Scientific Venues Research Articles

New Frontiers in Mucositis

Mucositis is among the most debilitating side effects of radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and targeted anticancer therapy. Research continues to escalate regarding key issues such as etiopathology, incidence and severity across different mucosae, relationships between mucosal and nonmucosal toxicities, and risk factors. This approach is being translated into enhanced management strategies. Recent technology advances provide an important foundation for this continuum. For example, evolution of applied genomics is fostering development of new algorithms to rapidly screen genomewide single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) for patient-associated risk prediction. This modeling will permit individual tailoring of the most effective, least toxic treatment in the future. The evolution of novel cancer therapeutics is changing the mucositis toxicity profile. These agents can be associated with unique mechanisms of mucosal damage. Additional research is needed to optimally manage toxicity caused by agents such as mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitors and tyrosine kinase inhibitors, without reducing antitumor effect. There has similarly been heightened attention across the health professions regarding clinical practice guidelines for mucositis management in the years following the first published guidelines in 2004. New opportunities exist to more effectively interface this collective guideline portfolio by capitalizing upon novel technologies such as an Internet-based Wiki platform. Substantive progress thus continues across many domains associated with mucosal injury in oncology patients. In addition to enhancing oncology patient care, these advances are being integrated into high-impact educational and scientific venues including the National Cancer Institute Physician Data Query (PDQ) portfolio as well as a new Gordon Research Conference on mucosal health and disease scheduled for June 2013.

Historical geographies of provincial science: themes in the setting and reception of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Britain and Ireland, 1831–c.1939

The British Association for the Advancement of Science sought to promote the understanding of science in various ways, principally by having annual meetings in different towns and cities throughout Britain and Ireland (and, from 1884, in Canada, South Africa and Australia). This paper considers how far the location of its meetings in different urban settings influenced the nature and reception of the association's activities in promoting science, from its foundation in 1831 to the later 1930s. Several themes concerning the production and reception of science--promoting, practising, writing and receiving--are examined in different urban contexts. We consider the ways in which towns were promoted as venues for and centres of science. We consider the role of local field sites, leading local practitioners and provincial institutions for science in attracting the association to different urban locations. The paper pays attention to excursions and to the evolution and content of the BAAS meeting handbook as a 'geographical' guide to the significance of the regional setting and to appropriate scientific venues. The paper considers the reception of BAAS meetings and explores how far the association's intentions for the promotion of science varied by location and by section within the BAAS. In examining these themes--the geographical setting of the association's meetings, the reception of association science in local civic and intellectual context and the importance of place to an understanding of what the BAAS did and how it was received--the paper extends existing knowledge of the association and contributes to recent work within the history of science which has emphasized the 'local' nature of science's making and reception and the mobility of scientific knowledge.

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: New Challenges for Definition, Diagnosis, and Treatment

The extensive literature regarding Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is often overwhelming, even to those most knowledgeable about this behavioral disorder. Consequently, it requires considerable effort to maintain currency about the numerous clinical and scientific advances reported with ever-greater rapidity and through diverse scientific venues. Our intention with this special issue, AttentionDeficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Recent Findings, Practical Matters and New Conceptualizations, is to provide a pragmatic and cogent critique of how we define, evaluate, diagnose, and treat individuals with ADHD. Concerted collaborative efforts among disciplines have led to generation and testing of theoretical models, identification of etiology with improved diagnostic acumen, application of more effective and varied treatments, and utilization of newer techniques, including neurophysiological, neuroradiological, and molecular genetic advances. We emphasize these accomplishments as they pertain to ADHD. Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, it is also intended that this issue challenge its readers to recognize the inadequacy of the DSM-IV criteria on which we rely for ADHD diagnosis. Sufficient data now exist to reinforce revision of the older assumptions and models that perpetuate their application. This conclusion is reached in light of considerable scientific advances and a natural progression in the concerted efforts made across disciplines to refine our understanding of ADHD. It is our intention to emphasize these within an integrated framework that cap-

Neuroscience meeting draws fire over Dalai Lama lecture

Critics say the scientific venue is a cover for the Buddhist leader's political and religious views.

Testimony in seventeenth-century English natural philosophy: legal origins and early development

This essay argues that techniques for assessing testimonial credibility were well established in English legal contexts before they appeared in English natural philosophy. ‘Matters of fact’ supported by testimony referred to human actions and events before the concept was applied to natural phenomena. The article surveys English legal views about testimony and argues that the criteria for credible testimony in both legal and scientific venues were not limited to those of gentle status. Natural philosophers became concerned with testimony when they shifted their attention from universal statements about nature to particular natural and experimental events. Testimony thus became important in the construction of natural and experimental histories constructed by English naturalists. The shift to a more Baconian approach to natural investigation, itself shaped in part by legal concepts and practice, made it possible for members of the Royal Society to adopt an already familiar and societally approved approach to testimony. However, the essay also suggests how the use of scientific instruments and the desire to avoid the adversarial processes of the law modified legal conditions for fact determination, and made it possible for later generations to associate the concept of fact, supported by credible testimony, with the natural rather than the human sciences.

From the Editor: The ‘Meeting of Minds’: Lessons Learned from Scientific Venues

From the Editor: The ‘Meeting of Minds’: Lessons Learned from Scientific Venues

Unity

Unity