What Is the Relationship between Haptoglobin, Malaria, and Anaemia?

Rogerson discusses a new study that found that children with the haptoglobin (Hp) 2-2 genotype had a greater fall in hemoglobin over the malaria season than children with other Hp genotypes

The Role of Agriculture in Development

A longstanding question in economics is why some countries are so much richer than others. Today, for example, income per capita in the worldÂ’s richest countries is roughly thirty-five times greater than it is in the worldÂ’s poorest countries. Recent work (e.g., Robert E. Lucas 2001, and Rachel Ngai 1999) argues that the proximate cause of this disparity is that todayÂ’s poor countries began the process of industrialization much later and that this process is slow. In this paper we argue that a model of structural transformation provides a useful theory of both why industrialization occurs at different dates, and why it proceeds slowly. A key implication of this model is that growth in agricultural productivity is central to development, a message that also appears prominently in the traditional development literature. (See, e.g., Peter Timmer (1986)).

Farm Work, Home Work and International Productivity Differences

AgricultureÂ’s share of economic activity is known to vary inversely with a countryÂ’s level of development. This paper examines whether extensions of the neoclassical growth model can account for some important sectoral patterns observed in a current cross-section of countries and in the time series data for currently rich countries. We find that a straightforward agricultural extension of the neoclassical growth model restricted to match U.S. observations fails to account for important aspects of the cross-country data. We then introduce a version of the growth model with home production, and we show that this model performs much better.

FARM WORK, HOME WORK AND INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTIVITY DIFFERENCES

Agriculture's share of economic activity is known to vary inversely with a country's level of development. This paper examines whether extensions of the neoclassical growth model can account for some important sectoral patterns observed in a current cross-section of countries and in the time series data for currently rich countries. We find that a straightforward agricultural extension of the neoclassical growth model restricted to match U.S. observations fails to account for important aspects of the cross-country data. We then introduce a version of the growth model with home production, and we show that this model performs much better.Agribusiness, Productivity Analysis,

Foucauldian analysis and \u27the best interests of the child\u27

In this thesis I have developed a theoretical framework using Michel Foucault’s metaphor of the panopticon and applied the resulting discursive methodology to prominent risk assessment texts in Tasmanian Government child protection services. From the analysis I have developed an innovation poststructural practice of discursive empathy for use in child protection social work. Previous research has examined discourses such as madness, mothering, the family and masculinity using Foucault’s ideas and argued that each is a performance of social government. However my interest is in ‘the best interests of the child’ as governmentality; risk as the apparatus through which it is conducted and child abuse its social effect. In applying a discursive analysis, practices of risk assessment are therefore understood to actually produce intellectual and material conditions favourable to child abuse, rather than protect children from maltreatment. The theoretical framework produces in this thesis incorporates three distinct components of Foucault’s interpretive analytics of power: archaeology, genealogy and ethics. These components provide a structure for discourse analysis that is also a coherent methodical practice of Foucault’s notion of ‘parrhesia’. The practice of parrhesia involves social workers recognised that social power is subjectively dispersed yet also hierarchical. Using this notion I have analysed ‘the best interest of the child’ as a panopticon and argued that child abuse is a consequence. This thesis therefore demonstrates how child protection social workers can expose the political purpose involved in the discourse ‘the best interests of the child’, and in doing so challenge the hostile intellectual and material conditions that exist for children in our community. In concluding, I identify how discursive empathy is a readily accessible skill that social workers can use to practice parrhesia in a creative way

Stochastic dynamical systems and processes with discontinuous sample paths

Chapter 1 we use a Poisson stochastic measure to establish a method of localizing, and a change of chart formula for, a class of stochastic differential equations with discontinuous sample paths. This is based on Gikhman and Skorohod [4]. In Chapter 2 we use essentially the method of Elworthy [2], to construct a unique, maximal solution to a stochastic differential equation defined on a manifold M. Chapter 3 establishes some properties of solutions of the equation. In particular if M is compact, then the solutions have infinite explosion time. We evaluate the infinitesimal generator of the process. By defining stochastic development of a-stable processes on the tangent space, we produce a process on the manifold which, as is shown in Section 6, is not a-stable on M

Pregnancy and malaria: the perfect storm

Purpose of review Malaria in pregnancy continues to exert a toll on pregnant women and their offspring. Recent findings The burden of Plasmodium falciparum infection is especially large in Africa, and new data show lasting effects of maternal infection on the infant's neurocognitive development. Elsewhere, P. vivax infection causes relapsing infections that are challenging to prevent. Infection in first trimester of pregnancy is an area of increasing focus, and its adverse effects on pregnancy outcome are increasingly recognised. First-trimester infection is common and frequently acquired prior to conception. Although newer rapid diagnostic tests still have limited sensitivity, they may be useful in detection of early pregnancy malaria for treatment. Artemisinin-based combination therapies are efficacious in later pregnancy but have yet to be recommended in first trimester because of limited safety data. In Africa, intermittent preventive treatment in pregnancy (IPTp) with monthly sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine improves pregnancy outcomes, but sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine resistance is worsening. The alternative, IPTp with dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine, has greater antimalarial efficacy, but does not appear to improve pregnancy outcomes, because sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine has poorly understood nonmalarial benefits on birthweight. Summary Novel IPTp regimens must be combined with interventions to strengthen protection from malaria infection acquired before and in early pregnancy

Performance Characteristics of Combinations of Host Biomarkers to Identify Women with Occult Placental Malaria: A Case-Control Study from Malawi

Because of its propensity to sequester in the placental intervillous space, Plasmodium falciparum can evade detection by peripheral smear in women with placental malaria (PM). We evaluated host biomarkers as potential indicators of occult PM infections.Using a case-control design, we evaluated the ability of biomarkers to identify PM in the absence of circulating peripheral parasites (n = 24) compared to placental smear-negative controls (n = 326). We measured levels of biomarkers (C3a, C5a, CRP, angiopoietin-1, angiopoietin-2, sTie-2, sEndoglin, VEGF, sFlt-1, tissue factor, and leptin) in maternal peripheral plasma at delivery. Using ROC curve analysis, we assessed the ability of clinical parameters and biomarkers to accurately detect PM infections identified by placental smear. We show that decreases in sFlt-1 and leptin and increases in CRP were associated with occult PM infections (p<0.01) and correlated with placental parasitaemia (p<0.01). Individually, all markers had moderate ability to diagnose occult PM infections with areas under the ROC between 0.62 and 0.72. In order to improve diagnostic performance, we generated simple scoring systems to identify PM infections using either a clinical score (0-2), a biomarker score (0-3) or a clinical plus biomarker score (0-5). The combinatorial model that incorporated both clinical parameters and biomarkers had an area under curve (AUC) of 0.85 (95% CI, 0.81-0.89), which was significantly better at identifying occult PM infections than the clinical score alone (p = 0.001).These data suggest that host biomarkers in the maternal peripheral blood may improve the detection of PM in the absence of peripheral parasitaemia