Astrobiology and Society in Europe Today

This book describes the state of astrobiology in Europe today and its relation to the European society at large. With contributions from authors in more than 20 countries and over 30 scientific institutions worldwide, the document illustrates the societal implications of astrobiology and the positive contribution that astrobiology can make to European society. The book has two main objectives: 1. It recommends the establishment of a European Astrobiology Institute (EAI) as an answer to a series of challenges relating to astrobiology but also European research, education, and society at large. 2. It also acknowledges the societal implications of astrobiology, and thus the role of the social sciences and humanities in optimizing the positive contribution that astrobiology can make to the lives of the people of Europe and the challenges they face

Den kognitiva vändningen - Idéhistoria och det mänskliga tänkandets historia

The last two decades have seen a noticeable increase in cognitive science studies that has changed the understanding of human thinking. Historians cannot ignore this any more. Cognitive history could be explained as the study of how humans in history used their cognitive abilities in order to understand the worldaround them and to orient themselves in it, but also how the world outside their bodies affected their way of thinking. In focus in this article is the relation between history and cognition, the human mind’s interaction with the environment in time and space. I will especially discuss certain cognitive abilities in interaction with the environment, which can be studied in the historical sources, and be put to the test, namely: embodied mind, situated cognition,perception, distributed cognition, conceptual metaphors, and communication. I also give concrete empirical examples of how a cognitive-historical analysis can provide more fundamental explanations for what happens in cultural encounters, when a human being meets another and tries to understand another cultureor another foreign environment. By these cognitive theories we can come closer to an understanding of how (not only what) people thought, and study the interaction between the human mind and the surrounding world. The most ambitious aim of such a cognitive history could be, in the long run, to also informthe research on the cognitive evolution of the human mind

Alexandra Kollontai and three Swedish female physicians – friendly relationships around the Soviet ambassador in Stockholm 1930–1945

Alexandra Kollontai was the Soviet ambassador to Sweden in the years 1930 to 1945. In Sweden she gained many friends in the peace- and women’s movement and among these were several female physicians. This article describes and investigates the friendships between Swedish female physicians and Alexandra Kollontai. The three physicians focused on are Ada Nilsson (1872–1964), Andrea Andreen (1888–1972) and Nanna Svartz (1890–1986). It is found that Kollontai and the physicians became proper friends, although initial contacts between them had political or medical causes

How Will the Emerging Plurality of Lives Change How We Conceive of and Relate to Life?

The project “A Plurality of Lives” was funded and hosted by the Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies at Lund University, Sweden. The aim of the project was to better understand how a second origin of life, either in the form of a discovery of extraterrestrial life, life developed in a laboratory, or machines equipped with abilities previously only ascribed to living beings, will change how we understand and relate to life. Because of the inherently interdisciplinary nature of the project aim, the project took an interdisciplinary approach with a research group made up of 12 senior researchers representing 12 different disciplines. The project resulted in a joint volume, an international symposium, several new projects, and a network of researchers in the field, all continuing to communicate about and advance the aim of the project

A Genome-Wide Association Study of Diabetic Kidney Disease in Subjects With Type 2 Diabetes

dentification of sequence variants robustly associated with predisposition to diabetic kidney disease (DKD) has the potential to provide insights into the pathophysiological mechanisms responsible. We conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of DKD in type 2 diabetes (T2D) using eight complementary dichotomous and quantitative DKD phenotypes: the principal dichotomous analysis involved 5,717 T2D subjects, 3,345 with DKD. Promising association signals were evaluated in up to 26,827 subjects with T2D (12,710 with DKD). A combined T1D+T2D GWAS was performed using complementary data available for subjects with T1D, which, with replication samples, involved up to 40,340 subjects with diabetes (18,582 with DKD). Analysis of specific DKD phenotypes identified a novel signal near GABRR1 (rs9942471, P = 4.5 x 10(-8)) associated with microalbuminuria in European T2D case subjects. However, no replication of this signal was observed in Asian subjects with T2D or in the equivalent T1D analysis. There was only limited support, in this substantially enlarged analysis, for association at previously reported DKD signals, except for those at UMOD and PRKAG2, both associated with estimated glomerular filtration rate. We conclude that, despite challenges in addressing phenotypic heterogeneity, access to increased sample sizes will continue to provide more robust inference regarding risk variant discovery for DKD.Peer reviewe

Alfred J. Gabay, The Covert Enligthenment: Eighteenth-Century Counterculture and Its Aftermath

Emanuel Swedenborg and the covert enlightenmen