#hws helsinki

[words-words-worlds]

Hetalia Capital OC: Helsinki

Song I Associate With This OC: Dog Days Are Over - Florence + the Machine

Questions For This OC: Open!

A/N: Cha cha cha. That is all :3

~Name~ -Leena Kekkonen [Capital Representative of Helsinki]

~Age~ -18

~Gender/Pronouns~ -Cis, She/Her

~Sexuality~ -Questioning

~Appearance~ -5'2 -Light purple eyes; long, braided blonde hair; and freckles! -Wears a white shoulder-less long sleeve crop top, long black skirt, leather gloves, and black platforms -Usually has a jacket because she's cold when outside of the nation -Looks like she's built like a stick, but she's actually well-toned and muscular from her time in the military -Fun fact! She wears a "I ❤️ My Boyfriend" shirt that has Käärijä on it. Can and will provide a picture of it

~Personality~ -Likes to think that she's way scarier than Finland -Used to be extremely feral -Will not hesitate to bite you -Gets a bit overprotective of her loved ones

~Extra Not Mentioned~ -Will only fall asleep to lullabies -Serious night owl -Refuses to cut her hair -Wrestles a lot with Soley (Reykjavik) or anyone that asks -Friends with Robin (Tallinn) -Somehow has a brown bear companion named Moomin -Absolutely loves to bake!!

[ask-miraculous-hetalia]

Creatures of the Night

October 25 prompt: Supernatural Creatures / Shadows / 'Do you like scary movies?'

Character(s): Faroe Islands (Eleonora/Plumage), 2P Sweden (Beck/Myskoxe), Helsinki (Taika/Lady Luck)

@hetaween-event-2022

Lady Luck didn't believe in many creatures, if at all. But, at the moment, there was nothing she could say as the current akumatized person had been turned into a slightly less creepy version of the nuckelavee. She'd heard stories of said creatures when she was visiting the Orkney Islands a while ago. Right now, she's running from the Nuckelavee akuma to the location where Myskoxe and Plumage are waiting for her. As she approached, she could see Myskoxe. He was walking in her direction with his mallet in hand. When she passed him she could swear she heard the faint sound of the song Valhalla Calling in the background. She turned in time to see Myskoxe bring his mallet down on top of Nuckelavee's horse head, bringing the akuma to the ground. Plumage came out of her hiding spot to stand next to Lady Luck.

"I don't think Butterfly meant for this to happen," Plumage said. "Unless Sommerfugl got the miraculous back and decided to just go for it." "Lucky charm!" Lady Luck said. What appeared in her hands is a pair of handcuffs. Nuckelavee then used its hands to attack the three holders. All three dodged as Lady Luck figured out what to do with the handcuffs. "I need to get close," she said. Plumage and Myskoxe looked at her like she's crazy. "Fine, whatever you say," Plumage said. The bull and rooster holders kept Nuckelavee distracted while Lady Luck maneuvered around and tangled Nuckelavee's arms around itself before cuffing them together, leaving them unable to do anything. The trio then looked around the body for what the akumatized object could be.

"Lady Luck," Myskoxe said when he noticed something. Lady Luck went to where he is to see what he was looking at. One of the hands was shut whereas the other was open. The hand was pried open to reveal a figurine. Myskoxe took the figurine and snapped it in half. Out came a black butterfly with thin purple lines on its wings. "Time to de-evilize," Lady Luck said and used her yoyo to capture the butterfly. When it was released, it was once again a white butterfly. Nuckelavee then turned back into a normal civilian. To thet holders' surprise, the akumatized person had been Norwegian Lukas Bakke. Plumage's eyes widened. She knew him better than the other two. "I need to go," she said, taking Lukas to where he lived. Myskoxe and Lady Luck raise an eyebrow and look at each other and shrug.

"Miraculous Lady Luck!" The Kwamiswap ladybug holder exclaimed and threw her lucky charm into the air. It turned into tiny ladybugs that flew around and fixed everything. Lady Luck and Myskoxe high fived once everything was fixed and the two headed their separate ways.

Eleonora looked down at Lukas. She had been Plumage, so she had known that he was Nuckelavee earlier. Her father. Akumatized because of whoever held the butterfly miraculous. When Lukas woke up, he saw Eleonora looking down at him. He raised a hand and placed it on her cheek.

"Jeg elsker deg, pappa," Eleonora said and nestled into his touch.

[alphabetsoup-blogposts]

"WHO"

is:

O—WH/HW (eg, North-Wright Airways)

or

H—WO/OW (eg Swoop)

"Health"

I think is:

The H—LA/AL (eg Laos, Los Angeles, Alabama...)

H at LHE/LEH/HEL (eg, Lahore, Le Havre or Helsinki)

or

HH late.

"Minister"

is most obviously:

I sent Rim

Rim[s] in [S]ET

Item[s] in R[S]

or

Tin—Reims

So, I imagine that

"Health Minister"

might be something like

Trash item in LHE/LEH/HEL

where Trash is Mamph, but it's not possible to settle that today, owing to the general indeterminacy of the phrase.

[cherries-are-valid]

|| I noticed the post about notes you wrote about Helsinki

Now I'm curious to hear about your Helsinki character if you have one 👀

-@ask-hws-eesti-ja-tallinn ||

@ask-hws-eesti-ja-tallinn heck yeah!

So I feel like my Helsinki differs a lot from the other sinki characters I’ve seen. Which isn’t a bad thing mind you, it’s cool to see how other people interpret personifications. But yeah keep that in mind.

Helsinki is a very stoic gal. She’s prefers to affection through actions rather than words

Like if someone she knows causally mentions they like mushrooms she’ll be sure to take a few pictures for them

Has a few close friends and that’s it. She’s only social when it comes to work

That doesn’t mean she mean or rude. She just has a hard time opening up to strangers

Has heterochromia (left eye is blue right eye is brown) and white hair so she’s often told she looks like a husky

Loves parks and birdwatching

When she was still a small town she had a one sided rivalry with Reval (who was completely unaware at the time)

This was because Helsinki was originally created to rival the city but that sadly never happened

She’s great at fighting thanks to the fort that was built around the 18th century

So ‘sinki also spent a large part of her childhood resenting both Reval and Stockholm (capitals usually handle National affairs and Finland belonged to Sweden at the time of Helsinki’s creation)

She no longer holds these feeling for either of them now. She does still occasionally have little fights with Stockholm but they’re mostly sibling related

She has a wide music range and can pretty much listen to everything. Metal is still her favorite genre though

Her and Tallinn still baby St. Petersburg even though they both used to work for her

[happyflappymoscowbirbpleyyn]

I forgot to post an ace oc yesterday so we have two, Helsinki and Reykjavik with the horse miraculous

[my-hetalia-academia]

Crystal Gem is open for questions

[callums-hetalia-blog]

some finnish city ohsees...

[ask-miraculous-helsinki]

Taika smirked as she walked to her locker after winning her recent wrestling match. The one thing she hadn’t realized before she’d even entered the building initially was that her flower pin had fallen off her coat when someone had bumped into her. Now she’s looking around for the flower pin. Where did it go? Where was the pin? Where was Miina?

“Miina,” Taika called out after leaving the building. “Miina, where are you?” Where did that little yellow and blue kwami go? The 19-year-old Finnish woman was worried about her little friend.

What she hadn’t been expecting was for a different kwami than the one she’d been looking for. A little orange kwami with a tuft, tail, and wings. “You’re the stingray, right? I heard you calling for Miina.” “Who’re you?” Taika asked, brown eyes glaring at the kwami. Good thing no one was around to see Taika talking to the little creature.

“My name is Luorian and I’m the Sphinx kwami.” Hey handed her the object in their little paws. “This is my Miraculous.” Taika took the miraculous from them and looked it over before looking back at the kwami. Luorian told her the activation and after finding a hiding spot, Taika’s voice rang out.

“Luorian, riddle me this!”

//2020 miracuswap event: start

@aph-miraculous-au

[askthenordic2ps]

iPad’s Gacha Life slots are full

Tómas/Valdís - the two Icelanders

Beck/Beatrix - the two Swedes

Mikkel/Hanne - the two Danes

Eirik/Ingrid - the two Norwegians

Leevi/Maija - the two Finns

Emma - Stockholm

Annebeth - Copenhagen

Alda - Reykjavik

Astra - Oslo (her and her counterparts came back with a tan, don’t @ me)

Taika - Helsinki

Berwald - 1P!Sweden

Eleonora - Faroe Islands

Heiká - Finnmark (Norwegian Sámi/Lapland)

Adriaan - Amsterdam

Ianto - my 3P!Wales

[ask-pottertalia]

Four more

[ask-hetaaca-scandinavia]

More birds

I would like to present some more of the birds of the AU.. because bird people are apparently all I know how to draw lmao

Allow me to introduce: 🥁🥁🥁🥁

Henriette (Left), a 3rd year hero student and her girlfriend Eskja (right), who does... not heroic things. They love each other very much and I have so many jokes about burnt chicken

Then we have little Lumikki, she's just a baby who loves frogs. She's the baby sister of my other character Mikkel (Who Kaz was amazing enough to draw for >this post<)

AND finally, Mrs. Abígael, who's a relative of the Henriksens as she's Vilhelm's half-sister! And she's the mom of Krákur, who can also be seen in Kaz's bird post!

Anywayyy... I'll probably answer some questions later this week!

[ask-miraculous-hetalia]

Disguises

October 23 prompt: Dreams & Nightmares / Costumes / "Monsters aren't real!"

Character(s): Helsinki (Taika/Lady Luck), Nyo Iceland (Kristín/Baby Bee), 2P Denmark (Mikkel/Pooch)

@hetaween-event-2022

(art by @askfairyromano )

Mikkel hadn't really celebrated Halloween since he was a child. Reason being that his biological family never let him or Hanne celebrate. By the time the two were adopted, Mikkel was considered too old due to him having been teenager. Now, he's an adult and has kids of his own that have pulled him into celebrating.

Taika loved dressing up for Halloween. Gave her another excuse to dress up outside of cosplay. Good thing she already has an outfit planned for the party she's going to be attending.

Kristín didn't really dress up much for Halloween anymore. She felt as if she'd grown out of it, just as Emil had. Didn't mean she couldn't celebrate in her own way. Which is how she ended up at a Halloween store. She was looking at the decorations when she felt little hands get hold of her pant leg. Looking down, she saw a little girl with glasses looking up at her. The girl's smile was infectious. Kristín found herself smiling in return. Not long after, the person who she assumed was the girl's father came over with a boy following him.

"Sorry about that," he said. "Looked away for a moment to help my son and next thing I knew she was gone." The girl made a happy sound when he picked her up, curling up to him. "No, it's fine," Kristín said. "My brother's raised kids of his own, so I get it." Both noticed when the girl motioned with her hands. An eyebrow was raised. "She wants you to help her pick a costume," her father said. "Oh, sure," Kristín said. With that, Kristín and the girl now known as Bitta looked through the little girls costumes until they found one she liked. A Dalmatian.

Taika was the first to show up to the party. The person to open the door is none other than Mikkel. In his arms is his tiny daughter, Bitta, eating a cookie and in her Dalmatian costume. A soft smile crossed his face and he let her in. Kristín showed up later on and for the first time in a while, she’s wearing a costume.

“Taika Hokkanen, dressed as the Winter Soldier.” Taika smirked and headed to the front of the room. She placed a hand on her hip and looked at the crowd.

“Kristín Kallidóttir, dressed as Luigi.” Kristín smiled a bit and joined Taika at the front. Taika placed an arm around Kristín’s shoulders and made the peace sign as people got pictures of them.

“Mikkel Winther, dressed as Leo, the lion holder before the swap.” Mikkel seemed surprised. When he signed that to Bitta, the girl smiled and hugged him. Smiling, Mikkel hugged Bitta and carried her to the front with Taika and Kristín. Bitta looked at Kristín and smiled. She got a smile in return. The trio had won the costume contest.

Lady Luck sat on the roof of a building the following morning. She was looking around and making sure that nothing was going on. Two people sat next to her, one on each side. She didn’t need to look at them to know who they were. Pooch and Baby Bee. Ever since the miraculous were swapped by accident, the trio have stuck together.

[nordic-capitals-inc]

Please I need y’all to see my bonkers design process for Stockholm and Helsinki. I went into this with the intent to draw Helsinki as a mix of Fin and Sve, because of course I did, and came out with two whole girls. I’m gonna ramble more under the cut about my thought process because I think it’s funny.

Ok so it starts at the top left and goes right in a backwards “S” shape down the rest of the page

The first two were Nyo!Sweden rips but a little softer because she is Fin’s daughter 

Then I thought “What if I made her like...handsome? Handsome in a soft way?” Then you get that weird swoopy hair look in the top right and I HATED it

Then with the short hair I really went “Nyo!Finland but shorter hair” and that wasn’t it either

I really tried to make it work if You couldn’t tell

I got frustrated and went to piccrew to goof around and see what I get. That’s how I ended up on the ponytail with the braids being pulled into a bun/ponytail with bangs

Then I slapped on some glasses and a longer face because I thought I was leaning too far away from Sweden

But all that mentioned above was too much, her face felt crowded (and too much like Czech) So I split her hair into braids, because I don’t have many characters with braided hair and I thought it’d be good practice, and kept the long-ish hair from Nyo!Sweden

I don’t remember how it happened, but I sketched out the drawing of Helsinki at the bottom left and just completely lost it. I thought she was cute and resembled Fin enough but not too much. I took the remaining traits from the design above her (ie the side part and longer face) and slapped them onto another girl who is now Stockholm

It’s not pictured here, but I tried to give Helsinki a longer or more pronounced nose like Sweden and Stockholm more of a button nose like Fin

I thought the contrast between Helsinki’s softer design and Stockholm’s sharper design with their noses would be fun...if that....if that makes any sense

One thing I do find funny is how consistant I was with giving Helsinki the choker. Literally all of them have it. I guess I got super attached to the name meaning thing I found while researching the city

It’s not colored so it’s not as obvious, but Helsinki has those soft blue eyes because of Sweden’s more blue-ish eyes. Although, I just really didn’t want to give her purple eyes because SO many characters already have purple eyes, especially in the Nordic family

Like, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Oslo, and Rey all have purple eyes. I wanted to mitigate that as much as possible

Oh, and that drawing to the right of Stockholm’s design at the bottom is just a concept sketch of her when she was younger and had longer hair

Also because my hand writing’s atrocious and I was scrawling like a maniac, here’s what all the notes say

“Absolutely not” in ref to the swoopy hair design 

“OSLO LISTENS TO GIRL IN RED <-- Crucial” That was just a random thought I had because I found out Ms. Girl-in-Red is from Norway 

“Y E S !!” I think it’s pretty clear what this means

What I really love about this, it that the “Final designs” at the bottom of the page aren’t all that close to hw they look now. That what I love about character design, they change so much through the process that they become different people

Anyway, I love character design, so I guess if y’all are interested to hear more about my thought processes for these girls I can make more of these

They went through so much both design and character wise

[biomedgrid]

Biomed Grid | Alzheimer’s Disease and Metabolic Dysfunction: No Association Between L72m Ghlr Variant in Brazilian Population

Introduction

In Alzheimer Disease (AD) the pattern of expression of the orexigenic hormone ghrelin is modified [1]. The neurocognitive function have influence for certain peptide hormones by the communication between the gastrointestinal tract and the central nervous system (CNS) [2]. DA is a neurological disorder a profound and progressively cognitive decline is observed, including memory loss, by the functional and morphological deterioration of the hippocampus and temporal lobe with accumulation of aggregates of the amyloid-β peptide (Aβ) and neurofibrillary tangles (NFT) [3]. In these areas of cognitive system and memory a reduction of ghrelin was observed in AD brain [4,5]. Ghrelin is a hormone with a plethora of functions. It is codified by the GHRL gene and contains four exons but only exons 1 and 2 code for the mature peptide [6]. A family of related peptides that can be generated by alternative splicing and/or post-translational modifications from GHRL gene [7]. The L72M (C/A, rs696217, p.L72M, 408 nt) variant is located in exon 2, outside the coding region for mature ghrelin [8]. This variant was associated with increased prevalence of metabolic syndrome [9] which has been considered as a risk factor to AD [10].

Ghrelin is known to play an important role in regulatory system for growth, energy homeostasis and metabolic function [11], is a hormone that stimulates hunger and, interestingly, increased during sleep. Ghrelin has a significant role in neurotrophy, particularly in the hippocampus [4] and in some inflammatory process [12]. It also acts in cognition [5], memory and learning processes. This hormone was correlated with a number of eating and drink disorder [13], and neurological disorders [14,15] such as AD [4,5,16] and influence both synaptic and structural plasticity of determined regions of the brain [2]. Considering that the AD is deeply affected by the metabolic and inflammatory conditions and ghrelin carry out the regulation of energy balance [5,17] and inflammatory processes we selected a variant of GHRL that was associated with metabolic syndrome and obesity [18], the L72M, to verify the relationship of this variant with AD by a case-control association study. Seminara et al., in review working, argues about the potential therapeutic benefits of ghrelin as a neurocognitive agent and a promising approach to DA [19]. In this context is important to consider the frequencies of variants with potential pharmacogenic as is the variant L72M for DA.

Materials and MethodsPopulation samples

The Brazilian subjects samples, were obtained from Paraná and São Paulo States, from 395 elderly, being 194 AD patients (mean age 76.1±8.77; males: 73, females: 121), with age and sex matched with 201 healthy controls (mean age 71.9±8.25; males: 58, females: 143) as of Behavioral Neurology Department UNIFESP/EPM, Geriatric Ambulatory of FAMEMA and Cognitive Dysfunction Ambulatory, Hospital of Clinics UFPR by Paraná State. The AD patients were diagnosed according to the NINCDS-ADRDA (National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke-Alzheimer’s disease and Related Disorders Association) criteria for probable AD [20,21]. The diagnoses were made in the specialized hospitals in diagnosing AD by the dementia experts. We considered patients with at least one year of evolution of AD, and were contemplated homogeneously all the stages, mild, moderate and severe of the disease. The control group has been previously described [22].

All subjects gave informed consent for participation in this study and this research is approved by the institutional Ethics Committee study (Protocol number 1192.117.11.08). All experiments were conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

Laboratory Analysis

Venous blood was obtained from all of the participants in a periodic clinical consultation and stored at -40ºC after separation of plasma. The total genomic DNA was extracted from peripheral blood samples using a Qiagen extraction kit , according to the manufacturer’s instructions, or by a standardized salting out method [23]and then diluted to a final concentration of 20 ng/ μL. Genotyping of the missense L72M (rs696217; C_3151003_20) variant was performed with the TaqMan genotyping kit assays (Applied Biosystems) by Real Time PCR in a Mastercycler realplex 2. The reactions were performed in the following steps: (1) 50 °C/2 min, (2) 95 °C/10 min, (3) repeat 50 times 95 °C/15s, interspersed by 60 °C/min

Statistical Analysis

Allele frequencies were obtained by direct counting the alleles from the observed genotypes. The Hardy-Weiberg equilibrium (HWE) was calculated manually. The chi-square test, used to compare categorical variables, was calculated using Clump software and SPSS version 17.0 for Windows; (Chicago, III., USA). A value of p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.

Results

The genotype distributions of the L72M variant of the GHRL gene were in Hardy–Weinberg (HW) equilibrium in patients (X2 = 1.52) and controls (X2 = 0.03). Genotypes and allele frequencies of the GHRL variant analyzed are summarized in Table 1. The genotypic and allele distribution of rs696217 did not show significant differences between cases and controls.

Table 1: Genotypes and allele frequencies of L72M GHRL gene variants in Alzheimer Disease (AD) and Elderly control (EC), and results of comparisons by χ2 (p) between them.

Discussion

Although many researchers have shown that ghrelin is involved in the neuropathology of AD [4,5], the only study of genetic association between GHRL gene and AD was performed in a Japanese population [16], and this is the first study in a Euroderived population. Similar to our study, Shibata and collaborators [16] did not find association between L72M and AD, but their described genotype frequencies were significantly different from our cases and controls (p < 0.0001). In Shibata’s study [16] the heterozygote genotype was more frequent than expected and the genotype frequencies were not in HWE. Even so, our data are consistent regarding absence of association in a different population. The L72M variant frequencies from our sample did not differ from another Brazilian population study [24] and other Euro-derived population [25], we did not find statistical difference between the frequencies (p > 0.7 and p > 0.2 respectively).

The L72M variant has been associated with obesity [8] higher triglyceride levels, dietary fat intake and lower HDL-cholesterol [9], higher body mass index (BMI) [26], fat mass and visceral fat [27], modulation of glucose-induced insulin secretion [28], risk for type 2 diabetes [29] and increase in prevalence of metabolic syndrome [9]. This variant, L72M, associated with these various disorders correlated with a physiological condition of insulin-resistance, may modulate glucose-induced insulin secretion [30]. In a study with Wistar rats, Antunes et al., suggest that the fasting ghrelin have a role in the pathogenesis of insulin-resistance by the possible loss of insulin inhibitory effect may be an adaptive metabolic adjustment. More studies are needed to understand these pathways [31]. Currently many positive associations have been reported between Alzheimer’s disease and metabolic factors such as obesity, abdominal adiposity, [29] diabetes and insulin resistance, BMI [29], abnormal glucose and insulin levels [32], and metabolic syndrome [10]. Metabolic disturbance is an important factor contributing to neurodegenerative diseases; however, the neuropathological mechanisms underlying these changes are not yet clear [33]. The GHRL gene is very complex and can be regulated at multiple levels [7]. The L72M variant, located outside the coding region for mature ghrelin, could alter the stability of the mRNA or interfere with the splicing of the prepro-hormone. Despite the recent evidence that suggests a strict link between metabolic disorders and AD [10,34], in this work we did not find association with the variant of Ghrelin that has a known correlation with metabolic effects. Gahete et al. [1] argues for a need to establish the precise role of the ghrelin system in AD. Although the L72M mutation does not affect the susceptibility to AD, it does not exclude the possibility of action of other variants or epigenetic control factors of GHRL gene in Alzheimer’s disease.

Acknowledgments

Grants and scholarships were received from Coordination for Improvement of Higher Education (CAPES).

Disclosure Statement

We have no potential conflicts of interest.

Read More About this Article:https://biomedgrid.com/fulltext/volume3/alzheimers-disease-and-metabolic-dysfunction-no-association-between-l72m.000727.php

For more about: Journals on Biomedical Science :Biomed Grid

[cherries-are-valid]

Shout out to this thing I found in my notes

[happyflappymoscowbirbpleyyn]

First entry for @heta-oc-week