Dinner Service: Echoing the Value of Philosophy Through Character and Story

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College

COVID-19 symptoms at hospital admission vary with age and sex: results from the ISARIC prospective multinational observational study

Background: The ISARIC prospective multinational observational study is the largest cohort of hospitalized patients with COVID-19. We present relationships of age, sex, and nationality to presenting symptoms. Methods: International, prospective observational study of 60 109 hospitalized symptomatic patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 recruited from 43 countries between 30 January and 3 August 2020. Logistic regression was performed to evaluate relationships of age and sex to published COVID-19 case definitions and the most commonly reported symptoms. Results: ‘Typical’ symptoms of fever (69%), cough (68%) and shortness of breath (66%) were the most commonly reported. 92% of patients experienced at least one of these. Prevalence of typical symptoms was greatest in 30- to 60-year-olds (respectively 80, 79, 69%; at least one 95%). They were reported less frequently in children (≤ 18 years: 69, 48, 23; 85%), older adults (≥ 70 years: 61, 62, 65; 90%), and women (66, 66, 64; 90%; vs. men 71, 70, 67; 93%, each P < 0.001). The most common atypical presentations under 60 years of age were nausea and vomiting and abdominal pain, and over 60 years was confusion. Regression models showed significant differences in symptoms with sex, age and country. Interpretation: This international collaboration has allowed us to report reliable symptom data from the largest cohort of patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19. Adults over 60 and children admitted to hospital with COVID-19 are less likely to present with typical symptoms. Nausea and vomiting are common atypical presentations under 30 years. Confusion is a frequent atypical presentation of COVID-19 in adults over 60 years. Women are less likely to experience typical symptoms than men

Bridging Development and Heritage: Expert Gaze, Local Discourses, and Visual Aesthetic Crisis at Hampi World Heritage Site

In this article, I explore the complex trajectory of two bridges that were proposed for construction across the River Tungabhadra in the early 1990s at locations that now fall within the boundary of Hampi, a UNESCO Cultural World Heritage Site (WHS) in India. The proposed bridges were considered improper forms of infrastructure development in the visual context of a WHS, and the site was placed on the World Heritage in Danger List in the late 1990s. Popular media framed the controversy as a ‘classic clash’ between heritage and development where conservation goals and developmental needs opposed one another. Heritage experts, agencies, and activists read the crisis as one of ‘heritage or development’, normatively typecasting residents north of the river as ‘uneducated, ignorant locals’ wanting development at the cost of heritage. However, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and archival material covering nearly three decades, I demonstrate that residents wanted the bridges not as physical infrastructure towards some obscure development goals, but as the means to link their overlooked contributions to the founding of the Vijayanagara Empire, the capital region and its contemporary remaking as a WHS. In this instance, the binary opposition lay in the ‘expert gaze’, not in local discourses. It was experts, rather than ‘local people’, who saw conservation and development as inherently opposed to each other. I explicate how various views on what constitutes heritage and development intersect with each other, and suggest that dissonance need not be the inevitable result but may be built into the gaze of expertise

Role of information on consumers' willingness-to-pay for genetically-modified rice with health benefits: an application to China

Despite their potential health benefits, the controversial nature surrounding the use of GM technology in biofortified crops remains a subject of discussion. This paper investigates the role of information on willingness-to-pay for folate-biofortified rice in a Chinese folate-deficient region. We conducted second price auctions with 252 women of childbearing age, split up into two target groups based on street (n = 132, non-student sample) or school auctions (n = 120, student sample). Notwithstanding a general positive effect of folate-related information (i.e. content, benefits and regional situation), evidence reveals that the non-student sample is less concerned about GM technology. The results also provide insight into serial position effects in conflicting GM information. Whereas participants in the non-student sample are more prone to a primacy bias when receiving both positive and negative information, an alarmist reaction is observed in the student sample. This study highlights the need for segmented, targeted communication strategies on biofortification