Capitalist Masters, Bourgeois Slaves

Masters change, slaves remain.

Sex determination offers an opportunity to address many classic questions of developmental biology. In addition, because sex determination evolves rapidly, it offers an opportunity to investigate the evolution of genetic hierarchies. Sex determination in Drosophila melanogaster is controlled by the master regulatory gene, Sex lethal (Sxl). DmSxl controls the alternative splicing of a downstream...

Plasticity of gene-regulatory networks controlling sex determination: of masters, slaves, usual suspects, newcomers, and usurpators.

Sexual dimorphism is one of the most pervasive and diverse features of animal morphology, physiology, and behavior. Despite the generality of the phenomenon itself, the mechanisms controlling how sex is determined differ considerably among various organismic groups, have evolved repeatedly and independently, and the underlying molecular pathways can change quickly during evolution. Even within ...

Conditions for Compatibility of Components - The Case of Masters and Slaves

We consider systems composed of reactive components that collaborate through synchronised execution of common actions. These multi-component systems are formally represented as team automata, a model that allows a wide spectrum of synchronisation policies to combine components into higher-level systems. We investigate the correct-by-construction engineering of such systems of systems from the p...

The Birth of Bourgeois Punishment

Slaves to medicine.

In a provocative new book, 1 George Beauchamp, MD, claims that physicians are “slaves to medicine.” He explains that this is partly because “when most people go to see a doctor, both the services the doctor provides and the fees that insurance companies allow him to charge are largely predetermined by parties other than the patients and doctors.” Most patients, in turn, feel completely powerles...