Saturday, 17 September 2016

Postmodernism & Science

"... science has been the recipient of criticism based on the ideas of the deconstruction. This is rightly seen by many scientists as a grave threat" - Aaron Kau in "Deconstruction and Science" published by Physics Department, Oregon State University may explain why there is still an ongoing culture in science to immaculate fragmentation and reductionism.

Monday, 5 September 2016

Design the Implementation Strategy For Development of Systems Biology/Medicine for Developing Countries

SSBTR members are thinking about the importance, bottleneck of implementation strategies of Translating Systems Biology or Systems Medicine for developing countries. They have proposed some strategic planning to overcome the hurdles and to implement it. Their thinking are shared in recent two articles:
1. Bottleneck towards the Practice of Multi-/Interdisciplinary Nature of Systems Pharmacology and Systems Medicine: Experience from India, Advances in Pharmacology and Clinical Trials, 1(1): APCT-MS-ID-00010, Pages 1-7.
Abstract. Presently medicine and clinical practices are viewed with systems approach. This makes a paradigm shift in the academic pursuits of the subject pharmacology, hence pharmacology with systems based approach is known as Systems Pharmacology. If Systems Pharmacology can be practised in a proper manner it would modify the future medicine and health care system. Since towards its accomplishment, it requires multidisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary framework and however, several policy related problems may hamper its development. Some of the problems exist globally while some others are mainly India specific. Currently, India is considered to be the superpower among the south Asian countries and therefore, it may be the representative of the developing countries. Hence, development of the subject in Indian perspective is vital in the management of different diseases in the global context as well. Here we discuss the problems that confront the development and growth of the subject in India and propose some methods that may come out as solutions. Apparently it seems that the major bottlenecks are mistrust, issue of nepotism and bias in the academic pursuit, but the inner reasons are the fund crunch, problem in recruitment policy, ignorance regarding the global trend of science and its implementation in policy.


2. Importance and Implementation Strategies of Systems Medicine Education in India, Annals of Systems Biology, 1(1): 1-12
Abstract. Though the inevitable outcome of Systems Biology (SB) may be directed to seek answers to the medical problems; however, due to its expanding horizon and flexibility, different academic institutions across the globe focus on different aspects of SB in their educational curriculum. Hence, some European educationists propose for streamlining of different course curriculum. Here such issues are discussed with respect to their translation towards medicine and health care system i.e., Systems Medicine (SM) under the perspectives of developing countries. Conventional molecule centric high-throughput technology driven practices of SB that are being carried out in Western world may not fit under the perspective of developing countries due to associated high cost. Streamlining approach for SB course curriculum would shift the multi-/interdisciplinary (MDID) framework of SB towards more rigidity and narrow down the scope for the development of the subject in developing countries. Since independence of India, policy was adopted so that field dependent (FD) cognition has got priority. Present educational policy makers are trained with that direction; hence, they remain ignorant about the importance of other facets of education. Still there is some unawareness regarding the long-term effect about the implemented policy for country’s development. Practice of SM is the need of time to address the regional and local problems. Development of domain knowledge and analytical methods should be prioritized for developing countries. This would invariably take an initiative towards further development of computational methods, information and web technology and automation; thereby its vastness and expanding horizons would be appreciated. Such activities may also shift the existing health care paradigm in near future. Learning process and education on SM through research could be the ideal path for the development of the subject. This, in turn, may blur the demarcating lines across and between the far disciplines and make a paradigm shift in the educational system across the globe.

Thursday, 2 June 2016

Changing Paradigm in Higher Education

This discussion looks at the role and potential of a growing class of professionals at U.S. colleges and universities today: scholar-practitioners or alternative-academics. Scholar-practitioners are products of a changing higher education landscape where core faculty lines are declining while contract and adjunct positions are growing in tandem with the proliferation of specialized campus services.  For hybrid scholar-practitioners of international higher education, opportunities exist to leverage their exposure to data and experiential knowledge in order to broaden and deepen the discussion in an enterprise increasingly attracting significant research attention. For details see ---> Bernhard Streitwieser and Anthony C. Ogden, "The Scholar-Practitioner Debate in International Higher Education", International Higher Education, 86: Summer 2016.

This article examines whether domestic or international mobility of scientists have positive effect on the productivity or impact of their work. We analyzed 100 top producing authors from 7 disciplines and found that mobility between at least two affiliations increases both output (number of publications) and impact (number of citations). However, mobility between countries does not seem to have a positive impact as domestic affiliation mobility. For detail see ---> Gali Halevi, Henk F. Moed, Judit Bar-Ilan "Does Research Mobility Have an Effect on Productivity and Impact?" International Higher Education, 86: Summer 2016.
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Durjoy Majumder, Ph.D.

Global Research Council (GRC) on MDID

GRC advocacy on research in the area of interdisciplinary area, please see Nature 16th Sept. 2015 special issue.
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Durjoy Majumder, Ph.D

Thursday, 26 May 2016

Development on Systems Biology : Strategic Planning for Education

Comments from Europe
Comments from India
  • Comments from Indian experts are also important, as India not only holds the central position in South Asian countries but also it holds the wide variations of cultural and ethnic diversity. For details see SSBTR site.

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Durjoy Majumder, Ph.D.
Secretary, SSBTR