Philosophical Transactions B - 2010 Anniversary issue Dasgupta Friths

Personal perspectives in the life sciences for the Royal Society's 350th anniversary

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This is a collection of personal perspectives by leading scientists on topics of high current relevance and interest written specifically to mark the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society. The authors were selected on the basis of their knowledge and experience in a topical area of life sciences research and they were invited to present their personal analysis of the status of the topic, promising and less promising approaches being used at the moment and, where possible, some bold conclusions. The topical areas highlighted were those that were mentioned most commonly by Royal Society Fellows and University Researchers as being of high interest and importance for future study. These topics range from environmental sustainability, including relevant areas of economics, ecology and behaviour, through complex process related to gene function and neural processing, to applications of stem cell research, social cognition and ageing.

This issue was compiled and edited by Professor Georgina Mace.

This issue is freely available online

You can order a print edition of the issue here.

Issue contents
Video Interview with Sir Partha Dasgupta
Video Interview with Uta and Chris Frith

Issue contents

Sir Partha Dasgupta: Nature's Role in Sustainable Economic Development
Professor Simon Levin: Crossing scales, crossing disciplines: collective motion and collective action in the Global Commons
Professor Martin Nowak: Evolutionary dynamics in structured populations
Professor Harold Mooney: The Ecosystem-Service Chain and the Biological Diversity Crisis
Lord Robert May: Ecological science and tomorrow's world
Professor Michel Loreau: Linking biodiversity and ecosystems: toward a unifying ecological theory
Professor John Beddington: Food security - contributions from science to a new and greener revolution
Professor William Hill: Understanding and utilising quantitative genetic variation
Professor Graham Bell: Fluctuating selection: the perpetual renewal of adaptation in variable environments
Professor Spencer Barrett: Understanding Plant Reproductive Diversity
Professor Tom Cavalier-Smith: Deep phylogeny, ancestral groups, and the four ages of life
Professor Simon Conway-Morris: Evolution: Like any other science it is predictable
Professor Linda Partridge: The New Biology of Ageing
Professor Fiona Watt and Dr Ryan Driskell: The therapeutic potential of stem cells
Professor Uta Frith and Professor Chris Frith: The social brain: allowing humans to boldly go where no other species has been
Professor Geoffrey Hinton: Learning to Represent Visual Input
Professor Taras Oleksyk, Professor Michel Smith and Professor Stephen O'Brien: Genome wide scans for footprints of natural selection
Sir Sydney Brenner: Sequences and Consequences