CRISPR as a Driving Force: The Model T of Biotechnology

The CRISPR system for gene editing can break, repair, and replace targeted sections of DNA. Although CRISPR gene editing has important therapeutic potential, it raises several ethical concerns. Some bioethicists worry CRISPR is a prelude to a dystopian future, while others maintain it should not be feared because it is analogous to past biotechnologies. In the scientific literature, CRISPR is often discussed as a revolutionary technology. In this paper we unpack the framing of CRISPR as a revolutionary technology and contrast it with framing it as a value-threatening biotechnology or business-as-usual. By drawing on a comparison between CRISPR and the Ford Model T, we argue CRISPR is revolutionary as a product, process, and as a force for social change. This characterization of CRISPR offers important conceptual clarity to the existing debates surrounding CRISPR. In particular, conceptualizing CRISPR as a revolutionary technology structures regulatory goals with respect to this new technology. Revolutionary technologies have characteristic patterns of implementation, entrenchment, and social impact. As such, early identification of technologies as revolutionary may help construct more nuanced and effective ethical frameworks for public policy

Psychosocial traits of children identified as at risk for language delay by the Spanish MacArthur-CDI

The MacArthur CDI Inventories have proved their validity as language assessing instruments, for very small children in the 8 to 30 months age period. Nevertheless, their application and use in clinical contexts is not yet clearly established. The Inventories have been found to correctly predict language delays, from early on. At times, they have also been found to adequately describe the linguistic level of language impaired children, as well as that of children with specific syndromes. Their use as basic diagnostic instruments is not to be recommended, as they are not designed for that purpose. If used on their own, they would, in fact, not discriminate among different pathologies. There is also an extremely high variability of the language acquisition process, which has backed doubts about the instrument´s ability to predict early language delays. In spite of this, their use as early detectors of at-risk cases in language development, is reasonably backed too. Although the isolated and/or shallow use of these instruments would trigger false alarms, we claim that a complementary and non-trivial use could detect at-risk population, under reliably set conditions. In order to ensure confidence in research on those conditions, a first step should establish the influence of psycosocial variables on low scores in the MCDI. This study has focused on those variables, i.e.: sex, age, bilingualism, schooling, and their relation to lowest percentiles in the Spanish MCDI-2 which was standarized with a sample of 593 children. Results obtain which variables should be taken into account when assessing the real risk of a future language delay, in children with low Spanish MCDI scores (<percentile 10th), comparing the values of those variables in low vs high performance groups

Juan Antonio González Iglesias: la recepción clásica en un poeta alejandrino posmoderno

This paper studies the classical elements in the poems of Juan Antonio González Iglesias, a poet and latinist from Salamanca. It will study his poetry books published until 2007. There we will observe the unusual form that greek and latin literature assumes in our poet, as in postmodernity the classical heritage is forced to asume new forms, setting this way a dialogue with the Antiquity. Of this Antiquity he will recreate some elements carefully. The classical reception will also be among other elements, old and modern, that will be mentioned when they join with the classical ones.Este artículo estudia los elementos clásicos presentes en la poesía de Juan Antonio González Iglesias, poeta y latinista salmantino, en sus poemarios publicados hasta el año 2007. Se estudiará la forma tan peculiar que toma la literatura grecolatina en nuestro poeta, ya que en la posmodernidad la herencia clásica se ve abocada a adoptar nuevas formas, estableciendo así un diálogo con la Antigüedad, de la que se recrean selectivamente algunos elementos. Además, podremos comprobar cómo los elementos clásicos conviven con otros, antiguos y modernos, que se mencionarán cuando se unan a los clásicos

Applying A Methodology For Educating Students With Special Needs: A Case Study

The introduction of innovative educational technologies opens up new ways of interacting with students. We propose to exploit this potential to help in the education of children with special needs. We analyze the state of the art of tools supporting the teaching process, focusing on the omissions of existing research. We propose a new framework to help throughout the whole teaching process and describe its application to Proyecto Aprender (Learn Project), an educational resource targeting children with learning difficulties. Finally, we outline some conclusions and current/future research lines

Universal Biology Does Not Prescribe Planetary Isolationism

Stephen Hawking’s caution against messaging extraterrestrial intelligence is a claim of universal biology and is probably false

Convergent evolution as natural experiment: the tape of life reconsidered

Stephen Jay Gould argued that replaying the ‘tape of life’ would result in radically different evolutionary outcomes. Recently, biologists and philosophers of science have paid increasing attention to the theoretical importance of convergent evolution—the independent origination of similar biological forms and functions—which many interpret as evidence against Gould’s thesis. In this paper, we examine the evidentiary relevance of convergent evolution for the radical contingency debate. We show that under the right conditions, episodes of convergent evolution can constitute valid natural experiments that support inferences regarding the deep counterfactual stability of macroevolutionary outcomes. However, we argue that proponents of convergence have problematically lumped causally heterogeneous phenomena into a single evidentiary basket, in effect treating all convergent events as if they are of equivalent theoretical import. As a result, the ‘critique from convergent evolution’ fails to engage with key claims of the radical contingency thesis. To remedy this, we develop ways to break down the heterogeneous set of convergent events based on the nature of the generalizations they support. Adopting this more nuanced approach to convergent evolution allows us to differentiate iterated evolutionary outcomes that are probably common among alternative evolutionary histories and subject to law-like generalizations, from those that do little to undermine and may even support, the Gouldian view of life

Eukaryotes first: how could that be?

In the half century since the formulation of the prokaryote : eukaryote dichotomy, many authors have proposed that the former evolved from something resembling the latter, in defiance of common (and possibly common sense) views. In such ‘eukaryotes first’ (EF) scenarios, the last universal common ancestor is imagined to have possessed significantly many of the complex characteristics of contemporary eukaryotes, as relics of an earlier ‘progenotic’ period or RNAworld. Bacteria and Archaea thus must have lost these complex features secondarily, through ‘streamlining’. If the canonical three-domain tree in which Archaea and Eukarya are sisters is accepted, EF entails that Bacteria and Archaea are convergently prokaryotic.We ask what this means and how it might be tested