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During the global Corona pandemic, the validity of science has been challenged by sections of the public, often for political gains [...]
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Aim and background: Since meningioma is the most common intracranial tumor, seizures in these patients account for a huge portion of the tumor-related epilepsy. Tumor-related seizures adversely affect the quality of life, hence a better... more
Aim and background: Since meningioma is the most common intracranial tumor, seizures in these patients account for a huge portion of the tumor-related epilepsy. Tumor-related seizures adversely affect the quality of life, hence a better understanding of meningioma seizure rates, associated risk factors, and potential mechanisms is critical to the development of improved treatment strategies. Methods: This study was conducted on 100 patients in Damascus Hospital who were diagnosed with supratentorial meningioma and were treated surgically between 2017-2021. Results: The incidence of preoperative seizure was found to be 0.92 higher for individuals with cerebral edema (OR =3.329) than for individuals without cerebral edema. Also, it was found that patients with cerebral edema had a higher incidence of postoperative seizures (OR =2.124) compared to patients without cerebral edema by 0.75. In addition, the incidence of seizures for people who have a tumor size of less than 4 cm is 0.23 h...
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The COVID-19 pandemic has affected populations globally, including Ghana. Knowledge of the COVID-19 disease, and the application of preventive public health interventions are pivotal to its control. Besides a lockdown, measures taken... more
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected populations globally, including Ghana. Knowledge of the COVID-19 disease, and the application of preventive public health interventions are pivotal to its control. Besides a lockdown, measures taken against the spread of the virus include the wearing of face masks, social distancing, regular hand washing with soap and, more recently, vaccination against the virus. In order to establish a possible link between the knowledge of the disease and compliance with preventive measures, including vaccination, a cross-sectional study employing an interview-structured questionnaire was conducted in six regions of Ghana (n = 1560). An adequate level of knowledge of COVID-19 (69.9%) was reported. The linear multiple regression analysis further explicated the differences in the knowledge of COVID-19 among the respondents by their knowledge of cholera and influenza (adjusted R-Square = 0.643). Despite this profound knowledge of the illness, two thirds of the resp...
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Sci (ISSN 2413-4155) is an international, open-access journal that covers most fields of scientific research. It has set out to challenge the conventional single- and double-blind peer review processes by adopting a post-publication... more
Sci (ISSN 2413-4155) is an international, open-access journal that covers most fields of scientific research. It has set out to challenge the conventional single- and double-blind peer review processes by adopting a post-publication public peer review (P4R) model. The model faced some difficulties with indexing and archiving services, prolongated the peer review process and its transparency received some opposition. It was therefore necessary to revisit the P4R model and modify it, resulting in the hybrid model (P4R hybrid) which is implemented in Sci today. Sci remains open to the whole scientific community as an inclusive and multidisciplinary scientific journal. In this context, we present you with six valuable contributions to the first Special Issue of Feature Papers Editors Collection 2020. The topics of the contributions address relevant and compelling issues ranging from data protection, material science, COVID-19 to the environment and climate change.
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Bert Lester Vallee (1919–2019) has been among the most important biochemists of the 20th century, a pioneer in metalloproteins and discoverer of numerous zinc proteins and enzymes, such as carboxypeptidase, alcohol dehydrogenases and... more
Bert Lester Vallee (1919–2019) has been among the most important biochemists of the 20th century, a pioneer in metalloproteins and discoverer of numerous zinc proteins and enzymes, such as carboxypeptidase, alcohol dehydrogenases and metallothioneins. His scientific achievements are condensed in over 600 publications, and articles relying on and citing his research are suited to fill entire bookshelves. Although Bert Vallee, as a scientist, has left a significant legacy on science, his more personal side and encounters have mostly escaped public observation. We deem this oversight rather unfortunate, as his personality, and indeed personal circumstances, have been truly turbulent and must have influenced his scientific career, from his birth as Bertold Blumenthal in the small village of Hemer in post-World War I Germany via Switzerland to New York and then Boston. Together with public records, the less obvious attributes and actions recommend a more holistic biography. On the occasi...
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Introduction: While coronary heart disease is decreasing in prevalence, Heart Failure (HF) is increasing in prevalence. Effective treatment is known for Heart Failure with reduced ejection fraction...
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Scientists observe, discover, justify and eventually share their findings with the scientific community. Dissemination is an integral aspect of scientific discovery, since discoveries which go unnoticed have no or little impact on... more
Scientists observe, discover, justify and eventually share their findings with the scientific community. Dissemination is an integral aspect of scientific discovery, since discoveries which go unnoticed have no or little impact on science. Today, peer review is part of this process of scientific dissemination as it contributes proactively to the quality of a scientific article. As the numbers of scientific journals and scientific articles published therein are increasing steadily, processes such as the single-blind or double-blind peer review are facing a near collapse situation. In fact, these traditional forms of reviewing have reached their limits and, because of this, are also increasingly considered as unfair, sloppy, superficial and even biased. In this manuscript, we propose forms of post-publication public peer review (P4R) as valuable alternatives to the traditional blind peer review system. We describe how the journal Sci has explored such an approach and provide first emp...
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Talk of mechanisms is ubiquitous in the natural sciences. Interdisciplinary fields such as biochemistry and pharmacy frequently discuss mechanisms with the assistance of diagrams. Such diagrams usually depict entities as structures or... more
Talk of mechanisms is ubiquitous in the natural sciences. Interdisciplinary fields such as biochemistry and pharmacy frequently discuss mechanisms with the assistance of diagrams. Such diagrams usually depict entities as structures or boxes and activities or interactions as arrows. While some of these arrows may indicate causal or componential relations, others may represent temporal or operational orders. Importantly, what kind of relation an arrow represents may not only vary with context but also be underdetermined by empirical data. In this manuscript, we investigate how an analysis of pharmacological mechanisms in terms of producing and underlying mechanisms—as discussed in the contemporary philosophy of science—may shed light on these issues. Specifically, we shall argue that while pharmacokinetic mechanisms usually describe causal chains of production, pharmacodynamics tends to focus on mechanisms of action underlying the in vivo effects of a drug. Considering the action of t...
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Chemical synthesis is a science and an art. Rooted in laboratory or large-scale manufacture, it results in certain side products, eventually compromising the integrity of the final products. Such “impurities” occur in small amounts and,... more
Chemical synthesis is a science and an art. Rooted in laboratory or large-scale manufacture, it results in certain side products, eventually compromising the integrity of the final products. Such “impurities” occur in small amounts and, within chemistry itself, are of little concern. In pharmacy, in contrast, impurities increase the potential for toxicity, side effects, and serious implications for human health and the environment. The pharmaceutical regulatory agencies have therefore developed regulatory and strategic systems to minimize the chemical presence or biological impact of such substances. Here, pharmaceuticals are turned from impure into more defined materials as part of a complex socio-technological system revolving around and constantly evolving its specific rules and regulations. Whilst modern analytical methods indicate the presence of impurities, the interpretations of corresponding results are gated by risk management and agreed thresholds. Ironically, this allows ...
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Numerous secondary metabolites found in edible plants modulate intracellular redox processes and are suggested to prevent certain diseases, especially in ageing organisms. Since such nutraceuticals provide the basis for new and innovative... more
Numerous secondary metabolites found in edible plants modulate intracellular redox processes and are suggested to prevent certain diseases, especially in ageing organisms. Since such nutraceuticals provide the basis for new and innovative designer diets and therapies, extracting these substances and their potential from plants has become a focus of research, with nanotechnology and natural nanoparticles at the centre of some of these developments.
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Background: Basic science has delivered unprecedented insights into intricate relationships on the smallest scales within well-controlled environments. Addressing pressing societal decision problems requires an understanding of systems on... more
Background: Basic science has delivered unprecedented insights into intricate relationships on the smallest scales within well-controlled environments. Addressing pressing societal decision problems requires an understanding of systems on larger scales in real-world situations. Objective: To assess how well the evidence assessors E-Synthesis and EBM+ assess basic science findings to support medical decision making. Method: We demonstrate the workings of E-Synthesis and EBM+ on a case study: the suspected causal connection between the widely-used drug amoxicillin (AMX) and the putative adverse drug reaction: Drug Reaction with Eosinophilia and Systemic Symptoms (DRESS). Results: We determine an increase in the probability that AMX can cause DRESS within the E-Synthesis approach and using the EBM+ standards assess the basic science findings as supporting the existence of a mechanism linking AMX and DRESS. Conclusions: While progress is made towards developing methodologies which allow...
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Selenocyanates demonstrate pronounced activity against bacteria of the ESKAPE family, yeast and nematodes with limited cytotoxicity against human cells.
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In the mid-1950s, Bert Lester Vallee and his colleague Marvin Margoshes discovered a molecule referred to today as metallothionein (MT). Meanwhile, MTs have been shown to be common in many biological organisms. Despite their prevalence,... more
In the mid-1950s, Bert Lester Vallee and his colleague Marvin Margoshes discovered a molecule referred to today as metallothionein (MT). Meanwhile, MTs have been shown to be common in many biological organisms. Despite their prevalence, however, it remains unclear to date what exactly MTs do and how they contribute to the biological function of an organism or organ. We investigate why biochemical research has not yet been able to pinpoint the function(s) of MTs. We shall systematically examine both the discovery of and recent research on Dr. Vallee’s beloved family of MT proteins utilizing tools from philosophy of science. Our analysis highlights that Vallee’s initial work exhibited features prototypical of a developing research tradition: it was upward-looking, exploratory, and utilized mere interactions. Since the 1960s, MT research has increasingly become intervention- and hypothesis-based while it remained largely upward-looking in character. Whilst there is no reason to think t...