The German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, is known for a number of ideas among which a particularly oft-quoted one is, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger” (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/30-that-which-does-not-kill-us-makes-us-stronger). A recent...
Last month, Murphy and colleagues (Cell, 2015) published a fascinating report about a patient with an immunodeficiency syndrome that underwent spontaneous resolution. The mechanism for this remarkable outcome points to the importance of somatic cell selection and...
According to both academic lore and history (Paulos, 1985; Ryerson, 2004), the late Sidney Morgenbesser, a professor of philosophy at Columbia and a renowned conversationalist and wit, was once listening to an Oxford colleague, J. L. Austin, lecturing on the...
Commentary on: M. Ackermann, B. Stecher, N. E. Freed, P. Songhet, W.-D. Hardt, and M. Doebeli (2008) Self-destructive cooperation mediated by phenotype noise. Nature 454:987-9 One of the most exciting developments in microbial population biology over the past few...
Autism is traditionally considered as a severe disorder involving some combination of repetitive behavior and restricted interests, deficits in social reciprocity and language, and mental retardation. But there is a long tradition of counterpoint to such disabilities,...