The Promise and Perils of Transformative Research

This report is on the workshop 'Transformative Research: Ethical and Societal Implications'. Workshop conversations cluster under the four headings of the history and definitions, promotion, evaluation, and integration of transformative research

Philosophy Matters - Examining the Value of Knowledge

This paper discusses the University of North Texas' (UNT) Center for the Study of Interdisciplinarity (CSID), where philosophers continue to examine the value of knowledge. The authors also discuss one example of CSID's work with the Comparative Assessment of Peer Review (CAPR) project. CAPR is a four-year project (2008-2012) studying the changing nature of peer review processes across six U.S. and foreign public science agencies. CAPR is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation's (NSF) Science of Science and Innovation Policy (SciSIP) program

Peer Review and the Ex Ante Assessment of Societal Impacts

Article discussing peer review and the ex ante assessment of societal impacts

Comparative Assessment of Peer Review (CAPR): EU/US workshop on peer review: Assessing "broader impact" in research grant applications

This is the report of a workshop focusing on the use of broader societal impacts criteria as part of the review process at the European Commission. There is both a historical account and some thinking about how 'impact' ought to be incorporated into Horizon 2020 (the funding scheme formerly known as FP8). Since the US NSF is also currently rethinking the details of its merit review process, and since there is an interesting comparison between NSF's and the EC's approaches to impact, the authors have also included a focus on NSF's Broader Impacts Criterion. The workshop was both a research opportunity (under SciSIP grant #0830387) and an effort to use that research to help inform policy for science (in terms of informing peer review models)

Introducing a Policy Turn in Environmental Philosophy

This article discusses policies in environmental philosophy

Impacts of elevated atmospheric CO₂ on nutrient content of important food crops.

One of the many ways that climate change may affect human health is by altering the nutrient content of food crops. However, previous attempts to study the effects of increased atmospheric CO2 on crop nutrition have been limited by small sample sizes and/or artificial growing conditions. Here we present data from a meta-analysis of the nutritional contents of the edible portions of 41 cultivars of six major crop species grown using free-air CO2 enrichment (FACE) technology to expose crops to ambient and elevated CO2 concentrations in otherwise normal field cultivation conditions. This data, collected across three continents, represents over ten times more data on the nutrient content of crops grown in FACE experiments than was previously available. We expect it to be deeply useful to future studies, such as efforts to understand the impacts of elevated atmospheric CO2 on crop macro- and micronutrient concentrations, or attempts to alleviate harmful effects of these changes for the billions of people who depend on these crops for essential nutrients

Multimodality treatment of brain metastases: an institutional survival analysis of 275 patients

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Whole brain radiation therapy (WBRT), surgical resection, stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS), and combinations of the three modalities are used in the management of patients with metastatic brain tumors. We present the previously unreported survival outcomes of 275 patients treated for newly diagnosed brain metastases at Cancer Care Northwest and Gamma Knife of Spokane between 1998 and 2008.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The effects treatment regimen, age, Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group-Performance Status (ECOG-PS), primary tumor histology, number of brain metastases, and total volume of brain metastases have on patient overall survival were analyzed. Statistical analysis was performed using Kaplan-Meier survival curves, Andersen 95% confidence intervals, approximate confidence intervals for log hazard-ratios, and multivariate Cox proportional hazard models.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The median clinical follow up time was 7.2 months. On multivariate analysis, survival statistically favored patients treated with SRS alone when compared to patients treated with WBRT alone (p < 0.001), patients treated with resection with SRS when compared to patients treated with SRS alone (p = 0.020), patients in ECOG-PS class 0 when compared to patients in ECOG-PS classes 2 (p = 0.04), 3 (p < 0.001), and 4 (p < 0.001), patients in the non-small-cell lung cancer group when compared to patients in the combined melanoma and renal-cell carcinoma group (p < 0.001), and patients with breast cancer when compared to patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (p < 0.001).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>In our analysis, patients benefited from a combined modality treatment approach and physicians must consider patient age, performance status, and primary tumor histology when recommending specific treatments regimens.</p