bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The viability and proliferation of human chondrocytes following cryopreservation
Authors: Xia Z. , Murray D. , Hulley P. A. , Triffitt J. T. , Price A. J.
Published: August 2008

Human articular cartilage samples were retrieved from the resected material of patients undergoing total knee replacement. Samples underwent automated controlled freezing at various stages of preparation: as intact articular cartilage discs, as minced articular cartilage, and as chondrocytes immediately after enzymatic isolation from fresh articular cartilage. Cell viability was examined using a LIVE/DEAD assay which provided fluorescent staining. Isolated chondrocytes were then cultured and Alamar blue assay was used for estimation of cell proliferation at days zero, four, seven, 14, 21 and 28 after seeding. The mean percentage viabilities of chondrocytes isolated from group A (fresh, intact articular cartilage disc samples), group B (following cryopreservation and then thawing, after initial isolation from articular cartilage), group C (from minced cryopreserved articular cartilage samples), and group D (from cryopreserved intact articular cartilage disc samples) were 74.7% (95% confidence interval (CI) 73.1 to 76.3), 47.0% (95% CI 43 to 51), 32.0% (95% CI 30.3 to 33.7) and 23.3% (95% CI 22.1 to 24.5), respectively. Isolated chondrocytes from all groups were expanded by the following mean proportions after 28 days of culturing: group A ten times, group B 18 times, group C 106 times, and group D 154 times.

This experiment demonstrated that it is possible to isolate viable chondrocytes from cryopreserved intact human articular cartilage which can then be successfully cultured.
Re-implantation of tumour tissue treated by cryotreatment with liquid nitrogen induces anti-tumour activity against murine osteosarcoma
Authors: Nishida H. , Tsuchiya H. , Tomita K.
Published: August 2008

We evaluated the possible induction of a systemic immune response to increase anti-tumour activity by the re-implantation of destructive tumour tissue treated by liquid nitrogen in a murine osteosarcoma (LM8) model. The tumours were randomised to treatment by excision alone or by cryotreatment after excision. Tissue from the tumour was frozen in liquid nitrogen, thawed in distilled water and then re-implanted in the same animal. In addition, some mice received an immunological response modifier of OK-432 after treatment. We measured the levels of interferon-gamma and interleukin-12 cytokines and the cytotoxicity activity of splenocytes against murine LM8 osteosarcoma cells. The number of lung and the size of abdominal metastases were also measured.

Re-implantation of tumour tissue after cryotreatment activated immune responses and inhibited metastatic tumour growth. OK-432 synergistically enhanced the anti-tumour effect. Our results suggest that the treatment of malignant bone tumours by reconstruction using autografts containing tumours which have been treated by liquid nitrogen may be of clinical value.
The effect of closed- and open-wedge high tibial osteotomy on tibial slope
Authors: El-Azab H. , Halawa A. , Anetzberger H. , Imhoff A. B. , Hinterwimmer S.
Published: August 2008

Radiographs of 110 patients who had undergone 120 high tibial osteotomies (60 closed-wedge, 60 open-wedge) were assessed for posterior tibial slope before and after operation, and before removal of the hardware. In the closed-wedge group the mean slope was 5.7° (sd 3.8) before and 2.4° (sd 3.9) immediately after operation, and 2.4° (sd 3.4) before removal of the hardware. In the open-wedge group, these values were 5.0° (sd 3.7), 7.7° (sd 4.3) and 8.1° (sd 3.9) respectively, when stabilised with a non-locking plate, and 7.7° (sd 3.5), 9.4° (sd 4.1) and 9.1° (sd 3.8), when stabilised with a locking plate. The reduction in slope (−2.7° (sd 4.1)) in the closed-wedge group and the increase (+2.5° (sd 3.4), in the open-wedge group was significantly different before and after operation (p = 0.002, p = 0.003). In no group were the changes in slope directly after operation and before removal of the hardware significant (p > 0.05). There was no correlation between the amount of correction in the frontal plane and the post-operative change in slope.

Posterior tibial slope decreases after closed-wedge high tibial osteotomy and increases after an open-wedge procedure because of the geometry of the proximal tibia. The changes in the slope are stable over time, emphasising the influence of the operative procedure rather than of the implant.
Delaying treatment of supracondylar fractures in children
Authors: Ramachandran M. , Skaggs D. L. , Crawford H. A. , Eastwood D. M. , Lalonde F. D. , Vitale M. G. , Do T. T. , Kay R. M.
Published: August 2008

The aim of this retrospective multicentre study was to report the continued occurrence of compartment syndrome secondary to paediatric supracondylar humeral fractures in the period 1995 to 2005. The inclusion criteria were children with a closed, low-energy supracondylar fracture with no associated fractures or vascular compromise, who subsequently developed compartment syndrome. There were 11 patients (seven girls and four boys) identified from eight hospitals in three countries. Ten patients with severe elbow swelling documented at presentation had a mean delay before surgery of 22 hours (6 to 64). One patient without severe swelling documented at presentation suffered arterial entrapment following reduction, with a subsequent compartment syndrome requiring fasciotomy 25 hours after the index procedure.

This series is noteworthy, as all patients had low-energy injuries and presented with an intact radial pulse. Significant swelling at presentation and delay in fracture reduction may be important warning signs for the development of a compartment syndrome in children with supracondylar fractures of the humerus.
Peri-acetabular resection and endoprosthetic reconstruction for tumours of the acetabulum
Authors: Jaiswal P. K. , Aston W. J. S. , Grimer R. J. , Abudu A. , Carter S. , Blunn G. , Briggs T. W. R. , Cannon S.
Published: August 2008

We treated 98 patients with peri-acetabular tumours by resection and reconstruction with a custom-made pelvic endoprosthesis. The overall survival of the patients was 67% at five years, 54% at ten years and 51% at 30 years. One or more complications occurred in 58.1% of patients (54), of which infection was the most common, affecting 30% (28 patients). The rate of local recurrence was 31% (29 patients) after a mean follow-up of 71 months (11 to 147). Dislocation occurred in 20% of patients (19). Before 1996 the rate was 40.5% (17 patients) but this was reduced to 3.9% (two patients) with the introduction of a larger femoral head. There were six cases of palsy of the femoral nerve with recovery in only two. Revision or excision arthroplasty was performed in 23.7% of patients (22), principally for uncontrolled infection or aseptic loosening. Higher rates of death, infection and revision occurred in men.

This method of treatment is still associated with high morbidity. Patients should be carefully selected and informed of this pre-operatively.
Alignment in total knee replacement
Authors: Sikorski J. M.
Published: August 2008

The advent of computer-assisted knee replacement surgery has focused interest on the alignment of the components. However, there is confusion at times between the alignment of the limb as a whole and that of the components. The interaction between them is discussed in this article. Alignment is expressed relative to some reference axis or plane and measurements will vary depending on what is selected as the reference. The validity of different reference axes is discussed. Varying prosthetic alignment has direct implications for surrounding soft-tissue tension. In this context the interaction between alignment and soft-tissue balance is explored and the current knowledge of the relationship between alignment and outcome is summarised.
Patient-reported outcomes after fixed- versus mobile-bearing total knee replacement
Authors: Wylde V. , Learmonth I. , Potter A. , Bettinson K. , Lingard E.
Published: August 2008

We compared patient-reported outcomes of the Kinemax fixed- and mobile-bearing total knee replacement in a multi-centre randomised controlled trial. Patients were randomised to the fixed- or the mobile-bearing prosthesis via a sealed envelope method after the bone cuts had been made in the operating theatre. Randomisation was stratified by centre and diagnosis. Patients were assessed pre-operatively and at eight to 12 weeks, one year and two years post-operatively. Validated questionnaires were used which included the Western Ontario MacMasters University, Short-Form 12, Mental Health Index-5, Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score for Knee-Related Quality of Life and Function in Sport and Recreation scales and a validated scale of satisfaction post-operatively. In total, 242 patients (250 knees) with a mean age of 68 years (40 to 80) were recruited from four NHS orthopaedic centres. Of these, 132 patients (54.5%) were women.

No statistically significant differences could be identified in any of the patient-reported outcome scores between patients who received the fixed-bearing or the mobile-bearing knee up to two-years post-operatively.
Strategies for blood management in orthopaedic and trauma surgery
Authors: Lemaire R.
Published: August 2008

Several aspects of the management of an orthopaedic surgical patient are not directly related to the surgical technique but are nevertheless essential for a successful outcome. Blood management is one of these. This paper considers the various strategies available for the management of blood loss in patients undergoing orthopaedic and trauma surgery.
Audit of Blood Transfusion in Elective Breast Cancer Surgery – Do We Need to Group and Save Pre-Operatively?
Authors: Malik Hassan , Bishop Hugh , Winstanley John
Published: August 2008

INTRODUCTION

Current guidelines on blood ordering in our hospital require all patients undergoing elective breast cancer surgery to have blood grouped, screened and saved as an part of a pre-operative assessment. The aim of this audit was to assess the need for, and cost effectiveness of, this approach in elective breast cancer surgery.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

Retrospective data collection was undertaken for a 2-year period using the theatre booking system. As a result, 497 consecutive elective breast surgery operations including mastectomies, wide local excisions and breast reconstruction procedures were identified for analysis. Using the hospital blood bank computer system, we established the blood group and save or cross-match status as well as the pre- and postoperative haemoglobin results and blood transfusion related data for each of the patients identified.

RESULTS

Of the 497 patients, 438 (88.1%) had blood sent for group-and-save. Of the total 497 patients identified, only 19 (3.82%) patients received a blood transfusion. From the 447 patients undergoing simple mastectomy or wide local excisions alone, 9 patients (1.81%) required transfusion. Fifty patients underwent an immediate reconstruction procedure of whom 10 (20%) required a transfusion.

CONCLUSIONS

This study demonstrates that reconstruction is more likely to be associated with the need for a postoperative transfusion. However, in the context of all breast surgery, blood transfusion is rarely requested. Given this, the time and cost involved in processing a group-and-save pre-operatively is not justified.
Uncomplicated Varicose Vein Surgery in the UK – A Postcode Lottery?
Authors: Nasr MK , Budd JS , Horrocks M
Published: August 2008

INTRODUCTION

Recent research confirms that uncomplicated varicose vein surgery provides significant benefits in terms of quality of life compared to conservative treatment at a relatively small cost. There appear to be major variations in indications for treating varicose veins across the UK and this seems to be based mainly on financial restraint imposed by local Primary Care Trusts (PCTs). This survey was aimed at quantifying this variation.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

An E-mail questionnaire was sent to 245 surgical members of the Vascular Society of Great Britain and Ireland across the UK. The main questions asked were aimed at finding out whether surgeons were having any restrictions imposed on them by their local PCTs with regard to treatment of varicose veins.

RESULTS

A total of 109 surgeons replied (44% response rate). Of these, 64% of surgeons had restrictions set upon them by their local PCTs; however, 62% of surgeons under restrictions still offered surgery for symptomatic uncomplicated varicose veins. Restrictions varied from 100% to 0% across different regions in the UK.

CONCLUSIONS

Many patients are denied surgical treatment for their symptomatic uncomplicated varicose veins according to where they live in the UK regardless of their symptoms.
Evaluating a cognitive analytic therapy service; practice‐based outcomes and comparisons with person‐centred and cognitive‐behavioural therapies
Authors: Marriott Michael. , Kellett Stephen.
Published: August 2008

Objectives. Evaluations of the clinical effectiveness of cognitive analytic therapy (CAT) are scarce and therefore represent an urgent service and research need. This paper sought to evaluate a CAT service by profiling CAT clients, examining the outcomes achieved by the CAT service and also comparing such outcomes with those achieved by other services, namely the person‐centred service and the cognitive‐behavioural service.

Design. Patients in routine practice were matched according to the amount of therapy time received (either brief or medium‐term contracts) and the degree of initial presenting psychological distress.

Methods. Patients completed a variety of validated scales of psychological functioning (Beck Depression Inventory‐II (BDI‐II), Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI), and Inventory of Interpersonal Problems (IIP‐32)) at assessment and termination of psychological intervention.

Results. The results indicate broad similarities between the outcomes achieved by the services, with rates of clinically significant improvement comparable, in the main, across the three services.

Conclusions. The results are discussed in terms of (a) the service delivery implications and (b) future indicated pragmatic research and evaluation efforts.
If They Touch One of Us, They Touch All of Us : Cooperativism as a Counterlogic to Neoliberal Capitalism
Authors: Faulk Karen Ann
Published: August 2008

Through an ethnographic examination of the BAUEN, a workers' cooperative and part of the recuperated businesses movement, this article considers the emergence of a logic of cooperativism in Argentina in recent years. In analyzing this idea of cooperativism, I distinguish three different but interrelated aspects: formal cooperativism, affective cooperativism or compañerismo , and community outreach and support. I show how this logic of cooperativism relies upon a discourse of corruption to delegitimize the cultural conceptions implicit in neoliberalism as applied in Argentina and opens a space for the emergence of new and revitalized conceptions of work and the citizen.
Feeding Nayaka Children and English Readers: A Bifocal Ethnography of Parental Feeding in “The Giving Environment”
Authors: Bird-David Nurit
Published: August 2008

In this article I examine relational child feeding in the Nayaka forest-world and problematize the concept of “nurturing” which interferes with understanding it. Several essentialist and individualist antecedents of “nurturing,” I suggest, conflate child feeding with a one-way, top-down transfer of food; with training, controlling and loving the children; and with rearing them to grow up and separate from their parents. This conflation obscures the Nayaka relational senses which are embedded in an ontology of “living together” and in which child feeding is framed as an instance of sharing between coevals who remain closely related throughout their lives. As well as offering a corrective to “The Giving Environment” (), this article contributes a relational perspective to the study of children among forest-dweller hunter-gatherers. Methodologically, a case is made in the article for “bifocal ethnography” that pays attention not only to the subjects of the study but also—and ethnographically, as well— to selected key notions in the language in which the ethnography is written as a means of limiting readers’ own inherent ontological biases and “fine-tuning” the ethnography.
Setting Themselves Apart: Education, Capabilities, and Sexuality Among Samburu Women in Kenya
Authors: Lesorogol Carolyn K.
Published: August 2008

Formal education for girls among the pastoralist Samburu of northern Kenya imparts new knowledge and skills, but also inculcates ideas and attitudes that clash with conventional understandings of female capabilities, sexuality, and gender roles. As a result, formal education has contributed to increased differentiation between educated and uneducated girls and women, with some negative implications for individuals as well as for female solidarity more generally. This article explores the meaning and implications of symbolic boundaries created and maintained by educated girls and women manifested both in words and ideas and embodied in dress and adornment.
Producing Cosmopolitanism at the Borderlands: Lonely Planeteers and “Local” Cosmopolitans in Southwest China
Authors: Notar Beth E.
Published: August 2008

While recent ethnographic research has complicated our understanding of the “cosmopolitan,” assumptions persist that those who are cosmopolitan must be metropolitan, mobile, consumers. Ethnic minority café owners in the borderland town of Dali, Yunnan, located in the himalayan foothills of southwest China, challenge these assumptions. Their cosmopolitanism has arisen not out of travel, consumption or metropolitan residence, but out of producing cosmopolitanism for transnational travelers, and increasingly, national tourists. While the café owners’ production of cosmopolitanism has become a means for social mobility and ethno-religious revitalization, not a political end in itself, their cosmopolitanism has political implications for how “minorities,” “indigenous peoples,” and borderland places are conceptualized, represented and controlled. The cosmopolitan production of the minority café owners calls for us to reconceptualize the who, what and why of cosmopolitanism.
The Humanity Game: Art, Islam, and the War on Terror
Authors: Winegar Jessica
Published: August 2008

This essay examines the connections between art and politics in Middle East arts events in the U.S. since 9/11/2001. It critiques the universalist assumptions about humanity and the agentive capacity of art to build bridges of understanding in contexts of so-called civilizational conflict—assumptions that have strong roots in anthropology. By juxtaposing evidence of how the notion of “humanity” is deployed in exhibitions of Palestinian art with an analysis of the three more predominant types of arts events (historical Islamic art, Sufi arts, and contemporary art by Muslim women), the essay demonstrates how American secular elite discourse on Middle Eastern art corresponds to that of the “War on Terror.”
Medicating Kids: Pediatric Mental Health Policy and the Tipping Point for ADHD and Stimulants
Authors: Mayes Rick , Erkulwater Jennifer
Published: August 2008

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (adhd) holds the distinction of being both the most extensively studied pediatric mental disorder and one of the most controversial. This is partly due to the fact that it is also the most commonly diagnosed mental disorder among minors. Currently, almost 8 percent of youth from the ages of four to seventen have a diagnosis of ADHD, and slightly more than 4 percent both have the diagnosis and are taking medication for the disorder. In other words, on average one in every ten to fifteen children in the United States has been diagnosed with the disorder and one in every twenty to twenty-five uses a stimulant medication—often Ritalin, Adderall, or Concertaas treatment. The biggest increase in youth diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed a stimulant drug occurred during the early 1990s, when the prevalence of physician visits for stimulant pharmacotherapy increased fivefold. This unprecedented increase in U.S. children using psychotropic medication triggered an intense public debate.
From Counter-Insurgency to Narco-Insurgency: Vietnam and the International War on Drugs
Authors: Kuzmarov Jeremy
Published: August 2008

If we have found we cannot be the world's policeman, can we hope to become the world's narc?

In the January 1968 issue of theWashingtonianmagazine, the son of the great American novelist John Steinbeck made his professional journalistic debut with the publication of a controversial article, “The Importance of Being Stoned in Vietnam.” John Steinbeck IV, who served as a roving correspondent for thePacific Stars and Stripes, wrote that marijuana of a potent quality was grown naturally in Vietnam, sold by farmers at a fraction of the cost than in the United States, and could be obtained “more easily than a package of Lucky Strikes cigarettes.” He estimated that up to 75 percent of soldiers in Vietnam got high regularly. “The average soldier sees that for all intents and purposes, the entire country is stoned,” Steinbeck observed. “To enforce a prohibition against smoking the plant [in Vietnam] would be like trying to prohibit the inhalation of smog in Los Angeles.”2
Law in Action: The Attorney General's Committee on Administrative Procedure
Authors: Grisinger Joanna
Published: August 2008

The story of American political development in the twentieth century is in no small part the story of administration. Administrative agencies, bureaus, and departments tasked with handling the work of the federal government had been a feature of governance since the early republic. With the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887, however, administrative agencies and independent regulatory commissions began to proliferate across the federal landscape. By the end of the massive expansion of federal power that characterized the New Deal, Americans very much experienced government through their interactions with bureaucrats and with administrative boards. Individuals and businesses claimed benefits from the Railroad Retirement Board and Veterans Administration, defended themselves against claims of unfair competition before the Federal Trade Commission, requested permits from the Federal Alcohol Administration and the Federal Communications Commission, and sought to resolve labor disputes before the National Labor Relations Board.
Closing the Public Lands Frontier: The Bureau of Land Management, 1961–1969
Authors: Skillen James R.
Published: August 2008

When the Bureau of Land Management (blm) was formed in 1946, the agency and the lands it managed had an ambiguous identity and future. Formed by President Truman through the merger of the General Land Office and the U.S. Grazing Service, the blm inherited the remaining 450 million acres of public-domain lands in the American West and Alaska, which I will refer to simply as “the public lands.” With those lands, the blm also inherited a set of property-rights regimes—that is, a set of property rights, privileges, and relationships that control land and resource access, withdrawal, management, exclusion, and alienation—that were strongly reflective of the nineteenth-century frontier era. They were marked by private initiative, self-regulation by public lands users, and common-law principles of prior use and appropriation. Indeed, public lands users often acted as if they held common-law rights to the public lands, claims that western congressmen defended through appropriations and oversight.
Do We Need Theory to Study Disease?: lessons from cancer research and their implications for mental illness
Authors: Kincaid Harold
Published: August 2008

This article applies general ideas from contemporary philosophy of science—chief among them that much good science proceeds without theories and laws—to the science of medicine. I claim that traditional philosophical debates over the nature of disease make demands on medicine that are mistaken. I demonstrate this philosophical error by applying the perspective of the philosophy of science to understanding the nature of disease in two concrete cases, cancer and depression. I first argue that cancer research produces various kinds of piecemeal causal explanation and does so without any well-developed theory of normal and malignant functioning, despite the rhetoric of some leading cancer researchers. I then defuse doubts about the scientific status of psychiatry, by demonstrating that it is not necessary to have a theory of normal functioning in order to understand and treat depression.
Philosophy of Medicine Is What Philosophers of Medicine Do
Authors: Stempsey William E.
Published: August 2008

Philosophy of medicine cannot be precisely defined because neither philosophy nor medicine can be precisely defined. Furthermore, philosophers of medicine do not constitute a well-defined class because they come not only from the fields of philosophy and medicine, but also from various other disciplines. Hence, I argue for a broad conception of philosophy of medicine that includes philosophical reflection on any matter considered to belong to medicine. A brief survey of the philosophy of medicine literature supports this view. Of the 625 articles surveyed for the years 1997–2006, nearly three-quarters dealt with matters of ethics, and of the 36 books surveyed, nearly 60% were primarily on ethics. Nonetheless, articles and books focusing on all other major branches of philosophy—metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, and logic—were also published. Moreover, many of the articles, even those primarily on ethics, dealt in significant ways with more than one branch of philosophy. I conclude that philosophy of medicine includes all sorts of philosophical reflection on medicine but is currently dominated by ethics. Given the stated purpose of journals and book series devoted to philosophy and medicine, this leaves ample room to expand other philosophical reflection on medicine.
Reflections on Humanizing Biomedicine
Authors: Marcum James A.
Published: August 2008

Although biomedicine is responsible for the “miracles” of modern medicine, paradoxically it has also led to a quality-of-care crisis in which many patients feel disenfranchised from the health-care industry. To address this crisis, several medical commentators make an appeal for humanizing biomedicine, which has led to shifts in the philosophical boundaries of medical knowledge and practice. In this paper, the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical boundaries of biomedicine and its humanized versions are investigated and compared to one another. Biomedicine is founded on a metaphysical position of mechanistic monism, an epistemology of objective knowing, and an ethic of emotionally detached concern. In humanizing modern medicine, these boundaries are often shifted to a metaphysical position of dualism/holism, an epistemology of subject knowing, and an ethic of empathic care. In a concluding section, the question is discussed whether these shifts in the philosophical boundaries are adequate to resolve the quality-of-care crisis.
Risk and Disease
Authors: Schwartz Peter H.
Published: August 2008

The way that diseases such as high blood pressure (hypertension), high cholesterol, and diabetes are defined is closely tied to ideas about modifiable risk. In particular, the threshold for diagnosing each of these conditions is set at the level where future risk of disease can be reduced by lowering the relevant parameter (of blood pressure, low-density lipoprotein, or blood glucose, respectively). In this article, I make the case that these criteria, and those for diagnosing and treating other “risk-based diseases,” reflect an unfortunate trend towards reclassifying risk as disease. I closely examine stage 1 hypertension and high cholesterol and argue that many patients diagnosed with these “diseases” do not actually have a pathological condition. In addition, though, I argue that the fact that they are risk factors, rather than diseases, does not diminish the importance of treating them, since there is good evidence that such treatment can reduce morbidity and mortality. For both philosophical and ethical reasons, however, the conditions should not be labeled as pathological. The tendency to reclassify risk factors as diseases is an important trend to examine and critique.
Mental Illness from the Perspective of Theoretical Neuroscience
Authors: Thagard Paul
Published: August 2008

Theoretical neuroscience, which characterizes neural mechanisms using mathematical and computational models, is highly relevant to central problems in the philosophy of psychiatry. These models can help to solve the explanation problem of causally connecting neural processes with the behaviors and experiences found in mental illnesses. Such explanations will also be useful for generating better classifications and treatments of psychiatric disorders. The result should help to eliminate concerns that mental illnesses such as depression and schizophrenia are not objectively real. A philosophical approach to mental illness based on neuroscience need not neglect the inherently social and historical nature of mental phenomena.
Constructive Realism and Medicine: an approach to medical ontology
Authors: Simon Jeremy R.
Published: August 2008

Metaphysics is an essential part of philosophy of medicine, providing the background for further methodological work. Current accounts of the ontology of particular diseases may be classified as realist or anti-realist. Because strong arguments can be marshaled by both of these positions, an approach to medical ontology that draws support from both sides of this divide would be desirable. Abstract models, as described by Ronald Giere, provide such an approach. After a review of Giere’s account of mechanics, I show how abstract models can provide an account of the ontology of diseases.
Health as Intra-Systemic Integrity: rethinking the foundations of systems biology and nanomedicine
Authors: Khushf George
Published: August 2008

In current research on systems biology and nanomedicine, we often find an ideal of a new science-based preventive medicine. I consider how disease, cause, explanation, diagnosis, and treatment are understood within this ideal, with special attention to the role of nanoscience and technology in elucidating the “circuit diagram” of a healthy system. I argue that the developmental systems theory that informed George Engel’s biopsychosocial model addresses some deficiencies in the current systems ideal, but it needs to be integrated with an ethical analysis that is more attentive to the socioeconomic, cultural, and institutional factors that condition how we understand and manage disease. We also need a richer account of top-down causal paths if we are to appropriately understand diseases as disruptions of inter- and intra-systemic integrity.
Medicine and the Call for a Moral Epistemology, Part II: Constructing a Synthesis of Values
Authors: Tauber Alfred I.
Published: August 2008

The demands and needs of an individual patient require diverse value judgments to interpret and apply clinical data. Indeed, objective assessment takes on particular meaning in the context of the social and existential status of the patient, and thereby a complex calculus of values determines therapeutic goals. I have previously formulated how this moral thread of care becomes woven into the epistemological project as a “moral epistemology.” Having argued its ethical justification elsewhere, I offer another perspective here: clinical choices employ diverse values directed at an array of goals, some of which are derived from a universal clinical science and others from the particular physiological, psychological, and social needs of the patient. Integrating these diverse elements that determine clinical care requires a complex synthesis of facts and judgments from several domains. This constructivist process relies on clinical facts, as well as on personal judgments and subjective assessments in an ongoing negotiation between patient and doctor. A philosophy of medicine must account for the conceptual basis of this process by identifying and addressing the judgments that govern the complex synthesis of these various elements.
The Changing Face of “Real Research”
Authors: Hiatt Howard
Published: August 2008

Over the past 50 years, the research agenda of clinical departments in teaching hospitals has broadened from one concerned primarily with physiologic studies to one that includes biochemistry, molecular biology, the quantitative analytic sciences, anthropology, and other social sciences. This memoir presents examples of such changes and provides examples of how the author’s involvement has been promoted not only by his mentors, but also by those whom he has mentored.
Beyond Empathy
Authors: Sobel Richard
Published: August 2008

Empathy is a highly desirable trait in a physician, but the term means different things to different people. Rather than focus on empathy, it may be more fruitful to consider the individual ingredients of a successful patient-physician engagement: scientific competency, imagination (the basis of empathy), caring about the patient, attentive (nonjudgmental) listening to the person’s story, and skill in rewriting the illness story. The cardinal skill, on a sound base of scientific competence, is imagination. A successful engagement has beneficial consequences for physicians as well as patients.
When Less Is More in Public Health
Authors: Masi Christopher
Published: August 2008

With obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease reaching epidemic proportions and health-care cost costs spiraling out of control, policy experts in the United States are taking a closer look at alternatives to the medical model of health care. James C. Riley demonstrates that the public health model, with its emphasis on education, disease prevention, and skill development, effectively controlled infectious diseases in many poor countries during the 20th century. The countries Riley profiles have yet to attain economic success, yet each now boasts relatively low chronic disease rates and life expectancies that are at or near those in the United States. Riley’s book provides evidence that demand for high-cost interventions can be controlled when populations have the knowledge, skills, and motivation they need to stay healthy.
Epistemological Reflections on the Art of Medicine and Narrative Medicine
Authors: Solomon Miriam
Published: August 2008

This article challenges the widespread view that there is both a science and an art of medicine. Through examination of recent work in medical humanities —Jodi Halpern’s From Detached Concern to Empathy (2001), Kathryn Montgomery’s How Doctors Think (2006), and Rita Charon’s Narrative Medicine (2006)—I argue that while a variety of epistemic techniques are important in medicine, it is not helpful to dichotomize them as “science” versus “art.” I assess the epistemic strengths and weaknesses of narrative medicine, a recent exemplar of humanistic medicine.
The Natural History of the Sexual Genome: proactive drivers and passive drifters
Authors: Avise John C.
Published: August 2008

Two authoritative treatises have recently addressed the evolutionary origins of the eukaryotic genome’s many surprising architectural features, such as the fact that more than 50% of the DNA in various species is made up of active or retired transposable elements.Austin Burt and Robert Trivers describe diverse tactics by which seemingly selfish pieces of DNA actively spread and persist in populations of sexual reproducers and thereby generate extensive intragenomic (intergenic) strife. Michael Lynch, by contrast, emphasizes how even deleterious mutations can passively drift to fixation in small populations. The worldviews in these two books may seem fundamentally at odds, but they share a powerful notion that all eukaryotic genomes are like intracellular ecosystems, the natural histories of which are fundamental to how sexual genomes evolve.
Evidence and Ethics in Medicine
Authors: Worrall John
Published: August 2008

Ethics and epistemology in medicine are more closely and more interestingly intertwined than is usually recognized. To explore this relationship, I present a case study, clinical trials of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO; an intervention for persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn).Three separate ethical issues that arise from this case study—whether or not it is ethical to perform a certain trial at all, whether stopping rules for trials are ethically mandated, and the issue of informed consent—are all shown to be intimately related to epistemological judgments about the weight of evidence. Although ethical issues cannot, of course, be resolved by consideration of epistemological findings, I argue that no informed view of the ethical issues that are raised can be adopted without first taking an informed view of the evidential-epistemological ones.
The Hiring and Compensation Practices of Business School Deans
Authors: Callie Trina M. , Cheslock John J.
Published: August 2008

This study uses a mixed methods approach to examine how business school deans alter the appointment status and salary structure of their faculty. In addition to analyzing interviews with deans, we examined faculty-level data for more than 200 business colleges between the 1997–1998 and 2005–2006 academic years. We find that business deans are substantially restructuring their full-time faculty toward a model of increased use of non-tenure track instructors. Deans are also changing their compensation practices so that salaries are less differentiated across academic rank and more differentiated among professors within the same rank.
Building a Two-Way Street: Challenges and Opportunities for Community Engagement at Research Universities
Authors: Weerts David J. , Sandmann Lorilee R.
Published: August 2008

Recent reforms in the Carnegie Foundation classification system and regional accreditation standards have fueled momentum for community engagement in higher education. This study employs a knowledge-flow conceptual framework to identify barriers and facilitators that influence the adoption of an engagement agenda at land-grant and urban research universities. With data drawn from six cases, broad themes related to institutional setting, history, epistemologies, leadership, structures, and boundary-spanning roles of faculty and staff emerged as key levers or inhibitors of community engagement at research universities. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.
Racial Differences in the Effects of Campus Racial Climate on Degree Completion: A Structural Equation Model
Authors: Museus Samuel D. , Nichols Andrew H. , Lambert Amber D.
Published: August 2008

Racial minority student persistence is of paramount importance to higher education policymakers and practitioners. This study was aimed at understanding racial differences in the direct and indirect effects of campus racial climate on degree completion using structural equation modeling techniques and a nationally representative sample. The findings of this analysis highlight the importance of examining conditional effects and indicate that students from disparate racial backgrounds may experience and react to their campus racial climates in different ways. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
Gender and Racial Gaps in Earnings among Recent College Graduates
Authors: Zhang Liang
Published: August 2008

Using a nationally representative sample of baccalaureate graduates from 1993 (B&B 93/97/03), I explore factors that contribute to the gender and racial gap in earnings among recent college graduate. Results indicate that college major remains the most significant factor in accounting for the gender gap in pay. Female graduates are still left significantly behind male graduates in fields such as science and engineering. In contrast, most variables that contribute to the racial gap in pay are related to students’ socioeconomic background, including family income, academic performance, and attending selective institutions.
Academic Freedom, the First Amendment and Competing Stakeholders: The Dynamics of a Changing Balance
Authors: Jorgensen James D. , Helms Lelia B.
Published: August 2008

The Supreme Court first affirmed the importance of academic freedom in 1957. Yet in subsequent cases, First Amendment precedent has displaced the concept of academic freedom to resolve disputes among competing interests on public campuses, primarily in favor of institutions. This paper draws on the concepts of path dependence and policy space to analyze the jurisprudence of academic freedom, evaluate its current status, and develop suggestions to protect this cherished tenet of higher education.
Imagining Military Conflict during the Seven Years’ War
Authors: Richardson John
Published: August 2008

Two features, avoidance and imaginative contradiction, characterize the martial literature of the Seven Years’ War. Many contemporary texts avoid confronting the success, territorial expansion, and killing of the war by re-imagining it in terms of defense, and many contain mixed, even contradictory, attitudes. Though enthusiastic about British military glory, they are reluctant to show killing or conquest, and are often drawn toward contemplation of the death of heroes. The contradiction betrays doubt, usually unacknowledged, about both war and the possibility of representing it. That doubt occurs in its most radical and comically self-conscious form in Tristram Shandy .
Ignoramus, The Woman Turned Bully , and Restoration Satire on the Common Lawyer
Authors: Prieto-Pablos Juan A.
Published: August 2008

The premiere of George Ruggle’s Latin play Ignoramus in 1615 proved to be the first step in a long history of revivals, translations, and adaptations that reached its zenith in the early decades of the Restoration. Much of its success is owed to its timely participation in the politico-legal debates held between Royalists and parliamentarians throughout the first half of the century. The renewed interest in Ignoramus in the Restoration confirmed the permanence of its political significance. This essay focuses on the influence that Ruggle’s play exerted on the anonymus comedy The Woman Turned Bully , which premiered and was printed in 1675, and analyzes how the figure of the Ignoramus lawyer was criticized by foregrounding the threats that the alliance between common law and Puritan ideology could still pose in Restoration society.
Adam Ferguson’s Aesthetic Idea of Community Spirit
Authors: Reinert Thomas
Published: August 2008

Adam Ferguson argues that savage society necessarily gives way to the rise of civic and commercial society, but he admires savage militarism as the purest form of community spirit. To sustain that spirit in an uncongenial era, he treats it as an object of aesthetic appreciation, and as such it leads him into strange extremes: a wistful idealization of torture among savage peoples, a defense of military carnage in the classical world, and a hapless plan to establish a Scottish militia. But violent community spirit must not threaten property: he deplores it when it sparks popular uprisings.
Chatterton, Ossian, Africa
Authors: Michasiw Kim Ian
Published: August 2008

This essay tracks the intimate tie between Englishness and violence from Thomas Chatterton’s earliest “Rowley” poems to his late African Eclogues. In judging violence essential to English national character, Chatterton takes seriously the Ossianic poems’ characterization of England’s founders as piratical savages. Chatterton then struggles, in his overt imitations of Ossian and his African poems, to find an alternative way of understanding national character. Finally the reversibility of Ossian’s own fundamental plot (dangerous invaders arrive by sea; indigenous people defend themselves) permits Chatterton to reimagine the British slave trade and to imagine a critique of James Macpherson’s nationalist determinism.
William Cowper’s Gypsies
Authors: Houghton-Walker Sarah
Published: August 2008

Within William Cowper’s The Task is a short description of a “tribe” of gypsies. Exploring the situation of the gypsies when Cowper wrote, and examining the position of the gypsy passage within the text, this article offers a close reading of the poem that argues that these lines add an interestingly troublesome edge to Cowper’s work, disrupting in various subtle ways many of the conclusions and interpretations regularly drawn from Cowper’s long poem regarding wandering, idleness, and difference and simultaneously revealing a good deal about the perception of “the gypsy” in the later eighteenth century.
Restoration Poetry and the Failure of English Tangier
Authors: Beach Adam R.
Published: August 2008

My essay investigates three poems that respond to the Moroccan siege of English Tangier in 1680 and its aftermath: an anonymous satire, “Rochester’s Farewell”; a broadside ballad, “The English Courage Undaunted”; and John Dryden’s “Epitaph on Sir Palmes Fairborne.” These poems place us as readers in a different position than other verse of the Restoration that addresses colonial themes because we know that English Tangier failed in 1684, soon after they were published. We need to take account of such colonial disasters and the literature they spawned in order to provide a fuller understanding of empire and literature in the Restoration period.
Recent Studies in the Restoration and Eighteenth Century
Authors: Potkay Adam
Published: August 2008

An assessment of recent scholarly work treating the literature of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century and some general observations on the state of the profession. A full bibliography and price list of the works received by SEL for consideration follow.
Commodity and Religion in Pope’s The Rape of the Lock
Authors: Hernandez Alex Eric
Published: August 2008

Discussions of the religious imagery in Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock have either been insubstantial or have largely ignored the potent signifying potential of the Bibles scattered among Belinda’s other consumer goods. Drawing on the robust tradition of sola scriptura in Protestant England during the period leading up to Pope’s early career, this essay argues that the Bible in canto 1 comes to represent a yoking together of two ideological strains of thought, concerned with not only the signifying potential of the Bible but also the burgeoning “consumer crisis” and corresponding shifts in political and economic theory.
Recounting Our Dreams: Imagining Shakespeare in Two Recent Film and Televised Adaptations of A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Authors: Ford John R.
Published: August 2008

Through a detailed analysis of two recent adaptations of A Midsummer Night's Dream - Ed Fraiman's and Peter Bowker's and Midsummer Night's Dream, produced in 2005 as part of the BBC's Shakespeare ReTold series, and Christine Edzard's The Children's Midsummer Night's Dream (2001) - this article considers the ways in which an adaptation of a Shakespeare play often employs strategies that simultaneously recover and resist Shakespeare's version, presenting itself, on the one hand, as an adaptation of an original Shakespearean work and, on the other, as an original work daring to use Shakespeare's play as source. The essay's line of inquiry pays particular attention to how each of these adaptions or appropriations present A Midsummer Night's Dream as both Shakespeare's and 'not Shakespeare's text': namely, how the first re-envisions the play in a landscape of postmodern mock Bardolatry - the Shakespearean tourist attraction 'Dream Park' - while The Children's Midsummer Night's Dream wrestles the play away from Shakespearean authorities, perhaps even from Shakespeare himself, re-situating the work within the young and fertile imaginations of eight- to twelve-year-old children. Ultimately, the article seeks to demonstrate how, in spite of the thievery of which both adaptations may be accused, each of them comes finally to celebrate Shakespeare's play as well as the innumerable collaborative texts that it has animated and inspired.