308 research outputs found
Ep. 37 - Vikram Mansharamani, Trend Spotter, not a Lawyer
No full textFuture law means understanding worlds beyond law. Lawyers spend a lot of time talking to other lawyers. This episode features a fascinating conversation with Vikram Mansharamani, a consultant, author, and importantly, not a lawyer, about macro trends in the economy and society that will inevitably come to affect legal professionals and legal systems
Writers, novels and banyan trees: notes on Vikram Seth\u27s A Suitable Boy
No full textVikram Seth\u27s first prose novel A Suitable Boy (1993) has been considered by critics and reviewers as a return to traditional ways of writing, particularly after the eighties, a decade of experimentation in the novel. However, a close reading of the book may reveal connections in the narrative with a contemporary mood also found in other recent novels. The aim of this article is to show that Seth\u27s work is deeply embedded in the ideological issues of its time, despite Seth\u27s anti-intellectual statements in a conversation with the author which is also recorded here
Severe progressive brain atrophy in pediatric multiple sclerosis
No full textBACKGROUND: Multiple sclerosis is an immune-mediated disease of the central nervous system. Progressive brain atrophy is a known marker of patient disability and cognitive impairment in MS patient, but limited information is available about the clinical and cognitive consequences in the pediatric population. CASE REPORT: We present a case of aggressive pediatric-onset MS with severe rapidly progressive brain atrophy, neurological disability, and cognitive deterioration. Serial brain MRI studies demonstrate ongoing cerebral atrophy correlating with severe deficits on serial neuropsychological testing. CONCLUSIONS: A subset of pediatric MS patient may be vulnerable to severe cognitive deterioration associated with marked brain atrophy.Peer reviewe
Does More Money Make You Fat? The Effects of Quasi-Experimental Income Transfers on Adolescent and Young Adult Obesity
No full textThis paper examines how exogenous income transfers during adolescence affect contemporaneous body mass index (BMI) measures and young adult obesity rates using evidence from the Great Smoky Mountains Study of Youth. The effects of extra income differ depending on the households’ initial socio-economic status, tracing out an inverted U-shaped relationship between initial income and BMI. Youths who resided in families that had high pre-treatment annual incomes experience no change in young adult obesity rates as a result of the income transfers, while the BMI of poorer children increases. Part of this effect is due to differential increases in height, as well as weight. An exogenous annual transfer of $4,000 per adult family member results in an almost 4 cm gain in height-for-age. Adolescents coming from worse-off households experience an increase in weight only, without the corresponding change in height. The cumulative effects of the increase in household income persist for several years into young adulthood.obesity, health, cash transfer, adolescents, indigenous peoples
Replication Package for Measuring Bias in Consumer Lending
No full textDobbie, W., A. Liberman, D. Paravisini, and V. Pathania. Measuring Bias in Consumer Lending. Forthcoming, Review of Economic Studies.
This file contains all of the analysis code needed to replicate this paper's results, all of the reproducible outputs reported in the article and a data availability statement
Replication Package for Measuring Bias in Consumer Lending
No full textDobbie, W., A. Liberman, D. Paravisini, and V. Pathania. Measuring Bias in Consumer Lending. Forthcoming, Review of Economic Studies. This file contains all of the analysis code needed to replicate this paper's results, all of the reproducible outputs reported in the article and a data availability statement
Global burden of tuberculosis: Estimated incidence, prevalence, and mortality by country
No full textObjective: To estimate the risk and prevalence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) infection and tuberculosis (TB) incidence, prevalence, and mortality, including disease attributable to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), for 212 countries in 1997. Participants A panel of 86 TB experts and epidemiologists from more than 40 countries was chosen by the World Health Organization (WHO), with final agreement being reached between country experts and WHO staff. Evidence Incidence of TB and mortality in each country was determined by (1) case notification to the WHO, (2) annual risk of infection data from tuberculin surveys, and (3) data on prevalence of smear- positive pulmonary disease from prevalence surveys. Estimates derived from relatively poor data were strongly influenced by panel member opinion. Objective estimates were derived from high-quality data collected recently by approved procedures. Consensus Process Agreement was reached by (1) participants reviewing methods and data and making provisional estimates in closed workshops held at WHO's 6 regional offices, (2) principal authors refining estimates using standard methods and all available data, and (3) country experts reviewing and adjusting these estimates and reaching final agreement with WHO staff. Conclusions: In 1997, new cases of TB totaled an estimated 7.96 million (range, 6.3 million-11.1 million), including 3.52 million (2.8 million-4.9 million) cases (44%) of infectious pulmonary disease (smear-positive), and there were 16.2 million (12.1 million-22.5 million) existing cases of disease. An estimated 1.87 million (1.4 million-2.8 million) people died of TB and the global case fatality rate was 23% but exceeded 50% in some African countries with high HIV rates. Global prevalence of MTB infection was 32% (1.86 billion people). Eighty percent of all incident TB cases were found in 22 countries, with more than half the cases occurring in 5 Southeast Asian countries. Nine of 10 countries with the highest incidence rates per capita were in Africa. Prevalence of MTB/HIV coinfection worldwide was 0.18% and 640 000 incident TB cases (8%) had HIV infection. The global burden of tuberculosis remains enormous, mainly because of poor control in Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and eastern Europe, and because of high rates of M tuberculosis and HIV coinfection in some African countries
Vikram Chandra's constant journey: swallowing the World
No full textThe purpose of this paper is to account for the challenging hybridity and in-betweenness that derives from the presence of non-Western traces in contemporary fiction written in a global language. Among the huge and ever-growing group of the so-called "new literatures in English", the focus will be placed on Vikram Chandra's novel Red Earth and Pouring Rain (1995). This Indian author, who lives between Bombay and Washington, is a real master when it comes to fictionalized oral storytelling, echoing the traditional Indian epics -the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. It is no wonder, then, that Chandra would define himself as a storyteller. The generic shaping of a text tends to voice the ontological conception of literature that an author has, as it is the case with Chandra's transcultural narrative. His work, delineated on the borders between oral rite and written fiction, displays an intersystemic dialogue in which literature becomes a space of intercultural communication, an endless journey
Vikram Chandra's constant journey : swallowing the World
No full textThe purpose of this paper is to account for the challenging hybridity and in-betweenness that derives from the presence of non-Western traces in contemporary fiction written in a global language. Among the huge and ever-growing group of the so-called "new literatures in English", the focus will be placed on Vikram Chandra's novel Red Earth and Pouring Rain (1995). This Indian author, who lives between Bombay and Washington, is a real master when it comes to fictionalized oral storytelling, echoing the traditional Indian epics -the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. It is no wonder, then, that Chandra would define himself as a storyteller. The generic shaping of a text tends to voice the ontological conception of literature that an author has, as it is the case with Chandra's transcultural narrative. His work, delineated on the borders between oral rite and written fiction, displays an intersystemic dialogue in which literature becomes a space of intercultural communication, an endless journey.</jats:p
Author response
No full textThe seemingly limitless diversity of proteins in nature arose from only a few thousand domain prototypes, but the origin of these themselves has remained unclear. We are pursuing the hypothesis that they arose by fusion and accretion from an ancestral set of peptides active as co-factors in RNA-dependent replication and catalysis. Should this be true, contemporary domains may still contain vestiges of such peptides, which could be reconstructed by a comparative approach in the same way in which ancient vocabularies have been reconstructed by the comparative study of modern languages. To test this, we compared domains representative of known folds and identified 40 fragments whose similarity is indicative of common descent, yet which occur in domains currently not thought to be homologous. These fragments are widespread in the most ancient folds and enriched for iron-sulfur- and nucleic acid-binding. We propose that they represent the observable remnants of a primordial RNA-peptide world
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