Best They Forget: Challenging Notions of Remembering and Forgetting

In Jeremiah 31:34 the LORD declares, “No longer will a man teach his neighbour, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest… For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (The NIV Study Bible, 1995, p.1170). It is not the intention of this paper to enter into a theological discussion as to whether or not God is capable of forgetting; however, at very least He chooses the metaphor of forgetting to display his forgiveness for his people. This seems to conflict with a commonly held negative stigma attached to forgetting. It has long been the case, specifically in the classroom, that remembering is considered a positive activity while forgetting is considered a negative one. It is the purpose of this paper to question this assumption by consolidating research done on multiple advantages of forgetting as well as many disadvantages connected to remembering. The discussion will begin with a glimpse at the direction our world could be moving towards in terms of collected memory, an emerging world which brings with it many problems that seem to be solvable only through intentional forgetting. Keeping in mind the theoretical disadvantages of complete memory, one must also recognize the flaws of memory today as well as the possible dangers that memory poses. Last, the research will be made applicable to the classroom and methods of forgetting will be proposed in order to benefit student-learning. This discussion is leading one towards the final conclusion that, at specific times, forgetting is beneficial, ethical, and necessary for advancing student learning

A Commentary on the WSIPP Report: Evaluating Whether a Risk Assessment Reduced Racial Disparity

The Washington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP) recently released a brief report on whether or not implementation of a risk assessment reduced racial disproportionality. This response to the report briefly reviews the findings, critiques the relevance of the research hypotheses, and describes limitations of the research design that undermine the credibility of the conclusions drawn from the study. It also describes a more comprehensive approach to reducing racial disparity and evaluating the success of these efforts

'Prisons Pay' Studies: Research or Ideology (FOCUS)

Over the last few years, a number of articles and reports have been published documenting the rise in U.S. crime rates and advocating increased use of incarceration to reverse the trend. Supporters have concluded that incarceration, while costly, is less expensive than the crime it prevents, concluding that imprisonment was remarkably cost-effective because each year of prison time saved taxpayers $430,000 in criminal justice expenditures. Advocates of increased incarceration have, at best, presented an incomplete picture to the American public. The huge and expensive increase in the use of imprisonment over the last decade has not led to decreases in crime. It is time to abandon the "prisons pay" myth and move on to affordable intermediate sanctions that adequately protect the public while offering more hope for long-term reductions in crime

Dynamics of wasting and underweight in Ethiopian children

In Ethiopia, 9.7 percent of rural and 28.7 percent of small-town children are wasted and underweight, and undernutrition is responsible for a large percentage of childhood deaths. We use two waves of panel data, from the 2012 and 2014 Ethiopia Socioeconomic Surveys, to assess the dynamics of weight-for-height z-score, wasting, weight-for-age z-score, and underweight among children aged 6-59 months. Ordinary least squares (OLS) and fixed effects regression models are used to examine the associations of individual, household, and community factors with each outcome. The cross-sectional results, which generally parallel previous findings, suggest that child’s sex, recent illnesses, household assets, and livestock ownership are correlated with nutritional status. However, many associations disappear after controlling for fixed effects; only recent illness and community access to a main road are consistently significant determinants of changes in nutrition status. Thus, changing factors traditionally identified as correlates of undernutrition may not be enough to improve children’s nutrition. Further panel analysis, conditional on baseline nutrition status, shows that drivers of change are asymmetrical—a finding important for policy development.Keywords: Ethiopia, child malnutrition, wasting, underweight, panel data analysi

[Letter to the editor] Telomere fusions associate with coding sequence and copy number alterations in CLL

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Assembly of the PtdIns 4-kinase Stt4 complex at the plasma membrane requires Ypp1 and Efr3

The phosphoinositide phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate (PtdIns4P) is an essential signaling lipid that regulates secretion and polarization of the actin cytoskeleton. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the PtdIns 4-kinase Stt4 catalyzes the synthesis of PtdIns4P at the plasma membrane (PM). In this paper, we identify and characterize two novel regulatory components of the Stt4 kinase complex, Ypp1 and Efr3. The essential gene YPP1 encodes a conserved protein that colocalizes with Stt4 at cortical punctate structures and regulates the stability of this lipid kinase. Accordingly, Ypp1 interacts with distinct regions on Stt4 that are necessary for the assembly and recruitment of multiple copies of the kinase into phosphoinositide kinase (PIK) patches. We identify the membrane protein Efr3 as an additional component of Stt4 PIK patches. Efr3 is essential for assembly of both Ypp1 and Stt4 at PIK patches. We conclude that Ypp1 and Efr3 are required for the formation and architecture of Stt4 PIK patches and ultimately PM-based PtdIns4P signaling

Telomere dysfunction accurately predicts clinical outcome in chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, even in patients with early stage disease

© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Defining the prognosis of individual cancer sufferers remains a significant clinical challenge. Here we assessed the ability of high-resolution single telomere length analysis (STELA), combined with an experimentally derived definition of telomere dysfunction, to predict the clinical outcome of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL). We defined the upper telomere length threshold at which telomere fusions occur and then used the mean of the telomere 'fusogenic' range as a prognostic tool. Patients with telomeres within the fusogenic range had a significantly shorter overall survival (P  <  0·0001; Hazard ratio [HR] = 13·2, 95% confidence interval [CI]  = 11·6-106·4) and this was preserved in early-stage disease patients (P  <  0·0001, HR=19·3, 95% CI = 17·8-802·5). Indeed, our assay allowed the accurate stratification of Binet stage A patients into those with indolent disease (91% survival at 10 years) and those with poor prognosis (13% survival at 10 years). Furthermore, patients with telomeres above the fusogenic mean showed superior prognosis regardless of their IGHV mutation status or cytogenetic risk group. In keeping with this finding, telomere dysfunction was the dominant variable in multivariate analysis. Taken together, this study provides compelling evidence for the use of high-resolution telomere length analysis coupled with a definition of telomere dysfunction in the prognostic assessment of CLL

Reclaiming academia from post-academia

Post-academic science, driven as it is by commercialisation and market forces, is fundamentally at odds with core academic principles. Publicly-funded academics have an obligation to carry out science for the public good, a responsibility which is incompatible with the entrepreneurial ethos increasingly expected of university research by funding agencies. Is nanoscience the &quot;first full embodiment of post-academic science&quot;? Have many of the traditional core values of publicly-funded university science been eroded to the point where they are now &quot;part of a scientific mythology&quot;? And is it &quot;morally bankrupt&quot; to draw a distinction between &quot;pure&quot; and &quot;applied&quot; science? These claims, which were all made in a recent commentary in Nature Nanotechnology b

Telomere length predicts for outcome to FCR chemotherapy in CLL

We have previously shown that dividing patients with CLL into those with telomeres inside the fusogenic range (TL-IFR) and outside the fusogenic range (TL-OFR) is powerful prognostic tool. Here, we used a high-throughput version of the assay (HT-STELA) to establish whether telomere length could predict for outcome to fludarabine, cyclophosphamide, rituximab (FCR)-based treatment using samples collected from two concurrent phase II studies, ARCTIC and ADMIRE (n = 260). In univariate analysis, patients with TL-IFR had reduced progression-free survival (PFS) (P < 0.0001; HR = 2.17) and shorter overall survival (OS) (P = 0.0002; HR = 2.44). Bifurcation of the IGHV-mutated and unmutated subsets according to telomere length revealed that patients with TL-IFR in each subset had shorter PFS (HR = 4.35 and HR = 1.48, respectively) and shorter OS (HR = 3.81 and HR = 2.18, respectively). In addition, the OS of the TL-OFR and TL-IFR subsets were not significantly altered by IGHV mutation status (P = 0.61; HR = 1.24 and P = 0.41; HR = 1.47, respectively). In multivariate modeling, telomere length was the dominant co-variable for PFS (P = 0.0002; HR = 1.85) and OS (P = 0.05; HR = 1.61). Taken together, our data suggest that HT-STELA is a powerful predictor of outcome to FCR-based treatment and could be used to inform the design of future risk-adapted clinical trials

Measuring telomere length and telomere dynamics in evolutionary biology and ecology

Telomeres play a fundamental role in the protection of chromosomal DNA and in the regulation of cellular senescence. Recent work in human epidemiology and evolutionary ecology suggests adult telomere length (TL) may reflect past physiological stress and predict subsequent morbidity and mortality, independent of chronological age. Several different methods have been developed to measure TL, each offering its own technical challenges. The aim of this review is to provide an overview of the advantages and drawbacks of each method for researchers, with a particular focus on issues that are likely to face ecologists and evolutionary biologists collecting samples in the field or in organisms that may never have been studied in this context before. We discuss the key issues to consider and wherever possible try to provide current consensus view regarding best practice with regard to sample collection and storage, DNA extraction and storage, and the five main methods currently available to measure TL. Decisions regarding which tissues to sample, how to store them, how to extract DNA, and which TL measurement method to use cannot be prescribed, and are dependent on the biological question addressed and the constraints imposed by the study system. What is essential for future studies of telomere dynamics in evolution and ecology is that researchers publish full details of their methods and the quality control thresholds they employ