Global bioethics: a suggested distinction between ethics and morality.

At the beginning of the new century Humankind is facing a new Era. It has to face the effects of a dramatic and accelerated population growth. Human population size increased from one billion in 1835, to six billion by the end of this century. This unprecedented increase in number, affecting specific geographical areas, has augmented the deterioration of the natural environment caused by the misuse of natural resources and the depletion of fertile soils due to climatic changes and pollution. The quality of life is now diminished by the "greenhouse effect" which is the direct result of industrialisation. Ecological integrity is a concept that has to be advanced in order to facilitate the protection of biological and ecological resources against the threat of human survival. Global Bioethics as a discipline of interaction of health professionals with the present endangered environment, the limited global resources and the new biotechnologies is needed in any Biomedical School.

Suppression of chimpanzee NORS in hamster/chimpanzee hybrid: report on cell line R48-26.

We present the first documented NOR suppression in a hybridoma other than man-mouse for the hamster-chimpanzee hybrid cell line R48-26. Alu PCR and chromosome painting showed that in this cell line chimpanzee chromosomes 13-15-23 are maintained. NORs on chimpanzee chromosomes 15-23, whose presence was directly verified by FISH with H 28s rDNA, resulted inactive while telomeric rDNA on hamster chromosomes resulted active even if hamster chromosomes presented extensive rearrangements. We observed an all or nothing model in accordance with a model of regulation by selective transcriptional factors. The rearrangements of hamster chromosomes have not involved the location of NORs because they maintain a telomeric position.

[Evaluation of skull vault asymmetry using methods of analytical morphometry]. / Valutazione delle asimmetrie della volta cranica con metodi di morfometria analitica.

Some vertical frontal C.A.T. sections of 8 skull vaults were studied in evaluating shape asymmetry between left and right curves. Every profile was normalized by subdividing in 120 points and standardized by positioning the sagittal line of skull vault profile parallel to the ordinate axis of a Cartesian system. After these procedures, we tried to detect the asymmetry. In order to achieve these results we used a procedure that we named "Janus", a subset of S.A.M. (Shape Analytical Morphometry) software system, giving an artificial close curve by the mirror composition of left and right cranial vault profiles to match each other. This match was performed by a parabolic fitting for a standard positioning. The procedure was able to split the whole asymmetry information into the isometric and allometric components. We tried to detect allometry in terms of direction and versus with a numerical evaluator of its magnitude; this description was properly a vector. In this pilot study by using 24 sections, we found 20 left and 4 right predominance, expressed time by time by isometry, allometry or both.

Banded karyotypes of 20 Papionini species reveal no necessary correlation with speciation.

The G-banded karyotypes of 20 species of the tribe Papionini are remarkably similar, and the amount of phylogenetic interpretation permitted is limited. The genera Mandrillus and Cercocebus may be linked by a derived chromosome 10. T. gelada may be linked to the macaques by chromosome 2. Chromosome 5, which differs in M. fascicularis, makes this species an unlikely ancestor of the Sulawesi (Celebes) macaques. An alternate hypothesis, which takes into consideration the possibility that ancestral populations may be polymorphic for these chromosome variants, suggests that different chromosome variants have become fixed in different lines. These chromosomes would therefore not reflect phylogenetic relations. In the Papionini the karyotype has not played a major role in diversification and speciation.

[Chromatid exchanges: a chromosomal index of environmental mutagenicity]. / Gli scambi cromatidici: un indice cromosomico di mutagenicità ambientale.

The induction of exchanges between related chromatids (SCEs) was studied to discover exposure to genotoxic agents. The frequencies of SCEs were recorded in a group of workers exposed to azoic dyes and in a control group. The chromatid exchange test was proved to be a sensitive indicator of chemical mutagenic action. The results on SCE frequency and chromosome aberrations indicate that these workers had been exposed to mutagenic agents.

Communality of surnames: a measures of biological interrelationships among thirty-one settlements in upper Val Varaita in the Italian alps.

The upper part of the Alpine valley of the Varaita (population about 1,596) has three communities situated in a triangle about 6 km on a side but divided into frazioni (clusters of houses) that form a "Y" along the road and river in the valley floor. The coefficient of relationship (Ri) based on the communality of surnames between pairs of frazioni and between pairs of the communities shows very high levels of interrelationship (up to 0.26 compared with 0.5 for brothers). It tends to be higher between frazioni of the same community than between communities. It is highest among five pairs of contiguous frazioni within 1 km of each other. It tends to be highest between frazioni of the community least influenced by tourism and migration. It is not dmonstrably affected by the division of one community into two parishes. It is about twice as high between contiguous communities as between the two communities with an intervening one. The high values represent the long history of the same surnames in the valley and the accumulation of relationship through high levels of valley endogamy.