April 2018: Volume 3 Issue 1

What ethics-related discussion is present in journal articles on brain damage due to water contamination by methylmercury? As a neurotoxin, increased bioavailability of methylmercury driven by human activities can have a significant adverse impact on future generations. We categorized ethics-related content according to a framework for Environmental Neuroethics (Cabrera et al., 2016). The framework provides a systematic way of examining phenomena at the intersection of ethics, brain, and environmental change. Measures of the relative quantity of ethics-related content and sources of academic discourse were also made. The most extensive ethical discussion concerned implications for social policy and regulation. We also noted a lack of ethics-related content with regard to cross-cultural perspectives.

The main objective of this study was to compare the efficiency of various evolutionary systems in maximizing the fitness of the population upon which they act. This was accomplished through the development of a genetic algorithm to optimize the chemical structure of carbon dioxide (CO2), which has a precisely known solution. This allowed for the comparison of efficacy of different versions of the algorithm, each based on a different evolutionary strategy. Each breeding system represents a distinct approach to reproduction, generating unique evolutionary curves; however, the population fitnesses converge toward the optimized solution at approximately the same time. It is concluded that for the given problem all versions are practical, but for more complex problems the path taken to optimization might make one method preferable.

Barriers to conventional treatments for mental health concerns in Canada posit the emergence of information and communications technology (ICT) as a means of providing mental health care; this is widely referred to as e-mental health care. Such platforms currently provide a myriad of mental health services in four broad categories: information dissemination, screening and assessment, intervention and peer support. Coupled with further research, careful consideration of e-mental health models in other countries and current barriers can be used to refine pre-existing e-therapy approaches.

Since its development in 2013, Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) Cas9 gene-editing technologies have dramatically impacted the feld of genetics research. CRISPR/Cas9 has received a lot of attention in the news in recent years, and accurate portrayal of this technology by the mainstream media has the potential to shape its perception by the public in a way that is conducive to its possible implementation as a viable tool for genetic engineering. Our aim was to evaluate how the discussion of CRISPR/ Cas9 in the mainstream media reflects and compares to that of the academic literature. We surveyed mainstream news articles (n=60) and scientific review articles (n=30) that discussed CRISPR/Cas9. Using an a priori coding scheme, we found that while the news does not accurately reflect the current state of CRISPR/Cas9 research and development, it provides more perspectives and considers broader social implications compared to the academic literature. h, both news media and academic papers provide valuable contributions to the conversation but news articles in particular have the opportunity to improve the accuracy or thoroughness of their coverage on the topic.

Proximity-dependent biotin identification (BioID) is a novel approach to identify protein-protein interactions (PPIs) in a natural cellular environment. BioID exploits a mutant form of a biotin protein ligase found in Escherichia coli, BirA*, that promiscuously catalyses biotinylation of proteins in close-proximity of the enzyme. Biotinylated proteins are then purified with conventional methods. BioID has been shown to overcome many of the limitations faced by traditional PPI techniques, such as co-immunoprecipitation, proximity ligation assays and yeast two-hybrid systems. The main advantages of BioID as compared to these methods include high sensitivity and spatial resolution, preservation of physiologically- relevant conditions, and detection of weak or transient interactions. Despite some inherent limitations, BioID remains a promising PPI technique and has led to more advanced methods, such as BioID2 and split-BioID.