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Aug 2026
A. Marcum JamesCorresponding author
The complexity of living systems, ranging from cellular networks to organisms to ecosystems, poses a significant challenge to the progress of contemporary biology and biomedicine. Living organisms are complex adaptive systems that are characterized by nonlinear interactions, causal-dynamic feedback loops, and context-dependent behaviors that give rise to emergent properties that are not completely explainable or predictable from the properties of the individual components alone. Investigating and understanding systemic complexity is therefore essential for advancing biology and biomedicine. Recently, artificial intelligence (AI) has been developed for analyzing large-scale, high-dimensional datasets generated by experimental and clinical research. AI enables the identification of correlations, causal patterns, and predictive relationships, which are difficult to discern using traditional analytical approaches. However, without an overarching framework, it risks being applied in fragmented or purely data-driven ways. Systems thinking (ST) provides a framework by emphasizing holism, interconnections, and dynamic behaviors across multiple organizational scales. By integrating ST and AI, researchers can creatively and effectively investigate living systems, ensuring that computational insights are meaningful and contextually grounded. An integrated ST–AI approach is proposed as a guiding framework for twenty-first century biology and biomedicine.
Oct 2020 DOI 10.14302/issn.2379-7835.ijn-20-3377
Amanya Mutuli LucyCorresponding author
PhD of Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology 190-50100
Introduction Sub-optimal dietary intake patterns have a major detrimental impact on the nutritional status of an alcoholic. These patterns exacerbate the status of alcoholism and the functioning of the alcoholic’s body. Objective This study aimed to examine alcoholic’s dietary intake patterns. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted on 204 alcoholics undergoing alcohol rehabilitation in selected rehabilitation centers. A 24 hour food recall and food frequency questionnaire was used to assess dietary intake of the respondents. Factor analysis of food items and groups, cluster analysis of dietary intake patterns, and multivariate regressions were carried out. Results Three dietary intake patterns were identified among alcoholics namely a low calorie intake (described mainly by consumption of plant-based foods); a composite intake (distinguished by adequate consumption of both plant-based and animal-based foods) and a high calorie intake (characterized by high consumption of animal-based foods). Conclusion Optimal dietary intake promotion programs are needed to address the dietary intakes of recuperating alcoholics under rehabilitation to help prevent malnutrition and other associated comorbidities.
Jan 2019 DOI 10.14302/issn.2574-612X.ijpr-18-2503
M Keppel Hesselink JanCorresponding author
Department of Health, University of Witten/Herdecke, Germany
Since the 2nd part of last century neo-shamanic rituals using mind-altering extracts from plants or animals have become increasingly popular in Europe and the USA. The first rituals coming to the west were based on drinking a special Amazonian tea, Ayahuasca, based on 2 different plants, with active compounds belonging to the class of the beta-carbolines (harmala alkaloids) and tryptamines. The use of such compounds will be described from the perspective of the transformative psychopharmacology: that part of psychopharmacology studying the use of psychoactive compounds to achieve a new balance, a transformation or healing and sometimes even leading to a cure. Examples of curing are meanwhile well documented, for instance the positive influence on drug abuse and addiction, alcoholism. The importance of the healing aspects of these rituals however are often neglected or overlooked. For users, these are key however. As medicine becomes more and more personalized and postmodern, it will be relevant to understand why patients and healthy people decide to participate in healing rituals based on psycho-active compounds. We will present the pharmacology, the transformative psychopharmacology, the effects and adverse events of 5-methoxy-N, N-dimethyltryptamine (5-MeO-DMT) and its place in postmodern medicine.