arms of criminal justice work and voluntary sector professionals. Today its membership is made up of researchers, practitioners and policy makers from all these disciplines, the majority of whom reside and work in the United Kingdom; its international membership makes up nearly one-third of the total membership and there are current endeavours to expand collaboration with other national societies in the field. Its activities are focused upon the Society journals, Addiction and Addiction Biology, other publishing activities, the annual symposium and a number of policy initiatives.

Behavior, Addictive↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Reductionism and the search for structure-function relationships in antibody molecules.

One of the claims of reductionism is that it can explain all the features of living systems by an analysis of their physico-chemical constituents. Such a claim disregards the existence in biological systems of emergent properties that do not exist in their isolated components but which allow autonomous organisms to be directively organized in a self-regulated and integrated manner. It is not possible to describe biological systems adequately without using functional language that is meaningless in the physical sciences. The description of biological functions is also an essential part of immunology and functional explanations are more useful than causal explanations also in this discipline. Since causality is not a relation between a material object and an event, the structure of an antibody cannot be the cause of its binding activity. When structure-function relationships are analysed, the search should be for correlations rather than for causal relations. Methods used to find correlations between the atomic structure of antibody binding sites and their binding activity are mostly based on mutagenesis studies. Since the effect of any mutation depends on the molecular context, it is usually very difficult to predict the effects of multiple mutations on antibody function. Our knowledge of the molecular basis of antigen-antibody recognition has led to the expectation that it may be possible to develop new vaccines using molecular design principles. Such unwarranted hopes arise because of a confusion between antigenicity and immunogenicity. Although knowledge of antibody structure is of little use in vaccine design, it may help to develop therapeutic inhibitors and antibodies effective in the passive immunotherapy of viral infection.

Animals↗

PubMed2006

Teaching molecular genetics: Chapter 3--Proteomics in nephrology.

The novel discipline of proteomics has experienced a rapid growth in the recent past and has great potentials for the future. The study of proteins on a genomic scale enables a large number of proteins to be analysed simultaneously. Moreover, proteomic analysis reveals the presence of protein isoforms and post-translational modifications, both of which have the potential to regulate protein complex formation, activity and function. As such, the assessment of the proteome, unlike genomic analysis, provides a view of biological processes at their level of occurrence. The knowledge thus gained is important not only for a better understanding of renal physiology and pathophysiology, but also for the identification of disease markers and the development of new therapies. This review applies the science of proteomics to nephrology: our aim is to give an overview of the discipline, providing background information and outlining the scope, advantages and limitations of proteomics.

Biomarkers↗

PubMed1977

The scope of ethnomedical science.

The subject matter of the field of ethnomedicine is outlined in this paper. Basic concepts and problem concerns are described. The linkages which ethnomedicine has with the other social and biologic disciplines are discussed. Ethnomedicine deals with information pertaining to social adaptation, deviant behavior, illness, disease, medical taxonomy, folk medical knowledge, and systems of medical care. Some of the problems inherent in studying these issues are described. Attention is also given potentially rich areas of inquiry which, heretofore, have not been cast in an ethnomedical context.

Aptitude↗

PubMed1986

PROPHET, a national computing resource for life science research.

PROPHET is a national computing resource tailored to meet the data management and analysis needs of life scientists working in a wide variety of disciplines, ranging from pharmacology to molecular biology. The PROPHET system offers a fully integrated graphics-oriented environment designed to aid research scientists in the manipulation and analysis of scientific spreadsheets of data, graphs, molecular structures, biological simulation models, and protein and nucleic acid sequences, and it includes access to a range of molecular structure and sequence databases. This paper briefly describes the PROPHET system, some of its current capabilities, and plans for a new fully distributed version of the system now under development.

Amino Acid Sequence↗

PubMed1988

PROPHET--a national computing resource for life science research.

Computer Communication Networks↗

PubMed2005

Bio-fluids educational issues: an emerging field aims to define its next generation.

There are numerous processes in the body under healthy and pathologic conditions in which bio-fluid mechanics play a central role. The delivery of various substances to and from tissues is accomplished through a combination of complex active and passive mass transfer processes. Bio-fluid mechanics also play a central role in locomotion, from water-bound amoeba and fish to the soaring of birds. Educating undergraduate and graduate students in such wide-ranging fluid mechanical phenomena has proved challenging within the typical context of a biomedical engineering program. The diversity of biomedical engineering topics entails increased biological sciences curricular content, possibly limiting the opportunities to provide a fundamental knowledge base in fluid mechanics which may be expected in the more traditional engineering disciplines. The lack of textbooks in the area, while problematic in the past, is being alleviated with some recent texts and several new ones are due to appear soon. Today's bio-fluids educators are presented with the challenge of providing sufficient fundamental knowledge in bio-fluid mechanics within one- or two-semester courses. The richness of this topic has led to a variety of approaches to course development. This article outlines some of the current approaches and presents some strategies that we hope would help in constructing effective bio-fluids courses.

Biomechanical Phenomena↗

PubMed1996

A systematic view on medical informatics.

Medical informatics is defined as the scientific discipline concerned with the systematic processing of data, information and knowledge in medicine and health care. The domain of medical informatics (including health informatics), its aim, methods and tools, and its relevance to other disciplines in medicine and health sciences are outlined. It is recognized that one of the major tasks of medical informatics is modelling processes. In this context, biological, communication, decision, engineering, educational, organizational and computational processes are distinguished and described.

Computer Communication Networks↗

PubMed1993

Psychological studies in nonionizing electromagnetic energy research.

Research on nonionizing electromagnetic (NIEM) energy has focused on potential hazards, and to a lesser degree beneficial applications, of radiofrequency (RF) fields and extremely low frequency (ELF) fields. The history of research on the potential biological effects of NIEM contains many psychological investigations. These psychological investigations were conducted primarily in the discipline of biopsychology and included interdisciplinary cooperation with engineering, physical sciences, and other disciplines not routinely associated with psychology. The current recommended exposure level for RF is based on behavioral observations of laboratory animals. Psychology has been and continues to be in the midst of controversy regarding the ability of low-frequency, low-level electromagnetic energy or electric and magnetic fields to affect living organisms.

Animals↗

PubMed2005

Nanotechnology on duty in medical applications.

At the beginning of 21(st) century, fifty years after discovery of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) double helix structure, scientific world is faced with a great progress in many disciplines of biological research, especially in the field of molecular biology and operating on nucleid acid molecules. Many molecular biology techniques have been implemented successfully in biology, biotechnology, medical science, diagnostics, and many more. The introduction of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) resulted in improving old and designing new laboratory devices for PCR amplification and analysis of amplified DNA fragments. In parallel to these efforts, the nature of DNA molecules and their construction have attracted many researchers. In addition, some studies concerning mimicking living systems, as well as developing and constructing artificial nanodevices, such as biomolecular sensors and artificial cells, have been conducted. This review is focused on the potential of nanotechnology in health care and medicine, including the development of nanoparticles for diagnostic and screening purposes, the manufacture of unique drug delivery systems, antisense and gene therapy applications and the enablement of tissue engineering, including the future of nanorobot construction.

Animals↗

PubMed2003

[Role of morphology in medical education, clinical practice and research].

Rapid development of molecular biology, biochemistry, physiology and other sciences has diminished the previously dominant role of morphology in the theoretical part of medical studies. Morphology, closely related to various disciplines, should, however, be included in clinical lectures. Changes in the curricula would require concise and well-structured textbooks, based on recent clinico-morphological studies, for the theoretical parts of both medical and allied health care study programmes. Comprehensive textbooks are still necessary for the specific needs of clinicians and researches.

Anatomy↗

PubMed2000

Patient-oriented research: principles and new approaches to training.

Remarkable advances in modern biology have enhanced our understanding of disease, permitting us to define-and potentially to treat-illness at the cellular and molecular level. The challenge we now face as physicians and physician-scientists is ensuring that these advances find expression in clinical practice. Thus far, the distance from the bench to the bedside has been surprisingly difficult to span, reflecting the need to develop broader, more integrative approaches to understanding how component molecules and physiologic systems function in the context of the whole person. Although there appears to be a consensus about the need to pursue such integrative, patient-oriented research, a mechanism for training future investigators in this discipline is less well established. In this essay, we present and develop the rationale for a set of underlying principles for patient-oriented research that can be used to guide appropriate training in this field. We also describe briefly a recently established prototype program-the Harvard initiative in Patient-Associated Science: Training, Education, Understanding, and Research (PASTEUR)-that we hope will help cultivate patient-oriented investigators and catalyze the evolution of patient-oriented research into a fully realized academic discipline.

Biology↗

PubMed2006

Extracting knowledge from science: a conversation with Elias Zerhouni. Interview by Barbara J. Culliton.

National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Elias Zerhouni is pushing hard for innovation and the risk taking required to make major leaps in medicine. Fully attuned to cutting-edge work that crosses disciplines, he cites nanotechnology, clinical databases designed to answer research questions, systems biology, and an openness to radical ideas among his top priorities. The NIH director's job, he says, "is to have a vision." This requires leveraging NIH funding so that money is spent more wisely and has a cumulative effect on population health. Knowledge can be extracted from science, and health system transformation is made possible.

Databases as Topic↗

PubMed1996

Basics of molecular biology and its applications: I. Molecular biology in medicine: basic concepts.

Medicine has, in recent years, incorporated wave after wave of new scientific discoveries and technologies. Molecular medicine is one of these technologies and shows a dramatic example of the impact of advances in basic science. Advances in molecular biology have revolutionized daily clinical practice, particularly in developed countries, such that practitioners who received their medical education decades ago now need to adapt to this new discipline. While molecular medicine may not be a priority health issue in developing countries such as Papua New Guinea, it is equally important to ensure that the basic principles of knowledge and understanding of what goes on in that field form part of today's teaching of all practitioners of medicine and allied health workers. The three papers in this series aim to present molecular biology and its medical applications in as simple and lucid a manner as possible so that its scientific basis and principles as well as its potential for diagnosis and management of diseases are well appreciated.

Allied Health Personnel↗

PubMedDate not supplied

The excitability of plant cells: with a special emphasis on characean internodal cells.

This review describes the basic principles of electrophysiology using the generation of an action potential in characean internodal cells as a pedagogical tool. Electrophysiology has proven to be a powerful tool in understanding animal physiology and development, yet it has been virtually neglected in the study of plant physiology and development. This review is, in essence, a written account of my personal journey over the past five years to understand the basic principles of electrophysiology so that I can apply them to the study of plant physiology and development. My formal background is in classical botany and cell biology. I have learned electrophysiology by reading many books on physics written for the lay person and by talking informally with many patient biophysicists. I have written this review for the botanist who is unfamiliar with the basics of membrane biology but would like to know that she or he can become familiar with the latest information without much effort. I also wrote it for the neurophysiologist who is proficient in membrane biology but knows little about plant biology (but may want to teach one lecture on "plant action potentials"). And lastly, I wrote this for people interested in the history of science and how the studies of electrical and chemical communication in physiology and development progressed in the botanical and zoological disciplines.

Action Potentials↗