BACKGROUND Job-exposure matrices (JEMs) applicable to the general population are usually constructed by using only the expertise of specialists. AIMS To construct a population based JEM for chemical agents from data based on a sample of French workers for surveillance purposes. METHODS The SUMEX job-exposure matrix was constructed from data collected via a cross-sectional survey of a sample...

This paper investigates the role of language in determining the substitutability between foreign and native workers. Our identification strategy exploits the linguistic diversity of Switzerland, a country with three main official languages (German, French and Italian) shared by bordering countries. This makes the Swiss labor market very peculiar, since both immigrants and natives may (or may no...

OBJECTIVES In Brazil, workers without a formal job contract represent approximately half of the labor force but there are no official statistics on occupational injuries for them. This study estimates the annual incidence of non-fatal work-related injuries for workers with and without job contracts and examines gender differences. METHODS This is a community-based study carried out with a ran...

Introduction Transparency of information on infectious disease epidemics is crucial for not only public health workers but also the residents in the communities. Traditionally, disease control departments created official websites for displaying disease maps or epi-curves with the confirmed case counts. The websites were usually very formal and static, without interaction, animation, or even th...

International migration and private transfers by immigrant workers to their home countries have proved to be vital elements in the economic sustainability of small nations in Latin America. These transfers, identified as remittances, are one of the largest foreign financial inflows into El Salvador, exceeding garment manufacturing exports and official foreign aid. However, remittances may induc...

BACKGROUND On Farm Emergency Slaughter (OFES) is the slaughter outside the slaughterhouse, of an otherwise healthy animal, which has suffered an accident that, for welfare reasons, prevented its transport to a slaughterhouse. The procedure is designed to prevent the transport of welfare compromised animals, which may have veterinary certification to slaughterhouses for Casualty Slaughter (CS), ...

Abstract. This is a review of an alternative cosmology, recently proposed by Fred Hoyle, Geoffrey Burbidge and this author. It begins with a brief discussion of why one needs an alternative cosmology, when the standard hot big bang cosmology is claimed to be doing well. It is argued that the observational and theoretical constraints on the standard big bang cosmology, from various directions, l...

If a point mass moves through a uniform gas cloud, at what rate does it accrete material? This is the question studied by Bondi, Hoyle and Lyttleton. This paper draws together the work performed in this area since the problem was first studied. Time has shown that, despite the simplifications made, Bondi, Hoyle and Lyttleton made quite accurate predictions for the accretion rate. Bondi–Hoyle–Ly...

BACKGROUND Although the smoking rate in the United States is declining because of an increase of smoke-free laws, among blue-collar workers it remains higher than that among many other occupational groups. OBJECTIVES We evaluated the factors influencing workplace secondhand smoke (SHS) exposures in the U.S. unionized trucking industry. METHODS From 2003 through 2005, we measured workplace S...