Globalization: the New Challenges to the Sciences

Our world including Russia as well as all sciences have recently encountered with unprecedented critical situation. Actually, it’s already a hybrid war against humanity, and a technologically-constructed world is incapable to meet a couple of the above challenges. The interactions of the political, economic, social, climatic and biological processes are clearly showed that a mono-disciplinary method of global studies has been insufficient. The globalization should be investigated as an interdisciplinary phenomenon which is developing in the space– time parameters. Accordingly, humanity isn’t an object of their complex impact but as the active agent of their prevention. And this agent is a union of various sciences, political forces and civil organizations. If nowadays a biological challenge came to the forefront but tomorrow it may be replaced by the geopolitical or climatic issues. But up to now humanity rejects to recognize the natural forces are the same factor of global transformations as a business, politics, sciences and new technologies. It’s one more reason to see the current situation as the critical one. We have to understand that we aren’t in an economic or political crises but it’s a do crucial state of humanity and its living environment. Therefore, recently, our main goal not a sustainable development but the mobilization of all resources at hands in order to save humanity combines with critical comprehension of current global geopolitics and scientific and technological achievements. I’m deeply convinced that Russian sociology is able to play a leading role in that work.

Assessing vulnerability to panic: a systematic review of psychological and physiological responses to biological challenges as prospective predictors of panic attacks and panic disorder

BackgroundCognitive–behavioural theories of panic disorder posit that panic attacks arise from a positive feedback loop between arousal-related bodily sensations and perceived threat. In a recently developed computational model formalising these theories of panic attacks, it was observed that the response to a simulated perturbation to arousal provided a strong indicator of vulnerability to panic attacks and panic disorder. In this review, we evaluate whether this observation is borne out in the empirical literature that has examined responses to biological challenge (eg, CO2 inhalation) and their relation to subsequent panic attacks and panic disorder.MethodWe searched PubMed, Web of Science and PsycINFO using keywords denoting provocation agents (eg, sodium lactate) and procedures (eg, infusion) combined with keywords relevant to panic disorder (eg, panic). Articles were eligible if they used response to a biological challenge paradigm to prospectively predict panic attacks or panic disorder.ResultsWe identified four eligible studies. Pooled effect sizes suggest that there is biological challenge response has a moderate prospective association with subsequent panic attacks, but no prospective relationship with panic disorder.ConclusionsThese findings provide support for the prediction derived from cognitive–behavioural theories and some preliminary evidence that response to a biological challenge may have clinical utility as a marker of vulnerability to panic attacks pending further research and development.Trial registration number135908.

Self-Awareness: Nucleic Acid–Driven Inflammation and the Type I Interferonopathies

Recognition of foreign nucleic acids is the primary mechanism by which a type I interferon–mediated antiviral response is triggered. Given that human cells are replete with DNA and RNA, this evolutionary strategy poses an inherent biological challenge, i.e., the fundamental requirement to reliably differentiate self–nucleic acids from nonself nucleic acids. We suggest that the group of Mendelian inborn errors of immunity referred to as the type I interferonopathies relate to a breakdown of self/nonself discrimination, with the associated mutant genotypes involving molecules playing direct or indirect roles in nucleic acid signaling. This perspective begs the question as to the sources of self-derived nucleic acids that drive an inappropriate immune response. Resolving this question will provide fundamental insights into immune tolerance, antiviral signaling, and complex autoinflammatory disease states. Here we develop these ideas, discussing type I interferonopathies within the broader framework of nucleic acid–driven inflammation.

Improving useful species: a public policy of the Directoire regime and Napoleonic Empire in Europe (1795-1815)

When the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Armies conquered most of Europe, they found unknown or hardly known plant and animal species. French naturalists, particularly the so-called agronomists led by botanists and zoologists, supported by the financial and political backing of the State, shaped an ambitious “Nature Policy”. They imported new species of plants and animals from the occupied territories to introduce them into France. The biological regeneration of French herds and agriculture was the main goal of this public policy. A unidirectional circulation from throughout the European continent towards France occurred from 1799 to 1815. But the continental blockade in 1806 cut off the supply of certain products and raw materials such as sugar, indigo and cotton. On a continental scale, in the most adapted parts of its Empire the Napoleonic State implemented an impressive policy of introducing and acclimatizing exotic plant species from many regions of the world. Many questions arise from this unprecedented circulation of plant and animal species within “French Europe”: How was it organised? On which circuits and networks did it rely? What was the role of the French state in that biological challenge? Finally, why were the results of that biological policy so disappointing?