Humanism or professionalism? The White Coat Ceremony and medical education.

In this article, the author challenges the widely held assumption that humanism and professionalism are necessarily complementary themes in medical education. He argues that humanism and professionalism are two very different value systems with different rationales, different goals, and different agendas. Whereas humanism is a universal, egalitarian ideology, professionalism represents the parochial, culturally determined practices of a particular professional group that may or may not conform to lay expectations.

Angiopoietins have distinct modular domains essential for receptor binding, dimerization and superclustering.

Angiopoietins are a recently discovered family of angiogenic factors that interact with the endothelial receptor tyrosine kinase Tie2, either as agonists (angiopoietin-1) or as context-dependent agonists/antagonists (angiopoietin-2). Here we show that angiopoietin-1 has a modular structure unlike any previously characterized growth factor. This modular structure consists of a receptor-binding domain, a dimerization motif and a superclustering motif that forms variable-sized multimers.