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Cross-sectional studies of growth in post-colonial Africa have overwhelmingly focussed on explaining the failure of growth in Africa. This prompting stylised fact has its qualifications and when these are taken into consideration the explanations of African economic growth appear incoherent. The notion of a chronic African growth failure has diverted attention from the process of economic growth a
For a long time Kenya was the African exception – a country that embraced a capitalist path to development in the midst of widespread state-led development. More recently it has been used as one of many examples of neopatrimonial rule in Africa, following its reputation for endemic corruption and its failure to successfully embrace economic and political reforms. Most interpretations of Kenya's ec
This article traces how African incomes have been measured through history, and shows that there has been a conflict of aims between producers and users of national income estimates. Politicians and international organizations seek income measures that reflect current political and economic priorities and achievements. Thus the importance given to markets, the state, and peasants in the estimates
Statistics on African economic growth are widely known to be inaccurate, but the extent and nature of these inaccuracies and their implications for the users of the data have not been rigorously assessed. This article investigates measurement issues of economic growth in post-colonial Tanzania. It is shown here that conclusions on Tanzania's development performance are conditioned by selection of
This review article examines the differences in the approaches taken by economists and historians when interpreting social and economic change in the African past. It is argued that it is a mistake to assume that one discipline has supremacy over the other, let alone monopoly, when it comes to evaluating historical causes of African poverty. One of the shortcomings of the ‘New African Economic His
If we take recent income per capita estimates at face value, they imply that the average medieval European was at least five times ‘better off’ than the average Congolese today. This raises important questions regarding the meaning and applicability of national income estimates throughout time and space, and their use in the analysis of global economic history over the long term. This article asks
Using data from a genome-wide association study of 907 individuals with childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (cases) and 2,398 controls and with validation in samples totaling 2,386 cases and 2,419 controls, we have shown that common variation at 9p21.3 (rs3731217, intron 1 of CDKN2A) influences acute lymphoblastic leukemia risk (odds ratio = 0.71, P = 3.01 x 10(-11)), irrespective of cell linea
Recent genome-wide association data have implicated genetic variation at 7p12.2 (IKZF1), 10q21.2 (ARIDB5), and 14q11.2 (CEBPE) in the etiology of B-cell childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). To verify and further examine the relationship between these variants and ALL risk, we genotyped 1384 cases of precursor B-cell childhood ALL and 1877 controls from Germany and the United Kingdom. The
BACKGROUND: The explosion in biological information creates the need for databases that are easy to develop, easy to maintain and can be easily manipulated by annotators who are most likely to be biologists. However, deployment of scalable and extensible databases is not an easy task and generally requires substantial expertise in database development.RESULTS: BioBuilder is a Zope-based software t
The rapid pace at which genomic and proteomic data is being generated necessitates the development of tools and resources for managing data that allow integration of information from disparate sources. The Human Protein Reference Database (http://www.hprd.org) is a web-based resource based on open source technologies for protein information about several aspects of human proteins including protein
Linkage between behavioral states and neural activity is one of the most important challenges in neuroscience. The network activity patterns in the awake resting state and in the actively behaving state in rodents are not well understood, and a better tool for differentiating these states can provide insights on healthy brain functions and its alteration with disease. Therefore, we simultaneously
All motile organisms need to organize their motor output to obtain functional goals. In vertebrates, natural behaviors are generally composed of a relatively large set of motor components which in turn are combined into a rich repertoire of complex actions. It is therefore an experimental challenge to investigate the organizational principles of natural behaviors. Using the relatively simple locom
The microstructure of calcite in the CM2 carbonaceous chondrite LON 94101 has been characterized using electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) analysis, to reconstruct the parent body deformation history during and/or after aqueous alteration. The results suggest that at least two events of calcite crystallization have taken place during aqueous alteration, and at least three episodes of deformati
Background: Calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) is one of the most potent endogenous vasodilators identified to date. The present study elucidates the differential interaction of CGRP, its receptor and the effect of the CGRP-receptor antagonist telcagepant on intracellular Ca2+ -levels and tension in rat middle cerebral arteries (MCA) by pressurized arteriography, FURA-2/wire myography and immu
Background Oxidative stress is implicated in both depression and anxiety, but it is currently unclear whether this relates to syndromal diagnoses or trans-diagnostic dimensional symptoms. We examined the relationship between oxidative stress and severity of depression and anxiety symptoms in individuals with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Methods Plasma oxidative stress markers F2-isoprostanes a
Background Nailfold capillaroscopic parameters hold increasing promise as outcome measures for clinical trials in systemic sclerosis (SSc). Their inclusion as outcomes would often naturally require capillaroscopy images to be captured at several time points during any one study. Our objective was to assess repeatability of image acquisition (which has been little studied), as well as of measuremen
