The Iterative Process of Legitimacy-Building in Hybrid Organizations

Hybrid organizations face the fundamental challenge of building legitimacy. To deal with this challenge in administrative theory and practice, we apply an analytical framework following an organizational logic of legitimacy building to an exemplary case of hybridity—the Swiss Institute for Translational and Entrepreneurial Medicine. Our framework application illustrates that pragmatic legitimacy (i.e., establishing instrumental value) must be built before moral legitimacy (i.e., fostering normative evaluation) and cognitive legitimacy (i.e., creating comprehensibility), followed by an iterative process of mutual influence between the legitimacy forms. Originating in the management literature, the framework promises new insights for public administration research on hybrids.

The Metamorphosis of Radionuclide Production and Development at Paul Scherrer Institute

Radionuclide production and development has a long history at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) and dates back to the founding times of its forerunner institutions: the Federal Institute for Reactor Research and the Swiss Institute for Nuclear Research. The facilities used for this purpose have evolved substantially over the last five decades. Many radiometals in use today, as radiopharmaceuticals, are for the diagnosis and treatment of disease, with the most popular means of detection being Positron Emission Tomography. These positron emitters are easily produced at low proton energies using medical cyclotrons, however, developments at these facilities are lacking. Currently, the fixed 72 MeV proton beam at PSI is degraded at IP2 irradiation station to provide the desired energy to irradiate targets to produce the likes of 44Sc, 43Sc and 64Cu as a proof of principle, which are of great interest to the nuclear medicine community. This development work can then be implemented at facilities containing medical cyclotrons. A history of the development of radionuclides at PSI, along with current development and projects with partner institutions, is described.

SIB Literature Services: RESTful customizable search engines in biomedical literature, enriched with automatically mapped biomedical concepts

Thanks to recent efforts by the text mining community, biocurators have now access to plenty of good tools and Web interfaces for identifying and visualizing biomedical entities in literature. Yet, many of these systems start with a PubMed query, which is limited by strong Boolean constraints. Some semantic search engines exploit entities for Information Retrieval, and/or deliver relevance-based ranked results. Yet, they are not designed for supporting a specific curation workflow, and allow very limited control on the search process. The Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics Literature Services (SIBiLS) provide personalized Information Retrieval in the biological literature. Indeed, SIBiLS allow fully customizable search in semantically enriched contents, based on keywords and/or mapped biomedical entities from a growing set of standardized and legacy vocabularies. The services have been used and favourably evaluated to assist the curation of genes and gene products, by delivering customized literature triage engines to different curation teams. SIBiLS (https://candy.hesge.ch/SIBiLS) are freely accessible via REST APIs and are ready to empower any curation workflow, built on modern technologies scalable with big data: MongoDB and Elasticsearch. They cover MEDLINE and PubMed Central Open Access enriched by nearly 2 billion of mapped biomedical entities, and are daily updated.

Application of the SwissDrugDesign Online Resources in Virtual Screening

SwissDrugDesign is an important initiative led by the Molecular Modeling Group of the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics. This project provides a collection of freely available online tools for computer-aided drug design. Some of these web-based methods, i.e., SwissSimilarity and SwissTargetPrediction, were especially developed to perform virtual screening, while others such as SwissADME, SwissDock, SwissParam and SwissBioisostere can find applications in related activities. The present review aims at providing a short description of these methods together with examples of their application in virtual screening, where SwissDrugDesign tools successfully supported the discovery of bioactive small molecules.

2019 ISCB Overton Prize: Christophe Dessimoz

Each year the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) honors the achievements of an early- to mid-career scientist with the Overton Prize. This prize was instituted in 2001 to honor the untimely loss of Dr. G. Christian Overton, a respected computational biologist and founding member of the ISCB Board of Directors. The Overton Prize recognizes early or mid-career phase scientists who have made significant contributions to computational biology or bioinformatics through their research, teaching, and service. In 2019, ISCB recognized Dr. Christophe Dessimoz, Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Professor at the University of Lausanne, Associate Professor at the University College London, and Group Leader at the Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics. Dessimoz receives his award and is presenting a keynote address at the 2019 Joint Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology/European Conference on Computational Biology held in Basel, Switzerland on July 21-25, 2019.

Eukaryotic Molecular Biology Databases: An Overview

A biological database is a big, structured body of continuous information, generally connected with computerized software intended to update, query, and recover information elements deposited within the framework. A straightforward database could be a single folder comprising several data, each carrying the same number of data. Such famous databases are GenBank from the National Center for Biotechnology Information, SwissProt from the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and PIR from the Protein Information Resource. Biological databases are bibliotheques of life science data, gathered from science studies, published literature, high-performance experimental technology, and computational analysis. Here we brefly described some recently published molecular databases.

Swiss institute for translational and entrepreneurial medicine (sitem-insel)

sitem-insel – the Swiss Institute for Translational and Entrepreneurial Medicine in Bern – was created to establish, operate and develop a National Center of Excellence for Translational Medicine. sitem-insel is organized as a non-profit oriented public private partnership. Translational medicine is a new, process-oriented discipline that aims to translate new findings and products emerging from private-sector development and basic research into clinical application. The discipline seeks to professionalize the essential interaction between scientists conducting basic research in the private sector and universities, clinicians, regulatory bodies and investors. The mission of sitem-insel is to create and foster an enhanced environment for translational medicine in Switzerland. The sitem-insel strategy rests on three pillars: 1) The sitem-insel School offers university-level continuing professional development courses taught by university and private-sector lecturers. 2) The sitem-insel Enabling Facilities provide infrastructure to foster cooperation between industrial partners, basic scientists and clinicians on the campus of the University Hospital of Bern (Inselspital) with the ultimate goal to bring novel diagnostic and therapeutic products towards clinical application. 3) The sitem-insel Promoting Services aim to optimize the administrative-regulatory effort along the route from laboratory bench to commercial products.

PREVALENCE OF UNSOLVED DRINKING PROBLEMS FOR DUI DRIVERS REFERRED FOR MEDICAL EVALUATION IN SWITZERLAND

Estimate the proportion of heavy DUI offenders who do not initiate a treatment for their drinking problem before referring to an official medical expertise to recover their driver’s license. Evaluate the proportion of offenders with drinking problems who became abstinent during 6 months within two years after their offense and their characteristics.Between January 2010 and December 2012, data were collected from 1316 consecutive drivers who were referred to an expertise in a legal medicine Swiss institute to recover their driver’s license after driving under the influence of alcohol. 153 offenders were included in the analysis after excluding patients under the influence of other recreational drugs and patients unfit to drive for other medical reasons. Heavy DUI were defined as first time drunk driving offenders with blood alcohol concentration (BAC) ≥2.50 g/kg, or second-time drunk driving offenders within five years with BAC ≥1.60 g/kg in five years, or third-time drunk driving offenders within ten years with BAC ≥0.80 g/kg. 28 subjects of 153 (18%) were considered fit to drive. The rest of the drivers (125, 82%) were considered unfit to drive (drinking problem 77, dissociation alone 48). The majority of offenders (46,4 %) had driving under the influence of alcohol 2 times in the last five years with BAC ≥ 1.60 g/Kg, 65 (42.5%) had BAC ≥ 2.5 and the rest had 3 or more drunk driving offenses. The criteria used for medical and/or psychological assessment are appropriate.

“Ich zweifle nicht, dass man hier für die Bauforschung sorgen könnte.” Nyt lys på H.O. Langes kamp for et dansk videnskabeligt institut i Egypten 1938-39

Lars Schreiber Pedersen: “Ich zweifle nicht, dass man hier für die Bauforschung sorgen könnte.” [“I do not doubt that one could take care of construction research here.”] New light shed on H. O. Lange’s struggle for a Danish scientific institute in Egypt 1938–39 Fund og Forskning 46 from 2007 contained an article about the Egyptologist and head librarian at The Royal Library from 1901–1924, H. O. Lange’s attempt to help his long-time friend, the German-Jewish Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt and his wife Emilie to acquire Danish citizenship and at the same time ensure Denmark and Copenhagen University a scientific institute in Cairo in Egypt. As early as 2007, it was clear that parts of the initial correspondence were missing between Ludwig Borchardt and later, after Ludwig Borchardt’s death on 12 August 1938, his wife Emilie Borchardt and H. O. Lange. Lange quoted diligently from these letters when he promoted Ludwig and Emilie Borchardt’s case in the summer and autumn of 1938 to several Danish ministries and at Copenhagen University. Part of the supposedly lost correspondence, including 14 letters from Ludwig and Emilie Borchardt to H. O. Lange, as well as three response drafts from H. O. Lange showed up a few years ago at Copenhagen University and constitute the focal point of this article. The letters provide new and detailed insight into H. O. Lange’s efforts to ensure the Danish state and Copenhagen University the scientific institute in Egypt. An institute, which could help highlight the leadership of Danish Egyptology in the Nordic countries. The rediscovered letters also document how tight a grip Ludwig and Emilie Borchardt had on the institute, and how unwilling the couple really were to entrust the institute and its corresponding assets to the Danish State. The letters leave the impression of a married couple, who did not hesitate to play close friends and peers (George Reisner, Allan H. Gardiner and H. O. Lange) against one another based on a supposed risk that the institution and its assets could be seized by National Socialist Germany. However, the foundation created by the couple using private funds in the district of Zamalek in Cairo, was never close to ending up in Danish, English or American hands. Since the alleged risk of seizing the institute and its corresponding assets in the late summer of 1938 had blown over, Emilie Borchardt gradually retracted the feelers she had put out. In the three countries, which participated in the battle to take over the institute, namely USA, England and Denmark, civil servants and politicians were in the end not willing to pay the price presented by the Borchardts for the scientific institute, plus the granting of citizenship. Today, the institute bears the name Schweizerisches Institut für Ägyptische Bauforschung und Altertumskunde (Swiss Institute for Architectural and Archaeological Research on Ancient Egypt) and continues to be financed by the foundation created by Ludwig and Emilie Borchardt.