In many non-Western societies, moderate to high levels of body fat in women have long been equated with health, physical attractiveness, social status, and fertility. In recent times, however, many Western cultures have emphasized the idea that slender women are most attractive. This emphasis on thinness has led to increased levels of body dissatisfaction and dieting in Western cultures and in ...

Hospital emergency departments play an increasingly important role in serving emergency and non-emergency medical needs of the public. Reports on how foreign medical services solve the numerous problems of delivery of emergency care might provide a welcome source of fresh and useful ideas in this field. Unfortunately, Organization of Emergency Medical Care: The Soviet Experience does not fulfil...

Although the globalization of food production is often assumed to result in a homogenization of consumption patterns with a convergence towards a Western style diet, the resources used to make global food products may still be locally produced (glocalization). Stable isotope ratios of human hair can quantify the extent to which residents of industrialized nations have converged on a standardize...

Hospital emergency departments play an increasingly important role in serving emergency and non-emergency medical needs of the public. Reports on how foreign medical services solve the numerous problems of delivery of emergency care might provide a welcome source of fresh and useful ideas in this field. Unfortunately, Organization of Emergency Medical Care: The Soviet Experience does not fulfil...

Late 19th century epidemics of tuberculosis (TB) in Western Canadian First Nations resulted in peak TB mortality rates more than six times the highest rates recorded in Europe. Using a mathematical modeling approach and historical TB mortality time series, we investigate potential causes of high TB mortality and rapid epidemic decline in First Nations from 1885 to 1940. We explore two potential...

1. The World is said to be a global village, linked together by all forms of technologies and infrastructures. At the touch of a button, it is virtually possible to access any part of the globe. That is the extent to which technology has gone. It has transformed humanity in several ways that could not have been imagined. Perhaps, no other phenomenon has had so much impact on humanity as technol...

Over the past decade, the Arctic region has received increased attention from climate scientists, politicians, and transnational corporations. Human-induced climate change is causing glaciers to recede, resulting in new northern sea passages that are highly sought after by businesses and governments alike. Deeply affected by this increased northern exposure are Arctic Fourth World nations – pol...

BACKGROUND Newborns of certain immigrant mothers are smaller at birth than those of domestically born mothers. Contemporary, population-derived percentile curves for these newborns are lacking, as are estimates of their risk of being misclassified as too small or too large using conventional rather than tailored birth weight curves. METHODS We completed a population-based study of 766 688 sin...

Nations design their education systems to prepare youth for achieving national goals and objectives as perceived by that nation. The system reflects nations' epistemological, ontological axiological assumptions. Accordingly, the secular west has designed its educational intervention based on assumptions is diametrically opposite Islamic belief culture (Asad, 2005). Our contemporary largely deve...

Second of a two-part series. The development of specific types of cancer within individuals and populations is in large measure a reflection of lifestyle factors and exposures to carcinogens and infectious agents. These factors differ between regions— for example, infectious diseases cause far more cancers in developing countries than in developed countries—and change over time. " The tobacco e...