CLiR No. 1 – Women in science & research

No.1 MAY TABLE OF CONTENTS

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4 MESSAGE FROM THE

26 GENDER-BASED

5 EDITORIAL

27 QUARTERLY BRIEFS

6 WOMEN IN SCIENCE

29 EDITION INQUIRY

DIRECTOR

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EACH OF US A HEALER: EXOTIC ANIMALS, TRADITIONAL MEDICINE, AND GLOBAL PANDEMICS

15 GROUNDBREAKING RESEARCH BY WOMEN SCIENTIST

20 WOMEN

PARTICIPATION IN MEDICAL SCIENCE, A CONTINUOUS ACTIVITY ALONG TIME

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

32 WOMEN

SUPPORTING SCIENCE

34 CLINICAL

RESEARCH FOR A NEW BEGINNING

36 COVID-19: A

PERSPECTIVE ON HUMAN FRAGILITY

38 RECRUITMENT CHALLENGES IN ONCOLOGY

42 WOMEN SCIENTISTS, DISCOVERERS, AND SOCIAL ACTIVISTS

46 MARIE CURIE WAS BORN A WOMAN

48 THE SCIENCE OF

BEING A WOMAN ON SCREEN

54 RERUM CONCORDIA DISCORS

55 THE PRISONER’S DILEMMA

57 TO POUR MYSELF INTO THE INFIMUM DEBACLE

58 GADGETS 62 CLIR TOON

STAFF DIRECTORY

•DIRECTION

•TRANSLATORS

GENERA L DIR ECTO R

Kimrey Anna Batts Gregory J. Dechant

Marco Cid EXEC U T IVE DIR ECTO R

•COMMERCIAL

Ivette Venegas

COM M E RC I A L D I R ECTO R

•EDITORIAL

Ana Paula Villarruel

EDITOR IN C HIEF

SA L E S & SU B SC R I PT I O N S

Yara Patiño-Estévez

Dulce Besanilla

• STYLE CORRECTION Kimrey Anna Batts Gregory J. Dechant

• GRAPHIC DESIGN César A. Pérez Valencia

Clinical Research Insider w w w.c lir i n s i d e r.co m

CLiR Insider is a trademark of CRPS, Clinical Research Professional Services, LLC. All rights reserved. CLiR Insider is published quarterly by CRPS, Clinical Research Professional Services, LLC.12550 Biscayne Blvd, STE 110, Miami, Fl. USA. Editor in Chief Yara Patiño Estévez. The content of the articles and publicity is responsibility of their authors and the sponsors. CLiR Insider is not responsible for information in advertising content. The prices shown in this publication are only for informational purposes only and are subject to change. Printed in Coloristas y Asociados, S.A. de C.V., México.

•COLLABORATORS Sébastien Wischlen Guillermo Caletti Thor Nissen Federico Lerner Raquel Partida Jocelyn Robles Violeta Hernández Guillermo Balderrábano Dolores Garnica Yaheli Montserrat H. Édgar Mondragón Frank Hernández Ángel Ortuño Inti Santamarina Francisco Payó-González Juan Francisco Pérez-Vargas

MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR It is with great pride and satisfaction that we present volume number 1 of Clinical Research Insider, an ambitious project created and consolidated by professionals committed to knowledge and science. Our raison d’être lies in a constant search for scientific truth and its dissemination at different levels of society. CLIR aims to bring knowledge in the fields of research and development to our enthusiastic followers. We invite you to take part!

In this issue, we commemorate women in science. More than 90% of the people participating in this project are women. I learn from them constantly and I have witnessed their commitment, dedication, and great intelligence when overcoming adversity, identifying and resolving problems, and sharing their vision.

Women are indispensable to the development of nations and are the driver of social change.

This edition is thus dedicated to an examination of their important role and vital contributions to science, research, and medicine. We will walk through history alongside characters such as Agnodice of Athens, the first woman doctor, Marie-Anne Pierrette, Florence Nightingale, and Marie Curie herself, who will share anecdotes from their daily lives and will allow us to learn from their enthusiasm, vision, strategy, and courage.

At CLIR, we are committed to working side by side with the public and our collaborators in an ethical and professional way. Each quarter, we will touch upon current topics, analyze situations, and review scientific methodologies, so that we can all have access to knowledge and contribute to societal development.

We invite you to take part in this project: accompany us through these pages, have fun and laugh along with us, be amazed by what we human beings are in the process of creating, and dream of new hopes in medicine.

Sincerely,

Marco Cid, Director

Chemical pharmacologist from La Salle University, MBA from ITESO, Senior Management IPADE Business School. Medicine research and development expert, entrepreneur, founder of various profit and non-profit associations, and developer of a private investment capital firm.

EDITORIAL WOMEN AT (SCIENCE) WORK Women are half of humanity, half of history, half of the labor, half of the knowledge, and only get a fraction of recognition.

History has not been so fair to women, as we owe to many with forgotten multiple, great discoveries that have gone unnoticed too often or signed with a male pseudonym. Other times they just have been mocked. But this is changing: the work of women in the field of science is increasingly visible, thanks to the struggle of women and allies, however, there is still a long way to go before society gives women all the recognition deserved for their enormous contributions in all fields, especially in science.

It is not desirable for humanity to ignore half of the possibilities and solutions.

Diversity shows, again and again, its value and function in terms of survival and evolution: development accelerates, respect grows, the environment improves, we move hand in hand, and with empathy, this is the way it happens when a woman is in charge. But there are no exclusive qualities of one genre or another. Instead, there is a multiplicity of ways of creating valuable knowledge for the rest of us and what surrounds us.

Paving the way, understanding, allowing, and recognizing the work of women in the various fields of science is a way of taking care of ourselves and moving forward hand in hand.

Yara PatiĂąo-EstĂŠvez, EIC Writer, editor, science communicator, and art curator

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WOMEN IN SCIENCE Jocelyn Robles

B.S. in Biotechnology is currently a Study Start Up and Study Closure Especialist at CidVID.

As a girl, I was always surprised that I heard more men’s names than I did women’s. As a woman in science, it bothers me. For while it is true that less than 30% of the world’s researchers are women, there are some amazing women scientists out there, whose names you might never have heard before. There are countless inspiring women who have made historic contributions to the field of science and who have helped us make sense of the world we live in.

Women may still face various obstacles in pursuing science and technology, but one thing we can be certain of is that we’re much better off than just a century ago. This is all thanks to the women who have paved the way for the rest of us.

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Here are some of the many inspiring women that have changed the scientific world:

1.J ennifer D oudna (b . 19 February 1964) Let’s start with a modern scientist: Doudna is an American biochemist. Her name may not be familiar to you, but the technology she helped develop most definitely is: CRISPR-Cas9.

She became a leading figure, along with Emmanuel Charpentier, in the “CRISPR Revolution,” after they proposed using CRISPR-Cas9 for programmable editing of genomes. In June of this year (2020), she will be awarded the Wolf Prize in Medicine, an international award for outstanding contributions to humanity.

2.G ertrude B. E lion (23 January 1918–21 February 1999) Going a bit back in time, we have another American biochemist and pharmacologist. Elion is credited with the following inventions: Mercaptopurine (Purithenol), the first treatment for leukemia, also used in organ transplantation; Azathroprine (Imuran), the first immunosuppressive agent used for organ transplantation; and Nelarabine, used for cancer treatments. In 1988, she shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with George H. Hitchings and Sir James Black for their use of innovative methods of rational drug design for the development of new drugs. These new methods focused on understanding the target of the drug rather than simply using trial and error. Elion’s work led to the creation of the AIDS drug AZT. She worked for organizations such as the National Cancer Institute, the American Association for Cancer Research, and the World Health Organization, among others.

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3.Margaret A. Liu (b. 11 June 1956) Liu is a researcher who studies gene expression, immune responses, and vaccines. She is the founder of research in the field of DNA-based vaccines and was the first researcher to provide evidence that gene-based immunization could protect against infectious diseases, such as influenza, tuberculosis, HPV, and HIV. In addition to her work with animal models, she has been involved with the first trial of gene-based influenza vaccines in humans. Discover magazine recognized Liu in 2002 as one of the 50 most important women in science.

4.Maxine Singer (b. 15 February 1931) Singer is a molecular biologist and science administrator, as well as a leader who has always stood up for the cause of women and minorities in science. She is known for her contributions to solving the genetic code, through her work with Leon Heppel on the role of enzymes that regulate synthesis of nucleic acids.

Singer’s research has also included the study of chromatin structure and genetic recombination. She has been

influential in refining science policy by raising concerns, when she was the cochair of the Gordon Conference in 1973, about potential health effects and risks in the relatively new field of recombinant DNA technology. She introduced the First Light project, a science education program for elementary school students in Washington, D.C. that seeks to improve mathematics and science education in schools. In 2002, Discover magazine named her one of the 50 most important women in science.

5.Vera Rubin (July 23, 1928–December 25, 2016

Rubin was an astronomer who pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates. She identified the discrepancy between the predicted angular motion of galaxies and their observed motion by studying galactic rotation curves. This phenomenon became known as the galaxy rotation problem and provided evidence for the existence of dark matter. While it was initially met with skepticism, her work has been confirmed in subsequent decades. The New York Times described her legacy as “ushering in a Copernican-scale change” in cosmological theory. She spent her life as an advocate for female astronomers and was known for

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her mentorship of aspiring young women in the field. Rubin is the first woman to have a large observatory named after her: the National Science Foundation’s Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

We have only managed here to scratch the surface of some of the amazing women who have helped pave the way through several generations for women seeking to find themselves in science. One way we can thank them for the work they have done is by learning their stories and by working

to make the world of science a more welcoming one for women and minorities everywhere.

“Don’t let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your curiosity.

It’s your place in the world; it’s your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live.” ―Mae Jemison

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Each of Us a Healer: Exotic Animals, Traditional Medicine, and Global Pandemics Juan Francisco Pérez Vargas

Writer, analyst and systems engineer

“I vow that in a future life, when I have attained Supreme Enlightenment, sentient beings afflicted with various illnesses, with no one to help them, nowhere to turn, no physicians, no medicine, no family, no home, who are destitute and miserable, will, as soon as my name passes through their ears, be relieved of their illness”

The 8th Vow of the Medicine BuddhaThe oldest traces of Chinese therapeutic treatments come to us from the Shang Dynasty, which ruled the Lower Yellow River Valley around 1600 BCE. The Shang Dynasty produced the earliest examples of Chinese written language, included in oracle bones and mainly used in divination. For the Shang, the dead ruled the world, but depended entirely upon the living for their sustenance. If said sustenance was ever lacking, terrible curses befell the population. Numerous cases of assorted ailments that plagued the Royal Family are mentioned (such as bloated stomachs, toothaches, and the like), but these were always attributed to curses cast by resentful ancestors. It was not until the appearance of the Huángdì Nèijīng (The Esoteric Canon of the Yellow Emperor) that the documentation of traditional Chinese medicine began. The Huángdì Nèijīng is divided in two broad sections: the Suwen (which consists of a lengthy dialogue between the Yellow Emperor and the mythical doctor Qibo, who is said to have learned the medical trade from Guangchengzi, an avatar of one of the Taoist Three Pure

Ones) and the Linghsu (which dealt with acupuncture). Interestingly enough, the Huángdì Nèijīng ignores the notion of supernatural influences such as spirits and magic, but is widely dependent on doctrines related to Taoism (such as the concept of Yin/Yang and the Five Phases) Fast forward to the 1950s. Chairman Mao made an impassioned speech about the need to support and promote traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) by way of its massive unification in service of the people. And here is where things get interesting: Mao never believed in TCM. Even his western-trained medical advisors found the notions contained in the older texts baffling and nonsensical.

The widespread support for TCM was an ideological move aimed at promoting a Marxist view of healthcare, which sought to prove that even the Western world was very much enamored of it.

Neither did it hurt that the tsunami that was the Cultural Revolution positioned TCM as a low-cost alternative to provide healthcare for the masses (see our previous issue).

By: Jo

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During the Great Leap Forward (19581962), Chairman Mao introduced a bold new policy that, in theory, would transform the mainly agrarian Chinese society into a modern industrialized state by setting up collective steel furnaces in the countryside, abolishing privately-owned farms, and imposing production quotas on grain and steel.

The results were a total disaster. It is estimated that between 38 and 45 million Chinese citizens starved to death, with numerous cases of cannibalism reported throughout the countryside after the complete collapse of the food supply.

By 1978, the Chinese Government, which held strict control over food production, was forced to make sweeping reforms and open the market to private companies in order to provide nourishment to the devastated population. Part of these reforms were extended to local farmers, who started capturing and selling small wildlife in order to sustain themselves.

The Government supported this move, as it allowed poor peasant households to earn a living.

ocelyn Robles

A decade later, the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Protection of Wildlife, drafted during the Seventh National People’s Congress of 1988, stipulated that wild animals were now property of the state and were allowed to be exploited for human use, as well as encouraging their breeding and domestication, which led to the increase in their availability. It is not unusual to find restaurants ―of varying degrees of legality― throughout Continental China, Macao, and Hong Kong that offer their clientele camel hump, peacock, water snakes, and tiger penis soup (which, according to the claims of the restauranteurs, is a sort of turbocharged Viagra). According to TCM, you can improve your swimming abilities by eating certain kinds of fish and your vision in the dark by consuming owl, while pangolin can cure a wide variety of ailments, ranging from kidney disease (if you eat its meat) to palsy (if you use its scales). And it is pricey. Very, very pricey, but we will discuss that in a moment.

The exotic animal trade is a robust US$148 billion dollar industry. In an economy of US$140.1 trillion dollars, that is merely a drop in the bucket, but it is drop that gives exceptional leeway when hiring lobbyists to keep the gravy train rolling.

Wet markets in China have a sinister reputation deeply rooted in rampant Sino-phobia as a breeding ground for strange and disturbing ailments and creepy people eating bat spring rolls or sea cucumber tacos or whatever else they are rumored to eat (as a rule, Sino-phobes are not that bright). The markets play a vital role in the social life of Chinese citizens, but the situation becomes murky when the grey market of the aforementioned exotic animal trade rears its problematic head: the availability of this produce in the wet

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may have come from bats and spread via an intermediary animal (very probably a pangolin or a turtle). At this point it is irrelevant, and the fact of the matter remains the same: exotic animals and their trade/consumption have been responsible for two pandemic outbreaks in the first two decades of the twenty-first century.

markets presents a sanitary hazard, as their selling and slaughtering in confined spaces stimulates zoonosis and is generally anti-hygienic. It is very important to note that the majority of the Chinese population is against these practices, but there is a very wealthy minority that eagerly consumes the most exotic and expensive species simply because they can.

The Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, Hubei, has been identified as the origin point of the current COVID-19 pandemic.

It has been theorized that the pathogen

After the initial outbreak, and following a questionable handling of the health crisis by the Chinese government, the country rolled up its sleeves and got to work.

By means of the Social Credit System enforced by the Communist Party, the healthcare system was able to track the movements and travel patterns of potentially infected persons. A complete lockdown of the city of Wuhan (and, eventually, the rest of the country) was enforced, and an emergency relief hospital was built in just ten days. At the time of this writing, the outbreak is under control, with new cases ironically popping among people returning to continental China.

Taiwan, an island of 23 million habitants just off the coast of China, braced for the

worst. The local government issued travel restrictions to passengers coming in from the mainland, conducted a mass assessment of medical supplies, and started an aggressive communications strategy aimed at both keeping the public informed and providing them with clear procedures in case of an infection. The usage of Big Data, the experience with the previous SARS outbreak, and a quick response from the authorities managed to keep the number of confirmed cases at 252, with two deaths.

Singapore was also prepared for the worst. The tiny island-state had lived through the previous SARS epidemic (with 283 reported cases and 13 deaths, combined with a massive economic downturn) and learned valuable lessons about the spread of disease, hygiene, and societal involvement. Local officials launched a widespread testing policy and painstakingly traced all contacts that possibly infected patients may have had. This strict policy of prevention, information, and containment (without shutting down any of the economic engines) has managed to keep the number of cases at 683, with two deaths.

The Black Death, caused by the Yersinia Pestis, arrived in Europe in 1347, and decimated

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the continent by killing between 30% and 60% of its population. It never truly went away, however: the most recent outbreak of the Black Death occurred in San Francisco in 1908. To put this into perspective, people died of bubonic plague the same year as the Tunguska incident and the production of the first Model T. Nevertheless, we have learned from our previous experiences: we now have insecticides, genetics, vaccines, and antibiotics.

You can kill most of something, but it is nearly impossible to kill all of something. Western governments need to start re-thinking their approaches, not just to public health, emergency response, and funding, but also to intersectionality and the interlinking of the human experience in the second decade of the new millennium.

And in the midst of one of humanity’s most difficult trials in recent memory, it would be good to remember the words of Jun’ichirō Tanizaki: “We find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates.”

GROUNDBREAKING RESEARCH BY WOMEN SCIENTISTS Violeta Hernandez Genomic Biotechnologist & Molecular and Cellular Biologist with focus on Vaccinology

Science-related fields have been dominated mostly by men. According to United Nations data, less than 30% of researchers in the world are women (Nature Cell Biology Editorial, 2018).

This may be a consequence of the discouragement women face and/ or of their lack of interest in the area of science, the so-called STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math).

have made remarkable contributions to science and shed light unto the unknown that is around us.

Across these STEM fields the representation of women varies. Biology, for example, is one of the fields in which women are more represented, in comparison with engineering, computer science, or physics, owing to several probable reasons we shall not discuss in this article (Renken, 2016).

In spite of all the challenges of gender discrimination and the lack of recognition in the scientific community that women have to cope with, there have been many inspiring women in these areas who

In biology, many advances have been achieved by women in different subfields, such as genetics. Among the many women represented in this domain, we may recall Barbara McClintock

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(Hartford, Connecticut, 1902–Huntington, New York, 1992), who had a deep interest in plant breeding, and specifically in Zea mays (maize). In collaboration with Lowell F. Randolph, McClintock identified the maize chromosomes required to complete proper cytology tests. Surprisingly, in the Cornell cornfields McClintock discovered a rare maize plant: a triploid, which means that the plant has three sets of chromosomes in each cell. After analyzing the plant for several months, the two researchers published their report in The American Naturalist, but there was a small problem: Randolph’s name was on top (Parr, 2016). In spite of this lack of recognition, McClintock’s love of the discipline allowed her to remain committed.

Maize produces many colored kernels, and since each one of them is an embryo produced from an individual fertilization, hundreds of offspring can be scored on a single ear. This is why maize is an ideal organism for genetic analyses. In fact, thanks to these characteristic, McClintock was able to study transposable elements (TEs) ―also known as jumping genes― and her work proved revolutionary, suggesting that an organism’s genome is not a stationary entity, but rather is susceptible to changes and rearrangements. This and her many other contributions to genetics finally led her to being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1983 (Pray & Zhaurova, 2008).

A n ot h e r n ota b l e g e n et i c i s t a n d hematologist was Janet Davison Rowley (New York, New York, 1925–Chicago, Illinois, 2013). She was the first scientist to identify a chromosomal translocation as the cause of leukemia and many other cancers. This led to the understanding that cancer is a genetic disease and became the basis for personalized cancer care and targeted therapy (National Women’s Hall of Fame, n/d).

Rowley became interested in chromosomes a decade after the discovery of DNA, while she was at Oxford together with her husband (a noted pathologist), who was on sabbatical there. Prior to that, she had worked as a physician at a clinic for children with learning disabilities in Chicago, where she returned later on to continue her research work on a part-time basis, while also raising four children. Working at home, she discovered the swapping of material between chromosomes 8 and 21 in a patient with

acute myeloid leukemia. Rowley’s career was marked by many other accomplishments: she demonstrated the importance of the balanced translocations in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and in the 1970s she explored the consequences of the Philadelphia chromosome, a genetic abnormality in chromosome 22 of CML cells, which provokes uncontrollable cellular divisions. This finding led to the development of the drug Imatinib, which has improved the outcomes of patients with CML (Hokland, 2014; National Cancer Institute , 2018).

In addition to all her brilliant work corroborated by many of her colleagues and recognized by many prizes―, Rowley also helped many women postdocs to develop as scientists while at the same time putting their families first.

She was characterized by an outspoken personality combined with a supportive approach (Hokland, 2014; National Women’s Hall of Fame, n/d).

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Among the most creative scientific theorists of the modern era, the place of Lynn Margulis (Chicago, Illinois, 1938–Amherst, Massachusetts, 2011) is secure.

It had long been established that, over time, the effects of natural selection on mutations would generate new adaptations. This gave rise to new questions: did it mean that new lineages and adaptations form by branching off of old ones and inheriting the genes of the old lineage? Many researchers answered no. Margulis discovered that a major organizational event in life likely involved the combination of two or more lineages through symbiosis.

In the 1960s, while Margulis was studying the structure of cells, it seemed to her that mitochondria an organelle that generates the energy required for metabolism― resembled bacteria. Others had posited the same thing in the late nineteenth century, and some even suggested that mitochondria arose from bacteria living in permanent symbiosis in both animals and plants.

There are many illustrations of the idea in plant cells. For example, algae and plant cells have a set of bodies used to carry out photosynthesis, which are known as chloroplasts. The energy they capture from sunlight induces biochemical reactions that produce organic matter. Thus, chloroplasts ―like mitochondria― are similar to bacteria. Margulis and others suggested that chloroplasts and mitochondria evolved from symbiotic bacteria, specifically from cyanobacteria, small organisms that harness energy from light and that abound in both fresh water and in oceans. For Margulis, symbiosis was an unrecognized but major force in cellular evolution.

She published her findings in 1970 in Origin of Eukaryotic Cells (University of California Museum of Paleontology, n/d).

Later on, in the 1970s, this was demonstrated by two teams of microbiologists headed by Carl Woese and W. Ford Doolittle, who studied genes inside chloroplasts of some species of algae and discovered that the chloroplast DNA was cyanobacterial DNA. The mitochondrial DNA was similar to the one in a group of bacteria that provokes typhus (Fig. 1).

After further study of the origins of other organelles and of eukaryogenesis ―an evolutionary process leading to the origin of the eukaryotic cell―, it has been shown that symbiosis plays a crucial role in them. Nevertheless, not all of Margulis’s ideas have been widely accepted. There is still a long way to go, as we come to understand that evolution is more flexible than was initially believed (Gray, 2017; University of California Museum of Paleontology, n/d).

Figure 1. Phylogenetic analyses based on genetic sequences support the endosymbiosis hypothesis (University of California Museum of Paleontology, n/d).

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would have a selective advantage.

Professor Robert “Swampy” Schwab, who was chair of Wildlife and Fisheries, was surprised at her question. For months he went to the bar, bringing her a variety of scientific articles and convincing her that science was fascinating. Matzinger would go on to earn an undergraduate degree in 1976 and a PhD in 1979 (Dreifus, 1998; National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, 2013).

Becoming a scientist is not always an easy decision to make. A clear example of this is Polly Matzinger (b. 1947 in La Seyne, France), who worked stints as a bartender, carpenter, jazz musician, Playboy bunny, and dog trainer, and is now a chief of the T-Cell Tolerance and Memory Section of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States.

It all started one day while she was working as a cocktail waitress and overheard two professors from the University of California at Davis talking about animal mimicry. She asked them why no animal had ever mimicked a skunk: a raccoon with a white stripe

In the field of immunology, Matzinger proposed the danger model, which says that the immune system is less worried about things that are foreign to it than those that do damage. There were two stages to this realization: in the first, Ephraim Fuchs (an eminent oncologist from the NIH) and Matzinger realized that a useful immune system would fight against dangerous things and ignore those that are not, but they could not figure out how to explain it. Then one day in the bathtub, Matzinger suddenly realized that “things that are dangerous do damage”: if there is no damage, there is no danger (Dreifus, 1998).

Here again is proof, as many believe, that you can always find the best answer in simplicity.

The two scientists then had to find out how white blood cells learn about damage.

The story of how they did so is a little odd: Matzinger and Annie (her border collie) were watching over some sheep grazing in a field, when something moved in the nearby woods, frightening the sheep, and Annie jumped up to protect them. As an immunologist, Matzinger related the incident to her work, thinking that alarm signals from damaged cells might wake up the dendritic cells sentinels present

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in every organ, which could be said to resemble sleeping sheep dogs― and then alert the immune system (Matzinger, 1994; Dreifus, 1998).

This model explains most of what the immune system does right, as well as most of what it appears to do wrong, covering a broad range of areas, such as transplantation, the immunobiology of tumors, and autoimmunity. After many years, Matzinger still has critics that refuse to take her model seriously, but she is not cowed: she continues doing her research.

While reading this article, you may have noticed that all these women have something in common: they were intrigued by life science processes, ranging from the origins of life to the treatment of devastating diseases such as cancer. As it happens, there is an interdisciplinary field concerned with the origins, early evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. The field is known as astrobiology: it explores whether or not extraterrestrial life exists and how humans may be able to detect it.

Jill Tarter (b. 1944 in New York) is a widely recognized astronomer, known for her work on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The question of whether we are alone in the universe has attracted the attention of humankind for many years and Tarter has tried for much of her life to provide an answer. She formerly worked as a scientist for NASA’s SETI program, which aims to identify transmissions from alien intelligence. She now works on the Allen Telescope Array, a group of more than 350 telescopes located northeast of San Francisco, California. Tarter and her team are looking for signals at frequencies or wavelengths that are different from what nature produces, according to her in 2014 (SETI Institute, n.d.; Walsh, 2018).

Many of us agree with Tarter that the universe certainly seems to have become more bio-friendly, although that does not mean that the habitable real estate is in fact inhabited. That is precisely the question we are asking. We do not know the answer, but it is astonishing that researchers are developing ways to explore the solar system and devising instruments that can picture worlds around other stars and so attempt to discover if there is any biology or technology present on them (Walsh, 2018).

REFERENCES •Dreifus, C. 1998. A Conversation With Polly Matzinger; Blazing an Unconventional Trail to a New Theory of Immunity. The New York Times, June 16, sec. F, p. 4.

•Gray, M. W. 2017. Lynn Margulis and the endosymbiont hypothesis: 50 years later. Molecular Biology of the Cell, 28(10), 1285-1287.

•Hokland , P. 2014. Janet Rowley 1925-2013: a rock star of haematology and genetics. British Journal of Haematology, 165, 269-270.

•Matzinger, P. 1994. Tolerance, Danger, and the Extended Family. Annual Review of Immunology, 12, 991-1045.

•National Cancer Institute. 2018. How Imatinib Transformed Leukemia Treatment and Cancer Research. Available at <https://www.cancer.gov/research/progress/discovery/gleevec> •National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. 2013. Laboratory of Immunogenetics: Polly Maztinger. Available at <https://www.niaid.nih.gov/research/polly-matzinger-phd> •National Women’s Hall of Fame. n/d. Janet D. Rowley. Available at <https://www.womenofthehall. org/inductee/janet-d-rowley/> •Nature Cell Biology Editorial. 2018. Celebrating women in science. Nature Cell Biology, 20, 993.

Available at <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41556-018-0190-4#ref-CR3> •Parr, P. 2016. Barbara McClintock (1902-1992): Fighting the Male Establishment. TheHumanist.

•Pray, L., & K. Zhaurova. 2008. Barbara McClintock and the discovery of jumping genes (transposons). Nature Education, 1(1), 169.

•Renken, E. 2016. Women in science tend to gravitate toward biology, cognitive sciences. The Brown Daily Herald.

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Women participation in medical science, a continuous activity along time.

Guillermo Caletti, Ph.D. Head of Clinical Operations at Boehringer Ingelheim for Mexico & Central America

I ntroduction Development of Medical Knowledge and the use of it in new therapeutic areas is a big challenge across the world and requires talents dedicated to identify options to treat unmet medical needs.

This knowledge is being developed

by Biological Scientist that dedicate their lives and efforts to investigate these new alternatives to treat patients, but the way is plagued by several obstacles including lack of money, lack of support and team spirit, credibility challenged by others due to egocentric perception and, no less important, gender.

In this last topic, in a world managed

A gnodice of Athens Photo Source

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/ Agnodice._Wellcome_L0016719.jpg

by Men, Scientific Women has to double their efforts not just to position their selves as leaders in the field but also simply to get credibility of their investigational results.

I would like to dedicate this review to those fantastic and exemplary women who challenge all frontiers and conquer their goals despite the storm faced.

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Agnodice of Athens is considered the first Medicine Woman in history or at least the first one with documented activity treating patients. She borned in century IV B.C. and studied Medicine in the Medical School of Herophilos (Latinised - Herophilus) disguised as a man.

She was very successful as Medicine Practitioner.

Her success made her colleagues angry and was accused of sexual harassment to her female patients, however, along the trial she clarify her real gender and was supported by her patients to avoid the death penalty. After the trial, and exonerated of all charges, Agnodice continues her Medicine practice as woman with the recognition of her colleagues and the entire community.

“A certain girl named Agnodice wished to learn medicine, and her desire was so vehement that she cut her hair in the manner of men, and entrusted herself to the teaching of a certain Herophilus. After learning medicine, when she learned that a woman was suffering in his womb, she went to her. As she did not want to entrust herself to Agnodice because she considered it to be a man, she raised her robe and showed that she was a woman; and thus she was healing them. When the doctors saw that they were not admitted in the presence of the women, they began to accuse Agnodice, because they said that she was a depilated man and corruptor of women, and that they were posing as sick. The Areopagites having gathered for this reason, they began to condemn Agnodice. She raised the robe to them and showed that she was a woman. At that time the doctors began to accuse her more strongly. For this reason, the most distinguished women appeared at the trial and said: “You are not husbands but enemies, because you condemn the one who restores our health.” At that time, the Athenians amended the law so that free women could learn the art of medicine.1”

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M etrodora ( aprox 200 – 400 a .C.) Metrodora was a Greek Medicine woman authors the most ancient known medical text written by a woman “On the Diseases and Cures of Women”2.

Many Medical topics, like Gynecology, were covered in her Medical text, in a culture where female’s health problems were focused almost unique to Delivery problems.

Her book was referred in a lot of Medical publications of that time in the Ancient Greece and Rome also was translated and published in Medieval Europe.

Graphic credit: Alzinous

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45495859

W omen of S alerno Also referred to as the “Ladies of Salerno,” the “Salernitan women,” and the “mulieres Salernitanae,” are a group of women physicians who studied in medieval Italy, at the Schola Medica Salernitana, one of the first medical schools to allow females.

This Medical School was established in Century X. The most relevant figure form this school was known as Trótula (Trota of Salerno) who wrote several text in diverse topics in medicine that were used for teaching in Medicine Universities. She dare to contradict Hipocrates denying the fact that menses turns women “poisoned”.

Source:

http://mujeresconciencia.com/app/ uploads/2016/01/trotula-salerno.jpg

She also believed that prevention of disease is better than treat the unhealthy, making this woman an individual beyond her time³.

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M edicine W omen in M exico In 1887, the first Mexican Women graduated from the Medicine University was Matilde Petra Montoya Lafragua, and after she only 151 Medicine women were found until 1940 in all Medicine Schools and Universities across Mexican territory 4. Majority of them were graduated from the National School of Medicine of the National University of Mexico.

Imagen:

https://nuestrasvoces.mx/matilde-montoya/

Ana Cecilia Rodriguez de Romo 4, made this research in Mexico and found that in this group appears the first Nicaraguan doctor, María Concepción Palacios Herrera, the first one in Costa Rica, Marieta Rimola de Biasso, and another, without being the first in his territory, she came from Russia to study medicine: Sofia Polzhidok. In addition, Ana Rodriguez found the original pioneers in Mexican country from Chiapas, Chihuahua, Guanajuato, Guerrero, Hidalgo, Jalisco, Michoacán,

Morelos, Puebla, Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, Sinaloa, Tabasco, Tamaulipas, Veracruz and Zacatecas.

Regarding the place of origin, it was initially thought that for purely geographical reasons, the first interested in studying medicine would be from the country’s capital, but with surprise, the author found that came from almost all ends of Mexico⁴.

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P rofessionals in Patient C are : Florence Nigthingale was a British nurse, writer and statistician, considered a pioneer of modern professional nursing and creator of the first model nursing conceptual. It laid the foundations for the professionalization of the nursing with the establishment, in 1860, of her nursing school in London’s Saint Thomas Hospital.

Her work was the source of inspiration for Henri Dunant, founder of the Red Cross and author of the humanitarian proposals adopted by the convention of Geneva. She became world famous for her pioneering nursing work in assisting the wounded during the Crimea.

In 1883 Queen Victoria awarded him the Royal Red Cross, and in 1907 she became the first woman to receive the United Kingdom Order of Merit.

The Nightingale oath made by the nurses upon graduation was created in his honor in 1893. International Nursing Day is celebrated on the date of his birthday.

I would like to make a special mention for all those unknown women who care about their children, grandchildren, nephews, siblings, parents, who provide care and treatment prescribed by doctors and who relieve with love, tenderness and words of hope.

A recognition for those women who, with the help of alternative medicine, heal the soul, the spirit and heal the wounds of the mind and heart hurt by a deception, unrequited love or disappointment by an infamous act of a close friend .

For them and for their vocation as healers, my deepest recognition and spiritual gratification.

References 1. Cayo, Julio Higino: Fábulas, Ediciones Akal, Madrid, 2008; p. 185.

2. www.mitrestorres.com/blog/0mujeres-medicina 3. https://medikuenahotsa.com/15/la-lucha-de-las-primerasmujeres-medicas 4.Rodriguez, Ana. Revista de la Facultad de Medicina de la UNAM, Vol 58, No2, Marzo – Abril, 2015. Pp 36 -40

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Gender-based Domestic Violence An Interdisciplinary Analysis from the Perspectives of Sociology and Neuroscience Raquel Partida-Rocha She has a Ph.D. in Social Sciences, a Master in Social Sciences and a BA in History from the University of Guadalajara; SNI level I researcher; full-time professor at UdeG with 35 years of teaching work.

S ummary This text seeks to shed light on new postmodern social explanations regarding the unequal social interaction between men and women in their personal relationships and its consequences. It is considered necessary here to end the status quo on discussion of Genderbased Domestic Violence (GDV), which has hitherto centered mostly on conflictual interpersonal relations owing to gender struggles and not on the structurally and historical unequal social constructions handed down through the twentieth century. We start from a question: How can GDV among women in the Mexican state of Jalisco be characterized? Characteristics of GDV involve series of aggressions perpetrated against a woman by a person with whom she has daily interactions emotional, economic, sexual in a private space (residence, room, vehicle, kitchen, or outside the home). The hypothesis proposed is that GDV derives from a close preexisting relationship between victim and aggressor, from a condition of subordination and power between unequal parties.

gender-based domestic violence, private property, gender inequality, inequality between men and women, aggression, mistreatment.

In this study we propose to discuss GDV from the perspective of the sociology of the emotions, combined with Characteristics of GDV involve series of aggressions perpetrated against a woman by a person with whom she has daily interactions emotional, economic, sexual in a private space (residence, room, vehicle, kitchen, or outside the home). The hypothesis proposed is that GDV derives from a close preexisting relationship between victim and aggressor, from a condition of subordination and power between unequal parties.

For many women, it is in the home, contrary to social and personal expectations, where aggression is mainly experienced. Nevertheless, the fact that women participate in a formal and informal labor market continues

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Quarterly briefs Without a doubt: pandemic. Covid-19 has had a significant impact on clinical trials, as they are developing at a breakneck pace. The approvals of the regulatory authorities have increased their speed, as well as the growth of multiple groups of specialists interested in helping to find treatments and solutions for this new one that all this year has left us amazed, locked up, broke, and confused if we are luck y. Given the speed and ex tent of news production on this topic, the rest of the news will not deal with it. Here you can find some briefs of coronavirus-free clinical research news:

“New research from mosquito and disease experts at the National Center for Atmospheric Research suggests populations of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which spreads Zika virus, will grow in the United States as the weather gets warmer.”

Source: w w w. b e c ke r s h o s p i ta l rev i e w.c o m/ qualit y/rese archers- es timate p ote ntia l -zi ka -v i ru s- ri s k- i n - 50 - u scities-5-findings.html

“A project funded by Instituto de Salud Carlos III to perform a systems biology analysis of the interactions between microbiome and host at the genetic, transcriptomic, metabolomic and lifestyle levels.”

Source: www.colonbiome.org

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“ While the world’s focus is trained on the new coronavirus, a groundbreaking clinical trial finds researchers battling a tough-totreat form of an “old” infectious disease, tuberculosis.”

Source: h t t p s : // w w w . u s n e w s . c o m / n e w s / health-news/ar ticles/2020 - 03 - 04/ n e w - w e a p o n - i n -f i g h t- a g a i n s tmultidrug-resistant-tb “Three research teams led by Stanford Medicine investigators were honored April 14 with a 2020 Top 10 Clinical Research Achievement Award at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. Winning studies were chosen by members of the Clinical Research Forum, a nonprofit foundation that promotes the understanding of clinical research and its impact on health and health care.”

Source: https://med.stanford.edu/

“Development of CAR T-cell Therapy for Multiple Myeloma (Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute). This study focused on developing a new therapy for myeloma that uses the body’s own immune system to treat cancer.”

Source: ht tps://w w w.clinicalresearchforum. org/ “The Clinical Research (CR) Forum will honor ten outstanding clinical research studies at the 2020 Top Ten Clinical Research Achievement Awards at the National Press Club on April 14, 2020.

These award-winning studies exemplify major advances resulting from the nation’s investment in research to benefit the health and welfare of its citizens, and reflect the influential work being conducted by investigators at nearly 60 research institutions and hospitals across the United States, as well as at partner institutions from around the world.”

Source: https://www.clinicalresearchforum.org/

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Edition Inquiry ISSUE # 1 FOR YOU, WHICH WOULD BE THE MOST IMPORTANT SCIENTIFIC CONTRIBUTIONS MADE BY WOMEN? I certainly believe that many women deserve to be named and remembered for the progress they have made in different disciplines; however, there is a trio of African-American women to whom I would like to award the distinguished honor.

Known as human computers, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Dorothy Vaughan calculated extremely complex operations with pencils and some calculators, which allowed man to go to space. Without their dedication and strength, against the adversity of those times, it would not have been possible for the human being to become an alien visitor on other worlds. Today we know that we opened this door to transform the history of humanity, to warn the inhabitants of the stars that we are here and that thanks to mathematics like them, we are capable of conquering the cosmos.

-Marco Cid, CEO

The creation of the first computational algorithm, by Ada Lovelace.

-Violeta Hernández, biotechnologist Eva Ramón Gallegos is researching for non-invasive treatments for the eradication of the uterine cervical cancer produced by the human papilloma virus (HPV), using photodynamic therapies. Also, the discovery of radium and polonium

by Marie Curie, of course.

-Maria E. Martens, architect

For me, we own DNA structure to Rosalind Franklin more than Watson and Crick (change my mind).

-Amanda Rountree, student Dorothy Hodgkin with the chemical structure of vitamin B12, she was awarded the Nobel!

-Vick y Toscano, teacher Hedy Lamarr was an actress and inventor who co-invented an early version of frequency-hopping spread spectrum, various of those techniques are incorporated into Bluetooth technology.

-Cristina Cervantes, CPA“

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The first to determine the presence of black holes in our galaxy was Andrea M. Ghez, an American astronomer.

-Jorge A . Palos, visual artist I think that women, in general, contribute their feminine perspective to science, adding variables such as the emotional one, which has opened the doors to a more universal, more open science. An example is Jane Goodal, who has had an incredible journey. She, without a training in science, carried out a scientific study without rigid bases, put all her passion and vision to turn it into science.

And, with all that juice of emotions, she communicated it and moved the world to care about conservation, not only of chimpanzees but also forests and many species.

-Trilce Ortega, Neurocientist.

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Women Supporting Science

“I’d like to thank my wife for typing my manuscript”

Thor Nissen Medical doctor, with a degree in Clinical Pharmacology, and an MBA in Quality Administration. He has succeeded collaborating to drug development in world leading pharmaceutical companies both in Medical Affairs and Clinical Research within new drugs, regulatory, marketing and sales departments.

Gender disparity has never been more widely discussed than at present. As humankind moves towards equal rights, the underrepresentation of women in science is now being recognized, and with luck, it is on its way towards being mitigated (Ceci et al., 2009). Marie Curie represents the globally-known case of appreciation for a life of scientific success and profound contributions.

Not every female scientist, however, has been the subject of such renown.

Several examples of inventions classically associated with a male scientist are now being disclosed as having been created, or at least significantly supported, by female colleagues, wives, mothers, sisters, or other women in their life (Lady Science, 2019). These women’s contributions remained in the background, in the acknowledgements and footnotes of prominent scientists. It is not unusual to find statements like: “I want to thank my wife for typing my manuscript.” Or even: “Thank you for taking care of the children and keeping our home while…” But most of the time these women did more than just typing manuscripts or taking care of housework. They had formal academic training of their own, but failed to receive due appreciation for their accomplishments.

Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze was the name of the woman who married Antoine Lavousier, known as the father of modern chemistry. Until recently, Madame Lavoisier was almost unknown. She was an intelligent and free-spirited woman with vast scientific knowledge,.

Her contributions to Antoine’s work have now been revealed and she has been granted the title of the mother of modern chemistry (Ferrer Valero, 2018).

William Herschel’s sister, Caroline Herschel, received a certain amount of recognition, but it was always

less than that given to her brother’s accomplishments (Famous Scientists, 2018). She herself even emphasized her brother’s achievements when awarded the Gold Medal of Science by the King of Prussia at the age of ninetysix.

In more recent history, Mileva Marić’s scientific career was always overshadowed by that of Albert Einstein (Gagnon, 2016).

Marić studied at the same institute and received better grades than Albert. They published a paper in which only Albert’s name was credited, because they agreed that having a woman’s name included would cause it to receive less attention.

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Thequestionis,havecircumstances improved today? A recent report from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics states that women account for a minority of the world’s researchers, although the situation varies among countries (UNESCO, 2019): Disparities regarding women’s participation does not vary solely by country. For example, key climate-change related sectors of science such as skilled workers, professionals, and decision-makers do not have equal representation, but female scientists are well represented in various related science disciplines, including health, agriculture, and environmental management. At the same time, they remain very much a minority in other fields that will be vital for the transition to sustainable development, such as energy, engineering, transportation, information technology (IT), and computing (Huyer, 2015).

SAGA (STEM and Gender Advancement) is a global UNESCO project supported by the government of Sweden. In its conclusions from a publication on gender equality in science and engineering, it states: “The under-representation of women in STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] translates into the loss of a critical mass of talent, thoughts and ideas, which hinders countries from reaching their maximum development potential” (UNESCO, 2017). This and many similar initiatives are needed to oversee and evaluate gender equality and to integrate aspects of gender into science, technology, and innovative policies so as to make progress towards a better world.

References •Ceci, S. J., W. M. Williams, and S. M. Barnett. 2009. Women’s underrepresentation in science: Sociocultural and biological considerations. Psychological Bulletin. 135 (2): 218–261.

•Famous Scientists. 2018. Caroline Herschel. 3 April 2018. Available at <www. famousscientists.org/caroline-herschel/> (accessed 20 March 2020).

•Ferrer Valero, Sandra. 2018. Mujeres en la historia. La madre de la química moderna, Marie Lavoisier (1758-1836). Available at <https://www. mujeresenlahistoria.com/2018/07/marie-lavoisier.html>.

•Gagnon, Pauline. 2016. The Forgotten Life of Einstein’s First Wife. Scientific American Guest Blog. Available at <https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/ guest-blog/the-forgotten-life-of-einsteins-first-wife/>.

•Huyer, Sophia. 2015. Is the Gender Gap Narrowing in Science and Engineering? UNESCO Science Report: Towards 2030 (UNESCO Publishing: 2015), p. 93. Available at <https://en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/usr15_is_ the_gender_gap_narrowing_in_science_and_engineering.pdf>.

•Lady Science. 2019. The Wives, Sisters, and Helpers of Science. Available at <https://www.ladyscience.com/podcast/episode17-wives-sisters-helpersof-science>.

•UNESCO. 2017. Measuring Gender Equality in Science and Engineering: The SAGA Toolkit. Available at <http://uis.unesco.org/sites/default/files/ documents/saga-toolkit-wp2-2017-en.pdf>.

•UNESCO. 2019. Women in Science. Fact Sheet No. 55 (June 2019) FS/2019/ SCI/55. Available at <file:///E:/CLIR/Women%20in%20science/2019_UNESCO_ Women-in-science-en.pdf>.

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Clinical Research for a New Beginning Dante Alducin He has 12 years of experience in the Clinical Research Field specialized in onclology, currently is dedicated to boosts enrollment studies on demand trough social networks.

Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, better known as Paracelsus, was one of the most famous alchemists in history. He also helped to produce a revolution in medicine during the Renaissance. But he lived in a different age, when the general rule was to maintain one’s knowledge in obscurity and complexity, like a personal trophy.

In the course of time, the study of alchemy branched off and developed into some of the various disciplines of modern science.

Nowadays we have the scientific method and sophisticated communication networks: as humankind, we have accumulated more knowledge than at any other period in history.

Well, that’s the theory in any case…

Yet today, with the outbreak of COVID-19, some unpleasant facts have emerged: people lack even basic information, such the need for proper handwashing and social distancing. But what is really worrying is the diminished authority that science holds over these issues.

There is an interesting paradox: clinical research is one of the most financially powerful branches of the medical industry and it serves to improve human quality of life day by day, and yet, outside of the club, no one really knows about it.

What is more, people are afraid of it. They think it is all about guinea pigs in cages or mad scientists testing mysterious “formulas” as they cackle dementedly. Clinical research is not so different today from what alchemy once was, and all of us involved in it are not so different from Paracelsus: we are generating a silent medical revolution of which people are unaware or afraid.

Of course, pop culture and past mistakes in history have a lot to do with it, but it also shows how incapable we are of spreading

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the message outside of our own little circle.

In fact, science in general has a marketing problem: most scientists are just not very good at explaining to the world how wonderful their work is.

All over the world, schools show little interest in teaching students how to divulge scientific knowledge. As a result, many important things are lost amidst abstractions. Science is viewed with reverence and respect (as alchemy once was), but also with distrust.

This is a complex situation, of course, and difficult to change right here and now, but what can we as individuals do? As I see it, we must be the ambassadors of our expertise, and fortunately people are curious about what we do. Today, it is COVID-19, but it may be anything else later on.

We have an opportunity to do our part: some of the most basic things could actually make a difference in our immediate environment.

We have to repudiate myths and falsehoods, to instruct our friends and neighbors in simple but effective methods like proper handwashing, and to be responsible about what we share on social networks. It can all make a difference.

Science requires a deep transformation.

Closing the gap between public distrust and real interest will be challenging, but the rewards would be immense: stricter control in public health emergencies, greater trust in clinical research, better ideas, and â&#x20AC;&#x2022;thanks to all of hisâ&#x20AC;&#x2022; a better world in which to live.

Only by following this path can science move farther away from alchemy and closer to people everywhere.

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COVID-19: A Perspective on Human Fragility Guillermo Balderrabano Bachelor in Biomedical Sciences

Since December 2019, humanity has been experiencing the beginning of an event that is bound to change the course and perspective of modern societies, namely, the new disease caused by the coronavirus, or COVID-19 (Wu et al., 2020). The first case of this disease was reported in Wuhan, China (Huang et al., 2020), and it later spread throughout that country before crossing the borders of more than other 190 countries worldwide (Worldometer, 2020).

The disease caused by the coronavirus is not new in terms clinical symptoms, which can also occur in severe acute respiratory syndromes (SARS), such as fever, fatigue, and muscle pain, sometimes followed by massive alveolar damage and progressive respiratory failure. Its mortality rate, however, is alarmingly high when it affects older people (those over sixty) and people with some underlying medical condition (such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, or chronic respiratory disease) (World Health Organization, 2020).

Although some measures have been taken at global level (such as restrictions on international flights) and these have successfully slowed down proliferation in certain countries by anywhere from 40% to 90% (Chinazzi et al., 2020), they have not been sufficiently effective at the local level to prevent the spread of the virus. The process of local transmission also involves contact with asymptomatic people, who are in the incubation phase of the virus, which can last five or six days (World Health Organization, 2020; Bai et al., 2020), as well as with people in the infectious phase (up to the days after the incubation phase), who continue to spread the disease (Zou et al., 2020). As a result, prophylactic measures are sometimes undermined by time issues or by a lack of social responsibility and willingness to adopt proper hygiene and isolation practices.

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Moreover, in many places, there is limited hospital and human resource infrastructure (doctors, nurses, and laboratory staff) to deal with the simultaneous intensive care of many patients with the same clinical diagnosis. According to several authors, this is where the system is thought to present complications (Anderson et al., 2020; Lipsitch et al., 2020).

We must also take into account the deterioration of the global economy due to the outbreak of the infection, as the direct and indirect economic costs of the virus will affect economic growth in most counties. Some of the aspects most affected by the crisis will be the consumption of goods and services and an increases in operating costs, with the consequent dismissal of qualified personnel and decreases in salaries, in order for companies to keep afloat (McKibbin & Fernando, 2020).

In spite of some admirable efforts over recent months, the end goals are still a long way off, considering the entire process required to validate the efficacy and safety of a vaccine that could sharply curb the rate of COVID-19 infection. In a best case scenario, the estimated time for the production of such a vaccine would be at least twelve or eighteen months (Anderson et al., 2020). Meanwhile, societies will have to deal with COVID-19 infection through palliative care and extraordinary investments in health care, not to mention the expenditures at a macroeconomic level that will be required to activate national economies in the hope of minimizing an inevitable economic recession (Anderson et al., 2020; McKibbin & Fernando, 2020).

Finally, it is important to mention the fragility with which human beings confront so unexpected an event, which can put the physical and economic health of nations at risk in just a few months. It is therefore a priority for all countries, without exception, actively to exercise efficient public health plans that can help to clarify the epidemiology of infectious diseases, while at same time evaluating their potential impact on both a local and global scale (Lipsitch et al., 2020; McKibbin & Fernando, 2020).

References •Anderson, R. M., H. Heesterbeek, D. Klinkenberg, & T. D. Hollingsworth. 2020. How will country based mitigation measures influence the course of the COVID-19 epidemic? The Lancet 395 (10228), 931-934.

•Bai, Y., L. Yao, T. Wei, F. Tian, D. Y. Jin, L. Chen, & M. Wang. 2020. Presumed asymptomatic carrier transmission of COVID-19. Jama.

•Chinazzi, M., J. T. Davis, M. Ajelli, C. Gioannini, M. Litvinova, S. Merler, & C. Viboud. 2020. The effect of travel restrictions on the spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. Science.

•Huang, C., Y. Wang, X. Li, et al. 2020. Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China. The Lancet, 395: 497-506.

•Lipsitch, M., D. L. Swerdlow, & L. Finelli. 2020. Defining the epidemiology of Covid-19 studies needed. New England Journal of Medicine.

•McKibbin, W. J. & R. Fernando. 2020. The global macroeconomic impacts of COVID-19: Seven scenarios.

•World Health Organization. 2020. Coronavirus disease 2019 ( COVID-19): situation report, 51.

•Worldometer. 2020. COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic. March 29th. Available at <https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/>.

•Wu, F., S. Zhao, B. Yu, Y. M. Chen, W. Wang, Z. G. Song, M. L Yuan, et al. 2020. A new coronavirus associated with human respiratory disease in China. Nature, 579 (7798), 265-269.

•Zou, L., Ruan, F., Huang, M., Liang, L., Huang, H., Hong, Z., & Guo, Q. 2020. SARS-CoV-2 viral load in upper respiratory specimens of infected patients. New England Journal of Medicine 382 (12), 1177-1179.

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Recruitment Challenges in Oncology SĂŠbastien Wischlen Clinical research specialist with over a decade of experience in the healthcare and pharma clinical operations sector. As Customer Solutions Director with Clinerion, he draws from his passion for medicine, research and patients as well as from his exposure to all clinical trial/study phases and the vast majority of therapeutic areas, to identify and facilitate the current patient, healthcare and industry needs.

In the field of clinical research, the therapeutic area of oncology in particular is facing a substantial patient recruitment challenge. At present, roughly 15,000 oncology trials are actively recruiting (Longtaal Clinical Trials Landscape Dashboard; www.clinicaltrials.gov), while participation rates have been estimated at a mere 3%-8% of possible candidates, with even smaller numbers in minority and geriatric populations (Institute of Medicine [US] Forum on Drug Discovery, Development, and Translation, 2010).

Low enrolment rates threaten more than just the success of individual clinical trials: they may also hinder treatment advances and corresponding benefits to outcomes (Unger et al., 2016).

Improving cancer care for patients in all aspects is the most important outcome promised by trials, but the fact is that any success stories happen in defiance of competition for patients among oncology researchers and of barriers of protocol feasibility and patient eligibility. Along with the fact that patients themselves have little awareness of existing opportunities, this all results in the reality that recruitment is often a labor- and time-intensive process.

Fortunately, technological innovations are starting to offer new ways to overcome historical oncology recruitment barriers

and disrupt the status quo. One example of technology coming to meet this need is the evaluation of live EMR data, which allows the combination of advanced clinical trial design with the possibility of assessing the occurrence of specific patient attributes at a site level. This would help accelerate recruitment by identifying trial-eligible patients at the time of diagnosis.

Most recruitment workflows applicable today rely strongly on oncologistsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; thorough knowledge of their patient base and their awareness of active clinical trials.

Patients, however, are not always tracked as potentially eligible for a clinical trial until after they have failed first-line therapy.

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On the industry side, the decision on which site to contact and thus to make potential patients aware of a new clinical trial traditionally follows the path from strategy leads at headquarters to regional affiliates, and then on to site managers at the local level, where the start-up and feasibility teams begin to determine ―or to pre-select― the clinical sites that might be eligible to participate. The final selection is based on a variety of factors, including, but not limited to, historical performance data, overall patient counts, specialization, and the assessment of historical claims data, if available. At this point, it is important to mention that, in the case of Germany, over half of cancer patients are not treated in university hospitals or teaching hospitals following initial diagnosis, but rather visit specialized regional clinics which might not necessarily make it onto the initial roster of potentially eligible sites.

With the increasing progress toward precision medicine, however, more comprehensive clinical diagnostics are often required to qualify patients for certain trials. Specialists may need to obtain additional tumor samples or biomarkers from patients and oncologists will need

subsequently to rely on the diagnostic teams for new analyses or ancillary reviews. This approach is not only cumbersome for the oncologists’ and pathologists’ case flows, but it can also delay entry into active treatment protocols and may have an emotional impact on patients, owing to treatment delays.

Timing is clearly of the essence in cancer trial recruitment. Principal investigators, clinical research coordinators, and other research staff are facing minimal time windows within which to work, not only owing to the complexity of diagnosing patients with specific inclusion/ exclusion criteria, but also because it is often challenging to obtain even baseline information in a consolidated fashion.

In essence, clinical sites need to find patients who have appropriate tumor types and who are at the right stage of treatment within various lines of therapy. Moreover, protocol eligibility factors may require patients who are refractory to a certain drug class and/ or in relapse. This forces physicians and coordinators to identify potential candidates

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feasibility questionnaires, attending to follow-up reminders, and waiting to receive completed questionnaires. Manual tracking and analysis of feasibility responses will be eliminated, and the availability of feasibility status update reports and dashboards will benefit study management teams seeking to keep up with all the activities tied to global trials (Clinical Researcher, 2017).

after they have failed one therapy, but before they are starting another course of treatment, in contrast to proactive identification and tracking of patients who are in certain lines of therapy earlier on.

The sooner oncology trial candidates can be identified after a diagnosis, the faster researchers, providers, and ―most importantly patients can achieve better outcomes.

From a site management perspective, contract research organizations (CROs) typically see that 15% to 20% of sites under-recruit or do not recruit at all. A large portion of this percentage is caused by the inability to identify the right patients at the right time and to approach them about participating in trials. Easing cumbersome workflows increases the likelihood that patients will be identified for relevant trials, alleviating the frustration of enrolling few recruits after completing months of upfront preparation (Howland & Bowen, 2019).

By adopting an online feasibility tool, pharmaceutical companies and contract research organizations can reduce the costs and effort devoted to e-mailing

Researchers and sponsors also benefit from the condensed timelines through technology-supported trial designs. Fasttrack enrolment can help alleviate delays that cost as much as US$8.0 million per day (Howland & Bowen, 2019). In addition, the sooner patients are enrolled in a study, the more efficacy and safety data can be collected.

For researchers and patients, the timely awareness of clinical research as a care option allows for earlier and more informed decision-making. Every increase in cancer study participation, small or large, represents new possibilities of saving lives.

Traditional challenges associated with oncology trial recruitment ―low enrolment rates amidst stiff competition― can be overcome. Identifying and tracking trialeligible patients driven by live EMR data is a new mechanism to help get the best care for patients.

References •Clinical Researcher. 2017. Accelerating Study Start-Up: The Key to Avoiding Trial Delays. Available at <https://acrpnet.org/2017/02/01/ accelerating-study-start-up-the-key-to-avoiding-trial-delays/> •Howland, C. Meghann and T. J. Bowen. 2019. Accelerating Oncology Trial Recruitment by Identifying Patients at Diagnosis. Clinical Researcher, June 2019 (Volume 33, Issue 6). Available at <https://acrpnet. org/2019/06/11/accelerating-oncology-trial-recruitment-by-identifyingpatients-at-diagnosis/> •Institute of Medicine (US) Forum on Drug Discovery, Development, and Translation. 2010. Transforming Clinical Research in the United States: Challenges and Opportunities. 6, Clinical Trials in Cancer. Available at <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK50895/> •Unger, J. M., E. Cook, E. Tai, and A. Bleyer. 2016. The role of clinical trial participation in cancer research: barriers, evidence, and strategies. Am Soc Clin Oncol Educ Book 36:185-98.

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Women Scientists, Discoverers, and Social Activists Yaheli Hernández Mexican writer and editor

I tried to give this text the tone of a scientific document, but it was impossible. I don’t know whether that has something to do with the popular appeal of these figures, due not only to their being women, but also to the political, social, and cultural factors that seem to place obstacles before our view of their work and their contributions, quite apart from these same variables.

The ages in which they lived, whether in the recent or distant past, are not so far removed from the issues they had to confront in their careers: from the beginning of my research, I noticed a tendency toward escape, beginning with Katherine Johnson, with the name change a woman was expected to accept when she got married. What would have happened if Johnson’s articles had been published under her maiden name? What about the lack of recognition in the case of the highly mediatized Nobel Prize, which was deliberately denied to Lise Meitner?

What is clear is that the most important thing for these women was not to have their names engraved on a trophy, but rather what they contributed to the rest of us for generations to come: the beginning of a path that has not yet reached its end.

K atherine Johnson Was an Afro-American mathematician and aerospace technologist who passed away just recently, in February of this year. She was responsible at NASA for calculating the orbital mechanics of Project Mercury and the Apollo 11 moon landing. It is said that astronaut John Glenn claimed he would not have orbited the earth if Katherine had not been the one reviewing the calculations for his journey. Johnson’s department at NASA, supervised by another Afro-American mathematician, Dorothy Vaughan, and made up of white male engineers, was known as the “Computers in Skirts.”

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Mathilde Krim

Lise Meitner

The work of Mathilde Krim was initially in the fields of cytogenetics and cancer at the Weizmann Science Institute in Israel, where she contributed to developing methods for the prenatal determination of sex. After settling in the United States, together with her husband Arthur B. Krim, she became a supporter of civil rights and LGBT causes.

In collaboration with Elizabeth Taylor, Mathilde created the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR), where she has since worked to raise awareness about this disease, its causes, and its modes of transmission.

Was trained in the fields of radioactivity and nuclear physics. She helped to discover nuclear fission, an achievement that earned her collaborator Otto Hahn the Nobel Prize.

When it became know that Meitner also deserved the award, Hahn was upset by the media attention she was receiving and claimed exclusive credit for the discovery, insisting that Lise had only hindered his work. Meitner also made contributions to the research that led to the development of reactors for the production of electricity, nuclear weapons, and nuclear medicine.

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Rachel Carson

Adriana C. Ocampo Uria

A marine biologist and conservationist, Rachel Carson was a pioneer in the ecology and conservationist movements.

Her most famous book, Silent Spring, in which she denounced the use of synthetic pesticides, contributed to an enormous growth in public concern about the environment: it pitted Carson against the chemical pesticide industry and helped to create a conservation movement has generated political change and the prohibition of DDT.

Is a planetary geologist from Colombia who now lives in Houston and directs a science program at NASA. When still an adolescent, Ocampo worked at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She also belonged to the team that identified, through satellite imaging, the impact of the Chicxulub crater. The meteorite that caused this crater was responsible for the extinction of more than 50% of all plant and animal species, including the dinosaurs.

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Marie Curie Was Born a Woman Dolores Garnica

Essayist and journalist. She has worked as a promoter, manager, and communicator. She is a columnist in ITESO’s Magis magazine, and a regular contributor to Luvina, a magazine of the University of Guadalajara. Her first book of essays, “A grey, almost green”, by Editorial Paraíso Perdido, was presented in 2017.

S ummary : Polonium, radium, mobile radiology, the isolation of radioactive isotopes, and the first medical treatments with radiation, among many other discoveries and inventions that transformed physics, chemistry, medicine forever: all this we owe to Maria Salomea Skłodowska-Curie, known to history as Marie Curie (Poland, 1867– France, 1934), the scientist whose legacy still moves through science like a female icebreaker.

Maria Salomea Skłodowska When a Russian inspector visited the school of the young Maria, in her native Warsaw, the twenty or so pupils concealed their notebooks and pulled out their embroidery. They did so because it was forbidden to study Polish history or literature, owing to the invasion by the Russian empire, but also because it was unseemly that girls should study at all. Thus did the little girl learn, as others like her, for hundreds of years, since the beginning of history ―with some few exceptions, such as Marie Curie herself― that certain interests and passions, such as study or even reading, could be practiced only in hiding.

Maria Skłodowska and her sister spent their first years at the “Floating University” in Poland, a system of clandestine studies that required graduate to pay for their education by giving classes to the less fortunate. “I have behaved well. I almost never mention of subject of higher education for women. In general I observe the decorum in my conversation that would be expected of someone in my position,” she wrote to her sisters when she was working as a teacher to save money and continue her studies outside of Poland. It was not until 1891 that she was able to travel to Paris, a sort of utopia that also turned out to be an iceberg.

NOTHING IN LIFE IS TO BE FEARED, IT IS ONLY TO BE UNDERSTOOD Marie Curie

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The First “Marie” In France Maria changed her name to Marie, in a show of newfound freedom. In 1895, of the 776 students in the faculty of sciences of the Université de Paris, only 27 were women. It was also in 1895 that Marie married Pierre Curie, completing a name that would go down in the annals of science: Marie Curie, who in 1903 would be only the second woman in history to earn a doctorate in one of the sciences (the first was Elsa Neumann, in Berlin, just a few years earlier, in 1899); the first woman to occupy a professorship at the Université de Paris; and the first woman to be placed at the head of a laboratory in that institution. Curie was also the first woman to be appointed to the faculty of the École Normale Supérieure and to be awarded the Davy Medal of the Royal Society in Great Britain, although she was not invited to deliver an acceptance speech.

Marie Curie was the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize (in physics), in 1903, followed by a second in chemistry in 1911. Although the Swedish Academy intended originally to honor only Pierre Curie and his colleague Henri Becquerel for the Nobel in 1903, Pierre threatened not to travel to Stockholm to receive the award unless it was awarded to Marie as well. Finally, Marie Curie was the first woman to be entombed (on her own merits) in the Pantheon in Paris, formerly reserved for “illustrious men.”

The Legacy of the Icebreaker Together with her husband Pierre, Madame Curie continued research into a discovery made shortly before, in 1895, by Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, while he was experimenting with a Crookes-Hittorf tube and a Ruhmkorff coil. As part of her doctoral thesis, Marie undertook to study the nature of radiation from uranium salts, in addition to her teaching work and raising two children. The research was so promising that her husband decided to abandon his own work and join her in the laboratory. In that ramshackle shed, which had formerly served as the university’s dissecting room, polonium and radium were discovered in 1898.

Thanks to these discoveries, we have accurate diagnoses by means of tomography and X-rays, radiotherapy, nuclear medicine, sterilization equipment and methods, measurements of thickness, density, and humidity, gammagraphy, and industrial radiography, not to speak of body scanning in airports, smoke detectors, Carbon-14 analysis, and many other uses in agriculture and in the other sciences.

Between 1898 and 1902, the Curies published findings from their work on more than thirty occasions, including studies of the potential use of radium to cure diseased cells and eliminate tumors. They decided not to patent their discovery of polonium and radium, believing that something they had only discovered did not belong to them. Pierre Curie died in 1906, bringing terrible sadness to the life of our heroine. Strangely enough, the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, served as a spur and encouragement to Marie to continue her scientific work.

During the war, on the ravaged battlefields, it was common to see the coming and going of the Petites Curies, mobile radiology units designed and financed by Marie Curie, which saved thousands of lives. In the midst of war, she had found a heroic means of applying her knowledge in physics and chemistry to improve the treatment offered by field hospitals. Many were surprised at the new vocation of the famous scientist: why would someone want to help in war? But Marie Curie saw no reason for surprise: after all, she had already fought many battles, she had already broken up many icebergs.

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The Science of Being a Woman on Screen Francisco Payó González Mexican filmmaker. He has made short films, advertising productions inside and outside Mexico, and assisted in the directing and production departments, and as script advisor, of various film projects.

Behind many of the greatest discoveries, advances, and achievements of humankind, there stands not a great man, but a great woman. The audiovisual world has recreated many of these historical figures and transformed so many other women into historical figures that, in spite of existing only on the screen, they have inspired many of us to change our lives and the world in which we live.

As we wait for the premiere of the motion picture Radioactive, based on Lauren Redniss’s graphic novel inspired by the life of Marie Curie, and directed by none other than Marjane Satrapi (the creator of the comic Persepolis), let’s look back over some motion pictures and TV series that, each in their own way, break or have broken with female stereotypes, making an impact on viewers of every gender.

A gora (2009)

A life devoted to knowledge, in which the heroine develops visionary theories that would be corroborated centuries afterwards, forms the axis of this impeccable production about the philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer Hypatia, who found herself confronting one of the greatest historical enemies of science and women’s rights: the then nascent Catholic Church.

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The X Files (1993 – 2018)

Dana Scully was so inspiring that she set off the “Scully Effect” in the 1990s, when an unprecedented number of women in the United States began to study science, technology, engineering, and mathematics at university.

According to one study, more than 50% of these women were fans of the series The X Files.

H idden Figures (2016)

On 24 February 2020, the mathematician Katherine Johnson, known as the “human computer,” passed away.

Her contributions marked a before and after in space exploration, although both her race and her gender caused her to be denied her due. The passage of time and this motion picture have undertaken to mend the injustice.

Star Trek (1966 – ?)

Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, expert linguist and cryptographer, in charge of communications on the Starship Enterprise, was a pioneer among fictional female characters with more active and decisive roles, while at the same time breaking racial barriers that were still very much in place at the time.

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G orillas in the mist (1988):

This motion picture is based on the life of scientist Dian Fossey, whose entire career was devoted to the cause of protecting the African gorilla from extinction. Fossey rejected her preordained role as housewife and homemaker and risked her life to the ultimate consequences. Starring an incomparable Signourey Weaver, this is a genuine classic of the 1980s.

J urassic Park (1993)

““God destroys dinosaurs. God creates Man… Man creates dinosaurs…” reflects one of the male characters, to whom the paleobotanist Ellie Satler replies: “Dinosaurs eat Man. Woman inherits the Earth…” In her case, at least, the planet would be in good, responsible hands.

A rrival (2016)

With the arrival of two extraterrestrial spaceships and the global hysteria that follows, Earth’s only hope is not a man armed to the teeth but a female linguist endowed with the intelligence and sensibility needed to decipher the language of the alien visitors before other human beings react as they always do to the threat of the unknown…

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C ontagion (2011)

A new virus begins to spread across the planet, infecting people quickly and lethally, while a group of experts from the government and civil society race against the clock in search of a cure. Kate Winslet plays Dr. Erin Mears, whose great determination and courage will be vital to saving us from the pandemic.

C ontact (1997)

Based on Carl Saganâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s novel, this motion picture stars the matchless Jodie Foster as Dr. Eleanor Arroway, an astrophysicist who has devoted her life to making contact with extraterrestrials. The paradoxes of faith and science, of merit and opportunism, of pain and transcendence, make for moments of great intensity.

The imitation game (2014)

Although the film centers on Alan Turing, it also pays special attention to Joan Clarke, another character based on real life: a codebreaker whose contributions not only helped the work of the team coordinated by Turing, but also may have tipped the balance in favor of the Allies in the Second World War.

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Women in leadership positions improves the economy Federico Lerner Chief Operating Officer at LatinaBA, a regional CRO; and Chairman of CAIC, Argentinean Congress of Clinical Research. Dr Lerner was responsible to lead many different clinical research teams for first time to man to large global registry trials, he was a former Latin American head for four major global CROs.

Having recently celebrated International Women’s Day, on March 8th, I would like to begin this article by stating that empowering women and encouraging them to take leadership positions is crucial to both the population at large and the world economy.

Much is discussed in other articles in this issue regarding women’s contributions to science, technology and innovation, but it is also important that a few lines be devoted to the financial impact of women’s work and the community impact due to this inclusion.

For many years, gender inequality was perceived exclusively as a matter of social injustice, ethics, and moral values. Society is continually evolving, however, and reflection on each issue can reveal that gender inequality has impacts on the economy as well.

Based on the information from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), published in March of 2019 by its former chairwomen Christine Lagarde, having a woman in a leadership position or as a board member improved company asset performance by 8 to 13 points (Lagarde, 2019).

Recent studies suggest that the economic benefits of increasing gender equality in the workplace surpass previous estimations. This is mainly because, while men and women can have the same potential, they bring a different set of skills to the table and different perspectives on ideas and innovation, which is of great value (Ostry et al., 2018).

Other studies show that women express a different kind of fear towards failure. This tendency towards being more careful and cautious can have its benefits. Companies with a balanced-gender board produce better results. This is particularly true for the manufacturing, high technology, and service sector, which requires specialized knowledge.

Gender diversity among board members for companies which work in the area of financial oversight may also be associated with much greater financial stability (Sahay and Čihák, 2018).

Another mayor finding is that more women in the workplace benefits men: their aptitudes complement and boost productivity, which increases salaries for both genders. These salary increases and boosts in productivity compensates for the fact that there are more workers competing for the same job.

There is still a long way to go in terms of leadership. Women occupy only 18% of political offices, hold only 24% of cabinet member positions at an international level, and can be found in only 34% of managerial roles.

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There is legislation in the works to revert this situation, although perhaps not as much as is needed. We do know that legislation does not change behavior. From our tiny corners of the world, we should all be more inclusive and, as citizens of the societies we represent, we should have a clear sense of the need to push for equal opportunities and fairness.

One of the lessons laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic is that individuality fails. We have a better chance as a society when we enhance our social awareness and increase our empathy for one another in pursuit of a common goal, which is to be safe. These are the same principles we need to apply in order to eliminate barriers and achieve gender equality.

References •Lagarde, Christine. 2019. A Global Imperative: Empowering Women Is Critical for the World’s Economy and People. Finance and Development 52, no. 1 (March 2019). https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ ft/fandd/2019/03/empowering-women-critical-for-global-economylagarde.htm.

•Ostry, Jonathan D., Jorge Álvarez, Raphael Espinoza, and Chris Papageorgiou. 2018. Economic Gains from Gender Inclusion: New Mechanisms, New Evidence. IMF Staff Discussion Note 18/06, International Monetary Fund, Washington, D.C. •Sahay, Ratna, and Martin Čihák. 2018. Women in Finance: A Case for Closing Gaps. IMF Staff Discussion Note 18/05, International Monetary Fund, Washington, D.C.

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Rerum concordia discors Ángel Ortuño Writer and poet. Bachelor of Arts from the University of Guadalajara He is the author of more than five poetry books. He has published in Tierra Adentro, La Tempestad, Cuadernos Salmón, La Colmena, Cantera Verde and Letras Libres.

In the twelfth epistle from the first book (circa 20 BCE), Horacio uses this phrase to refer to the philosophy of Empedocles, and more specifically, to the formula relating the four elements that as was believed at the time made the existence of the entire universe possible: water, fire, earth, and air all existed in “the discordant order of things.”

The baroque syntax of Beatricia Braque’s poetry employs hyperbaton to induce significant alterations in the verse’s syntactic chains, in a twist that causes us to question the functioning of meaning itself, or what we understand of it, only to recover it with clarity when further confusion would seem to occur. Language here is a code that mutates before our eyes, with the notion of order constantly shifting.

In her poem, Tania Carrera offers an interesting analogy to game theory.

As we know, the prisoner’s dilemma fundamentally operates on discord, on the disparity between two beating hearts: the

mysterious behavior of those who refuse to cooperate with one another, even if their reluctance ends up harming them.

In The Gay Science, Nietzsche writes that, “all ordered society puts the passions to sleep.” Just a few lines later, the German philosopher refers to the important role of behaviors considered “evil” in the vital modification of social codes. The discordant order of things appears once more.

Inti Santamaría’s illustration synthesizes and the choice of verb is more than metaphorical this volume’s main premise: the highly relevant and yet underrecognized role that the women of science have played, throughout human history, in brilliant inquiry, in the sharp questioning of orders that were once thought immovable, in a fundamental contribution to sciencebased thought and action.

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The prisoner ’s dilemma

Tania Carrera She is a poet and singer. She has published the poetry collections Espejos (Gato Negro Editorial, 2013) and Un dios lubricante (www. undioslubricante.com, 2015; Editorial Fund of the State of Morelos, 2018)

I repeated, with a foreing voice inside prayers I could not beleive.

The noble childhood trust and sing certainties As shared lies.

Age dries the mouth, however and shut down the truth: There will be always a first time That lead us to the last one.

Hopelessly linked no permission to die no permission to war.

Forced to enjoy according our own luck.

So, we learn to enjoy in the shadow because we felt it above us among us, below us: before us and we only got left the freedom of a smile.

Maybe that´s why we are so clumpsy We laugh at the one who falls We laugh when it hurts And we go out at night toasting for our failure We laugh at the tragedy Because it is right to declare it.

It is right to say No more I´ll stay her under the shadow of this tree fresh like death on the roadside.

The thorax, nevertheless, swells and thins, And dance as sheets in the wind.

But make no mistake, This is not about violence.

Nor should we call ir love.

Solidarity is as drastic as a mathematical dilemma in which words are missing to explain our meaning and speculation are abundant to name our worth.

Who could ask you to come and lay under the tree?

Who could ask you not to cry, to stop?

That´s the pain that life bring us That´s the faith we ascribe to death A fair faith, without imagination: A simple, poor and neat rest.

We cooperate, against the guilt to believe that we are the same: mud and beauty much, much more beauty than debris.

(Translated by Marisol Sahagún Pérez)

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Inti Santamarina, 2020

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To pour myself into the infimum debacle Beatricia Braque Neo-Baroque Poet // Unredeemed Narrator // Multimaterialist Femimarxist // Ideologically Inconsistent

To pour myself into the infimum debacle Hurt from humidity among the limp prairies of the monarchical sprouts A swap so smooth from trivial Riboviria silently hoisting with outspread spicules yearning a silky iridescent touch of adherence The bramble miasma of tyrannical stalactite tucked in ticks/ clothed in accent marks now exercising its right of reply prostrated in the armchair with vermilion velvet scepter in hand Its minuscule majesty unfolds With pleasure Inside the flesh chamber In the tart cabin that transcribes ad nauseam (Translated by Verรณnica Meneses)

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gadgets Depression, Taps, and Swipes It should come as no surprise that our smartphone use is correlated with our behavior, well-being, and mental health.

Wherever you go, you see people staring at small screens, entirely detached from their immediate surroundings. Some researchers have posited that smartphone dependency is the behavioral addiction of our time. For many people, mobile phones have become a way to detach from thoughts or emotions.

But which comes first: our troublesome behaviorsortheaddictiveuseofthedevices (Blue and University Communications, 2019)? In the case of depression, a University of Arizona study based on a survey of 346 subjects aged 18-20 concluded the latter: “The main takeaway is that smartphone dependency directly predicts later depressive symptoms” (Lapierre et al., 2019).

In another study, however, the Alphabet subsidiaryVerilytakesadifferentobservational approach (Mood Study 2, n/d). In addition to questionnaires and voice recordings, they asked subjects diagnosed with depression for permission to record and analyze data directly from their Android phones.

As is well known, smartphones can collect data on environment, location, and activity. Artificial Intelligence models can process this information and correlate phone data patterns with the mood of their owners. Verily affirms that the study “might be helpful in discovering new ways

to measure and predict mood. These findings could potentially help others suffering from depression in the future.”

Should your phone know your mood?

Big Brother, M.D. Every day we hear news about the different strategies that governments around the world have employed during the current COVID-19 pandemic to mitigate or contain the virus’s spread among the population.

Perhaps the most innovative of these is the rise of the surveillance state as a tool to fight the disease’s rapid propagation.

China has the most sophisticated mass surveillance network in the world. The central government can track all citizen movements with the aid of AI and big data technologies, and the authorities have not hesitated to use these powers to combat the novel coronavirus (Wall Street Journal, 2020).

In combination with thermal sensors, face recognition cameras can identify and report people running a fever. Smartphone location information for a confirmed case can be cross-referenced with that of other people in order to trace their interactions.

A mandatory quarantine can be enforced by following the movements of individuals or their vehicles. Mobile phone apps tell public transit passengers if they have shared a train or bus with a confirmed case.

And China is not alone: South Korea uses similar tactics, and privacy is no limitation.

On the Ministry of Health and Welfare

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website, you can search for cases and find detailed information about infected persons. Although no names or addresses are given, people can infer ―or worse, wrongly assume― the victim’s identity (BBC News, 2020).

Israel also enabled an espionage technology, previously used to track Palestinian militants, that allows the government to spy on their citizens’ phones to track possible carriers and alert their contacts (The Washington Times, 2020).

Leaving aside the moral dilemma, these measures seem to have been successful.

All this raises the question: during a health emergency of these proportions, can individual privacy be protected over the common good? Now may not be time to answer this question, but at some point, we will have to discuss whether we want Big Brother to be the guardian of our health.

References •BBC News. 2020. ‘At a Love Motel’: Are S Korea Virus Alerts Too Revealing? 5 March 2020, sec. Asia. Available at <https://www.bbc. com/news/world-asia-51733145>.

•Blue, Alexis, and University Communications. 2019. Which Comes First: Smartphone Dependency or Depression? UANews. 30 September 2019. Available at <https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/ which-comes-first-smartphone-dependency-or-depression>.

•Lapierre, Matthew A., Pengfei Zhao, and Benjamin E. Custer. 2019.

Short-Term Longitudinal Relationships Between Smartphone Use/Dependency and Psychological Well-Being Among Late Adolescents. Journal of Adolescent Health (August). Available at <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2019.06.001>.

•Mood Study 2 | Project Baseline. n/d. Available at <https://www. projectbaseline.com/study/mood2/> (accessed 6 April 2020).

•The Washington Times. 2020. Israel Using Phone Surveillance to Track Coronavirus Patient Contacts. 18 March 2020. Available at https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/mar/18/israelusing-phone-surveillance-track-coronavirus-/> (accessed 6 April 2020).

•Wall Street Journal. 2020. How China Is Deploying Drones and Data to Tackle Coronavirus. YouTube video, available at <https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=awfoSQ0mVGg>.

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gadgets Aluna What if your child with asthma could diagnose himself, and, at the same time, play a game on his smartphone? Aluna can do that. The device also offers to share the results with parents for review. https://bit.ly/2UxgLpI https://www.aluna.io/ https://bit.ly/2X04qMs https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=uxQG1LBw5pYIn another study, however, the Alphabet subsidiaryVerilytakesadifferentobservational approach (Mood Study 2, n/d). In addition to questionnaires and voice recordings, they asked subjects diagnosed with depression for permission to record and analyze data directly from their Android phones.

AerBetic https://bit.ly/343QGC3 https://www.aerbetic.com/home AerBetic is a new non-intrusive device to measure blood sugar levels. It is inspired by man’s best friend: “Dogs have been in service helping diabetics since 2003. These animals are trained to use their keen sense of smell to detect those gases in diabetics and alert them to a possible episode”. It uses gas sensors that can detect parts of billion of those gases to identify diabetic status.

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Xsensio https://bit.ly/3aCpsER https://xsensio.com/ There is a lot of biochemical information on the surface of the skin, and Xsensio developed a new sensing platform to collect this information. According to the manufacturer, Lab-on-Skin™​provides “unprecedented real-time information about our health and wellness, in a simple and non-invasive way.”

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