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  • Book cover of Benchmarking Bangalore's Public Services: What the Third Citizen Report Card Reveals
  • Book cover of The One who is Everything for you in Your Life
    Manisha Shah

     · 2021

    Reyansh is a boy who is into simple living and high thinking, who feels that our beliefs can manifest into reality. He leaves his well-paying job to do something big in his life. He chooses to become an entrepreneur. Besides his career, he has always wanted someone in his life with whom he can be as real as he is. Mishka is a simple innocent girl who has deep faith in love and destiny. She feels from the bottom of her heart that someone somewhere is made for her. She believes in the power of the universe and that everything happens for the reason. Will Reyansh get the one to whom he can say “you are my everything”? Will Mishka get the one to whom she can say “you are the one who is made for me”? Are they destined to be together or has destiny some other plan for them? What will happen when their different ways meet at the same destination?

  • Book cover of Blissed and Unstoppable
    Manisha Shah

     · 2024

    It's your birthright to be blissed and unstoppable. As the seed has the power to be a tree similarly every human being has the power to be blissed and unstoppable in their life There is no difference between you and all successful people so no matter where we are, there is a process which can make our life better. This blissed book will show you how can you be blissed today and have the riches of the universe. You will be fortunate to know what those successful people did that's why they are shining today. So, Are you ready to be blissed? Are you ready to have all blissful and unstoppable things ahead in your life? Are you ready to have unstoppable self confidence in you? If yes, then just tap into the road to riches.

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    A number of countries are pursuing the regulation of sex work in order to decrease the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and to reduce the probability of a generalized HIV/AIDS epidemic. We study the effects of enforcing licensing regulation laws on sex worker STI rates using nationally representative sex worker data from Ecuador. We find that increasing enforcement in the street sector significantly decreases STIs. However, increasing enforcement in the brothel sector increases the probability of a sex worker ever being infected with any STI. Increasing enforcement in the street shifts some sex workers from the more risky street into the less risky brothels and increases street prices, reducing the overall number of street clients. As a result overall infection rates fall. In contrast, increasing enforcement in the brothel sector can exacerbate public health problems by inducing some unlicensed brothel sex workers into the riskier street sector.

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    The COVID-19 pandemic brought the dual crises of disease and the containment policies designed to mitigate it. Yet, there is little evidence on the impacts of these policies on women, who are likely to be especially vulnerable, in lower-income countries. We conduct a large phone survey and leverage India's geographically-varying containment policies to estimate the association between both the pandemic and its containment policies, and measures of women's well-being, including mental health and food security. On aggregate, the pandemic resulted in dramatic income losses, increases in food insecurity, and declines in female mental health. While potentially crucial to stem the spread of COVID-19 cases, we find that greater prevalence of containment policies is associated with increased food insecurity, particularly for women, and with reduced female mental health. Average containment levels are associated with a 39-40% increase in the likelihood of sadness, depression, and hopelessness among women and with an increase in the likelihood that women feel more worried by 45% of the variable mean. Particularly vulnerable groups of women, those with daughters and those living in female-headed households, experience larger declines in mental health.

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    Can financial incentives, public health messages and other behavioral nudges -approaches deployed by state and local governments, employers, and health systems - increase SARS-CoV-2 vaccination rates among the vaccine hesitant in the US? In mid-2021, we randomly assigned unvaccinated members of a Medicaid managed care health plan to $10 or $50 financial incentives, different public health messages, a simple appointment scheduler, or control to assess impacts on SARS-CoV-2 vaccination intentions and vaccine uptake within 30 days of intervention. While messages increased vaccination intentions, none of the treatments increased overall vaccination rates. Consistent with backlash concerns, financial incentives and negative messages decreased vaccination rates for some subgroups. Financial incentives and other behavioral nudges do not meaningfully increase SARS-CoV-2 vaccination rates amongst the vaccine hesitant.

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    Approximately 75% of children aged 2 to 4 worldwide are regularly subjected to violent discipline across the globe. We study the impact of a virtually-delivered intervention on positive parenting practices in Jamaica. We find the intervention improves caregiver knowledge (0.52 SD) and attitudes around violence (0.2 SD) and leads to meaningful changes in caregiver disciplining behaviors, with a 0.12 SD reduction in violence against children. Treatment children also experience fewer emotional problems (0.17 SD). When we return nine months later, we also find reductions in caregiver depression (0.12 SD), anxiety (0.16 SD), and parental stress (0.16 SD) for treatment caregivers. The virtual delivery has important scalable policy implications which could help decrease violence against children across the globe.

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    Lisa Cameron

     · 2013

    Lack of sanitation and poor hygiene behavior cause a tremendous disease burden among the poor. This paper evaluates the impact of the Total Sanitation and Sanitation Marketing project in Indonesia, where about 11 percent of children have diarrhea in any two-week period and more than 33,000 children die each year from diarrhea. The evaluation utilizes a randomized controlled trial but is unusual in that the program was evaluated when implemented at scale across the province of rural East Java in a way that was designed to strengthen the enabling environment and so be sustainable. One hundred and sixty communities across eight rural districts participated, and approximately 2,100 households were interviewed before and after the intervention. The authors found that the project increased toilet construction by approximately 3 percentage points (a 31 percent increase in the rate of toilet construction). The changes were primarily among non-poor households that did not have access to sanitation at baseline. Open defecation among these households decreased by 6 percentage points (or 17 percent). Diarrhea prevalence was 30 percent lower in treatment communities than in control communities at endline (3.3 versus 4.6 percent). The analysis cannot rule out that the differences in drinking water and handwashing behavior drove the decline in diarrhea. Reductions in parasitic infestations and improvements in height and weight were found for the non-poor sample with no sanitation at baseline.

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    Manisha Shah

     · 2008

    "In tissue engineering, a highly porous artificial extracellular matrix or scaffold is required to accommodate mammalian cells and guide their growth and tissue regeneration in three dimensions. Successful tissue engineering of soft tissue largely depends on synthetic scaffolds that support the survival, proliferation and differentiation of seeded cells. In this investigation of the use of L-tyrosine based polyurethane in soft tissue engineering, three dimensional and 90% porous biodegradable polyurethane scaffolds with highly interconnected pore structure were fabricated by solvent casting and particulate leaching technique. Scaffolds were fabricated using ground and sieved sodium chloride particles. The grinding and sieving of sodium chloride resulted in particulates of uniform particle sizes but irregular shapes. Biodegradable L-tyrosine polyurethane scaffolds fabricated from these particulates had highly interconnected channels and the pores size that could allow cellular infiltration and nutrient delivery. The scaffolds had anisotropic pore structure with pore diameter ranging from 144-250um in diameter. Studies were conducted to investigate the effect of sodium chloride particulates on scaffold porosity and mean pore diameter. The study showed that scaffolds made using solvent casting and particulate leaching techniques demonstrated independent control of porosity and mean pore diameter of scaffold. Compression testing demonstrated mechanical anisotropy concomitant with the direction of the macro-pores. The porous architecture of these scaffolds reflected the mechanical anisotropy which was congruent with the scanning electron microscopy investigation. The results of this study showed that solvent casting and particulate leached (SPCL) L-tyrosine polyurethane scaffolds have great potential for use as a biodegradable tissue culture support devices. It is believed that, the porous polyurethane scaffold developed in this study will facilitate the construction of an implantable tissue engineered skin."--Abstract.