Geneticists told to debate with politicians

Ebola crisis has alerted politicians to global health threats, debate hears.

The Ebola virus epidemic has led to a “seismic political shift” in international attitudes to global health security, says Brian McCloskey, adviser to the United Nations’ special envoy on Ebola. McCloskey, who is on secondment from his job as director of global health at Public Health England, told a debate at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine that Ebola had “galvanised politic...

L1-associated diseases: clinical geneticists divide, molecular geneticists unite.

The neuronal cell adhesion molecule L1 (L1CAM) is a transmembrane glycoprotein belonging to the immunoglobulin superfamily and is essential in the development of the nervous system. It is mainly expressed on neurons and Schwann cells, and plays a key role in axon outgrowth and pathfinding through interactions with various extracellular ligands and intracellular second messenger systems. Mutatio...

Quarreling geneticists and a diplomat.

I N the 1950s the hydrogen bomb was new; it was also fearsome. Some of the test explosions produced debris that was dispersed by high-altitude winds, dropping radioactive fallout over an entire hemisphere. Some geneticists feared that mutations induced by the radiation would constitute a significant genetic hazard to future generations. Other people argued that the tests were a necessary part o...

Training of medical geneticists.

Optimizing Airspace Closure with Respect to Politicians' Egos

When a president is landing at a busy airport, the airspace around the airport closes for commercial traffic. We show how to schedule the presidential squadron so as to minimize its impact on scheduled civilian flights; to obtain an efficient solution we use a “rainbow” algorithm recoloring aircraft on the fly as they are stored in a special type of forest. We also give a data structure to answ...