Going big by going small: Trade-offs in microbiome explanations of cancer.

Microbial factors have been implicated in cancer risk, disease progression, treatment and prevention. The key word, however, is "implicated." Our aim in this paper is to map out some of the tensions between competing methods, goals, and standards of evidence in cancer research with respect to the causal role of microbial factors.

Exploring political diversity in relation to health and stress, among graduate students in the mental health field.

Examine associations between political diversity, health, and stress in a student sample for whom examining political biases is necessary. Graduate students in mental health ( = 512) from July 2017 to June 2018. Participants completed an online survey of political views, health, and stress.

Microbes, mathematics, and models.

Microbial model systems have a long history of fruitful use in fields that include evolution and ecology. In order to develop further insight into modelling practice, we examine how the competitive exclusion and coexistence of competing species have been modelled mathematically and materially over the course of a long research history. In particular, we investigate how microbial models of these dynamics interact with mathematical or computational models of the same phenomena.

Evaluation of dexmedetomidine and postoperative pain management in patients with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis: conclusions based on a retrospective study at a tertiary pediatric hospital.

Objectives: This study evaluated the effectiveness of dexmedetomidine in decreasing opioid use in children with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis following posterior spinal fusion surgery at a pediatric tertiary care hospital over the past 10 years.

Design: This was a retrospective chart review. Patients were separated into two groups: those that received opioid via patient-controlled analgesia pain therapy alone and those that received opioid via patient-controlled analgesia pain therapy with dexmedetomidine.

Flies from meat and wasps from trees: Reevaluating Francesco Redi's spontaneous generation experiments.

Francesco Redi's seventeenth-century experiments on insect generation are regarded as a key contribution to the downfall of belief in spontaneous generation. Scholars praise Redi for his experiments demonstrating that meat does not generate insects, but condemn him for his claim elsewhere that trees can generate wasps and gallflies. He has been charged with rejecting spontaneous generation only to change his mind and accept it, and in the process, with failing (at least in some sense) as a rigorous experimental philosopher.

Social and ethical checkpoints for bottom-up synthetic biology, or protocells.

An alternative to creating novel organisms through the traditional "top-down" approach to synthetic biology involves creating them from the "bottom up" by assembling them from non-living components; the products of this approach are called "protocells." In this paper we describe how bottom-up and top-down synthetic biology differ, review the current state of protocell research and development, and examine the unique ethical, social, and regulatory issues raised by bottom-up synthetic biology. Protocells have not yet been developed, but many expect this to happen within the next five to ten years.

Patient-controlled epidural analgesia (PCEA) for postoperative pain control after lumbar spine surgery.

Spine surgery remains one of the most common procedures for patients with a wide variety of spine disorders. Postoperative pain after major spine surgery is moderate to severe. We retrospectively reviewed 245 medical records of adult patients undergoing major spine surgery who received either patient-controlled epidural analgesia based on local anesthetics and opioids or patient-controlled intravenous analgesia as postoperative pain management.