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"Cook, Justin"
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THE NATURAL SELECTION OF INFECTIOUS DISEASE RESISTANCE AND ITS EFFECT ON CONTEMPORARY HEALTH
This paper empirically tests the association between genetically determined resistance to infectious disease and cross-country health differences. A country-level measure of genetic diversity for the system of genes associated with the recognition and disposal of foreign pathogens is constructed. Genetic diversity within this system has been shown to reduce the virulence and prevalence of infectious diseases and is hypothesized to have been naturally selected from historical exposure to infectious pathogens. Base estimation shows a statistically strong, robust, and positive relationship between this constructed measure and country-level health outcomes in times prior to, but not after, the international epidemiological transition.
Journal Article
Characterization of anionic and cationic functionalized bacterial cellulose nanofibres for controlled release applications
Bacterial cellulose (BC) is a biocompatible biopolymer synthesized by
Gluconacetobacter xylinus
. In this study, BC was oxidized and aminated to produce hydrogels for biomedical applications, and the products were characterized. A carboxyl (pK
a
of 3.9 ± 0.1) content of 1.13 ± 0.02 mmol/g was obtained with the TEMPO-catalyzed oxidation. Epichlorohydrin-mediated amination introduced amine groups (pK
a
of 11.0 ± 0.1) up to 1.74 ± 0.06 mmol/g. The oxidation of BC caused a decrease in its ζ-potential to −103 ± 6 mV, and amination increased the ζ-potential to −4 ± 6 mV. The fibre diameter decreased after both reactions. The high absolute value of the ζ-potential for oxidized BC led to superior colloidal stability in water, and a 390 % increase in water retention. The oxidized BC hydrogel was also found to increase in water retention fivefold from pH 1 to 7, making it a smart hydrogel. The cationic and anionic BC hydrogels described here could be used for several biomedical applications, including self-assembling drug delivery devices.
Journal Article
Persistence of Fortune: Accounting for Population Movements, There Was No Post-Columbian Reversal
Using data on place of origin of today's country populations and the indicators of level of development in 1500 used by Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson (2002), we confirm a reversal of fortune for colonized countries as territories, but find persistence of fortune for people and their descendants. Persistence results are at least as strong for three alternative measures of early development, for which reversal for territories, however, fails to hold. Additional exercises lend support to Glaeser et al.'s (2004) view that human capital is a more fundamental channel of influence of precolonial conditions on modern development than is quality of institutions.
Journal Article
Cliopatria - A geospatial database of world-wide political entities from 3400BCE to 2024CE
The scientific understanding of the complex dynamics of global history – from the rise and spread of states to their declines and falls, from their peaceful interactions with economic or diplomatic exchanges to violent confrontations – requires, at its core, a consistent and explicit encoding of historical political entities, their locations, extents and durations. Numerous attempts have been made to produce digital geographical compendia of polities with different time depths and resolutions. Most have been limited in scope and many of the more comprehensive geospatial datasets must either be licensed or are stored in proprietary formats, making access for scholarly analysis difficult. To address these issues we have developed Cliopatria, a comprehensive open-source geospatial dataset of worldwide states from 3400BCE to 2024CE. Presently it comprises over 1600 political entities sampled at varying timesteps and spatial scales. Here, we discuss its construction, its scope, and its current limitations.
Journal Article
Multigenerational Effects of Early-Life Health Shocks
A large literature has documented links between harmful early-life exposures and laterlife health and socioeconomic deficits. These studies, however, have typically been unable to examine the possibility that these shocks are transmitted to the next generation. Our study uses representative survey data from the United States to trace the impacts of in utero exposure to the 1918 influenza pandemic on the outcomes of the children and grandchildren of those affected. We find evidence of multigenerational effects on educational, economic, and health outcomes.
Journal Article
The role of lactase persistence in precolonial development
This paper argues that a genetic adaptation to the Neolithic Revolution led to differential levels of development in the precolonial era. The ability to digest milk, or to be lactase persistent, is conferred by a gene variant that is unequally distributed across the Old World. Milk provided qualitative and quantitative advantages to the diet that led to differences in the carrying capacities of respective countries. It is shown through a number of specifications that country-level variation in the frequency of lactase persistence is positively and significantly related to population density in 1,500 CE; specifically, a one standard deviation increase in the frequency of lactase persistent individuals (roughly 24 percentage points) is associated with roughly a 40% increase in precolonial population density. This relationship is robust to a large number of sample specifications and potentially omitted variables.
Journal Article
