Why has democracy failed to take root in Russia? After shedding the shackles of Soviet rule, some countries in the postcommunist region undertook lasting democratization. Yet Russia did not. Russia ...experienced dramatic political breakthroughs in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but it subsequently failed to maintain progress toward democracy. In this 2005 book, M. Steven Fish offers an explanation for the direction of regime change in post-Soviet Russia. Relying on cross-national comparative analysis as well as on in-depth field research in Russia, Fish shows that Russia's failure to democratize has three causes: too much economic reliance on oil, too little economic liberalization, and too weak a national legislature. Fish's explanation challenges others that have attributed Russia's political travails to history, political culture, or to 'shock therapy' in economic policy. The book offers a theoretically original and empirically rigorous explanation for one of the most pressing political problems of our time.
Real-world complex systems may be mathematically modeled as graphs, revealing properties of the system. Here we study graphs of functional brain organization in healthy adults using resting state ...functional connectivity MRI. We propose two novel brain-wide graphs, one of 264 putative functional areas, the other a modification of voxelwise networks that eliminates potentially artificial short-distance relationships. These graphs contain many subgraphs in good agreement with known functional brain systems. Other subgraphs lack established functional identities; we suggest possible functional characteristics for these subgraphs. Further, graph measures of the areal network indicate that the default mode subgraph shares network properties with sensory and motor subgraphs: it is internally integrated but isolated from other subgraphs, much like a “processing” system. The modified voxelwise graph also reveals spatial motifs in the patterning of systems across the cortex.
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► Areal and modified voxelwise graph definitions are proposed ► Subgraphs reflect known and unknown brain systems ► Default mode, sensory, and motor systems share network properties ► Functional systems are patterned across the cortex with spatial regularities
In this article, a new radical formula for a module over a commutative ring is introduced by constructing a generalization of radical and envelope and defining an (e, r)-radical formula. Since the ...set of these radical formulae is not totally ordered, we develop characterizations related to the module structure satisfying some radical formulae and McCasland modules. Furthermore, we show that some relations between those modules hold if and only if they are modules over a local ring. Moreover, we define a fully primal module which is needed for some relations between modules which satisfy some radical formulae and their localizations.
Cnidaria, the sister group to Bilateria, is a highly diverse group of animals in terms of morphology, lifecycles, ecology, and development. How this diversity originated and evolved is not well ...understood because phylogenetic relationships among major cnidarian lineages are unclear, and recent studies present contrasting phylogenetic hypotheses. Here, we use transcriptome data from 15 newly-sequenced species in combination with 26 publicly available genomes and transcriptomes to assess phylogenetic relationships among major cnidarian lineages. Phylogenetic analyses using different partition schemes and models of molecular evolution, as well as topology tests for alternative phylogenetic relationships, support the monophyly of Medusozoa, Anthozoa, Octocorallia, Hydrozoa, and a clade consisting of Staurozoa, Cubozoa, and Scyphozoa. Support for the monophyly of Hexacorallia is weak due to the equivocal position of Ceriantharia. Taken together, these results further resolve deep cnidarian relationships, largely support traditional phylogenetic views on relationships, and provide a historical framework for studying the evolutionary processes involved in one of the most ancient animal radiations.
In this compelling account of the "peasants' revolt" of 1381, in which rebels burned hundreds of official archives and attacked other symbols of authority, Steven Justice demonstrates that the ...rebellion was not an uncontrolled, inarticulate explosion of peasant resentment but an informed and tactical claim to literacy and rule.
Focusing on six brief, enigmatic texts written by the rebels themselves, Justice places the English peasantry within a public discourse from which historians, both medieval and modern, have thus far excluded them. He recreates the imaginative world of medieval villagers—how they worked and governed themselves, how they used official communications in unofficial ways, and how they produced a disciplined insurgent ideology.
Long-range interactions between regulatory elements and gene promoters play key roles in transcriptional regulation. The vast majority of interactions are uncharted, constituting a major missing link ...in understanding genome control. Here, we use promoter capture Hi-C to identify interacting regions of 31,253 promoters in 17 human primary hematopoietic cell types. We show that promoter interactions are highly cell type specific and enriched for links between active promoters and epigenetically marked enhancers. Promoter interactomes reflect lineage relationships of the hematopoietic tree, consistent with dynamic remodeling of nuclear architecture during differentiation. Interacting regions are enriched in genetic variants linked with altered expression of genes they contact, highlighting their functional role. We exploit this rich resource to connect non-coding disease variants to putative target promoters, prioritizing thousands of disease-candidate genes and implicating disease pathways. Our results demonstrate the power of primary cell promoter interactomes to reveal insights into genomic regulatory mechanisms underlying common diseases.
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•High-resolution maps of promoter interactions in 17 human primary blood cell types•Interaction patterns are cell type specific and segregate with the hematopoietic tree•Promoter-interacting regions enriched for regulatory chromatin features and eQTLs•Promoter interactions link non-coding GWAS variants with putative target genes
This study deploys a promoter capture Hi-C approach in 17 primary blood cell types to match collaborating regulatory regions and identify genes regulated by noncoding disease-associated variants. Explore this and other papers at the Cell Press IHEC webportal at http://www.cell.com/consortium/IHEC.
Soil disinfestation with steam was evaluated as an alternative to fumigation. Following soil disinfestation, plant health has traditionally been measured using plant size and yield. Plant health can ...be measured in a timely manner more efficiently, more easily and non-destructively using image analysis. We hypothesized that plant health could be quantified and treatments can be differentiated using an RGB (Red, Green, Blue) image analysis program, particularly by observing the greenness of plant leaves. However, plant size or the proportion of green area could be unreliable due to plant loss and camera’s position and angle. To this end, we decided to evaluate plant health by analyzing the RGB codes associated with the green color only, which detects the chlorophyll reflectance and nutrient status, noting that the degree of greenness within the green-leaf-area was not affected by the plant size. We identified five RGB codes that are commonly observed in the plant leaves and ordered them from dark green to light green. Among the five RGB codes, the relative percentage covered by the darkest green to the lightest green was significantly different between the steam and chloropicrin treatments and the control, and it was not significantly different between the steam and chloropicrin treatments. Furthermore, the result was correlated with the total yield, and the trend observed in the first year was replicated in the second year of this experiment. In this study, we demonstrate that the RGB image analysis can be used as an early marker of the treatment effect on the plant health and productivity.
The principles of chemical oceanography provide insight into the processes regulating the marine carbon cycle. The text offers a background in chemical oceanography and a description of how chemical ...elements in seawater and ocean sediments are used as tracers of physical, biological, chemical and geological processes in the ocean. The first seven chapters present basic topics of thermodynamics, isotope systematics and carbonate chemistry, and explain the influence of life on ocean chemistry and how it has evolved in the recent (glacial-interglacial) past. This is followed by topics essential to understanding the carbon cycle, including organic geochemistry, air-sea gas exchange, diffusion and reaction kinetics, the marine and atmosphere carbon cycle and diagenesis in marine sediments. Figures are available to download from www.cambridge.org/9780521833134. Ideal as a textbook for upper-level undergraduates and graduates in oceanography, environmental chemistry, geochemistry and earth science and a valuable reference for researchers in oceanography.
Skeletal muscle Akt activity stimulates muscle growth and imparts resistance to obesity, glucose intolerance and fatty liver disease. We recently found that ursolic acid increases skeletal muscle Akt ...activity and stimulates muscle growth in non-obese mice. Here, we tested the hypothesis that ursolic acid might increase skeletal muscle Akt activity in a mouse model of diet-induced obesity. We studied mice that consumed a high fat diet lacking or containing ursolic acid. In skeletal muscle, ursolic acid increased Akt activity, as well as downstream mRNAs that promote glucose utilization (hexokinase-II), blood vessel recruitment (Vegfa) and autocrine/paracrine IGF-I signaling (Igf1). As a result, ursolic acid increased skeletal muscle mass, fast and slow muscle fiber size, grip strength and exercise capacity. Interestingly, ursolic acid also increased brown fat, a tissue that shares developmental origins with skeletal muscle. Consistent with increased skeletal muscle and brown fat, ursolic acid increased energy expenditure, leading to reduced obesity, improved glucose tolerance and decreased hepatic steatosis. These data support a model in which ursolic acid reduces obesity, glucose intolerance and fatty liver disease by increasing skeletal muscle and brown fat, and suggest ursolic acid as a potential therapeutic approach for obesity and obesity-related illness.
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