The “core principles” of physiology: what should students understand?

2009 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Michael ◽  
Harold Modell ◽  
Jenny McFarland ◽  
William Cliff

The explosion of knowledge in all of the biological sciences, and specifically in physiology, has created a growing problem for educators. There is more to know than students can possibly learn. Thus, difficult choices have to be made about what we expect students to master. One approach to making the needed decisions is to consider those “core principles” that provide the thinking tools for understanding all biological phenomena. We identified a list of “core principles” that appear to apply to all aspects of physiology and unpacked them into their constituent component ideas. While such a list does not define the content for a physiology course, it does provide a guideline for selecting the topics on which to focus student attention. This list of “core principles” also offers a starting point for developing an assessment instrument to be used in determining if students have mastered the important unifying ideas of physiology.

Author(s):  
Stéphane Schmitt

The problem of the repeated parts of organisms was at the center of the biological sciences as early as the first decades of the 19th century. Some concepts and theories (e.g., serial homology, unity of plan, or colonial theory) introduced in order to explain the similarity as well as the differences between the repeated structures of an organism were reused throughout the 19th and the 20th century, in spite of the fundamental changes during this long period that saw the diffusion of the evolutionary theory, the rise of experimental approaches, and the emergence of new fields and disciplines. Interestingly, this conceptual heritage was at the core of any attempt to unify the problems of inheritance, development, and evolution, in particular in the last decades, with the rise of “evo-devo.” This chapter examines the conditions of this theoretical continuity and the challenges it brings out for the current evolutionary sciences.


Symmetry ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 202
Author(s):  
Tobias Hartwig Bünning ◽  
Luigi Panza ◽  
Abdel Kareem Azab ◽  
Barbara Muz ◽  
Silvia Fallarini ◽  
...  

Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT) is a binary therapy that promises to be suitable in treating many non-curable cancers. To that, the discovery of new boron compounds able to accumulate selectively in the tumour tissue is still required. Hypoxia, a deficiency of oxygen in tumor tissue, is a great challenge in the conventional treatment of cancer, because hypoxic areas are resistant to conventional anticancer treatments. 2-Nitroimidazole derivatives are known to be hypoxia markers due to their enrichment by bioreduction in hypoxic cells. In the present work, 2-nitroimidazole was chosen as the starting point for the synthesis of a new boron-containing compound based on a 1,3,5-triazine skeleton. Two o-carborane moieties were inserted to achieve a high ratio of boron on the molecular weight, exploiting a short PEG spacer to enhance the polarity of the compound and outdistance the active part from the core. The compound showed no toxicity on normal human primary fibroblasts, while it showed noteworthy toxicity in multiple myeloma cells together with a consistent intracellular boron accumulation.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica Consolandi

Purpose Seniors are nowadays at the core of important reflections to understand both how to ensure them a proper quality of life and better recognize their social role, providing them services and proper health care to value them as persons and resources. This paper aims to find a through definition about who is a senior, in the author’s opinion the starting point to help them flourishing. Design/methodology/approach As an example of definitions, an online dictionary and two geriatric text-books are quoted, highlighting qualities and rights referred to seniors especially in the delicate context of the health-care system. Findings The lack of a commonly shared perspective on this delicate kind of patient entails the difficulty to reach a coherent and satisfying definition about who a senior is. Originality/value The lack of a commonly shared definition leads to inevitable misunderstandings and could explain the arduousness of considering seniors in all their aspects. Further investigations are suggested.


Author(s):  
Diana Mendieta Vicuña ◽  
Javier Esparcia Pérez

El análisis de contenidos está en el centro de gran cantidad de estudios de investigación social. Por su parte, el análisis del sistema de actores también ha sido ampliamente explotado en el estudio de procesos de desarrollo local, bajo diferentes aproximaciones. Sin embargo, este trabajo tiene como objetivo mostrar algunas de las potencialidades y ventajas del análisis de contenidos a partir del discurso de los actores implicados en procesos de desarrollo local. Para ello, se toma como punto de partida la información primaria obtenida de las entrevistas semiestructuradas realizadas a una muestra de actores sociales, económicos e institucionales vinculados a la puesta en marcha de la central eólica Villonaco (Loja, Ecuador). Según el gobierno ecuatoriano, esta ha de tener una clara proyección en el desarrollo local, y de ahí el interés por analizar estos procesos desde esta perspectiva metodológica. Para mostrar las potencialidades del análisis de contenidos a partir del discurso de los actores se utiliza el software MAXQDA, que permite, tras la codificación de la información, analizar los diferentes temas y subtemas que definen las posiciones y valoraciones de los actores implicados.The content analysis is at the core of a large number of social studies. On the other hand, the stakeholder analysis has been widely used in the study of local development processes from different approaches. However, this paper aims to show the potential and advantages of content analysis based on the actors’ discourse involved in local development processes. Primary information obtained from interviews conducted with a sample of social, economic and institutional actors linked to the starting up and operation of Villonaco Wind Farm (Loja, Ecuador), has been taken as a starting point. According to the Ecuadorian government, this wind farm should have a clear projection in local development, hence the interest in the analysis of these processes using this methodological approach. Software MAXQDA is used to show the potential of content analysis. This tool allows, after the encoding process of information, to analyze the various topics and subtopics that define the positions adopted by the actors and their appraisals of the studied processes.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara Kalandadze ◽  
Sara Ann Hart

The increasing adoption of open science practices in the last decade has been changing the scientific landscape across fields. However, developmental science has been relatively slow in adopting open science practices. To address this issue, we followed the format of Crüwell et al., (2019) and created summaries and an annotated list of informative and actionable resources discussing ten topics in developmental science: Open science; Reproducibility and replication; Open data, materials and code; Open access; Preregistration; Registered reports; Replication; Incentives; Collaborative developmental science.This article offers researchers and students in developmental science a starting point for understanding how open science intersects with developmental science. After getting familiarized with this article, the developmental scientist should understand the core tenets of open and reproducible developmental science, and feel motivated to start applying open science practices in their workflow.


Author(s):  
M.B. Rarenko ◽  

The article considers the story by Henry James (1843 – 1916) «The Turn of the Screw» (1898 – first edition, 1908 – second edition) in connection with the emergence of a new type of narrator in the writer's late prose. The worldview and creative method of H. James are formed under the influence of the philosophy of pragmatism, which became widespread at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries thanks to the works of the writer's elder brother, the philosopher William James (1842 – 1910). The core of pragmatism is the pluralistic concept of William James based on the assumption that knowledge can be realized from very limited, incomplete, and inadequate «points of view» and this leads to the statement that the absolute truth is essentially unknowable. The epistemological statements of William James's theory is that the content of knowledge is entirely determined by the installation of consciousness, and the content of the truth in this case depends on the goals and experience of the human, i.e. the central starting point is the consciousness of the person. Henry James not only creates works of art, but also sets out in detail the principles of his work both on the pages of fiction works of small and large prose, putting them in the mouths of their characters – representatives of the world of art, and in the prefaces to his works of fiction, as well as in critical works.


Author(s):  
Aleksandra Zywert

Text is a novel of manners with elements of a thriller, a noir, and a detective novel (but the above-mentioned complementary elements fulfill only a supportive role, because the criminal intrigue exposed at the very beginning is treated marginally amounts to a starting point for deeper considerations of the psychological and sociological nature). Due to the peculiar presentation of the image of the Center (here: Moscow), Text fits into the vision of Moscow as the core of Russian predatory capitalism, exuberant consumerism, glitz, semblance and ruthless struggle for recognition in the ranking of successful people, which is presented in contemporary Russian literature. Its fundamental value is the fact that the realization of the author's idea is mainly due to the confrontation of megalopolis with images of the periphery, which can be regarded as satellite cities of the capital. In his perception of Russia, Glukhovsky is close to Roman Senchin and, similarly to the latter, he believes that the traditionally understood center-periphery, city-village conflict is disappearing, because eventually it turns out that (despite the spatial and social diversity) none of these places (mainly because of conspicuous regressive tendencies) does not give a person a chance for free development and self-realization.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuta Katsumi ◽  
Karen Quigley ◽  
Lisa Feldman Barrett

It is now well known that brain evolution, development, and structure do not respect Western folk categories of mind – that is, the boundaries of those folk categories have never been identified in nature, despite decades of search. Categories for cognitions, emotions, perceptions, and so on, may be useful for describing the mental phenomena that constitute a human mind, but they make a poor starting point for understanding the interplay of mechanisms that create those mental events in the first place. In this paper, we integrate evolutionary, developmental, anatomical, and functional evidence and propose that predictive regulation of the body’s internal systems (allostasis) and modeling the sensory consequences of this regulation (interoception) may be basic functions of the brain that are embedded in coordinated structural and functional gradients. Our approach offers the basis for a coherent, neurobiologically-inspired research program that attempts to explain how a variety of psychological and physical phenomena may emerge from the same biological mechanisms, thus providing an opportunity to unify them under a common explanatory framework that can be used to develop shared vocabulary for theory building and knowledge accumulation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 252-266
Author(s):  
Ahmet Koşar ◽  
Aytul Kasapoglu

More than 95 percent of those who lost their lives as a result of the spread of the Covid-19 virus to the world since the beginning of 2020 are over the age of 60 (WHO, 2020). The main purpose of this article is to reveal the vital difficulties of the 65-75 age group in Turkey, who were quarantined due to the Covid-19 pandemic, as a result of deprivation of their former normal lives and how they overcame them. The theoretical starting point of this study is the relational sociologist H. White and his “uncertainty” classification. In the study, Grounded Theory Methodology was chosen as one of the qualitative research approaches and open, axial and selective codings were made as a requirement of this. In this context, interviews were made with 12 individuals from the 65-75 age group and the data were presented in figures. As a result of open, axial and selective coding, the core concept of the study was determined as "solidarity". In accordance with the grounded theory, at the end of the study, the "solidarity process" was narrated using the "river" metaphor.


2018 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Insa Lee Koch

The introduction starts with what many have seen as a worrying paradox: the illiberal turn that liberal democracies have taken with, or perhaps because of, popular support. While commentators have focused on ‘why’ liberal democracy has taken an illiberal turn, the book proposes an alternative starting point that focuses on the ‘how’ and the ‘what’: what democracy means to some of Britain’s most marginalized citizens in the first place and how these citizens engage with the state. It is by shifting the analytical focus to these questions that a more encompassing legacy of state coercion than commonly acknowledged in narratives of the punitive turn can be brought into focus, as well as the possibility of its critique and subversion. The introduction sets out council estates as a historical and ethnographic setting for such a project, outlines the methodology, and introduces the anthropological framework at the core of the book.


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