Turkistan: Kazak Religion and Collective Memory

This study in the anthropology of religion examines the relationship between Kazak ethnicity and religion, exploring how the collective memory is mediating Muslim values in Kazak culture in the 1990s. Ethnographic field research was conducted in the Kazak language from 1992 to 1998 in the city of Turkistan (Turkestan) in southern Kazakstan (Kazakhstan). Turkistan is the site of the Timurid shrine of Ahmet Yasawi (Ahmed Yasavi), a key figure in the Turkic Sufism of Central Asia. Today it is also a cultural center of the new Pan-Turkism and the site of a Kazak-Turkish international university. The findings of the study are that Kazak religion in Turkistan is affectively experienced as five elements: (1) an ethnic identity that is conceived as a Muslim identity, because the Kazak steppe has been sacralized by Muslim architectural landscapes; (2) normative Islam idealized as the pure way, which the Kazak elders and Qojas (khojas), a religious honor group with roots in the Sufi tradition, are expected to practice as surrogates for the Kazak community; (3) an ancestor cult energized by dreams and dream-visions and expressed in domestic and neighborhood rites that reflect the Islamic cycle of funerary meals; (4) pilgrimage (ziyarat) to the tomb of Ahmet Yasawi and the peripheral shrines of other Muslim saints, whose spirits are associated with the spirits of the Kazak ancestors; and (5) folk medicine associated with Muslim therapeutic values, the blessing (baraka) of Muslim saints, and the healer\u27s ancestor-spirits. In five descriptive chapters these elements are substantiated with verbatim interview data in Kazak, with English translations. The problem of normative and popular Islam (folk Islam), the lslamization of Inner Asia, the syncretic interpretation of Turko-Mongolian shamanism, and the semantic fields of Kazak religious discourse are explored. The persistence of Kazak religion in the Soviet Union is accounted for by the strength of the contextualization of Islam in the nomadic period and the capacity of the collective memory to store religious values in attenuated ritual forms. The study concludes that religion identified with sacred habitus and ethnic identity will persist in the collective memory even under severe deculturative pressure

Cannabinoid Therapy in Chronic Pain Management

In 1996, the state of California was the first in the union to allow for the use of medical marijuana. Since then, 28 more states have enacted similar laws (National Conference of State Legislatures, [NCSL], 2017). With the ever-growing opiate problem that has now been classified as an epidemic by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, medical marijuana could be a viable alternative to this problem. As of 2014, the CDC reported opioid deaths were up 369%, which is more than 91 deaths per day from overdose (Centers for Disease Control, [CDC], 2017). The purpose of this study is to compare medical marijuana to opiates in safety and addiction; in addition, the efficacy of using cannabis as an alternative for individuals who deal with chronic pain will be investigated. A literature review was conducted to find systematic reviews, meta-analyses and randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that evaluated medical marijuana and opiates for the treatment of chronic pain. Four databases were surveyed with multiple sources found in CINAHL, Cochrane Database, PubMed and PsycINFO. Current literature shows that cannabinoids may provide potential benefit with short-term use, but not without possible adverse effects. With the current lack of research on long-term treatment of chronic pain with cannabinoids, additional research needs to be conducted to further understand the potential adverse effects associated with cannabinoid use

Cannabinoid Therapy in Chronic Pain Management

In 1996, the state of California was the first in the union to allow for the use of medical marijuana. Since then, 28 more states have enacted similar laws (National Conference of State Legislatures, [NCSL], 2017). With the ever-growing opiate problem that has now been classified as an epidemic by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, medical marijuana could be a viable alternative to this problem. As of 2014, the CDC reported opioid deaths were up 369%, which is more than 91 deaths per day from overdose (Centers for Disease Control, [CDC], 2017). The purpose of this study is to compare medical marijuana to opiates in safety and addiction; in addition, the efficacy of using cannabis as an alternative for individuals who deal with chronic pain will be investigated. A literature review was conducted to find systematic reviews, meta-analyses and randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that evaluated medical marijuana and opiates for the treatment of chronic pain. Four databases were surveyed with multiple sources found in CINAHL, Cochrane Database, PubMed and PsycINFO. Current literature shows that cannabinoids may provide potential benefit with short-term use, but not without possible adverse effects. With the current lack of research on long-term treatment of chronic pain with cannabinoids, additional research needs to be conducted to further understand the potential adverse effects associated with cannabinoid use.https://commons.und.edu/pas-grad-posters/1021/thumbnail.jp

Transient receptor potential channel 1 deficiency impairs host defense and proinflammatory responses to bacterial infection by regulating protein kinase Cα signaling

Transient receptor potential channel 1 (TRPC1) is a nonselective cation channel that is required for Ca2+ homeostasis necessary for cellular functions. However, whether TRPC1 is involved in infectious disease remains unknown. Here, we report a novel function for TRPC1 in host defense against Gram-negative bacteria. TRPC1-/- mice exhibited decreased survival, severe lung injury, and systemic bacterial dissemination upon infection. Furthermore, silencing of TRPC1 showed decreased Ca2+ entry, reduced proinflammatory cytokines, and lowered bacterial clearance. Importantly, TRPC1 functioned as an endogenous Ca2+ entry channel critical for proinflammatory cytokine production in both alveolar macrophages and epithelial cells. We further identified that bacterium-mediated activation of TRPC1 was dependent on Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), which induced endoplasmic reticulum (ER) store depletion. After activation of phospholipase Cγ (PLC-γ), TRPC1 mediated Ca2+ entry and triggered protein kinase Cα (PKC-α) activity to facilitate nuclear translocation of NF-kB/Jun N-terminal protein kinase (JNK) and augment the proinflammatory response, leading to tissue damage and eventually mortality. These findings reveal that TRPC1 is required for host defense against bacterial infections through the TLR4-TRPC1-PKCγ signaling circuit.Fil: Zhou, Xikun. University Of North Dakota; Estados Unidos. West China Hospital Of Sichuan University; ChinaFil: Ye, Yan. University Of North Dakota; Estados UnidosFil: Sun, Yuyang. University Of North Dakota; Estados UnidosFil: Li, Xuefeng. West China Hospital Of Sichuan University; China. University Of North Dakota; Estados UnidosFil: Wang, Wenxue. University Of North Dakota; Estados UnidosFil: Privratsky, Breanna. University Of North Dakota; Estados UnidosFil: Tan, Shirui. University Of North Dakota; Estados UnidosFil: Zhou, Zongguang. West China Hospital Of Sichuan University; ChinaFil: Huang, Canhua. West China Hospital Of Sichuan University; ChinaFil: Wei, Yu-Quan. West China Hospital Of Sichuan University; ChinaFil: Birnbaumer, Lutz. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. National Institute Of Environmental Health Sciences; Estados UnidosFil: Singh, Brij B.. University Of North Dakota; Estados UnidosFil: Wu, Min. University Of North Dakota; Estados Unido

Brain States That Encode Perceived Emotion Are Reproducible but Their Classification Accuracy Is Stimulus-Dependent

The brain state hypothesis of image-induced affect processing, which posits that a one-to-one mapping exists between each image stimulus and its induced functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)-derived neural activation pattern (i.e., brain state), has recently received support from several multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) studies. Critically, however, classification accuracy differences across these studies, which largely share experimental designs and analyses, suggest that there exist one or more unaccounted sources of variance within MVPA studies of affect processing. To explore this possibility, we directly demonstrated strong inter-study correlations between image-induced affective brain states acquired 4 years apart on the same MRI scanner using near-identical methodology with studies differing only by the specific image stimuli and subjects. We subsequently developed a plausible explanation for inter-study differences in affective valence and arousal classification accuracies based on the spatial distribution of the perceived affective properties of the stimuli. Controlling for this distribution improved valence classification accuracy from 56% to 85% and arousal classification accuracy from 61% to 78%, which mirrored the full range of classification accuracy across studies within the existing literature. Finally, we validated the predictive fidelity of our image-related brain states according to an independent measurement, autonomic arousal, captured via skin conductance response (SCR). Brain states significantly but weakly (r = 0.08) predicted the SCRs that accompanied individual image stimulations. More importantly, the effect size of brain state predictions of SCR increased more than threefold (r = 0.25) when the stimulus set was restricted to those images having group-level significantly classifiable arousal properties

A study of astigmatic lenses on digit recognition under tachistoscopic conditions.

A study of astigmatic lenses on digit recognition under tachistoscopic conditions

Fifteen new risk loci for coronary artery disease highlight arterial-wall-specific mechanisms

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Although 58 genomic regions have been associated with CAD thus far, most of the heritability is unexplained, indicating that additional susceptibility loci await identification. An efficient discovery strategy may be larger-scale evaluation of promising associations suggested by genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Hence, we genotyped 56,309 participants using a targeted gene array derived from earlier GWAS results and performed meta-analysis of results with 194,427 participants previously genotyped, totaling 88,192 CAD cases and 162,544 controls. We identified 25 new SNP-CAD associations (P < 5 × 10(-8), in fixed-effects meta-analysis) from 15 genomic regions, including SNPs in or near genes involved in cellular adhesion, leukocyte migration and atherosclerosis (PECAM1, rs1867624), coagulation and inflammation (PROCR, rs867186 (p.Ser219Gly)) and vascular smooth muscle cell differentiation (LMOD1, rs2820315). Correlation of these regions with cell-type-specific gene expression and plasma protein levels sheds light on potential disease mechanisms