abstract: The paper reviews some of the models of consequentialist justice, the nature of social contracts, and the social coordination of behaviors through social norms. The challenge with actualizing justice in many contemporary societies is the broad and often conflicting individual beliefs on rights and responsibilities that each member of a society maintains to describe the opportunities and compensations they attribute to themselves and others. This obscurity is compounded through a lack of academic or political alignment on the definition and tenets of justice. The result of the deficiency of commonality of the definition and tenants of justice often result in myopic decisions by individuals and discontinuity within a society that reduce the available rights, obligations, opportunities, and/or compensations that could be available through alternative modalities. The paper begins by assessing the challenge of establishing mutual trust in order to achieve cooperation. I then examine utility enhancement strategies available through cooperation. Next, I turn to models that describe natural and artificial sources of social contacts, game theory, and evolutionary fitness to produce beneficial results. I then examine social norms, including the dual inheritance theory, as models which can selectively reinforce certain cooperative behaviors and reduce others. In conclusion, a possible connection among these models to improve the overall fitness of society as defined by the net average increase in available utility, rights, opportunities, and compensations is offered. Through an examination of concepts that inform individual choice and coordination with others, concepts within social coordination, the nature of social contracts, and consequentialist justice to coordinate behaviors through social norms may illustrate an integrated perspective and, through additional examination, produce a comprehensive model to describe how societies could identify and foster just human coordination. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Philosophy 2019

L'obésité est une condition médicale résultant d'une accumulation excessive de dépôts adipeux. Le remodelage pathologique du tissu adipeux chez les sujets obèses pourrait conduire à l'élaboration de plusieurs problèmes de santé. Malheureusement, la prévalence de l'obésité augmente dans le monde entier et en particulier chez les jeunes hommes en âge de procréation. En outre, plusieurs études ont suggéré que les informations de l'environnement paternel comme l'obésité acquise restent dans l’épigénome du spermatozoïde et peuvent moduler le phénotype de la descendance. Pour toutes ces raisons, une compréhension plus approfondie des effets de l’obésité sur la composition moléculaire des spermatozoïdes est nécessaire. Le premier objectif de cette thèse était d'évaluer l'effet de l'obésité sur la composition moléculaire et sur la physiologie des spermatozoïdes mobiles. Les échantillons de sperme ont été obtenus à partir de 96 hommes s’adressant au centre de fertilité ‘A-clinic’, Liban. Les patients ont été classés en trois groupes : poids normal, le surpoids, et obèses. Nos résultats ont montré qu’il y a une rétention des histones plus élevée, et un ADN spermatique hypométhylé et hypohydroxymethylé, dans les spermatozoïdes mobiles des hommes obèses par rapport à ceux des hommes non-obeses. Par conséquent, les embryons issus de spermatozoïdes mobiles d'un homme obèse avaient une cinétique de division embryonnaire altérer par rapport à ceux provenant des spermatozoïdes d’un homme de poids normal / Obesity is a medical condition resulting from an excessive accumulation of adipose deposits. The pathological remodelling of the adipose tissue in obese subjects may lead to the development of several health problems. Unfortunately, the prevalence of obesity is increasing worldwide and of particular interest among young men of reproductive age. Furthermore, accumulated evidence suggests that information from paternal environment such as acquired obesity remains in the sperm epigenome and can modulate the phenotype of the offspring. Therefore, a deeper comprehension of the drawbacks of male excessive fatness on the sperm molecular composition is needed. The first aim of this thesis was to assess the impact of obesity on the molecular composition and on the physiology of the motile sperm. The semen samples were obtained from 96 men attending the A-clinic fertility center, Lebanon. Patients were categorized into three groups: normal weight, overweight, and obese. We showed that the motile sperm of obese men had abnormal levels of paternally inherited histones and hypomethylated/hypohydroxymethylated DNA as compared to normal weight men. Subsequently, the embryos derived from the motile sperm of an obese father had an altered morphokinetic patterns when compared to those derived from normal weight one. The second aim of this thesis was to evaluate the adaptive and evolutionary potential of non-genetic heritable mechanisms in experimentally controlled animal models. Using a high fat diet (HFD)-induced obesity mouse model, we have examined how feeding male mice with a high fat diet for multiple generations impacts the phenotype of the resulting mice

LED and HS have been funded by startup funds from Stanford and a pilot grant to LED from the Stanford Center for Clinical and Translation Research and Education (UL1 TR001085, PI Greenberg). LED has also been funded by Cohen Veterans Bioscience (CVB), and she is part of the CVB Working Group for PTSD Adaptive Platform Trial. BG has been funded by the NIH (R01-HD-059835, PI Williams) and CVB. HH has been funded by the NIH (NIH K01DK114379 and NIH R21AI139012), the Zhengxu and Ying He Foundation, and the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research. MBR received funds from WPA Congress Mexico City 2018, Guayaquil CEPAM 2019, Asunción X CONGRESO LATINOAMERICANO DE LA FLAPB 2018, Guayaquil 2019 (Bago), and Lancet Psychiatry, London (commission on Violence against women) 2019. SS declares no potential conflict of interest. / Genome-wide approaches including polygenic risk scores (PRSs) are now widely used in medical research; however, few studies have been conducted in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), especially in South America. This study was designed to test the transferability of psychiatric PRSs to individuals with different ancestral and cultural backgrounds and to provide genome-wide association study (GWAS) results for psychiatric outcomes in this sample. The PrOMIS cohort (N = 3308) was recruited from prenatal care clinics at the Instituto Nacional Materno Perinatal (INMP) in Lima, Peru. Three major psychiatric outcomes (depression, PTSD, and suicidal ideation and/or self-harm) were scored by interviewers using valid Spanish questionnaires. Illumina Multi-Ethnic Global chip was used for genotyping. Standard procedures for PRSs and GWAS were used along with extra steps to rule out confounding due to ancestry. Depression PRSs significantly predicted depression, PTSD, and suicidal ideation/self-harm and explained up to 0.6% of phenotypic variation (minimum p = 3.9 × 10−6). The associations were robust to sensitivity analyses using more homogeneous subgroups of participants and alternative choices of principal components. Successful polygenic prediction of three psychiatric phenotypes in this Peruvian cohort suggests that genetic influences on depression, PTSD, and suicidal ideation/self-harm are at least partially shared across global populations. These PRS and GWAS results from this large Peruvian cohort advance genetic research (and the potential for improved treatments) for diverse global populations. / National Institutes of Health / Revisión por pares

According to the standard life-cycle hypothesis, all expected future incomes should be incorporated into an individual’s life-time budget and therefore affect current economic behavior. As inheritances can be anticipated to some extent, I test if expectations on receiving an inheritance in the future affect individuals’ current decisions about their labor supply, savings and consumption. To empirically test this, I take advantage of the combined facts that individuals in Sweden are legal heirs to their childless sibling and that the probability of inheriting a childless sibling increases with time due to the negative relationship between age and fertility. If individuals internalize the expected inheritance, we should observe a readjustment in labor supply and consumption at the time of an unexpected birth of a nephew or niece and onwards. Exploiting the variation in the expected inheritance loss, I find that individuals internalize expected inheritances by readjusting their savings after this event. I do not find any overall effects in labor supply or consumption. However, there seems to exist some heterogeneity in responses between males and females, where males only adjust their savings while females adjust both their labor supply and savings.

This dissertation explores both the production of underclass literature and the vibrancy of material between 1868-1935. During an era of rampant materialism, consumer capitalism, unchecked industrialism, and economic inequality in the United States, poor, working class Americans confronted their socioeconomic status by abandoning the linear framework of capitalism that draws only a straight line between market and consumer, and engaging in a more intimate relationship with local, material things – found, won, or inherited – that offered a sense of autonomy, belonging, and success. The physical seizure of property/power facilitated both men and women with the ability to recognize their own empowerment (both as individuals and as a community) and ultimately resist their marginalization by leveling access to opportunity and acquiring or creating personal assets that could be generationally transferred as affirmation of their family's power and control over circumstance. Reading into these personal possessions helps us understand the physical and psychological conflicts present amongst the underclasses as represented in American literature, and these conflicts give rise to new dynamics of belonging as invested in the transformative experience of ownership and exchange. If we can understand these discarded, poor, and foreign things and people as possessing dynamic and vibrant agency, then we will change the ethics of objectifying and ostracizing discarded, poor, and foreign humans, then and now.

This thesis describes my work to develop methods and assays to study transgenerational inheritance in the widely used genetic model organism Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans). In the first chapter, I describe a novel method that uses an exogenous histamine-selective chloride channel (HisCl1) for negative selection in transgenesis. C. elegans transgenesis is a core technique used by most laboratories and often requires distinguishing between rare animals with a single-copy transgene inserted into the genome from more frequent animals that carry multiple copies of the transgene in extra-chromosomal arrays. I demonstrate that histamine-selection induces rapid and irreversible paralysis in only array animals thus allowing quick identification of the desired transgenic animals. In the second chapter, I develop a high-throughput assay for quantifying transgenerational epigenetic inheritance of endogenous gene silencing. Small RNA -mediated gene silencing leads to an increased incidence of males in the population which can be inherited for four to six generations. I identify a fluorescent marker that specifically fluoresces in males and show that I can use a large-particle particle sorter to quantify the frequency of males in a population. This automated system will allow me to follow inheritance patterns over at least ten generations in various mutant backgrounds in parallel to determine the genetic basis and the rules of epigenetic inheritance.

The aim of this dissertation is to analyze and discuss the individual experience of cultural legacy and inheritance, intended as the transmission of an immaterial product, from the perspective of continental philosophy, and especially through the lens of phenomenology. In particular, I discuss why the conventional way of approaching the matter in terms of tradition is unsatisfying when faced with the deeply personal nature of the Inheritance/Legacy phenomenon. I analyze the concept of `content' as the intellectual object to be transmitted and received in the process, and define it in terms of fragmentability and inclusiveness: what is the minimal notion that we can still inherit? What is the largest conglomerate of ideas that we can approach as one content? I introduce the fundamental notion of cultural density, as an alternative to culture in the discussion of the individual approach to contents. In particular, I define cultural density as the sum of all possible contents potentially available to an individual at any given time. Then, I move to the analysis of the moment of attention, as the locus of actualization of the contents, which are available in one's cultural density and, through attention, move into the interpretative space of inheritance. I also distinguish between attention and attentiveness. The core of my dissertation focuses in turn on Inheritance (the process of receiving a content from a previous author and making it ours) and Legacy (the creation of cultural contents in the perspective of a future receiver). I analyze their temporal relation and their complex interaction with our perception of time. I show how they are interconnected and how they both rely on narration (and specifically on self narration as a form of re-presentation) to be brought into actuality. Finally, I deal with their co-dependence and show how the reliance of Inheritance and Legacy on each other (with each needing the other to come first) gives rise to an apparent paradox. I suggest the notion of a saturated phenomenon (elaborated by Marion) to solve it, with an invitation to conceive the inconceivable (following Derrida and Levinas).

Barley has had wide acceptance not only as a cultivated crop but also as an excellent source of genetic material. Barley was being used in inheritance studies by Tschermak when he rediscovered Mendel's laws of heredity. Since then barley has become one of the most widely used plants for genetic studies known today. More than 100 characters have been investigated indicating the relative ease of classification. There are 7 linkage groups corresponding to the 7 chromosomes in which 2 or more characters have been located as reported by Robertson (1939). But Kramer, Veyl, and Hanson (1954), from translocation experiments, suggest that linkage group III and VII should be combined in separate arms of the same chromosome. The present work is a study of character inheritance and linkage relationships aimed toward identifying the number of genes conditioning individual characters and associating them with linkage groups. When barley genes are more completely placed in their respective linkage groups, breeding for various good characteristics can be enhanced materially. This is readily accomplished when linkages are found between desirable characters for which selection is difficult or time-consuming.

Present-day plant breeding, on the foundation made many years ago, has achieved important scientific and economic results. By means of introductions and selections, superior strains such as Turkey and Kanred have been obtained. Through hybridization new combinations of characters result, combining desirable characters of different plant types in a single individual. In this program, wheat hybridization has occupied a worthy place. Each year a number of wheat crosses are made at the Utah Experiment Station, the main purpose of which is to develop superior strains of wheat. Such an economic program is aided and hastened by studies in genetic behavior. This paper reports such a genetic study of the inheritance of awns, spike density, and kernel color in a cross between Ridit and Utac wheat varieties.

Wheat is an important food crop of the world, especially in Soviet Russia, U.S.A., China, India and Pakistan. Over one billion bushels of wheat are produced annually in U.S.A. The total area under wheat production in Pakistan during 1947-48 was 10 million aeres with an average yield of 12 bushels per acre. The stem rust disease has been known for along time to be destructive to grain crops, even centuries before the Christian era. Rust is of major importance in both the U.S. and Pakistan. Jethro Tull recorded rust in England in 1725. In 1916, rust was serious over the entire world. Since 1900 there have been eight epidemic rust years when losses were estimated as much as 160 million bushels per year. The heaviest losses are in the humid hard red winter and hard red spring wheat areas. Three methods of control are generally practiced for black stem rust of wheat. They are breeding resistant varieties barberry eradication and sulphur dusting. Of these, resistant varieties appear to be the most effective in the control of this disease. The problem discussed in this paper involves the breeding and selection of rust-resistant spring wheat strains.