Child Neglect: What Is It, What Causes It and How We Can Minimize It?

Adaptive developmental plasticity: what is it, how can we recognize it and when can it evolve?

Developmental plasticity describes situations where a specific input during an individual's development produces a lasting alteration in phenotype. Some instances of developmental plasticity may be adaptive, meaning that the tendency to produce the phenotype conditional on having experienced the developmental input has been under positive selection. We discuss the necessary assumptions and pred...

Subclinical atherosclerosis: what it is, what it means and what we can do about it

Atherosclerosis is a chronic, progressive, inflammatory disease with a long asymptomatic phase. Disease progression can lead eventually to the occurrence of acute cardiovascular events such as myocardial infarction, unstable angina pectoris and sudden cardiac death. While the disease is still in a subclinical stage, however, the presence of atherosclerosis can be identified by several methods, ...

Macroeconomic uncertainty : what is it , how can we measure it and why does it matter ?

Since mid-2008, the UK economy has faced an unprecedented series of large adverse shocks that have led companies and households to become more uncertain about future economic prospects. These shocks include one of the United Kingdom’s largest ever financial crises, continuing headwinds from the euro-area debt crisis and the implementation of the Government’s fiscal consolidation programme. The ...

Evolvability: What Is It and How Do We Get It?

Cytogenetic biodosimetry: what it is and how we do it.

Dicentric assay is the international gold standard for cytogenetic biodosimetry after radiation exposure, despite being very labour-intensive, time-consuming, and highly expertise-dependent. It involves the identification of centromeres and structure of solid-stained chromosomes and the enumeration of dicentric chromosomes in a large number of first-division metaphases of cultured T lymphocytes...