A Review of Anthropological Adaptations of Humans Living in Extreme Conditions and Health Implications

Understanding gene variations in people living under extreme conditions has the potential of curing diseases caused by exposure to heat, cold, fatty diets, hypoxia, and pathogens. One candidate gene associated with heat resistance is ACE1, encoding angiotensin-converting enzyme 1. Associations have also been made between cold resistance or fatty diets and polymorphisms of several genes including ACTN3, encoding alpha-actinin-3, and CPTIA, encoding carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1A. A prominent role in resistance to hypoxia has been given for polymorphisms of EPAS1, encoding endothelial PAS domain protein 1, and EGLN1, encoding Egl-9 family hypoxia inducible factor 1. Variants conferring human resistance to pathogens include HBB, encoding hemoglobin subunit beta, and ACE2, encoding angiotensin-converting enzyme 2. Genetic knowledge concerning malaria and hypoxia should continue to promote advances in gene therapy

Media Coverage on Climate Change: An Analysis of the Relationship between Newspaper and Government Frames

Climate change is one of the most urgent issues of our times. Most people receive information onclimate change from the mainstream newspapers and broadcast media and it is important that this information be as accurate and complete as possible. As for many other topics, governments are an important point of reference for media coverage on climate change, as they are the main actors regarding international climate negotiations and national climate policy. In this thesis, I set out to compare newspaper and government frames in four countries: the UK, Germany, the US, and India. Using qualitative content analysis, I examined government communication and two quality and one mid-market or popular newspaper in each country in two time frames. The first time frame was the month around the 2011 Durban Conference, the second in June 2012. The countries' newspaper regimes were categorised following Hallin and Mancini's (2004) model of media systems, which correspond with different political systems. Frames have become a popular tool to structure media content. This thesis makes a point of using a clear and narrow definition of framing by drawing from strong elements of existing definitions. I established government frames and checked newspaper articles for frame congruence. The independent variable originally was political parallelism, which, in Hallin and Mancini's model plays a key role in determining the relationship between media and political system. After a first evaluation, political parallelism showed to have less explanatory value for the relationship between newspaper and government frames than expected. As a second explanatory variable, I then established national loyalty, a concept, on which I elaborate in this thesis. This new element gave the thesis a more exploratory character. This study shows that it is possible to apply Hallin and Mancini's framework beyond countries that are included in their original study without trying to fit them into one of the existing models. However, the study also indicates that for climate change coverage, political parallelism seems to play a role less important than described by Hallin and Mancini. The newspapers rather seem to follow national loyalty, when covering international climate negotiations in particular. This national focus stays in contrast with the global character of the issue of climate change and raises questions for future research. This study contributes to the field through its comparative and longitudinal design. While there exists a good body of research on media coverage on climate change, particularly for US and UK media, most studies are cross-sectional and focus on one country. Future research can widen the scope of media included and further explore the notion of national loyalty in media coverage

Genetic Etiology of Parkinson Disease Associated with Mutations in the SNCA, PARK2, PINK1, PARK7, and LRRK2 Genes: A Mutation Update

To date, molecular genetic analyses have identified over 500 distinct DNA variants in five disease genes associated with familial Parkinson disease; α-synuclein (SNCA), parkin (PARK2), PTEN-induced putative kinase 1 (PINK1), DJ-1 (PARK7), and Leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2). These genetic variants include ∼82% simple mutations and ∼18% copy number variations. Some mutation subtypes are likely underestimated because only few studies reported extensive mutation analyses of all five genes, by both exonic sequencing and dosage analyses. Here we present an update of all mutations published to date in the literature, systematically organized in a novel mutation database (http://www.molgen.ua.ac.be/PDmutDB). In addition, we address the biological relevance of putative pathogenic mutations. This review emphasizes the need for comprehensive genetic screening of Parkinson patients followed by an insightful study of the functional relevance of observed genetic variants. Moreover, while capturing existing data from the literature it became apparent that several of the five Parkinson genes were also contributing to the genetic etiology of other Lewy Body Diseases and Parkinson-plus syndromes, indicating that mutation screening is recommendable in these patient groups. Hum Mutat 31:763–780, 2010. © 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc

Research and Science Today No. 1(5)/2013

Research and Science Today Journal is a publication founded in 2011 and it is dedicated to the students of all levels (license, master and doctoral) of faculties in the country and abroad. We want to offer the participants the opportunity to present their scientific works in the following areas: Social Sciences, Economic Sciences, Legal Sciences, Humanities, Education Sciences, Engineering, Medicine and Sport. This journal provides students the opportunity to create and/or to improve their abilities to write scientific papers. So each appearance (two appearances per year at which we can add supplements) contains a number of papers written by students, masters and doctoral from the faculties from the country or/and abroad. The journal promotes original studies contributing to the progress of knowledge and it is motivated by the need to address issues of theory and practice in the areas mentioned above

Research and Science Today No. 1(5)/2013

Research and Science Today Journal is a publication founded in 2011 and it is dedicated to the students of all levels (license, master and doctoral) of faculties in the country and abroad. We want to offer the participants the opportunity to present their scientific works in the following areas: Social Sciences, Economic Sciences, Legal Sciences, Humanities, Education Sciences, Engineering, Medicine and Sport. This journal provides students the opportunity to create and/or to improve their abilities to write scientific papers. So each appearance (two appearances per year at which we can add supplements) contains a number of papers written by students, masters and doctoral from the faculties from the country or/and abroad. The journal promotes original studies contributing to the progress of knowledge and it is motivated by the need to address issues of theory and practice in the areas mentioned above

Research and Science Today No. 1(5)/2013

Research and Science Today Journal is a publication founded in 2011 and it is dedicated to the students of all levels (license, master and doctoral) of faculties in the country and abroad. We want to offer the participants the opportunity to present their scientific works in the following areas: Social Sciences, Economic Sciences, Legal Sciences, Humanities, Education Sciences, Engineering, Medicine and Sport. This journal provides students the opportunity to create and/or to improve their abilities to write scientific papers. So each appearance (two appearances per year at which we can add supplements) contains a number of papers written by students, masters and doctoral from the faculties from the country or/and abroad. The journal promotes original studies contributing to the progress of knowledge and it is motivated by the need to address issues of theory and practice in the areas mentioned above