Η δόξα του Θεού κατά την ησυχαστική παράδοση, ως θεολογική προϋπόθεση ερμηνείας της συμβολικής παράστασής της, στην παλαιολόγεια ζωγραφική.

Η μέθεξη των ακτίστων Ενεργειών του Θεού από αυτή τη ζωή, είναι ο σκοπός της πνευματικής ζωής. Με το φως της Μεταμορφώσεως στην καρδιά του μετανοούντος ανθρώπου προβάλλει ένα θαυμαστό άνθος το Πρόσωπο-Υπόσταση. Ο ησυχασμός τα παλαιολόγεια χρόνια (1261-1453 μ.χ.) έχοντας διανύσει υπερχιλιετή ιστορική διαδρομή δεν είχε πρόθεση να ανανεώσει τα εκφραστικά μέσα στην απόδοση της δόξας του Τριαδικού Θεού. Όμως είχε τόσο πολύ επηρεάσει την θεολογική σκέψη της εποχής, που επέδρασε στην τέχνη και τους δημιουργούς με πολλούς άμεσους ή έμμεσους τρόπους. Η εργασία αναλύει τους εικονογραφικούς τύπους της δόξας και τις παραλλαγές τους και επιχειρεί μια ερμηνευτική προσέγγιση στη συμβολική παράσταση της δόξας.The purpose of spiritual existence of this life is the communion of the uncreated energies of God. With the light of the Metamorphosis in the repentant man’s heart, a miraculous flower, the Person-Substance, emerges. Hesychasm, having spanned a historical course of more than a millennium to the Paleologeian years (1261 – 1453 a.c.) did not intend to renew the expressive means in the rendition of the glory of the Triadic God. However, it had such a great influence on the Theological thought of the time that it affected art and its initiators in many direct and indirect ways. This work analyzes iconographic glory and its variations and attempts to offer an interpretive approach to the symbolic representation of this glory

Identification of genetic loci simultaneously associated with multiple cardiometabolic traits

Background and aims: Cardiometabolic disorders (CMD) arise from a constellation of features such as increased adiposity, hyperlipidemia, hypertension and compromised glucose control. Many genetic loci have shown associations with individual CMD-related traits, but no investigations have focused on simultaneously identifying loci showing associations across all domains. We therefore sought to identify loci associated with risk across seven continuous CMD-related traits. Methods and results: We conducted separate genome-wide association studies (GWAS) for systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP/DBP), hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), low- and high- density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C/HDL-C), waist-to-hip-ratio (WHR), and triglycerides (TGs) in the UK Biobank (N = 356,574–456,823). Multiple loci reached genome-wide levels of significance (N = 145–333) for each trait, but only four loci (in/near VEGFA, GRB14-COBLL1, KLF14, and RGS19-OPRL1) were associated with risk across all seven traits (P < 5 × 10−8). We sought replication of these four loci in an independent set of seven trait-specific GWAS meta-analyses. GRB14-COBLL1 showed the most consistent replication, revealing nominally significant associations (P < 0.05) with all traits except DBP. Conclusions: Our analyses suggest that very few loci are associated in the same direction of risk with traits representing the full spectrum of CMD features. We identified four such loci, and an understanding of the pathways between these loci and CMD risk may eventually identify factors that can be used to identify pathologic disturbances that represent broadly beneficial therapeutic targets.National Institutes of Health12 month embargo; published: 07 January 2022This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Beyond Missing Heritability: Prediction of Complex Traits

Despite rapid advances in genomic technology, our ability to account for phenotypic variation using genetic information remains limited for many traits. This has unfortunately resulted in limited application of genetic data towards preventive and personalized medicine, one of the primary impetuses of genome-wide association studies. Recently, a large proportion of the “missing heritability” for human height was statistically explained by modeling thousands of single nucleotide polymorphisms concurrently. However, it is currently unclear how gains in explained genetic variance will translate to the prediction of yet-to-be observed phenotypes. Using data from the Framingham Heart Study, we explore the genomic prediction of human height in training and validation samples while varying the statistical approach used, the number of SNPs included in the model, the validation scheme, and the number of subjects used to train the model. In our training datasets, we are able to explain a large proportion of the variation in height (h2 up to 0.83, R2 up to 0.96). However, the proportion of variance accounted for in validation samples is much smaller (ranging from 0.15 to 0.36 depending on the degree of familial information used in the training dataset). While such R2 values vastly exceed what has been previously reported using a reduced number of pre-selected markers (<0.10), given the heritability of the trait (∼0.80), substantial room for improvement remains

A proposed potential role for increasing atmospheric CO2 as a promoter of weight gain and obesity

Human obesity has evolved into a global epidemic. Interestingly, a similar trend has been observed in many animal species, although diet composition, food availability and physical activity have essentially remained unchanged. This suggests a common factor—potentially an environmental factor affecting all species. Coinciding with the increase in obesity, atmospheric CO2 concentration has increased more than 40%. Furthermore, in modern societies, we spend more time indoors, where CO2 often reaches even higher concentrations. Increased CO2 concentration in inhaled air decreases the pH of blood, which in turn spills over to cerebrospinal fluids. Nerve cells in the hypothalamus that regulate appetite and wakefulness have been shown to be extremely sensitive to pH, doubling their activity if pH decreases by 0.1 units. We hypothesize that an increased acidic load from atmospheric CO2 may potentially lead to increased appetite and energy intake, and decreased energy expenditure, and thereby contribute to the current obesity epidemic

An investigation of toxicities and survival in Hispanic children and adolescents with ALL: Results from the Danaâ Farber Cancer Institute ALL Consortium protocol 05â 001

PurposeThis study compared the relative incidence of treatmentâ related toxicities and the eventâ free and overall survival between Hispanic and nonâ Hispanic children undergoing therapy for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) on Danaâ Farber Cancer Institute ALL Consortium protocol 05â 001.Patients and methodsSecondary analysis of prospectively collected data from a phase III multicenter study in children and adolescents of 1â 18 years with previously untreated ALL.ResultsBetween 2005 and 2011, 794 eligible patients enrolled on DFCI 05â 001, 730 of whom were included in this analysis (19% [N = 150] Hispanic, 73% [N = 580] nonâ Hispanic). Hispanic patients were more likely to be â ¥10 years of age (32% vs. 24%, P = 0.045) at diagnosis. Toxicity analyses revealed that Hispanic patients had significantly lower cumulative incidence of bone fracture (P < 0.001) and osteonecrosis (ON; P = 0.047). In multivariable risk regression, the risk of ON was significantly lower in Hispanic patients â ¥10 years (HR 0.23; P = 0.006). Hispanic patients had significantly lower 5â year eventâ free survival (EFS) (79.4%; 95% CI: 71.6â 85.2) and overall survival (OS) (89.2%; 95% CI: 82.7â 93.4) than nonâ Hispanic patients (EFS: 87.5%; 95% CI: 84.5â 90.0, P = 0.004; OS: 92.7%; 95% CI: 90.2â 94.6, P = 0.006). Exploratory analyses revealed differences between Hispanic and nonâ Hispanic patients in the frequency of common variants in genes related to toxicity or ALL outcome.ConclusionHispanic children treated for ALL on DFCI 05â 001 had fewer boneâ related toxicities and inferior survival than nonâ Hispanic patients. While disease biology is one explanatory variable for outcome disparities, these findings suggest that biologic and nonâ biologic mechanisms affecting drug delivery and exposure in this population may be important contributing factors as well.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141132/1/pbc26871.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141132/2/pbc26871_am.pd

Estimating Genetic Ancestry Proportions from Faces

Ethnicity can be a means by which people identify themselves and others. This type of identification mediates many kinds of social interactions and may reflect adaptations to a long history of group living in humans. Recent admixture in the US between groups from different continents, and the historically strong emphasis on phenotypic differences between members of these groups, presents an opportunity to examine the degree of concordance between estimates of group membership based on genetic markers and on visually-based estimates of facial features. We first measured the degree of Native American, European, African and East Asian genetic admixture in a sample of 14 self-identified Hispanic individuals, chosen to cover a broad range of Native American and European genetic admixture proportions. We showed frontal and side-view photographs of the 14 individuals to 241 subjects living in New Mexico, and asked them to estimate the degree of NA admixture for each individual. We assess the overall concordance for each observer based on an aggregated measure of the difference between the observer and the genetic estimates. We find that observers reach a significantly higher degree of concordance than expected by chance, and that the degree of concordance as well as the direction of the discrepancy in estimates differs based on the ethnicity of the observer, but not on the observers' age or sex. This study highlights the potentially high degree of discordance between physical appearance and genetic measures of ethnicity, as well as how perceptions of ethnic affiliation are context-specific. We compare our findings to those of previous studies and discuss their implications

Associations between ACE-Inhibitors, Angiotensin Receptor Blockers, and Lean Body Mass in Community Dwelling Older Women

Studies suggest that ACE-inhibitors (ACE-I) and angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) may preserve skeletal muscle with aging. We evaluated longitudinal differences in lean body mass (LBM) among women diagnosed with hypertension and classified as ACE-I/ARB users and nonusers among Women’s Health Initiative participants that received dual energy X-ray absorptiometry scans to estimate body composition (n=10,635) at baseline and at years 3 and 6 of follow-up. Of those, 2642 were treated for hypertension at baseline. Multivariate linear regression models, adjusted for relevant demographics, behaviors, and medications, assessed ACE-I/ARB use/nonuse and LBM associations at baseline, as well as change in LBM over 3 and 6 years. Although BMI did not differ by ACE-I/ARB use, LBM (%) was significantly higher in ACE-I/ARB users versus nonusers at baseline (52.2% versus 51.3%, resp., p=0.001). There was no association between ACE-I/ARB usage and change in LBM over time. Reasons for higher LBM with ACE-I/ARB use cross sectionally, but not longitundinally, are unclear and may reflect a threshold effect of these medications on LBM that is attenuated over time. Nevertheless, ACE-I/ARB use does not appear to negatively impact LBM in the long term

Genetically predicted physical activity levels are associated with lower colorectal cancer risk: a Mendelian randomisation study.

Funder: The Darwin Trust of EdinburghFunder: National Institute of Health [grant number R01 HL136528]BACKGROUND: We conducted a Mendelian randomisation (MR) study to investigate whether physical activity (PA) causes a reduction of colorectal cancer risk and to understand the contributions of effects mediated through changes in body fat. METHODS: Common genetic variants associated with self-reported moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA), acceleration vector magnitude PA (AMPA) and sedentary time were used as instrumental variables. To control for confounding effects of obesity, we included instrumental variables for body mass index (BMI), body fat percentage, waist circumference and arm, trunk and leg fat ratios. We analysed the effect of these instrumental variables in a colorectal cancer genome-wide association study comprising 31,197 cases and 61,770 controls of European ancestry by applying two-sample and multivariable MR study designs. RESULTS: We found decreased colorectal cancer risk for genetically represented measures of MVPA and AMPA that were additional to effects mediated through genetic measures of obesity. Odds ratio and 95% confidence interval (CI) per standard deviation increase in MVPA and AMPA was 0.56 (0.31, 1.01) and 0.60 (0.41, 0.88), respectively. No association has been found between sedentary time and colorectal cancer risk. The proportion of effect mediated through BMI was 2% (95% CI: 0, 14) and 32% (95% CI: 12, 46) for MVPA and AMPA, respectively. CONCLUSION: These findings provide strong evidence to reinforce public health measures on preventing colorectal cancer that promote PA at a population level regardless of body fatness