Miranda Wang

This article discusses the practice and development of organ donation by capital prisoners in China. It analyzes the issue of informed consent regarding organ donation from capital prisoners in light of Confucian ethics and expounds the point that under the influence of Confucianism, China is a country that attaches great importance to the role of the family in practicing informed consent in various areas, the area of organ donation from capital prisoners included. It argues that a proper form of organ donation from capital prisoners can be justified within the Confucian moral context in which the proper interests of capital prisoners and their families, the benefit of organ receptors, and a rightful order of society should all be appropriately considered. From the Confucian perspective, the act of donating organs from a capital prisoner must be decided by both the prisoner and his/her family (i.e., each side should hold a veto power), whereas such donation, in the proper circumstance protected by a rightful procedure, should be appreciated as a morally praiseworthy act of the prisoner who is willing to make the final effort to repent and correct his/her evil conduct and to leave something good to the world

Common bean is the most important grain legume for human consumption and has a role in sustainable agriculture owing to its ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen. We assembled 473 Mb of the 587-Mb genome and genetically anchored 98% of this sequence in 11 chromosome-scale pseudomolecules. We compared the genome for the common bean against the soybean genome to find changes in soybean resulting from polyploidy. Using resequencing of 60 wild individuals and 100 landraces from the genetically differentiated Mesoamerican and Andean gene pools, we confirmed 2 independent domestications from genetic pools that diverged before human colonization. Less than 10% of the 74 Mb of sequence putatively involved in domestication was shared by the two domestication events. We identified a set of genes linked with increased leaf and seed size and combined these results with quantitative trait locus data from Mesoamerican cultivars. Genes affected by domestication may be useful for genomics-enabled crop improvement.