Word: mao
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Khamenei's backing of the disputed election results has surprised many in Iran, precisely because it is directed against a substantial segment of the revolution's political establishment. Just as Mao Zedong, in China's Cultural Revolution, unleashed a campaign of terror carried out by poorer young people against what he decried as the more liberal, "bourgeois" elements of the communist party, so does Ahmadinejad claim to be waging a class war, with the backing of the poor and the security forces, against a corrupt political elite brought to power by the revolution. And he clearly has Khamenei's backing...
...Beaver's study shows, not all carriers of the defective MAO-A gene join a gang, and not all gang members have the defect. It remains largely unknown how common the low-active gene variant is in the general population, though one 2002 study indicated that genetic factors, including MAO-A, account for as much as 50% of the population variance in risk for antisocial behaviors. Additionally, Beaver's and other studies have found that low levels of the MAO-A enzyme affect only men, despite the fact that the MAO-A gene is located on the X chromosome...
...Males, who have one X chromosome and one Y chromosome, possess only one copy of this gene, while females, who have two X chromosomes, carry two," Beaver says. "Thus, if a male has a variant for the MAO-A gene that is linked to violence, there isn't another copy to counteract it." (See the top 10 scientific discoveries...
Beaver cites last month's prevention study as key to understanding how to best make use of his latest findings on MAO-A and gang membership. If policymakers wish to prevent violence, he says, money would be better spent not hunting for gene-based drugs, say, but expanding and improving neighborhood-based intervention programs, such as early childhood education and after-school activities...
...much easier and cost-effective to modulate an individual's environment than it is to alter their genetic code," says Buckholtz. And until the gene is better understood, that investment will pay off for those with the MAO-A defect and those without...