Embracing complexity in social epidemiology

Embracing social media.

Progress in medicine and science depends on the dissemination of accurate information about health, disease and therapy. Social media are key tools to facilitate this, bringing research findings to people’s attention more rapidly than ever before and also to a wider and more diverse population than previously. For information to be useful, it must be presented and interpreted in context. This i...

Pushing limits by embracing complexity.

In this essay, celebrating the tenth anniversary of this journal, the author describes his journey, from being an engineering student to being a researcher in the biomolecular and biomedical sciences. Along the way, he is going to explain how he learned that handling the complexity of biological systems and cellular processes can provide guidance in situation we all face in our everyday life. I...

Heart failure in older adults: embracing complexity

Heart failure (HF), particularly in the setting of preserved systolic function, disproportionately afflicts older individuals and results in significant morbidity, mortality, and health care costs. In the United States, among the Medicare population (age > 65 years), HF is among the leading cause of hospital admissions. Optimal care for older adults with HF requires knowledge of age-related phy...

Intimate partner violence and HIV: embracing complexity.

Embracing complexity: organicism for the 21st century.

Organicism (materialistic holism) has provided the philosophical underpinnings for embryology since the time of Kant. It had influenced the founders of developmental mechanics, and the importance of organicism to embryology was explicitly recognized by such figures as O. Hertwig, H. Spemann, R. Harrison, A. M. Dalq, J. Needham, and C. H. Waddington. Many of the principles of organicism remain i...