Author: Biz India

Dragged Down By Debt, 23 Developed Countries Added Only 20% to World GDP Growth Since 2009

By Chantell (Nighswonger) Cieszkowski  Assistant Account Executive – Allison+Partners Found in this week’s issue of The Economist is a chart of the world GDP which compares the contributions of the BRICS, developed countries, and developing countries against the overall world. Thanks largely to the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) world GDP rose by 2.5% during the final quarter of 2012. The BRICS alone have been responsible for 55% of global growth since the end of 2009. Dragged down by debt and austerity, the 23 countries that make up the developed world contributed just 20% to that...

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Book Review: Women, Money and the Law – 19th Century Fiction, Gender, and the Courts

Author: Joyce W. Warren Publisher: University of Iowa Press – 373 pages Book Review by: Sonu Chandiram This book asks the most important question at the very beginning right on the inside flap: Did nineteenth-century American women have money of their own? Throughout the course of this book, the many aspects of this question are explored and answered by the author Joyce Warren, who is a professor of literature and director of women’s studies at Queens College, part of the City University of New York. Joyce Warren, in reportorial fashion, went through a large archive of documents recorded between...

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“Syria No Longer Exists,” Says Well-Placed Source in Damascus

A WND Exclusive By F. Michael Maloof Washington, March 28, 2013 – Iran and Hezbollah have effectively taken over Syria, guiding the nation’s military operations and functions of government, as the Lebanese resistance group’s fighters have begun to flood into the Damascus area, reveals a well-placed source in the Syrian capital. To make a “long version really short, Syria no longer exists,” the source told WND. The government of Syria and the running of the Syrian military are no longer are under the command of the Syrians, he explained. “Lebanon also is no more,” the source added. Like Syria,...

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Book Review: Reading Essays: An Invitation

Author: G. Douglas Atkins Publisher: University of Georgia Press – 276 pages Book Review by: Paiso Jamakar G. Douglas Atkins, a professor of English at the University of Kansas, shows us in this helpful book how to read, enjoy, and benefit from essays, a form of writing that has been around for over 400 years. He points out that there are currently, many books prevailing on how to enjoyably and beneficially read works of drama, fiction and poetry; but not many on the essay. Atkins presents and discusses 25 essays in this collection that he has used in his...

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Book Review: Launching the Antibiotic Era: Personal Accounts of the Discovery and Use of the First Antibiotics

Editors: Carol L. Moberg and Zanvil A. Cohn Publisher: Rockefeller University Press – 97 pages Book Review by: Nano Khilnani On October 23, 1939, the antibiotic gramicidin was discovered by Rene Dubos. It was the first antibacterial agent obtained from natural resources through rational pursuit. Fifty years later a symposium was held on October 23, 1989 at Rockefeller University in New York City. This book is about Rene Dubos and his contributions to science in particular and humanity in general.  The editors write in the Preface that Dubos was better known as a biographer, a philosopher of humankind and staunch protector of the environment than as a microbiologist in his earlier career. Why was the discovery of gramicidin important? Because it was ‘a novel medium for the growth of the tubercle bacillus,’ the editors write. For Dubos, it was one of the “exciting milestones in his early career at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research.” My guess is that most readers have not heard of gramicidin but they certainly know about penicillin. But it was the work on gramicidin that led the two English scientists Ernest Chain and Howard Foley to revive the “dormant research” on penicillin that Alexander Fleming found accidentally in 1928, writes Moberg in the book’s final essay Friend of the Good Earth: Rene Dubos (1901-1982). Although he was first trained as an agronomist, then as...

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