Biochemical, biomechanical and imaging biomarkers of ischemic stroke:Time for integrative thinking

Stroke is one of the leading causes of adult disability affecting millions of people worldwide. Post-stroke cognitive and motor impairments diminish quality of life and functional independence. There is an increased risk of having a second stroke and developing secondary conditions with long-term social and economic impacts. With increasing number of stroke incidents, shortage of medical professionals and limited budgets, health services are struggling to provide a care that can break the vicious cycle of stroke. Effective post-stroke recovery hinges on holistic, integrative and personalized care starting from improved diagnosis and treatment in clinics to continuous rehabilitation and support in the community. To improve stroke care pathways, there have been growing efforts in discovering biomarkers that can provide valuable insights into the neural, physiological and biomechanical consequences of stroke and how patients respond to new interventions. In this review paper, we aim to summarize recent biomarker discovery research focusing on three modalities (brain imaging, blood sampling and gait assessments), look at some established and forthcoming biomarkers, and discuss their usefulness and complementarity within the context of comprehensive stroke care. We also emphasize the importance of biomarker guided personalized interventions to enhance stroke treatment and post-stroke recovery.</p

Cosmologies, sciences, planetary politics:reflections on ‘knowledge’ in new registers

Important efforts to build more cross-disciplinary, and cross-science, approaches to knowledge construction have been at the forefront in many academic and policy initiatives. For example, those engaged in thinking through the implications of climate change and the Anthropocene, quantum sciences and complexity perspectives have challenged not only the borders between natural and social sciences but also the idea that we can have firm ‘knowledge’ of ‘a world’ around ‘us’. This chapter cheers and probes such paradigm shifts in relation to knowledge. I also explores the implications for how we might in this context encourage different ways of knowing, narrating and becoming in enmeshment with others (human and non-human). This chapter suggests that as part of exploring the widening array of perspectives on ‘knowledge’ (itself a difficult moniker these days) we benefit from embracing and understanding sciences in a more direct, communal, experiential sense. Instead of dismissing ‘Science’ as a positivist, singular, colonial or a ‘western’ edifice, I suggest it will help to observe ‘sciences’ as a messy living practice of being with, or communing; as a way of doing politics across disciplines and species. The result is a less ‘apolitical’ understanding of science, a less ‘social’ understanding of politics, and, hopefully, a more ‘planetary’ multispecies understanding of political possibility