Taking a chance on KK

Taking a chance on epigenetics

Epigenetics has become the indispensable science for understanding the geneenvironment relationships that control risk exposure, therapeutic response, and disease progression. Despite the importance of the field, not all scientists agree on how even to define epigenetics (Dupont et al., 2009); some, like me, restrict epigenetics to events that happen at the gene level, such as DNA methylation a...

“Leaving it to chance”—Passive risk taking in everyday life

While risk research focuses on actions that put people at risk, this paper introduces the concept of “passive risk”— risk brought on or magnified by inaction. We developed a scale measuring personal tendency for passive risk taking (PRT), validated it using a 150 undergraduate student sample, and obtained three factors indicating separate domains of passive risk taking: risk involving resources...

Give chance a chance

How did I get to become a cell biologist? Or, more generally, why do things happen the way they do? The answer provided by the philosopher Democritus and later adopted by Jacques Monod is "everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity." While I read Monod's book Chance and Necessity as an undergraduate student, little did I appreciate the accuracy of this citation and...

Taking a climate chance: a procedural critique of Vietnam's climate change strategy.

This article asks through what processes and for which interests the emerging Vietnamese climate change strategy is being designed, and if, ultimately, it is likely or not to be effective in the face of the looming threat. Through a review of an emerging body of literature and field observations, the paper finds the strategy partial and problematic in several ways. Its technocratic process prev...

KK Bhomi