Environment change, economy change and reducing conflict at source

At a time when fossil fuel burning, nationalism, ethnic and religious intolerance, and other retrograde steps are being promoted, the prospects for world peace and environmental systems stability may appear dim. Yet now is it the more important to continue to examine the sources of conflict. A major obstacle to general progress is the currently dominant economic practice and theory, which is here called the economy-as-usual, or economics-as-usual, as appropriate. A special obstacle to constructive change is the language in which economic matters are usually discussed. This language is narrow, conservative, technical and often obscure. The rapid changes in the environment (physical and living) are largely kept in a separate compartment. If, however, the partition is removed, economics -as-usual, with its dependence on growth and its widening inequality, is seen to be unsustainable. Radical economic change, for better or worse, is to be expected. Such change is here called economy change. The change could be for the better if it involved an expansion of the concept of economics itself, along the lines of oikonomia, a modern revival of a classical Greek term for management or household. In such an expanded view, not everything of economic value can be measured. It is argued that economics-as-usual is the source of much strife. Some features are indicated of a less conflictual economy - more just, cooperative and peaceful. These features include a dignified life available to all people as of right, the word 'wealth' being reconnected with weal, well and well-being, and 'work' being understood as including all useful activity

The Accuracy of Survival Time Prediction for Patients with Glioma Is Improved by Measuring Mitotic Spindle Checkpoint Gene Expression

Identification of gene expression changes that improve prediction of survival time across all glioma grades would be clinically useful. Four Affymetrix GeneChip datasets from the literature, containing data from 771 glioma samples representing all WHO grades and eight normal brain samples, were used in an ANOVA model to screen for transcript changes that correlated with grade. Observations were confirmed and extended using qPCR assays on RNA derived from 38 additional glioma samples and eight normal samples for which survival data were available. RNA levels of eight major mitotic spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC) genes (BUB1, BUB1B, BUB3, CENPE, MAD1L1, MAD2L1, CDC20, TTK) significantly correlated with glioma grade and six also significantly correlated with survival time. In particular, the level of BUB1B expression was highly correlated with survival time (p<0.0001), and significantly outperformed all other measured parameters, including two standards; WHO grade and MIB-1 (Ki-67) labeling index. Measurement of the expression levels of a small set of SAC genes may complement histological grade and other clinical parameters for predicting survival time