Abstract Background To investigate the mechanisms and intergenerational effects of Toxoplasma gondii infection in parental male mice on the transcriptome of the brain of their offspring. Methods Male parental mice were infected with the T. gondii strain TgCtwh6 and then mated with healthy female mice to produce offspring F1. Three independent and comparable groups were established: infected male mice (M) versus F1 male generation (F1♂) (M vs. F1♂), healthy female mice (F) versus F1 female generation (F1♀) (F vs. F1♀), and parental generation (P) versus F1 generation (F1) (P vs. F1). RNA was extracted from the brain tissues of both parental and offspring mice for transcriptome sequencing, screening for differentially expressed genes (DEGs) common to all three groups. DEGs were identified and validated by quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). Furthermore, functional analyses including Gene Ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG), and evolutionary genealogy of genes: Nonsupervised Orthologous Groups (eggNOG) classification were performed to reveal the potential functions of DEGs in mice and genes in biological processes, key metabolic or signaling pathways, which provide a molecular basis for further studies on how to affect transcriptional expression in offspring. Results An overlap in gene expression was observed among the M versus F1♂, F versus F1♀, and P versus F1 comparisons. Collectively, these three comparisons identified 66 DEGs that were consistently altered across all groups, comprising 19 upregulated and 47 downregulated genes. GO analysis revealed that these DEGs were predominantly enriched in categories such as identical protein binding, positive regulation of NF-kappa B transcription factor activity, and membrane raft. KEGG analysis further indicated that the majority of enriched pathways were associated with immune responses, including those involved in viral infection pathways. qRT-PCR was employed to validate the expression changes of key genes. Conclusions T. gondii infection of male parental mice significantly downregulates gene expression in the brain tissue of their offspring and negatively regulates the immune system and signal transduction pathways. This study provides valuable insights into the intergenerational effects of T. gondii infection and highlights the importance of further research in this critical area. Graphical Abstract
In the tradition of Irish traditional music, ownership of music is vague and sometimes contested. Tunes are not generally associated with a “composer”, but, if identified with anyone at all, are generally associated with the person most well-known for performing them, or a person identified with a tune, or a particular version thereof. This article will examine some of the songs and performances/singers in the collection of the late Tom Munnelly (1944–2007), collector of the most extensive collection of English-language songs in Ireland and not only an avid collector but also a very talented singer. Of primary concern will be Tom Munnelly’s attitude to song and its ownership, shedding light on a field long contested and much debated. Drawing on Tom Munnelly’s field recordings of specific songs, the article will endeavour to shed fresh light on how traditional music in Ireland is viewed.
This essay highlights Natchez, Mississippi’s Confederate heritage tourism to illustrate interrelationships between memory, history, and imagination, and how performed commemorations critically shape nationalist ideals and beliefs. Memories—and the bodies that pass them—shape the politically charged terrain of imagined nations, which are uncertain and collectively negotiated. To illustrate the contested nature of historical memory and how performing the past reimagines and reshapes the present and future nation, I juxtapose the Confederate Pageant’s nostalgic, rosy-tinted view of the Old South with examples of contemporary Black-centered commemorations and heritage tourism in Natchez. The dissonance and tension between these opposing forces illustrate interrelationships between memory and history, how these are critical to sustaining nationalism, and how performed commemorations of the past—whether historically accurate or imagined—critically shape ideals and beliefs about race and the nation. I use Natchez to undergird broad questions about the nature of memory and history, which are axiomatically contested and fallible. I use examples of Black commemoration in Natchez to illustrate antiracist theories of historiography.
Berglind Arnadottir, Jon G. Jonasson, Sigridur O. Haraldsdottir
et al.
Background
The familial risk of sarcoidosis is heterogeneous, and previous studies demonstrate conflicting results. The present study maps the pattern of familial distribution of all known, biopsy-verified sarcoidosis in the Icelandic population (1981–2021).
Methods
All cases were re-confirmed and categorised into one of the five phenotypic groups described by Schupp et al., and in different groups based on disease severity. Distant relationships were accurately traced for relatives of sarcoidosis patients and their mates using the nationwide Icelandic Genealogy Database. This allows creation of matched control groups for the calculation of relative risk and kinship coefficient (KC).
Results
462 patients with biopsy-proven diagnoses of sarcoidosis were included. We identified 282 extended families and seven sibling pairs with sarcoidosis. 20 families had five or more affected individuals. Relative risk (RR) was 3.7 (95% CI 1.54–8.55) in 1st-degree relatives (p=0.003), 1.65 (1.05–1.92) in 4th-degree relatives (p=0.014) and 1.57 (1.08–1.70) in 5th-degree relatives (p=0.003). RRs among 1st–5th degree relatives of the patients’ mates were not significant. KC for sarcoidosis was only significant for the first two meioses (KC=1.06, p<0.008 and KC=1.01, p=0.011, respectively). The most common sarcoidosis phenotypes were pulmonary-lymphonodal (47.6%), ocular-cardiac-cutaneous and central nervous system (21.6%), and musculoskeletal cutaneous (20.9%). There seems to be no clustering of a single phenotype or resistant sarcoidosis in the extended sarcoidosis families.
Conclusion
Our study does not consider heritability a strong risk factor for sarcoidosis. The risk is highest for 1st-degree relatives of patients with sarcoidosis. Single phenotypes and resistant sarcoidosis do not cluster in distinct families.
Louis Wai-Tong Fan, Maximillian Newman, John Wakeley
We introduce a general diploid population model with self-fertilization and possible overlapping generations, and study the genealogy of a sample of $n$ genes as the population size $N$ tends to infinity. Unlike traditional approach in coalescent theory which considers the unconditional (annealed) law of the gene genealogies averaged over the population pedigree, here we study the conditional (quenched) law of gene genealogies given the pedigree. We focus on the case of high selfing probability and obtain that this conditional law converges to a random probability measure, given by the random law of a system of coalescing random walks on an exchangeable fragmentation-coalescence process of \cite{berestycki04}. This system contains the system of coalescing random walks on the ancestral recombination graph as a special case, and it sheds new light on the site-frequency spectrum (SFS) of genetic data by specifying how SFS depends on the pedigree. The convergence result is proved by means of a general characterization of weak convergence for random measures on the Skorokhod space with paths taking values in a locally compact Polish space.
Foundation models have garnered increasing attention for representation learning in remote sensing. Many such foundation models adopt approaches that have demonstrated success in computer vision with minimal domain-specific modification. However, the development and application of foundation models in this field are still burgeoning, as there are a variety of competing approaches for how to most effectively leverage remotely sensed data. This paper examines these approaches, along with their roots in the computer vision field. This is done to characterize potential advantages and pitfalls, while outlining future directions to further improve remote sensing-specific foundation models. We discuss the quality of the learned representations and methods to alleviate the need for massive compute resources. We first examine single-sensor remote foundation models to introduce concepts and provide context, and then place emphasis on incorporating the multi-sensor aspect of Earth observations into foundation models. In particular, we explore the extent to which existing approaches leverage multiple sensors in training foundation models in relation to multi-modal foundation models. Finally, we identify opportunities for further harnessing the vast amounts of unlabeled, seasonal, and multi-sensor remote sensing observations.
This paper explores the Polish Jew journal as a pivotal second-tier record for advancing Holocaust studies and Jewish genealogy. Traditionally underutilized in academic research, this periodical provides a unique repository of names and narratives of Holocaust victims, filling crucial gaps in primary record collections. The investigation centers on the journal’s potential not only to contribute names to existing databases of Holocaust victims—many of whom are still unrecorded—but also to enhance genealogical methods through the integration of network analysis. By examining Polish Jew, this study illustrates how second-tier records can extend beyond mere supplements to primary data, acting instead as vital tools for reconstructing complex social and familial networks disrupted by the Holocaust. The paper proposes a methodological framework combining traditional genealogical research with modern network analysis techniques to deepen our understanding of Jewish community dynamics during and after World War II. This approach not only aids in identifying individual victims and survivors but also in visualizing the broader interactions within Jewish diaspora communities. This research underscores the significance of Polish Jew in the broader context of Holocaust remembrance. It offers a novel pathway for the future of Jewish genealogical research, advocating for the strategic use of second-tier records in scholarly investigations.
Introducton. The article is devoted to the analysis of German Romanticism through a social philosophical examination of its origin, features and methodological foundations in the historical and cultural context. Theoretical analysis. It is proposed to consider the analysis and methodology of German Romanticism using the philosophical method of genealogy. The genealogical procedure is heterogeneous in its essence, since it involves the identification of the duality of the beginning, the source of sociality. In the romantic worldview, this is the fusion of aesthetic perception and conceptual thinking. It is established that the philosophical methodological foundations of German Romanticism are laid by the German idealistic transcendental philosophy (Kant and Schelling) in the unity of epistemological, aesthetic and anthropological aspects. Empirical analysis. Genealogical understanding of the specific social conditions in Germany at the end of the XVIII-early XIX centuries allowed us to identify the primary concept of the German romantic worldview as the source of sociality – free sociability – and to defi ne its multidimensional nature as understanding and recognition of the Other (rules of conduct and communication, creation of programs of eternal peace, interest in history and folk language). The foundation of the University of Berlin becomes the academic realization of the concept of free sociability. Conclusion. It is concluded that the goal of early German Romanticism – free sociability as a new form of human solidarity – long determined the humanistic orientation of the romantic worldview.
Abstract Renaming practices are increasingly deployed as a political technology in USA campaigns to do greater justice to the rights, histories, and identities of historically marginalized groups. African American social actors and groups have been especially active in this onomastic or naming activism. To fully make sense of this renaming moment, which is often popularly misrepresented as brand new, we outline an approach that takes a longer view of the history of Black naming by drawing together ideas from the field of Black geographies, specifically Katherine McKittrick’s ideas about Black livingness, and our work in critical place naming studies. As an illustration, we conduct a study of SNCC and the way civil rights workers and mobilized communities valued names and deployed onomastic tactics—the (re)naming of people, places, and institutions as part of their creative and grass-roots activism. These onomastic tactics facilitated and accompanied SNCC’s gathering of antiracist intelligence, constructing a subaltern transportation system, and carrying out a revolutionary remaking of place and affective atmosphere in the face of oppression. We not only seek to add a needed racial genealogy of ongoing naming struggles in America, but also use SNCC’s onomastic tactics to tell a story of the Civil Rights Movement generally not well understood and to expand what counts as activism and who counts as activists beyond canonized celebrations of the Movement in popular media and education. As an important guide to current naming struggles, the SNCC experience is instructive of the fact that renaming alone cannot count as liberation. Rather, the efficacy of naming as a civil rights practice comes from the assembling and mobilizing of names with the broader capacities of people, material places, and political practices and discourses.
History of scholarship and learning. The humanities, Social Sciences
What are the political, gender, and theological implications at stake when associating Jesus with modern combat and righteous violence? Jesus is rendered in combative form across media—i.e., live-action films and shorts, animated television, sketch comedy, graphic novels, and video games. This rendition occurs at a confluence of meaning, most immediately for the sake of generating comedy through juxtaposition (in this case, rendering the meek with a sword) and/or reaffirming Jesus’ prominent cultural value through an association with other popularly mediatized entities. Beyond these initial layers of significance, however, I argue that Jesus becomes associated with violence and brutality for the sake of de/legitimizing politically conservative ideologies with respect to Christianity and American exceptionalism, redeeming the crisis of “domesticated masculinity” and fortifying traditional masculine norms, and theologically reinstituting popular paradigms of low Christology. Ideological “manhood” remains traced to one’s ability to perform traditional gender roles (i.e., family provider, community protector, and father/procreator). To capture the discrepancy that Jesus of Nazareth, as presented in canonical gospels, largely concerns none of these roles, I analyze the hypermasculine Christ, and the various weapons he employs, as part of a popular genealogy of Western value systems and discourse. Though in this article I reference some examples of non-American media, I reserve my analysis and commentary for the stakes and implications of what it means for U.S. Americans to produce and consume such content. In short, I submit that popular America idolizes itself in the form—one amidst many—of a naïve, combative, and boorish Christ: an arrogant and, at times, narcissistic man with delusional views of the world made dangerous through invasive power and authority. Western entertainment has deemed the United States (through its fictional stand-ins) as morally failing yet still chosen. Within this logic, American Christians need not reform their ways as long as they cultivate evidence of their exceptionalism.
Variation in a sample of molecular sequence data informs about the past evolutionary history of the sample's population. Traditionally, Bayesian modeling coupled with the standard coalescent, is used to infer the sample's bifurcating genealogy and demographic and evolutionary parameters such as effective population size, and mutation rates. However, there are many situations where binary coalescent models do not accurately reflect the true underlying ancestral processes. Here, we propose a Bayesian nonparametric method for inferring effective population size trajectories from a multifurcating genealogy under the $Λ-$coalescent. In particular, we jointly estimate the effective population size and model parameters for the Beta-coalescent model, a special type of $Λ-$coalescent. Finally, we test our methods on simulations and apply them to study various viral dynamics as well as Japanese sardine population size changes over time. The code and vignettes can be found in the phylodyn package.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the popular pastime of exploring one’s family history can unleash strong emotions, both positive and negative. The aim of this study was to chart the extent and nature of negative emotions among family historians, and profile those most vulnerable to distress. Data from an online survey of 775 adult Australian hobbyist family historians showed nearly two-thirds experienced strong distressing emotions such as anger, shock and sadness while researching their forebears. Triggers included discoveries which led to feelings of betrayal and distrust or posed moral dilemmas. Also distressing were findings about ancestors who behaved badly, were treated cruelly/unfairly, or who experienced tragedy. Family historians who reported strong negative emotions were more likely than those who did not to be younger, female, spend more time on their hobby, have half-siblings, driven by the motive for greater self-understanding, and score higher on the personality trait of openness to experience but lower on emotional stability. The study is important because it raises issues of (a) what support is available to family historians who find their discoveries strongly distressing and (b) whether purveyors of genealogical research products should provide more education and support to their clients.
The medieval respect towards progenitors induced not only sentimental feelings but also practical steps, such as sponsoring works of art. In the present study, the family connections of Landgrave Hermann I of Thuringia to the Carolingians and to (Saint) Guillaume/Guilhem d’Orange, from the family of the Counts of Autun, have been explored. The possibility of the role of these kinships as a “driving force” behind initiating and sponsoring the epos Willehalm of Wolfram von Eschenbach has been analyzed.
The paper explores the importance of social movements as reinventors of Paulo Freire’s pedagogy and promoters of a radical popular education. It particularly focuses on the Movimento de Mulheres Camponesas (MMC) (Peasant Women’s Movement), which was founded in 2004 and is currently organised in eighteen Brazilian States. My reflections arise from a collaborative and multi-sited ethnography conducted with the Movement in the State of Santa Catarina, in the South of Brazil, between 2011 and 2015. In the light of this research, I will argue that the Freirean inspiration represents a path and a challenge for the MMC and is evident in its genealogy, struggles for education, political-educational methodologies and in the process of forming of militant subjectivities. On the other hand, I will argue that the Movement contributes to expanding Freire’s proposal to new themes, such as: feminist struggles and the environmental question.
The magnitude of Pearson correlation between two scalar random variables can be visually judged from the two-dimensional scatter plot of an independent and identically distributed sample drawn from the joint distribution of the two variables: the closer the points lie to a straight slanting line, the greater the correlation. To the best of our knowledge, similar graphical representation or geometric quantification of tree correlation does not exist in the literature although tree-shaped datasets are frequently encountered in various fields, such as academic genealogy tree and embryonic development tree. In this paper, we introduce a geometric statistic to both represent tree correlation intuitively and quantify its magnitude precisely. The theoretical properties of the geometric statistic are provided. Large-scale simulations based on various data distributions demonstrate that the geometric statistic is precise in measuring the tree correlation. Its real application on mathematical genealogy trees also demonstrated its usefulness.
The critical study of one’s own family history is a relatively new field that sits at the intersection of family genealogical research and scholarly research [...]
So far, Croatian migrant families have been predominantly studied within the scope of theoretical questions oriented toward ethnicity and their role as the guardians of ethnic/national identity. Going beyond the ethnic lens of those studies, the article focuses on an exploration of family structures and the social functioning of wider kinship networks in the migration context as well as an understanding of how migrants conceive of ethnic/national identity. By highlighting the complex entanglements of traditional family patterns (patrilocality, seniority, and gender roles), transnational kinship networks and “a little tradition of ethnic/national identity” held by migrants, this article seeks to establish autonomous research into family processes among Croatian migrants and to make a rapprochement between classical anthropological research of family and kinship and migration studies.
The legacy of chattel slavery persists in the lives of Black people all over the world. The current state of race relations in Bermuda is shaped by the underlying features of European domination and imperialism that gave birth to chattel slavery. The current racial climate in Bermuda is an example of the long-term impact of chattel slavery and the system of controls that followed. The damaging consequences of these systems of exploitation and oppression continue to shape the life chances and opportunities of Black people. Racial ideas, attitudes, and behaviors influence contemporary race relations between Black and White people throughout the African Diaspora, including Bermuda, which is the focus of this essay.
Nietzsche develops three important genealogies of central aspects of Christianity: one concerning a certain syncretism between Judaism and the cult of Dionysus; a second concerning a “slave revolt in morality”; and a third concerning doctrines about an otherworld (God, an afterlife, etc.). In each case, his genealogy appears implausible or even perverse at first sight, but on closer examination turns out to be very historically plausible, indeed correct.