A depiction of Mumbai’s slumdwellers and growing corruption in India has won American author and Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Katherine Boo a prestigious award in American literature. Boo, the wife of New Delhi-born Sunil Khilnani, who authored the critically acclaimed book The Idea of India, was among the winners of this year’s National Book Award.
She was honoured for her debut work Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity’, a tale of despair and hope in India. Her very first work on India is a non-fiction account that gives a detailed picture of Annawadi slum near Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport and follows the interconnected lives of several residents, including a young trash picker, a female “slumlord,” and a college student.
In 2000, her series for the Washington Post about homes for mentally retarded people won her the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Fourty-eight-year-old Boo is currently on staff with the New Yorker. The National Book Awards also honoured longtime author Louise Erdrich (58) for her book The Round House, the second of a planned trilogy, about an Ojibwe boy and his quest to avenge his mother’s rape.
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Scientists decode genome of pig
London: Scientists have sequenced the genome of the pig, showing that swine and human share 112 DNA mutations linked to a range of disease including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, which may be useful in fighting diseases.
Researchers, who undertook the largest ever study of the pig genome, found that swine are adaptable, easy to seduce with food and susceptible to domestication — much like humans. Insights into the genetic code of pigs reveal the swine and its cousin the wild boar have much in common with humans.
The new analysis also supports the use of the pig in studies of human diseases. “We identified many more gene variants implicated in human disease, further supporting the pig as a valuable biomedical model,” Professor Martien Groenen, a principal investigator on the study, said.
— PTI