Biological Clocks: Explaining with Models of Mechanisms

Author(s):  
Sarah K. Robins ◽  
Carl F. Craver

This article examines the concept of mechanistic explanation by considering the mechanism of circadian rhythm or biological clocks. It provides an account of mechanistic explanation and some common failures of mechanistic explanation and discusses the sense in which mechanistic explanations typically span multiple levels. The article suggests that models that describe mechanisms are more useful for the purposes of manipulation and control than are scientific models that do not describe mechanisms. It comments on the criticism that the mechanistic explanation is far too simple to fully express the complexity of real explanations in neuroscience and that neuroscientific explanations require emergent properties that cannot be explained by decomposition into the parts, activities, and organizational features that constitute the mechanism.

Neuroforum ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Varun Venkataramani ◽  
Matthia A. Karreman ◽  
Frank Winkler

Abstract The nervous system with its complex organizational features and functions is well-known for its impressive ability to process information and drive countless biological processes. It has come to the surprise of many that the nervous system can also be intimately involved in an unwelcome area of human life: the initiation and progression of cancer. For brain tumors, the parallels to neurodevelopment and nervous system function can be found on multiple levels. First, cancer cells of incurable gliomas interconnect with long cellular extensions to a large communicating multicellular network. Second, indirect and direct neuronal input can generate, activate, and control brain tumor growth. Third, it is becoming increasingly clear that those features not only drive brain tumor progression but also the notorious resistance of these tumors against standard antitumor therapies. Remarkably, these recent insights have already generated novel ideas for better antitumor therapies.


1989 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constantine Tsikos ◽  
Tom Chmielewski ◽  
Brian Frederick

Open Medicine ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 271-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arome Odiba ◽  
Victoria Ottah ◽  
Comfort Ottah ◽  
Ogechukwu Anunobi ◽  
Chimere Ukegbu ◽  
...  

AbstractScience always strives to find an improved way of doing things and nanoscience is one such approach. Nanomaterials are suitable for pharmaceutical applications mostly because of their size which facilitates absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion of the nanoparticles. Whether labile or insoluble nanoparticles, their cytotoxic effect on malignant cells has moved the use of nanomedicine into focus. Since nanomedicine can be described as the science and technology of diagnosing, treating and preventing diseases towards ultimately improving human health, a lot of nanotechnology options have received approval by various regulatory agencies. Nanodrugs also have been discovered to be more precise in targeting the desired site, hence maximizing the therapeutic effects, while minimizing side-effects on the rest of the body. This unique property and more has made nanomedicine popular in therapeutic medicine employing nanotechnology in genetic therapy, drug encapsulation, enzyme manipulation and control, tissue engineering, target drug delivery, pharmacogenomics, stem cell and cloning, and even virus-based hybrids. This review highlights nanoproducts that are in development and have gained approval through one clinical trial stage or the other.


2019 ◽  
pp. 303-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dragomir N. Nenchev ◽  
Atsushi Konno ◽  
Teppei Tsujita

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 152-165
Author(s):  
Tega Brain

This paper considers some of the limitations and possibilities of computational models in the context of environmental inquiry, specifically exploring the modes of knowledge production that it mobilizes. Historic computational attempts to model, simulate and make predictions about environmental assemblages, both emerge from and reinforce a systems view on the world. The word eco-system itself stands as a reminder that the history of ecology is enmeshed with systems theory and presup-poses that species entanglements are operational or functional. More surreptitiously, a systematic view of the environment connotes it as bounded, knowable and made up of components operating in chains of cause and effect. This framing strongly invokes possibilities of manipulation and control and implicitly asks: what should an ecosystem be optimized for? This question is particularly relevant at a time of rapid climate change, mass extinction and, conveniently, an unprecedented surplus of computing.


2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (7) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Cléber Ranieri Ribas de Almeida

O artigo se propõe elaborar uma exegese do livro O Aberto: o Homem e o Animal, de Giorgio Agamben, de maneira a expor o argumento central da obra bem como situar o autor na Filosofia Política contemporânea. Para Agamben, o aberto não se situa unicamente numa analítica fenomenológico-existencial do ser: politicamente, o lugar privilegiado de movimentação desse conceito situa-se especificamente na biofilosofia dos graus do orgânico. A definição desses graus torna-se cada vez mais imprecisa à medida em que se propõe distinguir o limite entre o que é o animal e o que é o humano. A inovação de Agamben na abordagem dessa questão, portanto, está no modo como ele politiza o tema do aberto e o situa numa zona estratégica entre a zoologia e as políticas do homem. A entificação do tema, o aberto, não é para o autor um índice de conspurcação cientificista; é, antes, um índice de incessante politização, isto é, realocação conceitual, modulação disciplinar e institucionalização jurídica. Agamben não quer apenas uma ciência da política, mas também uma política da ciência, entendendo a ciência como lugar soberano de mobilização, manipulação e controle dos corpos. Numa palavra, a ciência, especificamente, a biofilosofia e as ciências do homem, são legisladoras da decisão pública acerca do que é homem. E quem decide o que é o homem, decide ex ante, qual política e qual moral deve dispor sobre a ordem pública.Abstract: This paper aims to do an exegesis of Giorgio Agamben´s book The Open: the Man and the Animal, in order to expose its central point as well as to contextualize the author in Contemporary Political Philosophy. According to Agamben the open is not situated only in a phenomenological-existential analytics of being: politically the privileged place of that concept is specifically on the biophilosophy of organic grades. The definition of those grades becomes more and more imprecise as long as it aims to distinguish the limit between the man and the animal. The innovation of Agamben is the way how he politizes the subject of open and places it on a strategic zone between the zoology and the politics of man. Agamen does not want only a science of the political, but alson a politics of science by understanding the science as a sovereign place of mobilization, manipulation, and control of bodies. In a word, the science, especially the biophilosophy and the human sciences, are legislators of public decision about what man is. And who decides what the man is, do it ex ante which politics and which moral should rule over the public order. Keywords: Agamben, mankind, animal, biophilosophy.


Plant Disease ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 97 (10) ◽  
pp. 1352-1357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bindu Poudel ◽  
William M. Wintermantel ◽  
Arturo A. Cortez ◽  
Thien Ho ◽  
Archana Khadgi ◽  
...  

Blackberry yellow vein disease is one of the most important diseases of blackberry in the United States. Several viruses are found associated with the symptomology but Blackberry yellow vein associated virus (BYVaV) appears to be the most prevalent of all, leading to the need for a better understanding of its epidemiology. Efficient detection protocols were developed using end-point and quantitative reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction. A multi-state survey was performed on wild and cultivated blackberry to assess the geographical distribution of the virus. Two whitefly species, Trialeurodes abutilonea and T. vaporariorum, were identified as vectors and 25 plant species were tested as potential BYVaV hosts. The information obtained in this study can be used at multiple levels to better understand and control blackberry yellow vein disease.


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