The Good Life: What is it, do we have it?

Good Environmental Status of marine ecosystems: what is it and how do we know when we have attained it?

The European Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) requires EU Member States (MS) to achieve Good Environmental Status (GEnS) of their seas by 2020. We address the question of what GEnS entails especially with regard to the level at which targets are set (descriptors, criteria, indicators), to scales for assessments (regional, sub-divisions, site-specific), and to difficulties in putting i...

What is it to do good ethics?

Much of my work in bioethics over the years has been throwing off ethics as pursued in the analytical tradition. I believe the field should steer clear of the rigid style of hyper-rationalist ethics and a reduction of ethics to a search for rules and principles. It should be open to a full range of influence, in style and substance, of literature, history and the social sciences. It should take...

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...

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, ...