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Molding the Mass Viewer: New Insights into the Early Soviet Art System
No full textMonographs on the visual culture of the Soviet period are infrequent enough that the appearance of two in one year is a cause for celebration. Chicago University Press has published long-awaited books on El Lissitzky (1890–1941) and Aleksandr Deineka (1899–1969), contemporaries who occupied very different spheres in the early Soviet art system and different niches within the historiography of Soviet art. Designer and architect Lissitzky was an acclaimed member of the international avant-garde, while the figurative painter and graphic artist Deineka is still relatively little known outside the context and cliches of Socialist Realism. Only rarely did their paths cross in the fractious Soviet art world of the 1920s and 30s—they were both members of the October group, for example, the last to embrace pluralistic dissonance before artistic associations were abolished in 1932. But as these books compellingly show, both artists shared a similar desire to invent new visual systems of communication and expression for the Soviet Union’s emerging mass audience. When viewed not as art-world opposites, but as occupying “adjacent and interconnected circles” (Kiaer, 124), Lissitzky’s multimedia experiments and Deineka’s proletarian bodies together offer an expanded field for rethinking Soviet art history
Higher Blood Lipid Levels After the Transition to Menopause in Two Forager-Horticulturalist Populations
No full textBackground: Reproduction affects health and longevity among females across the life course. While significant focus has been devoted to the role of menarche, menopause remains understudied. Most menopause research is conducted in industrialized populations, where the risk of cardiovascular diseases increases progressively during the menopausal transition.
Methodology: Weworked with the Tsimane, Indigenous Bolivian forager-farmers with physically active lifestyles, and the Moseten, genetically and culturally related horticulturalists experiencing greater market integration. We assessed relationships between menopause status and lipid biomarkers (HDL, LDL, non-HDL, total cholesterol, triglycerides, and apolipoprotein-B). Using linear mixed-effects models, in an all-age sample of n = 1,121 women (15---92 years) we found positive associations between menopausal status and most lipid levels.
Results: Menopause was associated with 5.0% higher total cholesterol (b = 7.038 mg/dL, P = .001), 9.4% higher LDL (b = 5.147 mg/dL, P = .017), 5.9% higher non-HDL cholesterol (b = 8.071 mg/dL, P \u3c .001), 11.3% higher triglycerides (b = 19.119 mg/dL, P \u3c .001), and 1.5% higher apolipoprotein-B (b = 0.248 mg/dL, P = .001), controlling for age, body mass index (BMI), year of data collection, and population. In contrast, HDL did not vary with menopause status.
Conclusions: After controlling for age, BMI, and year of data collection, post-menopausal lipid profiles among the Tsimane across six biomarkers are 2---7 times lower than those documented in U.S./U.K. populations. These results support existing literature that documents distinct shifts in lipid profiles during and after the menopause transition in industrialized populations. Further, our results suggest lipids increase post-menopause similarly to those of industrialized populations, despite the differential diet, physical activity, fertility, and hormone exposure in industrialized environments.
Lay Summary: Menopause is a relatively rare life history trait primarily studied in industrial populations. We examined relationships between menopause and cardiovascular disease risk biomarkers in two forager-horticulturalist populations. We found positive associations between menopause and total cholesterol, HDL, LDL, non-HDL, triglycerides, and apolipoprotein-B, suggesting lipid increases post-menopause are a human universal
Chronic Heavy Alcohol Intake and Liver-specific LRP-1 Reduction Increase Amyloidosis in Alzheimer’s Disease Mice
Get PDFBackground
Chronic heavy alcohol drinking may be a modifiable risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but studies in rodent AD models more closely mimic chronic moderate alcohol drinking in humans and largely focus on the brain. The role of the liver, which is significantly impacted by chronic heavy alcohol intake, in driving brain changes in alcohol-dependent AD remains unexplored. Our study using intragastric-ethanol feeding, which mimics chronic heavy alcohol intake in humans, in C57BL/6J mice showed significant AD-relevant changes in the brain and liver. Therefore, we aimed to investigate how hepatic changes using this model of chronic heavy drinking drive AD pathology in AD mice, which has never been attempted. Methods
Eight-month-old male APP/PS1 mice were fed ethanol or control diet intragastrically for 5 weeks (n = 7-11/group). Brain and liver Aβ were assessed using immunoassays. Three important mechanisms of brain amyloidosis were investigated: hepatic LRP-1 (major peripheral Aβ regulator), blood-brain barrier (BBB) function (vascular Aβ regulator), and microglia (major brain Aβ regulator) using immunoassays. Hepatic LRP-1 expression was confirmed using Nanostring spatial transcriptomics. To elucidate the role of hepatic LRP-1 in brain amyloidosis, hepatic LRP-1 was silenced by injecting LRP-1 microRNA delivered by the adeno-associated virus 8 (AAV8) and the hepato-specific thyroxine-binding globulin promoter to 4-month-old male APP/PS1 mice (n = 6). Control APP/PS1 mice received control AAV8 (n = 6). Spatial memory was assessed 12 weeks after LRP-1 silencing using Y-maze, and brains and livers were harvested to detect Aβ. Results
Alcohol feeding increased aggregated Aβ (p\u3c0.05) by ELISA and 6E10-positive Aβ load (p\u3c0.05) by immunostaining, and reduced plaque-associated microglia in APP/PS1 mice brains. Further, alcohol-fed APP/PS1 had liver steatosis and significantly downregulated hepatic LRP-1 (p\u3c0.01) at the protein and transcript level, and brain and hepatic Aβ were positively correlated (p\u3c0.05). Hepato-specific LRP-1 silencing significantly increased brain Aβ load (p\u3c0.05) and reduced entries into the novel arm of the Y-maze (p\u3c0.05) in APP/PS1 mice. Conclusion
Chronic heavy alcohol intake reduced hepatic LRP-1 expression, and hepato-specific LRP-1 silencing increased brain Aβ and spatial memory deficits in APP/PS1 mice. Our results place hepatic LRP-1 as a potential key driver of brain amyloidosis in alcohol-dependent AD
Justice and Restitution in Post-Nazi Romania: Rebuilding Jewish Lives and Communities, 1944-1950
Get PDFOn 23rd August 1944, following the collapse of the pro-Nazi dictatorship of Ion Antonescu, Romania changed sides and abandoned the Axis to join the Allies. Justice and Restitution in Post-Nazi Romania explores the hopes, struggles and disappointments of Jewish communities in Romania seeking to rebuild their lives after the Holocaust. Focusing on the efforts of survivors to recuperate rights and property, Stefan Cristian Ionescu demonstrates how the early transitional government enabled short term restitution. However, from 1948, the consolidated communist regime implemented nationalizations which dispossessed many citizens. Jewish communities were disproportionality affected, and real estate and many businesses were lost once again. Drawing on archival sources from government documentation to diaries and newspaper reports, this study explores both the early success and later reversal of restitution policies. In doing so, it sheds light on the postwar treatment of Romanian Jewish survivors, and the reasons so many survivors emigrated from Romania.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/history_books/1048/thumbnail.jp
Stochastic Gradient Descent-based Inference for Dynamic Network Models with Attractors
No full textIn Coevolving Latent Space Networks with Attractors (CLSNA) models, nodes in a latent space represent social actors, and edges indicate their dynamic interactions. Attractors are added at the latent level to capture the notion of attractive and repulsive forces between nodes, borrowing from dynamical systems theory. However, CLSNA reliance on MCMC estimation makes scaling difficult, and the requirement for nodes to be present throughout the study period limit practical applications. We address these issues by (i) introducing a Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) parameter estimation method, (ii) developing a novel approach for uncertainty quantification using SGD, and (iii) extending the model to allow nodes to join and leave over time. Simulation results show that our extensions result in little loss of accuracy compared to MCMC, but can scale to much larger networks. We apply our approach to the longitudinal social networks of members of US Congress on the social media platform X. Accounting for node dynamics overcomes selection bias in the network and uncovers uniquely and increasingly repulsive forces within the Republican Party. Supplemental materials for the article are available online
Cross-Cultural Data on Romantic Love and Mate Preferences from 117,293 Participants Across 175 Countries
Get PDFPsychological studies on close relationships have often overlooked cultural diversity, dynamic processes, and potentially universal principles that shape intimate partnerships. To address the limited generalizability of previous research and advance our understanding of romantic love experiences, mate preferences, and physical attractiveness, we conducted a large-scale cross-cultural survey study on these topics. A total of 404 researchers collected data in 45 languages from April to August 2021, involving 117,293 participants from 175 countries. Aside from standard demographic questions, the survey included valuable information on variables relevant to romantic relationships: intimate, passionate, and committed love within romantic relationships, physical-attractiveness enhancing behaviors, gender equality endorsement, collectivistic attitudes, personal history of pathogenic diseases, relationship quality, jealousy, personal involvement in sexual and/or emotional infidelity, relational mobility, mate preferences, and acceptance of sugar relationships. The resulting dataset provides a rich resource for investigating patterns within, and associations across, a broad range of variables relevant to romantic relationships, with extensive opportunities to analyze individual experiences worldwide