Bridging the "two cultures" in ethnopharmacology: barriers against interdisciplinarity in postgraduate education.

As significant contributors to the generation, dissemination and publication of scientific knowledge, graduate students have considerable leverage on publication trends and the future direction of ethnopharmacology. The rigid discipline-oriented framework of academia is often cited as responsible for impeding interdisciplinarity, particularly for fields such as ethnopharmacology which span both the natural and social science domains. Funding opportunities, funding eligibility periods, time-to-degree patterns and departmental expectations and requirements for graduate students enrolled in the natural sciences are considerably different than for those in the social sciences.

Seeking a transdisciplinary and culturally germane science: The future of ethnopharmacology.

Publication of the 100th issue of the Journal of Ethnopharmacology offers a strategic juncture to reflect on what, intellectually and practically, substantiates ethnopharmacology as a domain of inquiry and what its future might be. We characterize ethnopharmacology through the diversity of its practitioners, and review critiques that challenge researchers to set their sights on a theory-driven and context-sensitive study of the pharmacologic potential of species used by indigenous peoples for medicine, food, and other purposes. The conclusion suggests themes that will inspire an integrated, transdisciplinary ethnopharmacology for the future.

The co-evolution of people, plants, and parasites: biological and cultural adaptations to malaria.

The urgency generated by drug-resistant strains of malaria has accelerated anti-malarial drug research over the last two decades. While synthetic pharmaceutical agents continue to dominate research, attention increasingly has been directed to natural products. The present paper explores the larger context in which plant use occurs and considers how the selection of medicinal plants has evolved over millennia as part of the larger human effort to mediate illness.