Perspectives Section Research Articles

The historian will see you now: introducing Case Histories

www.thelancet.com Vol 387 January 16, 2016 211 “I hope that Lord Grey and you are well”, wrote the Regency wit and clergyman Sydney Smith to his confi dante Lady Mary Grey in February, 1836, “no easy thing, seeing that there are about fi fteen hundred diseases to which man is subject”. Last year the editors of the Lancet journals announced the launch of The Lancet Clinic, a major online initiative which draws together an overview Seminar with the best current research from across the Lancet journals on 135 of the most globally important diseases. Smith and the Greys might have been deeply, even personally familiar with some of these conditions, but many others would seem bewilderingly new to them. In Case Histories, a new monthly column in The Lancet’s Perspectives section, I will take up this challenge by exploring the history of some of the diseases featured in The Lancet Clinic. Case Histories is concerned with what the historian Charles Rosenberg a generation ago called the framing of disease—the complex, mutable, and often counterintuitive ways in which biological reality, biomedical knowledge and practices, and political, economic, and cultural power come together, marking out a set of symptoms and processes as a concrete, discrete diagnosis. Each column will be published in the journal before being added to The Lancet Clinic’s online resources. I will be drawing as often as I can on the themes discussed in the best recent historical scholarship (just as The Lancet Clinic aims to present the best current clinical research), and each column will be accompanied by a short bibliography. Disease is nothing if not various, and my approach in Case Histories will be correspondingly diverse. One disease might prompt a refl ection on the nature of the “case” as a form of clinical knowledge, or the way in which it became the fulcrum of a political or media campaign. Another might demand a venture into the networks of public health, state medicine, and big pharma within which so many modern diagnoses emerge. Some diagnostic categories are ancient, others barely a decade old in their present form, and yet more have been transformed radically by changing attitudes to race, gender, and sexuality. A short historical essay cannot possibly be the last word on an entity so protean as a disease, but it might, I hope, be a fi rst word— an invitation to refl ect on what an anthropologist would call the thoughtways and workways of modern medicine, and their changing place in the wider human world. Along the way, I want to show that there can be a mutually illuminating conversation between the clinical professions and the independent, diverse, and critically engaged discipline of medical history. Case Histories will be suggesting some avenues along which this conversation might proceed—and I’ll begin with a discussion of Parkinson’s disease.

Guidelines for Student Perspectives Section

Guidelines for Student Perspectives Section

Understanding Policy Change in Latin America

This second issue of Latin American Policy (LAP) for 2015 addresses a question that analysts and practitioners ask themselves, how to explain policy change in a specific problem area. In this issue, readers can find six fascinating articles dealing with the matter from different perspectives. Shiri Noy approaches the subject in the healthcare industry in Costa Rica, explaining how neoliberal policies introduced by the World Bank took a different approach than the outcomes emphasized by government policy, such as efficiency and equity. Carlos Solar highlights change in civic–military relations in Chile when explaining the country's new governance of defense. Alejandro Chavez-Segura demonstrates the importance of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions for regaining legitimacy in Latin America, and Gustavo Sadot Sosa-Núñez suggests how Mexico's foreign policy on climate change could be modified by the country's recent energy reform. Readers will find John Hogan and Brendan K. O'Rourke's interesting article comparing institutional change in Ireland and Mexico, and Mara Fernández's study portraying the relationship between negotiation processes and legitimacy when building new institutions, as occurred when transparency reform was incepted in Mexico. This issue also includes Adolfo Laborde's policy article on a Japanese-inspired business model for Mexico and two interesting contributions in our Perspectives Section. Terry F. Buss discusses Haiti, and Leandro Rodríguez and R. Guy Emerson consider Latino power in the United States through the participation of Latino communities in business, academia, news, and films. Our Book Review section includes critical assessments of three recently published books. We hope our readers enjoy this issue as much as the LAP editorial team enjoyed its elaboration.

How the Srebrenica Massacre Redefined US Foreign Policy

This special perspectives section features commentary on the implications of the Srebrenica massacre for U.S. foreign policy. Given the 20-year anniversary of the massacre, we felt that it was appropriate to invite a range of scholars to participate in a forum to address different aspects of the tragedy and its aftermath in the context of U.S. foreign policy. The forum is structured around a commentary by David Gibbs, author of First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, Vanderbilt University Press, 2009. Gibbs article, How the Srebrenica Massacre Redefined U.S. Foreign Policy, is featured below. Within the next month, we will have responses to Gibbs' argument from several experts on the subject, followed by a closing commentary by Gibbs. As this article goes to press, a new development has emerged: “The Obama administration is moving to designate the Islamic State’s murderous attacks on the Yazidi in Iraq an act of ‘genocide,’” according to a press report. It should be recalled that last year, the regime of Bashir Assad was widely believed to be committing genocide in Syria, and in 2011, Muammar Gaddafi was at least planning a genocide in Libya. And in all of these cases, the claims of genocide were widely accompanied by calls for US and NATO intervention, as a solution. While readers will rightly deplore the atrocities that attended these events, the word “genocide” is being used with notable regularity, in a way that already has and will continue to erode the meaning of this very important concept, through overuse. --Ronald W. Cox

Guidelines for Student Perspectives Section

Guidelines for Student Perspectives Section

Guidelines For Student Perspectives Section

Guidelines For Student Perspectives Section

INTRODUCTION: Point–Counterpoint: Measuring Proficiency Outcomes in Online Foreign Language Education

An introduction is presented to a pair of point-counterpoint articles on the evaluation of online foreign-language learning programs, noting this was the topic of the Perspectives section in the Summer 2015 issue of the publication and citing computerized language-study program Rosetta Stone.

Guidelines for student perspectives section

Guidelines for student perspectives section

Introduction: Literacies and autonomy of the advanced language learner

The present volume contains ten articles related to the literacies and autonomy of the advanced language learner, which was the overarching theme of the 2014 CCERBAL Conference organized by the OLBI and hosted by the University of Ottawa. This theme was implemented in various ways and within various scholarly domains during the conference, representing work related to the main pillars of the OLBI’s expertise: language teaching, language policy, language assessment and technology-enhanced language learning. Similarly, the articles in this issue revolve around these core areas and represent a diversity of perspectives generated by both established researchers and emerging scholars. Some of the articles draw on completed research projects, others report on work in progress or pilot studies, and still others are based on pedagogical workshops. This mix of approaches and perspectives exemplifies the dynamic nature of the field and is indicative of the vibrant research and teaching culture fostered by the OLBI and its research centre, the CCERBAL. The volume is introduced by a lead article, and the rest of the submissions are divided into two sections: Research and Pedagogical Perspectives. The Research section contains articles based on empirical studies, while the Pedagogical Perspectives section contains articles based on reflections on classroom practices or teaching workshops. Some of the articles contain elements from both categories, which highlights the interconnectedness and, in some cases, fusion of research and practice. This invites us to pause for a moment and rethink some of the traditional lines that we are used to drawing in conceptualizing scholarly communication.

Special perspectives section: responsible research and innovation for synthetic biology

In November 2014, a group of more than 100 scholars and practitioners from academia, industry, and non-profit organizations gathered in Tempe, AZ for an intensive two-day workshop to articulate the most important and pressing questions on the societal aspects of synthetic biology. The aim of the workshop was not just to reflect on the social science research that has been done around synthetic biology, but also to generate new questions to construct a new (set of) research agenda(s). A subset of the papers the participants wrote and circulated in advance of the workshop focused on the theme of responsible innovation; these authors agreed to revise their papers for this Special Perspectives Section. Together these articles communicate a diverse set of new ideas for work in responsible innovation.

Editor's Introduction.

Editor’s Introduction Martha Montello This issue of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine introduces three new sections for the journal: Personal Perspectives, Review Essays, and Fiction. These new sections exemplify the journal’s commitment to create a unique space for innovative, thought-provoking, and eclectic work at the intersections of medicine, science, and the humanities. Our model in creating these new sections is thoroughly collaborative. The ideas come from authors. We have worked closely with prospective authors to create and define each of the new sections. Our overriding goal with these three venues is to provide scholars, researchers, and readers with new ideas framed in new ways. We hope to encourage creative thinking about the enormous shifts that are taking place in clinical medicine, health policy, and bioscientific research. Speaking across and through disciplines, our authors are exploring new ways of reshaping the goals of medicine and science. The essay format for Perspectives in Biology and Medicine emphasizes the process of exploration. The new Personal Perspectives section offers authors the opportunity to focus more directly on the intersection of the personal with the public or professional in their work than they might in a traditional scholarly essay. Our first essay of this genre is by our Deputy Editor, Frank Miller. “Changing One’s Mind in Bioethics” tells an intriguing story of his own personal transformation over the years as a bioethicist, one with profound implications for the changing field of [End Page 377] bioethics as a whole. We hope that other authors are willing to write about the ways that their own ideas have changed as they have engaged with new developments or challenging critics. We have published essay reviews in the past. With this issue, however, we introduce a new Essay Review section, with Larry Churchill as Editor. Where many journals publish book reviews, our aim in this section is to present essays that synthesize ideas about important new books, articles, films, plays, or cases. We encourage authors to submit review essays that respond to scholarly work that has appeared in any or all of these formats. We only ask that books or clusters of articles are thematically related. We hope our authors will use their essays as an occasion to speak their minds, with descriptions, comments, and analyses of questions and issues they believe deserve broader attention. Larry Churchill leads off the new section with a remarkable new essay of his own, “Conscience and Moral Tyranny.” Essays that attend to two or more books, or two or more articles, are especially welcome. We believe these essays will fill a substantial gap in the scholarship of many fields in biology and medicine, such as genetics, neurobiology, and evolution, as well as bioethics, history, philosophy, medical education, and clinical practice. Essays in the New York Review of Books or Times Literary Supplement provide examples of the approach we seek. Review Essays for Perspectives in Biology and Medicine will be indexed as peer-reviewed, published articles. And finally, for the first time in its history, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine will publish fiction. The new Fiction section recognizes that certain aspects of the truth can be told only through a story. Chris Feudtner’s extraordinary new story, “Second Time,” portrays an experience in a young physician’s life that leaves the reader with a profound understanding that only a well-told story could render. This issue as a whole gathers together essays on an array of topics, from an analysis of the implications of changes in organ donation policy to speculation about what killed Mary Todd Lincoln. We hope you enjoy it. [End Page 378] martha_montello@hms.harvard.edu Copyright © 2016 Johns Hopkins University Press

The role of chemical engineering in medicinal research including Alzheimer's.

Various disciplines of chemical engineering, especially thermodynamics and kinetics, play an important role in medicinal research and this has been particularly recognized during the last 10-15 years (von Stockar and van der Wielen, J Biotechnol 59:25, 1997; Prausnitz, Fluid Phase Equilib 53:439, 1989; Prausnitz, Pure Appl Chem 79:1435, 2007; Dey and Prausnitz, Ind Eng Chem Res 50:3, 2011; Prausnitz, J Chem Thermodynamics 35:21, 2003; Tsivintzelis et al. AIChE J 55:756, 2009). It is expected that during the twenty-first century chemical engineering and especially thermodynamics can contribute as significantly to the life sciences development as it has been done with the oil and gas and chemical sectors in the twentieth century. Moreover, it has during the recent years recognized that thermodynamics can help in understanding diseases like human cataract, sickle-cell anemia, Creuzfeldt-Jacob ("mad cow" disease), and Alzheimer's which are connected to "protein aggregation." Several articles in the Perspectives section of prominent chemical engineering journals have addressed this issue (Hall, AIChE J 54:1956, 2008; Vekilov, AIChE J 54:2508, 2008). This work reviews recent applications of thermodynamics (and other areas of chemical engineering) first in drug development and then in the understanding of the mechanism of Alzheimer's and similar diseases.

Editorial: From Research to Clinical Practice in Adolescent Psychiatry

Editorial: From Research to Clinical Practice in Adolescent Psychiatry

Introduction to “Labor and Capital in the Twenty-First Century”

In this issue’s Perspectives section, a second article appears commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the 1974 seminal publication of Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (Monthly Review Press). (The first article acknowledging Braverman’s significant contributions was published in the September 2014 issue). In this superbly and smartly written article, Dr. Jeffrey Sallaz, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Arizona, argues that Labor and Monopoly Capital is an essential volume for comprehending the capitalist labor process. Nevertheless, Sallaz points out that there are omissions in Braverman’s analysis which are crucial for analyzing work in the twenty-first century. First, Braverman neglected to understand that the process of deskilling is constrained, especially with regards to service industries which have come to dominate US employment in the second decade of the twenty-first century. Second, Sallaz contends that Braverman remained unwilling to acknowledge that states could deliver “material welfare” to workers which could afford them with safeguards from labor market dependency. Finally, Sallaz addresses Braverman’s view of the future of work as being “unnecessarily pessimistic.” He argues that while Braverman is correct in arguing that standardization and automation can lead to the degradation of work, Sallaz maintains that the surplus created during the production of goods and services “can potentially expand human freedom.” If any of the journal’s readers are interested in responding to any essays published in the “Perspectives” Section or would like to write articles on any topics in the field of employee relations, please do not hesitate to contact me with your proposal. I welcome both practitioner-based and scholarly-based articles written from any one of a variety of theoretical perspectives. I hope that you enjoy this article and find it most illuminating. Employ Respons Rights J (2014) 26:297 DOI 10.1007/s10672-014-9252-3

Ethnographic Explorations and Fragmented Senses of Feminist Insecurity

Forum: The State of Feminist Security Studies: Continuing the Conversation. This forum comprises seven pieces conceived in response to the recent Politics & Gender Critical Perspectives section that featured contributions from Carol Cohn, Valerie Hudson, Jennifer Lobasz, Laura Sjoberg, Ann Tickner, Annick Wibben, and Lauren Wilcox ( P&G 2011, Vol. 7, Issue 4). Throughout, we refer to this collection as “the CP section.”

Emancipatory Potential in Feminist Security Studies

Forum: The State of Feminist Security Studies: Continuing the Conversation. This forum comprises seven pieces conceived in response to the recent Politics & Gender Critical Perspectives section that featured contributions from Carol Cohn, Valerie Hudson, Jennifer Lobasz, Laura Sjoberg, Ann Tickner, Annick Wibben, and Lauren Wilcox ( P&G 2011, Vol. 7, Issue 4). Throughout, we refer to this collection as “the CP section.”

Samting Nating: Pacific Waves at the Margins of Feminist Security Studies

Forum: The State of Feminist Security Studies: Continuing the Conversation. This forum comprises seven pieces conceived in response to the recent Politics & Gender Critical Perspectives section that featured contributions from Carol Cohn, Valerie Hudson, Jennifer Lobasz, Laura Sjoberg, Ann Tickner, Annick Wibben, and Lauren Wilcox ( P&G 2011, Vol. 7, Issue 4). Throughout, we refer to this collection as “the CP section.”

Feminist (In)securities and Camp Politics

Forum: The State of Feminist Security Studies: Continuing the Conversation. This forum comprises seven pieces conceived in response to the recent Politics & Gender Critical Perspectives section that featured contributions from Carol Cohn, Valerie Hudson, Jennifer Lobasz, Laura Sjoberg, Ann Tickner, Annick Wibben, and Lauren Wilcox ( P&G 2011, Vol. 7, Issue 4). Throughout, we refer to this collection as “the CP section.”

Passing American Security

Forum: The State of Feminist Security Studies: Continuing the Conversation. This forum comprises seven pieces conceived in response to the recent Politics & Gender Critical Perspectives section that featured contributions from Carol Cohn, Valerie Hudson, Jennifer Lobasz, Laura Sjoberg, Ann Tickner, Annick Wibben, and Lauren Wilcox ( P&G 2011, Vol. 7, Issue 4). Throughout, we refer to this collection as “the CP section.”

The State of Feminist Security Studies: Continuing the Conversation

This forum comprises seven pieces conceived in response to the recent Politics & Gender Critical Perspectives section, titled “The State of Feminist Security Studies: A Conversation” (P&G2011, Vol. 7, Issue 4). Throughout, we refer to this collection as “the CP section.” We are pleased to take this opportunity to continue the conversation begun in the CP section and to offer sympathetic yet critically engaged contributions in response to the original collection of essays. We hope that this forum indicates the (geographical, cultural, theoretical) diversity of feminist security studies and its multivocality, as well as providing an overview, for those not familiar with the literature, of the issues and debates currently enlivening the field.