If it is methylated it must be Tectonic

If it is methylated it must be Tectonic.

The molecular mechanisms by which organisms defend themselves against predators and the molecular weapons the predators use to attack their victims have coevolved over eons of time. Microbial pathogens share the common feature of being covered in a surface coat comprised of carbohydrates (glycans) linked to lipids and proteins or as free polysaccharides. In vertebrates, such defense mechanisms ...

If it is to be, it is up to me.

Must research benefit human subjects if it is to be permissible?

Must medical experiments with human subjects offer them a 'favourable risk-benefit ratio', that is, more expectation of benefit than harm or burden, if they are to be judged as ethically justified? Ethical justification is easier for experiments that do offer net benefit to subjects, but ethical justification is possible also for some experiments that do not. Basic science experiments with heal...

If There Is Something It Is Like to Be Alife, What Is It?

In the field of consciousness studies, the phrase ‘Is there something it is like to be X?’, derived from Nagel’s ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ (Nagel 1974), has become an acceptable way of asking whether X is conscious. It is my contention that this is a question that should be asked in the context of artificial organisms of the type studied in Alife, and especially of physically embodied orga...

If it changes it must be a process: study of emotion and coping during three stages of a college examination.

This natural experiment provides substantial evidence for the following major themes, which are based on a cognitively oriented, process-centered theory of stress and coping: First, a stressful encounter should be viewed as a dynamic, unfolding process, not as a static, unitary event. Emotion and coping (including the use of social support) were assessed at three stages of a midterm examination...