On how to generalize species-specific conceptual schemes to generate a species-independent Conceptual Schema of the Genome

Background Understanding the genome, with all of its components and intrinsic relationships, is a great challenge. Conceptual modeling techniques have been used as a means to face this challenge. The heterogeneity and idiosyncrasy of genomic use cases mean that conceptual modeling techniques are used to generate conceptual schemes that focus on too specific scenarios (i.e., they are species-specific conceptual schemes). Our research group developed two different conceptual schemes. The first one is the Conceptual Schema of the Human Genome, which is intended to improve Precision Medicine and genetic diagnosis. The second one is the Conceptual Schema of the Citrus Genome, which is intended to identify the genetic cause of relevant phenotypes in the agri-food field. Methods Our two conceptual schemes have been ontologically compared to identify their similarities and differences. Based on this comparison, several changes have been performed in the Conceptual Schema of the Human Genome in order to obtain the first version of a species-independent Conceptual Schema of the Genome. Identifying the different genome information items used in each genomic case study has been essential in achieving our goal. The changes needed to provide an expanded, more generic version of the Conceptual Schema of the Human Genome are analyzed and discussed. Results This work presents a new CS called the Conceptual Schema of the Genome that is ready to be adapted to any specific working genome-based context (i.e., species-independent). Conclusion The generated Conceptual Schema of the Genome works as a global, generic element from which conceptual views can be created in order to work with any specific species. This first working version can be used in the human use case, in the citrus use case, and, potentially, in more use cases of other species.

Searching for Criminal Responsibility

In her latest book, In Search of Criminal Responsibility, Nicola Lacey distinguishes four ‘more or less discrete ideational frameworks for the understanding of criminal responsibility’, focusing respectively on capacity, on character, on outcomes, and on risk; she traces the rise and fall (and rise) of each of these conceptions, and the complicated and shifting relationships between them. These are, she thinks, ‘competing’, ‘philosophically inconsistent conceptions of responsibility’, although they can sometimes ‘coexist’ with each other in the historically messy and conflicted practices of criminal law. This chapter responds to Lacey’s claims about the changing conceptions of responsibility that she finds in English criminal law: not to deny those claims, but to argue that they need to be qualified in the light of a more complex conceptual schema than she provides. It discusses just what these changing ‘conceptions of responsibility’ are conceptions of, and just what it is that changes between them; and it argues that the final change, which Lacey describes as the development of a risk-based conception of responsibility and as marking a ‘resurgence of character-based mechanisms’, is best understood not as a change in the conception of responsibility, but rather as an abandonment of responsibility (answerability), in favour of kinds of liability that are detached from responsibility.

Painting with data: Alternative aesthetics of qualitative research

In this article I outline an original creative method for qualitative research, namely the painting with data technique. This is a participatory methodology which brings creativity and participation through to the analytical phase of qualitative research. Crucially, I acknowledge but also challenge the dominant aesthetic that currently shapes qualitative research and renders life in a monochromatic palette. The painting with data method evidences an alternative aesthetic to the predominant one and I argue that we can understand this methodology by adapting Jennifer Mason’s concept of ‘layering’ to conceptualise how different aesthetics help us to see the different shapes, forms and moulds that make us, our relationships and our worlds. The process moves away from traditional ways of treating transcribed data, and prioritises addition above extraction; juxtaposition over thematisation; and collaging rather than ordering. This alternative aesthetic for qualitative research offers an evocative form and a conceptual schema through which to interpret the world, providing a route to novel insights, that enlivens the interpretative work of the analyst and offers opportunities to make and witness potent connections.

Homo adorans: exitus et reditus in theological anthropology

Thinking with and beyond Alexander Schmemann, this essay constructs a theological anthropology that conceives of humans as standing as priests at the centre of the cosmos. Within the exitus et reditus framework of neoplatonic thinking, the cosmos proceeds from and returns to the one God. Recent biblical theology has interpreted the imago Dei in a royal-functional sense. However, this essay argues for a priestly-functional interpretation of the imago Dei that comports better with the conceptual schema of Genesis 1–2 when read through an exitus et reditus lens. Ramifications for worship and work follow the constructive portion of the essay.