Guest editorial. Promoting public health practice

Guest Editorial: Nuclear Power and Public Health

of concern about the health and environmental effects of burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil to produce electrical energy in recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in nuclear power stations as a " carbon-free " method of generating electricity. For example, an interdisciplinary study titled The Future of Nuclear Energy, released by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ...

Guest Editorial: Noise and Health

Noise affects everybody in everyday life—at home, at leisure, during sleep, when traveling, and at work. However, human organisms are not prepared to shut off the noise. Hearing is a permanent process using cortical and subcortical structures to filter and interpret acousti-cal information; the analysis of acoustical signals is essential for human survival and communication. Noise is detrimenta...

Guest Editorial: Global Perspective on Environmental Health

The environment is a key determinant of human health, and exposures to toxic chemicals, physical fac­ tors, and pollutants all have a direct impact on the quality of life, the burden of disease, and the outcome of longevity. In the developing world, population growth with urban crowding, the introduction of many environmental pollutants and toxic exposures, and the lack of clear policies to con...

Guest editorial: Evidence-based practice: destination or journey?

Guest editorial - the turbo principle: from theory to practice II

INTRODUCTION I N 1997, Hagenauer coined the phrase " the turbo principle " to describe the fundamental strategy underlying the success of turbo decoding, namely the iterated exchange of soft information between different blocks in a communications receiver in order to improve overall system performance. This principle, embodied in the iterative decoding of parallel concatenated " turbo codes " ...