War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe

Streaming video requires RealPlayer to view.The University Archives has determined that this item is of continuing value to OSU's history.Victoria Tin-bor Hui is Assistant Professor of Political Science at University of Notre Dame. She is author of "War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe" (Cambridge, 2005), winner of the Mershon Center's Edgar S. Furniss Book Award for an author whose first book makes an exceptional contribution to the study of national and international security. Hui will deliver a lecture based on her book, which demonstrates that from 656-221 B.C., China's government consisted of a system of sovereign territorial states similar to those in early modern Europe. This finding runs counter to the common belief that the roots of liberal democracy are unique to European civilization and alien to non-Western cultures.Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security StudiesEvent webpage, streaming video, photo

A Method for Collective Healing: The Utility of Talking Circles

This paper highlights the importance of Justice and Healing Talking Circles (JAHTC) in higher education settings, as well as other institutions to provide a safe place for individuals and groups to have collective healing experiences. This paper outlines the current sociopolitical climate that poses a threat to social equity, social justice, and communal healing, while also providing a method and rationale for the implementation of JAHTC

Potential Benefits of Sexting among Long-term Monogamous Romantic Partners

The team sought to investigate if sexting would predict an increase in sexual satisfaction among emerging adults (18-29 years old) in a long-term committed relationship (12 months or more). We also investigated if sexting could potentially have other benefits. A sample of 272 individuals completed the survey including a demographic questionnaire and a ten-question self-constructed scale measuring sexting behavior, sexual satisfaction, and higher agreement on certain sexual facts. Results indicate sexting predicted an increase in Sexual Satisfaction scores and Sexual Facts scores. These findings support past studies that indicate sexting between couples in a committed relationship was linked to improvement in sexual satisfaction. In addition, our results demonstrated sexting may have additional benefits beyond improving romantic relationships

Charles Horner, Rising China and Its Postmodern Fate: Memories of Empire in a New Global Context

Dans Rising China and Its Postmodern Fate, Charles Horner aborde le thème devenu incontournable de la politique chinoise d’« émergence paisible ». Si les ouvrages portant un titre similaire s’intéressent généralement aux implications militaires et économiques de l’essor chinois dans les pays occidentaux, Horner analyse en revanche ce que l’émergence de la Chine signifie pour les Chinois. Il étudie ainsi comment « la Chine cherche à rassembler une série d’enseignements tirés de son passé et qu..

Charles Horner, Rising China and Its Postmodern Fate: Memories of Empire in a New Global Context

Dans Rising China and Its Postmodern Fate, Charles Horner aborde le thème devenu incontournable de la politique chinoise d’« émergence paisible ». Si les ouvrages portant un titre similaire s’intéressent généralement aux implications militaires et économiques de l’essor chinois dans les pays occidentaux, Horner analyse en revanche ce que l’émergence de la Chine signifie pour les Chinois. Il étudie ainsi comment « la Chine cherche à rassembler une série d’enseignements tirés de son passé et qu..

Epigenome-wide association study of serum urate reveals insights into urate co-regulation and the SLC2A9 locus

Elevated serum urate levels, a complex trait and major risk factor for incident gout, are correlated with cardiometabolic traits via incompletely understood mechanisms. DNA methylation in whole blood captures genetic and environmental influences and is assessed in transethnic meta-analysis of epigenome-wide association studies (EWAS) of serum urate (discovery, n = 12,474, replication, n = 5522). The 100 replicated, epigenome-wide significant (p < 1.1E–7) CpGs explain 11.6% of the serum urate variance. At SLC2A9, the serum urate locus with the largest effect in genome-wide association studies (GWAS), five CpGs are associated with SLC2A9 gene expression. Four CpGs at SLC2A9 have significant causal effects on serum urate levels and/or gout, and two of these partly mediate the effects of urate-associated GWAS variants. In other genes, including SLC7A11 and PHGDH, 17 urate-associated CpGs are associated with conditions defining metabolic syndrome, suggesting that these CpGs may represent a blood DNA methylation signature of cardiometabolic risk factors. This study demonstrates that EWAS can provide new insights into GWAS loci and the correlation of serum urate with other complex traits

Expanding the diversity of mycobacteriophages: insights into genome architecture and evolution.

Mycobacteriophages are viruses that infect mycobacterial hosts such as Mycobacterium smegmatis and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. All mycobacteriophages characterized to date are dsDNA tailed phages, and have either siphoviral or myoviral morphotypes. However, their genetic diversity is considerable, and although sixty-two genomes have been sequenced and comparatively analyzed, these likely represent only a small portion of the diversity of the mycobacteriophage population at large. Here we report the isolation, sequencing and comparative genomic analysis of 18 new mycobacteriophages isolated from geographically distinct locations within the United States. Although no clear correlation between location and genome type can be discerned, these genomes expand our knowledge of mycobacteriophage diversity and enhance our understanding of the roles of mobile elements in viral evolution. Expansion of the number of mycobacteriophages grouped within Cluster A provides insights into the basis of immune specificity in these temperate phages, and we also describe a novel example of apparent immunity theft. The isolation and genomic analysis of bacteriophages by freshman college students provides an example of an authentic research experience for novice scientists

Target genes, variants, tissues and transcriptional pathways influencing human serum urate levels.

Elevated serum urate levels cause gout and correlate with cardiometabolic diseases via poorly understood mechanisms. We performed a trans-ancestry genome-wide association study of serum urate in 457,690 individuals, identifying 183 loci (147 previously unknown) that improve the prediction of gout in an independent cohort of 334,880 individuals. Serum urate showed significant genetic correlations with many cardiometabolic traits, with genetic causality analyses supporting a substantial role for pleiotropy. Enrichment analysis, fine-mapping of urate-associated loci and colocalization with gene expression in 47 tissues implicated the kidney and liver as the main target organs and prioritized potentially causal genes and variants, including the transcriptional master regulators in the liver and kidney, HNF1A and HNF4A. Experimental validation showed that HNF4A transactivated the promoter of ABCG2, encoding a major urate transporter, in kidney cells, and that HNF4A p.Thr139Ile is a functional variant. Transcriptional coregulation within and across organs may be a general mechanism underlying the observed pleiotropy between urate and cardiometabolic traits.The Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) Project was supported by the Common Fund of the Office of the Director of the National Institutes of Health, and by NCI, NHGRI, NHLBI, NIDA, NIMH, and NINDS. Variant annotation was supported by software resources provided via the Caché Campus program of the InterSystems GmbH to Alexander Teumer

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Epigenome-wide association study of serum urate reveals insights into urate co-regulation and the SLC2A9 locus

Serum urate concentration can be studied in large datasets to find genetic and epigenetic loci that may be related to cardiometabolic traits. Here the authors identify and replicate 100 urate-associated CpGs, which provide insights into urate GWAS loci and shared CpGs of urate and cardiometabolic traits.Elevated serum urate levels, a complex trait and major risk factor for incident gout, are correlated with cardiometabolic traits via incompletely understood mechanisms. DNA methylation in whole blood captures genetic and environmental influences and is assessed in transethnic meta-analysis of epigenome-wide association studies (EWAS) of serum urate (discovery, n = 12,474, replication, n = 5522). The 100 replicated, epigenome-wide significant (p < 1.1E-7) CpGs explain 11.6% of the serum urate variance. At SLC2A9, the serum urate locus with the largest effect in genome-wide association studies (GWAS), five CpGs are associated with SLC2A9 gene expression. Four CpGs at SLC2A9 have significant causal effects on serum urate levels and/or gout, and two of these partly mediate the effects of urate-associated GWAS variants. In other genes, including SLC7A11 and PHGDH, 17 urate-associated CpGs are associated with conditions defining metabolic syndrome, suggesting that these CpGs may represent a blood DNA methylation signature of cardiometabolic risk factors. This study demonstrates that EWAS can provide new insights into GWAS loci and the correlation of serum urate with other complex traits.</p