Christian Devotional Meditation and Holistic Well Being

Holistic well-being is a concept that implies humans are multidimensional and require a broad approach to help them achieve life contentment and satisfaction. Spirituality, relationships, emotional functioning, and biology all play a part in achieving this life balance and satisfaction. Interpersonal neurobiology suggests that early life experiences can contribute to underdeveloped brain structures resulting in the diminished ability to form meaningful attachment relationships that help foster contentment as an adult. This ability to engage in positive and supportive relationships has impact on life and holistic well-being. Further, the inability to form close relationships, engage, and emotionally connect with others has impacted the church as whole, and can even impact one’s attachment to God. Church-based programs, therefore, are needed to foster holistic well-being. A 6-week program utilizing Christian meditation and mindfulness activities has been developed as a Christian sensitive approach to relationship and life enhancement, and holistic well-being

Can balancing selection on MHC loci counteract genetic drift in small fragmented populations of black grouse?

The ability of natural populations to adapt to new environmental conditions is crucial for their survival and partly determined by the standing genetic variation in each population. Populations with higher genetic diversity are more likely to contain individuals that are better adapted to new circumstances than populations with lower genetic diversity. Here, we use both neutral and major histocompatibility complex (MHC) markers to test whether small and highly fragmented populations hold lower genetic diversity than large ones. We use black grouse as it is distributed across Europe and found in populations with varying degrees of isolation and size. We sampled 11 different populations; five continuous, three isolated, and three small and isolated. We tested patterns of genetic variation in these populations using three different types of genetic markers: nine microsatellites and 21 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) which both were found to be neutral, and two functional MHC genes that are presumably under selection. The small isolated populations displayed significantly lower neutral genetic diversity compared to continuous populations. A similar trend, but not as pronounced, was found for genotypes at MHC class II loci. Populations were less divergent at MHC genes compared to neutral markers. Measures of genetic diversity and population genetic structure were positively correlated among microsatellites and SNPs, but none of them were correlated to MHC when comparing all populations. Our results suggest that balancing selection at MHC loci does not counteract the power of genetic drift when populations get small and fragmented

The higher education impact agenda, scientific realism and policy change: the case of electoral integrity in Britain

Pressures have increasingly been put upon social scientists to prove their economic, cultural and social value through ‘impact agendas’ in higher education. There has been little conceptual and empirical discussion of the challenges involved in achieving impact and the dangers of evaluating it, however. This article argues that a critical realist approach to social science can help to identify some of these key challenges and the institutional incompatibilities between impact regimes and university research in free societies. These incompatibilities are brought out through an autobiographical ‘insider-account’ of trying to achieve impact in the field of electoral integrity in Britain. The article argues that there is a more complex relationship between research and the real world which means that the nature of knowledge might change as it becomes known by reflexive agents. Secondly, the researchers are joined into social relations with a variety of actors, including those who might be the object of study in their research. Researchers are often weakly positioned in these relations. Some forms of impact, such as achieving policy change, are therefore exceptionally difficult as they are dependent on other actors. Strategies for trying to achieve impact are drawn out such as collaborating with civil society groups and parliamentarians to lobby for policy change

Tainted law? The Italian Penal Code, fascism and democracy

Author's draft. Final version Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011. Available online at http://journals.cambridge.org/The current Italian Penal Code is the direct descendant of the 1930 Rocco Code. Originally a hybrid of authoritarian and liberal elements, but revised and reinterpreted in the post-war Republic, the Code was nevertheless introduced under the Fascists and has not been definitively reformed or renamed. Given such roots, this article argues that the Code’s legitimacy can be questioned by considering the significance of the Fascist past in terms of the Code’s symbolic, contextually narrative and memorial dimensions. On this basis the article develops a concept of tainted law in order to ground and direct analysis of law in relation to the anti-democratic past, arguing that critical engagement with the connections between law and the darker episodes of twentieth-century politico-legal history is vital to the construction and conservation of democratic legal systems today

Purification and characterization of Simian Virus 40 large T antigen

Typescript (photocopy).Simian Virus 40 (SV40) is a small DNA virus that multiplies lytically in the rhesus monkey, and in cultured monkey cells. SV40 also causes tumors when injected into newborn hamsters, and transforms cultured hamster, rat, mouse, and human cells into tumor-like cells. Large T antigen is a viral-coded protein that is synthesized early in the lytic cycle, and is expressed continuously in SV40-induced tumors and SV40-transformed cells. In the lytic cycle, T antigen stimulates cellular RNA and DNA synthesis, regulates the transcription of its own gene, and initiates SV40 replication. T antigen is also necessary for the induction and maintenance of cell transformation. To better understand the multiple properties of T antigen, it was purified and several of its chemical and physical properties were characterized. Preliminary investigations were done with T antigen from the mKSA cell line, a line of SV40-transformed mouse cells. Characterization of mKSA nuclear extracts by sucrose step-gradient centrifugation and gel filtration chromatography showed that T antigen existed as both large and small molecular-weight species. The nuclear extracts also contained significant amounts of nucleic acid, predominantly RNA, which adversely affected some T antigen purification procedures.T antigen from SV80 cells, a line of SV40-transformed human fibroblasts, was purified to near homogeneity by a procedure that involved nuclear isolation and extraction, ultracentrifugation, and blue-agarose, Phenyl-Sepharose, heparin-agarose, and DEAE Bio-Gel chromatographic steps. T antigen from freshly prepared nuclear extracts sedimented as a tetramer during glycerol gradient centrifugation. Storage of the nuclear extract at -20(DEGREES)C converted the T antigen to a monomeric species. Immunoprecipitation of T antigen followed by SDS-electrophoresis showed that SV80 cellular extracts contained 91-, 89-, 87-, 83-, 81-, and 78-kDa forms of T antigen. The 91-kDa T antigen was detected only when the cellular extraction buffer contained TPCK or TLCK. It is proposed that the 91-kDa T antigen is produced by the covalent modification of the 89-kDa T antigen by TPCK or TLCK. Also, previously unrecognized conditions that produce the proteolytically cleaved 83-, 81-, and 78-kDa T antigens were discovered

Purification and characterization of Simian Virus 40 large T antigen

Typescript (photocopy).Simian Virus 40 (SV40) is a small DNA virus that multiplies lytically in the rhesus monkey, and in cultured monkey cells. SV40 also causes tumors when injected into newborn hamsters, and transforms cultured hamster, rat, mouse, and human cells into tumor-like cells. Large T antigen is a viral-coded protein that is synthesized early in the lytic cycle, and is expressed continuously in SV40-induced tumors and SV40-transformed cells. In the lytic cycle, T antigen stimulates cellular RNA and DNA synthesis, regulates the transcription of its own gene, and initiates SV40 replication. T antigen is also necessary for the induction and maintenance of cell transformation. To better understand the multiple properties of T antigen, it was purified and several of its chemical and physical properties were characterized. Preliminary investigations were done with T antigen from the mKSA cell line, a line of SV40-transformed mouse cells. Characterization of mKSA nuclear extracts by sucrose step-gradient centrifugation and gel filtration chromatography showed that T antigen existed as both large and small molecular-weight species. The nuclear extracts also contained significant amounts of nucleic acid, predominantly RNA, which adversely affected some T antigen purification procedures.T antigen from SV80 cells, a line of SV40-transformed human fibroblasts, was purified to near homogeneity by a procedure that involved nuclear isolation and extraction, ultracentrifugation, and blue-agarose, Phenyl-Sepharose, heparin-agarose, and DEAE Bio-Gel chromatographic steps. T antigen from freshly prepared nuclear extracts sedimented as a tetramer during glycerol gradient centrifugation. Storage of the nuclear extract at -20(DEGREES)C converted the T antigen to a monomeric species. Immunoprecipitation of T antigen followed by SDS-electrophoresis showed that SV80 cellular extracts contained 91-, 89-, 87-, 83-, 81-, and 78-kDa forms of T antigen. The 91-kDa T antigen was detected only when the cellular extraction buffer contained TPCK or TLCK. It is proposed that the 91-kDa T antigen is produced by the covalent modification of the 89-kDa T antigen by TPCK or TLCK. Also, previously unrecognized conditions that produce the proteolytically cleaved 83-, 81-, and 78-kDa T antigens were discovered