In many countries, the population is either declining or rapidly concentrating in big cities, which causes problems in the form of vacant houses in many local communities. It is often challenging to keep track of the locations and the conditions of vacant houses, and for example in Japan, costly manual field studies are employed to map the occupancy situation. In this paper, we propose a techni...

OBJECTIVE This paper describes how powerful detectors of adverse events manifested in multivariate series of biosurveillance data can be learned using only a few labeled instances of such events. BACKGROUND The context of the work presented here is rapid detection of statistically significant emerging patterns of adverse events in data related to food-and agriculturesafety collected by the U.S....

BACKGROUND Despite public concern about potential adverse health effects of concentrated animal feeding operations, objectively assessed data on environmental exposure to concentrated animal feeding operations and respiratory health are sparse. We aimed to assess respiratory health in neighbors of confined animal feeding operations. METHODS A survey was done in 2002-2004 among all adults (18-...

During the debate in 2013 over the budget stalemate that led to the closing of much of the federal government, Republican party members of the U.S. House of Representatives proposed numerous ways to repeal Obamacare – the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act adopted in 2010. This controversial law is intended to ensure access to health care for all Americans and is a notable extension of ...

BACKGROUND The oral disease burden in India is showing a steady increase in the recent years. Utilization of dental care being the major factor affecting the oral health status of the population is used as an important tool in oral health policy decision-making and is measured in terms of the number of dental visits per annum. MATERIALS AND METHODS A cross-sectional house to house questionnai...

In recent years, as houses have become more insulated and airtight, indoor environments in Japan tended to low-humidity winter, making dryness a problem. The relationship between the perception of indoors low humidity is unclear, though it has been suggested that other environmental factors may influence adverse health effects. It essential clarify association environment human responses relate...

Background: Radon, thoron and their progenies are the most important contributions to human exposure from natural sources. Radon exists in soil gas, building materials, Indoor atmosphere etc. Among all the natural sources of radiation dose to human beings, inhalation of radon contributes a lot. The work presented here emphasizes the long term measurements of radon, thoron and their proge...

SUMMARY An improvement in the identification of pulmonary tuberculosis among residents of common lodging houses has proved possible through the close cooperation of the doctor providing primary medical care, the mass miniature radiography services, and the wardens of the hostel where the proposed visit is to take place. Renewed interest has recently been expressed about the single homeless and ...

BACKGROUND House screening should protect people against malaria. We assessed whether two types of house screening--full screening of windows, doors, and closing eaves, or installation of screened ceilings--could reduce house entry of malaria vectors and frequency of anaemia in children in an area of seasonal malaria transmission. METHODS During 2006 and 2007, 500 occupied houses in and near ...

Rural America is witnessing widespread housing development, which is to the detriment of the environment. It has been suggested to cluster houses so that their disturbance zones overlap and thus cause less habitat loss than is the case for dispersed development. Clustering houses makes intuitive sense, but few empirical studies have quantified the spatial pattern of houses in real landscapes, a...