Not all that <i>post</i>, not all that <i>new</i>:The disruption of challenging coloniality

What happens when, as scholars who have habitually been working with posthumanism and the new materialisms, we find ourselves summoned by thinkers who critique the covert coloniality present in these approaches? This work is the result of a year-long project where we set up the task of feeling our way through these critiques, exploring how they change our work and ourselves; and attempting to find a way of relating to the challenge of decoloniality. We use collaborative writing as an approach to delve into our encounters with readings, our own histories, and our ways of relating to the academy and each other. In this work, we start from our differing histories and positionalities—a Chilean woman and a British man; now colleagues and with a history of being a PhD supervisee-supervisor. Then, we grapple with how posthumanism/new materialism has neglected to think about how coloniality is entangled in who the “humans” it speaks to are and how it is further reproducing colonial dynamics of ethnocentric erasure that effectively do not allow it to go beyond the “human.” After considering possibilities of integration, reparation, survival, and refusal, we conclude it is crucial to reflexively acknowledge and work with our concrete positionalities and interests, thereby making our conceptualizations necessarily provincial, limited, and in some ways problematic. Otherwise, we run the risk of engulfing decolonial, postcolonial, anticolonial, and indigenous theories without any fundamental change, thus furthering coloniality

The Half-Life of Happiness: Hedonic Adaptation in the Subjective Well-Being of Poor Slum Dwellers to a Large Improvement in Housing

A fundamental question in economics is whether happiness increases pari passu with improvements in material conditions or whether humans grow accustomed to better conditions over time. We rely on a large-scale experiment to examine what kind of impact the provision of housing to extremely poor populations in Latin America has on subjective measures of well-being over time. The objective is to determine whether poor populations exhibit hedonic adaptation in happiness derived from reducing the shortfall in the satisfaction of their basic needs. Our results are conclusive. We find that subjective perceptions of wellbeing improve substantially for recipients of better housing but that after, on average, eight months, 60% of that gain disappears.Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS

Shelter from the storm: upgrading housing infraestructure in Latin American slums

This paper provides empirical evidence on the causal effects that upgrading slum dwellings has on the living conditions of the extremely poor. In particular, we study the impact of providing better houses in situ to slum dwellers in El Salvador, Mexico and Uruguay. We experimentally evaluate the impact of a housing project run by the NGO TECHO which provides basic pre-fabricated houses to members of extremely poor population groups in Latin America. The main objective of the program is to improve household well-being. Our findings show that better houses have a positive effect on overall housing conditions and general well-being: treated households are happier with their quality of life. In two countries, we also document improvements in children’s health; in El Salvador, slum dwellers also feel that they are safer. We do not find this result, however, in the other two experimental samples. There are no other noticeable robust effects on the possession of durable goods or in terms of labor outcomes. Our results are robust in terms of both internal and external validity because they are derived from similar experiments in three different Latin American countries.Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS

Shelter from the storm: upgrading housing infraestructure in Latin American slums

This paper provides empirical evidence on the causal effects that upgrading slum dwellings has on the living conditions of the extremely poor. In particular, we study the impact of providing better houses in situ to slum dwellers in El Salvador, Mexico and Uruguay. We experimentally evaluate the impact of a housing project run by the NGO TECHO which provides basic pre-fabricated houses to members of extremely poor population groups in Latin America. The main objective of the program is to improve household well-being. Our findings show that better houses have a positive effect on overall housing conditions and general well-being: treated households are happier with their quality of life. In two countries, we also document improvements in children’s health; in El Salvador, slum dwellers also feel that they are safer. We do not find this result, however, in the other two experimental samples. There are no other noticeable robust effects on the possession of durable goods or in terms of labor outcomes. Our results are robust in terms of both internal and external validity because they are derived from similar experiments in three different Latin American countries.Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS

The Half-Life of Happiness: Hedonic Adaptation in the Subjective Well-Being of Poor Slum Dwellers to a Large Improvement in Housing

A fundamental question in economics is whether happiness increases pari passu with improvements in material conditions or whether humans grow accustomed to better conditions over time. We rely on a large-scale experiment to examine what kind of impact the provision of housing to extremely poor populations in Latin America has on subjective measures of well-being over time. The objective is to determine whether poor populations exhibit hedonic adaptation in happiness derived from reducing the shortfall in the satisfaction of their basic needs. Our results are conclusive. We find that subjective perceptions of wellbeing improve substantially for recipients of better housing but that after, on average, eight months, 60% of that gain disappears.Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS

Evaluación preliminar técnica, económica e institucional para la implementación de un servicio de ferris en el Caribe Oriental

La Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), en el marco de una asistencia técnica a la Asociación de Estados del Caribe (AEC), realizó, entre otras actividades, un primer estudio sobre la posibilidad de lanzar una red regional de ferris, cuyos resultados se exponen en este documento. En la primera parte se presenta una evaluación técnica y económica del mercado del Caribe Oriental, incluidos cuatro países del continente (Colombia, Guyana, Suriname y Venezuela (República Bolivariana de)), en la que se identifican los flujos potenciales y las posibles rutas para la implementación de un plan piloto, y se propone la flota que se emplazaría y las necesidades de infraestructura. En la segunda parte se analiza la posible inclusión de la participación privada, en su versión de asociaciones público-privadas, para el financiamiento y la operación de dichas rutas en el Caribe, así como para el financiamiento y la operación de los puertos requeridos para ello. También se analizan casos similares exitosos de asociaciones público-privadas, de los cuales se pueden extraer elementos clave al momento de impulsar el proyecto de ferris para el Caribe.Introducción .-- I. Análisis técnico y económico para la propuesta de una red regional de ferris .-- II. Participación privada en el desarrollo de sistema de ferris en el Caribe

Efficacy and safety of dasatinib vs. Imatinib in Latin american subpopulation from the dasision trial in patients with newly diagnosed chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in chronic phase (CP)

sem informação100120th Congress of European-Hematology-Associationsem informaçã

The impact of inpatient bloodstream infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria in low- and middle-income countries: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Bloodstream infections (BSIs) produced by antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB) cause a substantial disease burden worldwide. However, most estimates come from high-income settings and thus are not globally representative. This study quantifies the excess mortality, length of hospital stay (LOS), intensive care unit (ICU) admission, and economic costs associated with ARB BSIs, compared to antibiotic-sensitive bacteria (ASB), among adult inpatients in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). METHODS AND FINDINGS: We conducted a systematic review by searching 4 medical databases (PubMed, SCIELO, Scopus, and WHO's Global Index Medicus; initial search n = 13,012 from their inception to August 1, 2022). We only included quantitative studies. Our final sample consisted of n = 109 articles, excluding studies from high-income countries, without our outcomes of interest, or without a clear source of bloodstream infection. Crude mortality, ICU admission, and LOS were meta-analysed using the inverse variance heterogeneity model for the general and subgroup analyses including bacterial Gram type, family, and resistance type. For economic costs, direct medical costs per bed-day were sourced from WHO-CHOICE. Mortality costs were estimated based on productivity loss from years of potential life lost due to premature mortality. All costs were in 2020 USD. We assessed studies' quality and risk of publication bias using the MASTER framework. Multivariable meta-regressions were employed for the mortality and ICU admission outcomes only. Most included studies showed a significant increase in crude mortality (odds ratio (OR) 1.58, 95% CI [1.35 to 1.80], p < 0.001), total LOS (standardised mean difference "SMD" 0.49, 95% CI [0.20 to 0.78], p < 0.001), and ICU admission (OR 1.96, 95% CI [1.56 to 2.47], p < 0.001) for ARB versus ASB BSIs. Studies analysing Enterobacteriaceae, Acinetobacter baumanii, and Staphylococcus aureus in upper-middle-income countries from the African and Western Pacific regions showed the highest excess mortality, LOS, and ICU admission for ARB versus ASB BSIs per patient. Multivariable meta-regressions indicated that patients with resistant Acinetobacter baumanii BSIs had higher mortality odds when comparing ARB versus ASB BSI patients (OR 1.67, 95% CI [1.18 to 2.36], p 0.004). Excess direct medical costs were estimated at $12,442 (95$6,693 to $18,191]) for ARB versus ASB BSI per patient, with an average cost of$41,103 (95% CI [$30,931 to$51,274]) due to premature mortality. Limitations included the poor quality of some of the reviewed studies regarding the high risk of selective sampling or failure to adequately account for relevant confounders. CONCLUSIONS: We provide an overview of the impact ARB BSIs in limited resource settings derived from the existing literature. Drug resistance was associated with a substantial disease and economic burden in LMICs. Although, our results show wide heterogeneity between WHO regions, income groups, and pathogen-drug combinations. Overall, there is a paucity of BSI data from LMICs, which hinders implementation of country-specific policies and tracking of health progress

Objective assessment of electrode discrimination with the auditory change complex in adult cochlear implant users

The spatial auditory change complex (ACC) is a cortical response elicited by a change in place of stimulation. There is growing evidence that it provides a useful objective measure of electrode discrimination in cochlear implant (CI) users. To date, the spatial ACC has only been measured in relatively experienced CI users with one type of device. Early assessment of electrode discrimination could allow auditory stimulation to be optimized during a potentially sensitive period of auditory rehabilitation. In this study we used a direct stimulation paradigm to measure the spatial ACC in both pre- and post-lingually deafened adults. We show that it is feasible to measure the spatial ACC in different CI devices and as early as 1 week after CI switch-on. The spatial ACC has a strong relationship with performance on a behavioural discrimination task and in some cases provides information over and above behavioural testing. We suggest that it may be useful to measure the spatial ACC to guide auditory rehabilitation and improve hearing performance in CI users