The folk literature of the Sephardic Jews digital library

The Folk Literature of the Sephardic Jews Digital Library contains over 200 digitized reel-to-reel audiotapes that record the fieldwork of two of America's foremost Romance medievalists, Samuel Armistead (University of California, Davis) and Joseph Silverman (University of California, Santa Cruz), who gathered ballads and other folk literature in the Hispanic tradition as preserved by Sephardic Jews. Their fieldwork extended over several decades in the latter half of the twentieth century and spanned three continents and many dozens of informants. The audio recordings can be heard in their entirety or they can be searched for specific ballads across a number of different tapes. The transcriptions of the ballads and other folk material can also be searched for words and phrases. The digital library is now permanently hosted by the University of Illinois library and can be accessed at http://sephardifolklit.illinois.edu.Not

The folk literature of the sephardic jews digital library

The Folk Literature of the Sephardic Jews Digital Library contains over 200 digitized reel-to-reel audiotapes that record the fieldwork of two of America’s foremost Romance medievalists, Samuel Armistead (University of California, Davis) and Joseph Silverman (University of California, Santa Cruz), who gathered ballads and other folk literature in the Hispanic tradition as preserved by Sephardic Jews. Their fieldwork extended over several decades in the latter half of the twentieth century and spanned three continents and many dozens of informants. The audio recordings can be heard in their entirety or they can be searched for specific ballads across a number of different tapes. The transcriptions of the ballads and other folk material can also be searched for words and phrasesFil: Rosenstock, Bruce. Univertity of Illinois; Estados UnidosFil: Bistué, María Belén. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Mendoza; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Filosofia y Letras; Argentin

Food and earth systems: Priorities for climate change adaptation and mitigation for agriculture and food systems

Human activities and their relation with land, through agriculture and forestry, are significantly impacting Earth system functioning. Specifically, agriculture has increasingly become a key sector for adaptation and mitigation initiatives that address climate change and help ensure food security for a growing global population. Climate change and agricultural outcomes influence our ability to reach targets for at least seven of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. By 2015, 103 nations had committed themselves to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, while 102 countries had prioritized agriculture in their adaptation agenda. Adaptation and mitigation actions within agriculture still receive insufficient support across scales, from local to international level. This paper reviews a series of climate change adaptation and mitigation options that can support increased production, production efficiency and greater food security for 9 billion people by 2050. Climate-smart agriculture can help foster synergies between productivity, adaptation, and mitigation, although trade-offs may be equally apparent. This study highlights the importance of identifying and exploiting those synergies in the context of Nationally Determined Contributions. Finally, the paper points out that keeping global warming to 2 °C above pre-industrial levels by 2100 requires going beyond the agriculture sector and exploring possibilities with respect to reduced emissions from deforestation, food loss, and waste, as well as from rethinking human diets

Climate Smart Agriculture in the African Context

Agriculture remains vital to the economy of most African countries and its development has significant implications for food security and poverty reduction in the region. Increase in agricultural production over the past decades has mainly been due to land area expansion, with very little change in production techniques and limited improvement in yields. Currently one in four people remains malnourished in Africa. CSA integrates all three dimensions of sustainable development and is aimed at (1) sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes; (2) adapting and building resilience to climate change from the farm to national levels; and (3) developing opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture compared with past trends. It is an approach to identify the most suitable strategies according to national and local priorities and conditions to meet these three objectives. There is no such thing as an agricultural practice that is climate smart per se. Whether or not a particular practice or production system is climate smart depends upon the particular local climatic, biophysical, socio-economic and development context, which determines how far a particular practice or system can deliver on productivity increase, resilience and mitigation benefits. For Africa to reap the potential benefits CSA, concrete actions must be taken to: enhance the evidence base to underpin strategic choices, promote and facilitate wider adoption by farmers of appropriate technologies; develop institutional arrangements to support, apply and scale-out CSA from the farm level to the agricultural landscape level; manage tradeoffs in perspectives of farmers and policymakers; strengthen technical, analytical and implementation capacities; ensure policy frameworks and public investments are supportive of CSA; develop and implement effective risk-sharing schemes

Incretin-based therapies

Incretin-based therapies have established a foothold in the diabetes armamentarium through the introduction of oral dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors and the injectable class, the glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists. In 2009, the American Diabetes Association and European Association for the Study of Diabetes authored a revised consensus algorithm for the initiation and adjustment of therapy in Type 2 diabetes (T2D). The revised algorithm accounts for the entry of incretin-based therapies into common clinical practice, especially where control of body weight and hypoglycemia are concerns. The gut-borne incretin hormones have powerful effects on glucose homeostasis, particularly in the postprandial period, when approximately two-thirds of the β-cell response to a given meal is due to the incretin effect. There is also evidence that the incretin effect is attenuated in patients with T2D, whereby the β-cell becomes less responsive to incretin signals. The foundation of incretin-based therapies is to target this previously unrecognized feature of diabetes pathophysiology, resulting in sustained improvements in glycemic control and improved body weight control. In addition, emerging evidence suggests that incretin-based therapies may have a positive impact on inflammation, cardiovascular and hepatic health, sleep, and the central nervous system. In the present article, we discuss the attributes of current and near-future incretin-based therapies

Sotagliflozin, a Dual SGLT1 and SGLT2 Inhibitor, as Adjunct Therapy to Insulin in Type 1 Diabetes

To assess the safety and efficacy of dual sodium–glucose cotransporter (SGLT) 1 and SGLT2 inhibition with sotagliflozin as adjunct therapy to insulin in type 1 diabetes

Effect of Canagliflozin on Renal Threshold for Glucose, Glycemia, and Body Weight in Normal and Diabetic Animal Models

Background: Canagliflozin is a sodium glucose co-transporter (SGLT) 2 inhibitor in clinical development for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Methods: 14 C-alpha-methylglucoside uptake in Chinese hamster ovary-K cells expressing human, rat, or mouse SGLT2 or SGLT1; 3 H-2-deoxy-D-glucose uptake in L6 myoblasts; and 2-electrode voltage clamp recording of oocytes expressing human SGLT3 were analyzed. Graded glucose infusions were performed to determine rate of urinary glucose excretion (UGE) at different blood glucose (BG) concentrations and the renal threshold for glucose excretion (RTG) in vehicle or canagliflozin-treated Zucker diabetic fatty (ZDF) rats. This study aimed to characterize the pharmacodynamic effects of canagliflozin in vitro and in preclinical models of T2DM and obesity. Results: Treatment with canagliflozin 1 mg/kg lowered RT G from 415612 mg/dl to 94610 mg/dl in ZDF rats while maintaining a threshold relationship between BG and UGE with virtually no UGE observed when BG was below RTG. Canagliflozin dose-dependently decreased BG concentrations in db/db mice treated acutely. In ZDF rats treated for 4 weeks, canagliflozin decreased glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) and improved measures of insulin secretion. In obese animal models, canagliflozin increased UGE and decreased BG, body weight gain, epididymal fat, liver weight, and the respiratory exchange ratio

Climate risk management and rural poverty reduction

Climate variability is a major source of risk to smallholder farmers and pastoralists, particularly in dryland regions. A growing body of evidence links climate-related risk to the extent and the persistence of rural poverty in these environments. Stochastic shocks erode smallholder farmers’ long-term livelihood potential through loss of productive assets. The resulting uncertainty impedes progress out of poverty by acting as a disincentive to investment in agriculture – by farmers, rural financial services, value chain institutions and governments. We assess evidence published in the last ten years that a set of production technologies and institutional options for managing risk can stabilize production and incomes, protect assets in the face of shocks, enhance uptake of improved technologies and practices, improve farmer welfare, and contribute to poverty reduction in risk-prone smallholder agricultural systems. Production technologies and practices such as stress-adapted crop germplasm, conservation agriculture, and diversified production systems stabilize agricultural production and incomes and, hence, reduce the adverse impacts of climate-related risk under some circumstances. Institutional interventions such as index-based insurance, adaptive safety nets and climate services play a complementary role in enabling farmers to manage risk, overcome risk-related barriers to adoption of improved technologies and practices, and protect their assets against the impacts of extreme climatic events. While some research documents improvements in household welfare indicators, there is limited evidence that the risk-reduction benefits of the interventions reviewed have benefited significant numbers of chronically poor farmers. We discuss the roles that climate-risk management interventions can play in efforts to reduce rural poverty, and the need for further research on identifying and targeting environments and farming populations where improved climate risk management could accelerate efforts to reduce rural poverty

Exercise therapy in Type 2 diabetes

Structured exercise is considered an important cornerstone to achieve good glycemic control and improve cardiovascular risk profile in Type 2 diabetes. Current clinical guidelines acknowledge the therapeutic strength of exercise intervention. This paper reviews the wide pathophysiological problems associated with Type 2 diabetes and discusses the benefits of exercise therapy on phenotype characteristics, glycemic control and cardiovascular risk profile in Type 2 diabetes patients. Based on the currently available literature, it is concluded that Type 2 diabetes patients should be stimulated to participate in specifically designed exercise intervention programs. More attention should be paid to cardiovascular and musculoskeletal deconditioning as well as motivational factors to improve long-term treatment adherence and clinical efficacy. More clinical research is warranted to establish the efficacy of exercise intervention in a more differentiated approach for Type 2 diabetes subpopulations within different stages of the disease and various levels of co-morbidity