Man’s highly developed constructive curiosity and his capacity for communication are two of the attributes distinguishing him from all other animals. Man alone has sought to understand the whole living world and things beyond his own environment and to pass his knowledge on to others. Consequently, when he discovers or invents something new he also creates a new word, or words, in order to be a...

Science expands knowledge not only through understanding but also through communication. Words form ideas, and words are tools for thoughts. The world looked very different 150 years ago. Scientific communication had a completely different language than now, and we were more strictly dependent on the spoken and printed word. The dissemination of new ideas was much slower than today, leading to ...

A fundamental problem in cancer research is identification of the cell type capable of sustaining the growth of the neoplastic clone. There is overwhelming evidence that virtually all cancers are clonal and represent the progeny of a single cell. What is less clear for most cancers is which cells within the tumor clone possess tumor-initiating cell (T-IC) function and are capable of maintaining...

The 1940 film Courageous Dr. Christian shows a meningitis outbreak in “squatter town.” When Dr (Jean Hersholt) is called to diagnose child, he warns the community of more come. Once informed, unfazed mayor interjects that slums alone are at risk. Christian—deeply serious and upset by mayor's lack compassion for poor—tells him infection could also get town administrators. portrayed might have su...

This article refers to ‘A Phase II study of autologous mesenchymal stromal cells and c-kit positive cardiac cells, alone or in combination, patients with ischaemic heart failure: the CCTRN CONCERT-HF trial’ by R. Bolli et al., published this issue on pages 661–674. ‘Research is see what everybody else has seen, think nobody thought.’ Albert Szent-Györgyi 1893–1986. The current Journal reports f...

It is probable that there are both genetic and environmental risk factors for breast and/or ovarian cancer. Adequate evidence suggests that mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are associated with an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer, and perhaps other cancers as well (U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, 2013). Although estimates vary widely, in the general population about 5%–10% ...

M ost of us have experienced that excruciating silence that often descends at the end of a scintillating seminar or even a symposium talk. We have invited a leading world expert to deliver a feisty lecture on the state-of-the-art and the ferment of ideas unleashed by their own findings. They have fulfilled the brief admirably, sticking zealously to the appointed 45-min time-slot, leaving ample ...

The following article by Frost et al. (2003) exemplifies an exciting application of new ways of using anatomical evidence to reconstruct evolutionary history and embodying significant innovations on both the practical and the theoretical fronts. Their chosen subject is cranial variation in the large, extant African monkeys known as baboons, which, together with the mangabeys (their close and pr...

This chapter introduces the theme of the book (i.e., the challenge of chance) and includes brief surveys of the individual chapters. The collapse of cohesion is one of the features that characterize chance. By sheer accident, or so it seems, something breaks the typical regularity of the natural world, like a comet disrupting the solar system. At a human scale, we find examples like unexpectedl...

For most readers, their exposure to invasive species will come from media accounts of “killer” algae in the Mediterranean Sea, Burmese pythons prowling through Florida’s Everglades, or mosquitoes vectoring Zika virus in Brazil. What these observers typically miss, however, are the thousands of species that each year are moved and released well outside their native range (labeled as exotics) but...