University of Copenhagen

About: University of Copenhagen is a education organization based out in Copenhagen, Denmark. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Medicine. The organization has 57645 authors who have published 149740 publications receiving 5903093 citations. The organization is also known as: Copenhagen University & Københavns Universitet.

The same sequence variant on 9p21 associates with myocardial infarction, abdominal aortic aneurysm and intracranial aneurysm

Abstract: Recently, two common sequence variants on 9p21, tagged by rs10757278-G and rs10811661-T, were reported to be associated with coronary artery disease (CAD)(1-4) and type 2 diabetes (T2D)(5-7), respectively. We proceeded to further investigate the contributions of these variants to arterial diseases and T2D. Here we report that rs10757278-G is associated with, in addition to CAD, abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA; odds ratio (OR) 1.31, P = 1.2 x 10(-12)) and intracranial aneurysm (OR = 1.29, P = 2.5 x 10(-6)), but not with T2D. This variant is the first to be described that affects the risk of AAA and intracranial aneurysm in many populations. The association of rs10811661-T to T2D replicates in our samples, but the variant does not associate with any of the five arterial diseases examined. These findings extend our insight into the role of the sequence variant tagged by rs10757278-G and show that it is not confined to atherosclerotic diseases.

The Selaginella genome identifies genetic changes associated with the evolution of vascular plants.

Abstract: Vascular plants appeared ~410 million years ago, then diverged into several lineages of which only two survive: the euphyllophytes (ferns and seed plants) and the lycophytes. We report here the genome sequence of the lycophyte Selaginella moellendorffii (Selaginella), the first nonseed vascular plant genome reported. By comparing gene content in evolutionarily diverse taxa, we found that the transition from a gametophyte- to a sporophyte-dominated life cycle required far fewer new genes than the transition from a nonseed vascular to a flowering plant, whereas secondary metabolic genes expanded extensively and in parallel in the lycophyte and angiosperm lineages. Selaginella differs in posttranscriptional gene regulation, including small RNA regulation of repetitive elements, an absence of the trans-acting small interfering RNA pathway, and extensive RNA editing of organellar genes.

On the Empirics of Foreign Aid and Growth

Abstract: The present paper re-examines the effectiveness of foreign aid theoretically and empirically. Using a standard OLG model we show that aid inflows will in general affect long-run productivity. The size and direction of the impact may depend on policies, 'deep' structural characteristics and the size of the inflow. The empirical analysis investigates these possibilities. Overall we find that aid has been effective in spurring growth, but the magnitude of the effect depends on climate-related circumstances. Finally, we argue that the Collier-Dollar allocation rule should be seriously reconsidered by donor agencies if aid effectiveness is related to climate. The usefulness of foreign aid in promoting growth in developing countries has been an area of controversy ever since Rosenstein-Rodan in 1943 advocated for aid to Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. Browsing through successive editions of a leading textbook in development economics provides a telling illustration of how the confidence in aid effectiveness dwindled over the years. In the first edition of 'Leading Issues in Economic Development', Meier (1964) dedicated a full 18-page section to the issue of foreign aid. He started out asking: 'How much aid?'. By the time of the sixth edition (Meier, 1995), the treatment of foreign aid had been cut into half, and the questions in focus were 'Why official assistance?' and 'Does aid work?'. In the 2000 edition (Meier and Rauch, 2000), 'foreign aid' is not even listed in the index.

The abrupt termination of the Younger Dryas climate event

Abstract: PREVIOUS studies on two deep Greenland ice cores have shown that a long series of climate oscillations characterized the late Weichselian glaciation in the North Atlantic region1, and that the last glacial cold period, the Younger Dryas, ended abruptly 10,700 years ago2. Here we further focus on this epoch-defining event, and present detailed heavy-isotope and dust-concentration profiles which suggest that, in less than 20 years, the climate in the North Atlantic region turned into a milder and less stormy regime, as a consequence of a rapid retreat of the sea-ice cover. A warming of 7 °C in South Greenland was completed in about 50 years.

Ancient human genome sequence of an extinct Palaeo-Eskimo

Abstract: We report here the genome sequence of an ancient human. Obtained from approximately 4,000-year-old permafrost-preserved hair, the genome represents a male individual from the first known culture to settle in Greenland. Sequenced to an average depth of 20x, we recover 79% of the diploid genome, an amount close to the practical limit of current sequencing technologies. We identify 353,151 high-confidence single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), of which 6.8% have not been reported previously. We estimate raw read contamination to be no higher than 0.8%. We use functional SNP assessment to assign possible phenotypic characteristics of the individual that belonged to a culture whose location has yielded only trace human remains. We compare the high-confidence SNPs to those of contemporary populations to find the populations most closely related to the individual. This provides evidence for a migration from Siberia into the New World some 5,500 years ago, independent of that giving rise to the modern Native Americans and Inuit.