Attributing scientific and technical progress: the case of holography

Holography, the three-dimensional imaging technology, was portrayed widely as a paradigm of progress during its decade of explosive expansion 1964–73, and during its subsequent consolidation for commercial and artistic uses up to the mid 1980s. An unusually seductive and prolific subject, holography successively spawned scientific insights, putative applications and new constituencies of practitioners and consumers. Waves of forecasts, associated with different sponsors and user communities, cast holography as a field on the verge of success—but with the dimensions of success repeatedly refashioned. This retargeting of the subject represented a degree of cynical marketeering, but was underpinned by implicit confidence in philosophical positivism and faith in technological progressivism. Each of its communities defined success in terms of expansion, and anticipated continual progressive increase. This paper discusses the contrasting definitions of progress in holography, and how they were fashioned in changing contexts. Focusing equally on reputed ‘failures’ of some aspects of the subject, it explores the varied attributes by which success and failure were linked with progress by different technical communities. This important case illuminates the peculiar post-World War II environment that melded the military, commercial and popular engagement with scientific and technological subjects, and the competing criteria by which they assessed the products of science

Longitudinal serum S100β and brain ageing in the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936

Elevated serum and cerebrospinal fluid concentrations of S100β, a protein predominantly found in glia, are associated with intracranial injury and neurodegeneration, although concentrations are also influenced by several other factors. The longitudinal association between serum S100β concentrations and brain health in nonpathological aging is unknown. In a large group (baseline N = 593; longitudinal N = 414) of community-dwelling older adults at ages 73 and 76 years, we examined cross-sectional and parallel longitudinal changes between serum S100β and brain MRI parameters: white matter hyperintensities, perivascular space visibility, white matter fractional anisotropy and mean diffusivity (MD), global atrophy, and gray matter volume. Using bivariate change score structural equation models, correcting for age, sex, diabetes, and hypertension, higher S100β was cross-sectionally associated with poorer general fractional anisotropy (r = -0.150, p = 0.001), which was strongest in the anterior thalamic (r = -0.155, p < 0.001) and cingulum bundles (r = -0.111, p = 0.005), and survived false discovery rate correction. Longitudinally, there were no significant associations between changes in brain imaging parameters and S100β after false discovery rate correction. These data provide some weak evidence that S100β may be an informative biomarker of brain white matter aging

Assessing changes in global fire regimes

PAGES, Past Global Changes, is funded by the Swiss Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Sciences and supported in kind by the University of Bern, Switzerland. Financial support was provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation award numbers 1916565, EAR-2011439, and EAR-2012123. Additional support was provided by the Utah Department of Natural Resources Watershed Restoration Initiative. SSS was supported by Brigham Young University Graduate Studies. MS was supported by National Science Centre, Poland (grant no. 2018/31/B/ST10/02498 and 2021/41/B/ST10/00060). JCA was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101026211. PF contributed within the framework of the FCT-funded project no. UIDB/04033/2020. SGAF acknowledges support from Trond Mohn Stiftelse (TMS) and University of Bergen for the startup grant ‘TMS2022STG03’. JMP participation in this research was supported by the Forest Research Centre, a research unit funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia I.P. (FCT), Portugal (UIDB/00239/2020). A.-LD acknowledge PAGES, PICS CNRS 06484 project, CNRS-INSU, Région Nouvelle-Aquitaine, University of Bordeaux DRI and INQUA for workshop support.Background The global human footprint has fundamentally altered wildfire regimes, creating serious consequences for human health, biodiversity, and climate. However, it remains difficult to project how long-term interactions among land use, management, and climate change will affect fire behavior, representing a key knowledge gap for sustainable management. We used expert assessment to combine opinions about past and future fire regimes from 99 wildfire researchers. We asked for quantitative and qualitative assessments of the frequency, type, and implications of fire regime change from the beginning of the Holocene through the year 2300. Results Respondents indicated some direct human influence on wildfire since at least ~ 12,000 years BP, though natural climate variability remained the dominant driver of fire regime change until around 5,000 years BP, for most study regions. Responses suggested a ten-fold increase in the frequency of fire regime change during the last 250 years compared with the rest of the Holocene, corresponding first with the intensification and extensification of land use and later with anthropogenic climate change. Looking to the future, fire regimes were predicted to intensify, with increases in frequency, severity, and size in all biomes except grassland ecosystems. Fire regimes showed different climate sensitivities across biomes, but the likelihood of fire regime change increased with higher warming scenarios for all biomes. Biodiversity, carbon storage, and other ecosystem services were predicted to decrease for most biomes under higher emission scenarios. We present recommendations for adaptation and mitigation under emerging fire regimes, while recognizing that management options are constrained under higher emission scenarios. Conclusion The influence of humans on wildfire regimes has increased over the last two centuries. The perspective gained from past fires should be considered in land and fire management strategies, but novel fire behavior is likely given the unprecedented human disruption of plant communities, climate, and other factors. Future fire regimes are likely to degrade key ecosystem services, unless climate change is aggressively mitigated. Expert assessment complements empirical data and modeling, providing a broader perspective of fire science to inform decision making and future research priorities.Peer reviewe

Outcomes from elective colorectal cancer surgery during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

This study aimed to describe the change in surgical practice and the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on mortality after surgical resection of colorectal cancer during the initial phases of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

The genomic landscape of balanced cytogenetic abnormalities associated with human congenital anomalies

Despite the clinical significance of balanced chromosomal abnormalities (BCAs), their characterization has largely been restricted to cytogenetic resolution. We explored the landscape of BCAs at nucleotide resolution in 273 subjects with a spectrum of congenital anomalies. Whole-genome sequencing revised 93% of karyotypes and demonstrated complexity that was cryptic to karyotyping in 21% of BCAs, highlighting the limitations of conventional cytogenetic approaches. At least 33.9% of BCAs resulted in gene disruption that likely contributed to the developmental phenotype, 5.2% were associated with pathogenic genomic imbalances, and 7.3% disrupted topologically associated domains (TADs) encompassing known syndromic loci. Remarkably, BCA breakpoints in eight subjects altered a single TAD encompassing MEF2C, a known driver of 5q14.3 microdeletion syndrome, resulting in decreased MEF2C expression. We propose that sequence-level resolution dramatically improves prediction of clinical outcomes for balanced rearrangements and provides insight into new pathogenic mechanisms, such as altered regulation due to changes in chromosome topology

Abstracts from the 20th International Symposium on Signal Transduction at the Blood-Brain Barriers

https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138963/1/12987_2017_Article_71.pd

Future Perspectives

Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC), are inflammatory processes localised to the gastrointestinal tract. Endoscopy can iden-tify features and elemental lesions, useful in the diagnosis of IBD and to differentiate IBD from enterocolitides with known aetiology. At present the most important and wide-spread endoscopic technique for the evalua-tion of IBD is (ileo-) colonoscopy, while the diagnostic field of upper endoscopy is re-stricted to paediatric patients and to patients with symptoms suggestive of upper gastroin-testinal location of Crohn’s disease. In this paper we will review the role of low-er endoscopy in IBD, with regards to