Residues of brominated diphenylethers (PBDEs), organochlorinated pesticides (OCPs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were measured in 40 eggs of little owls (Athene noctua), a terrestrial top predator from Belgium. The major organohalogens detected were PCBs (median 2,600 ng/g lipid, range 790-23 000 ng/g lipid). PCB 153,138/163, 170, 180 and 187 were the predominant congeners and constitute...

The residue levels of 16 US EPA priority polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and 16 selected organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) in rice and rice hull collected from a typical e-waste recycling area in southeast China were investigated from 2005 to 2007. PAHs and OCPs also were measured in ten mollusk species (soft tissues) collected in an adjacent bay in 2007. Individual PAHs were frequently ...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Preterm birth (PTB) is an important cause of prenatal death, neonatal morbidity and mortality and adult illness. Increased inflammation occurs in normal parturition, and inflammatory cytokines and oxidative stress are found to be higher in PTB cases. The present study was planned to investigate the association of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) with mRNA expression of i...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) is more common in women than in men, but the role of hormonal factors in its etiology remains uncertain. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between hormonal factors and risk of SAH in women. METHODS This was a prospective, multicenter, population-based, case-control study performed in 4 major urban centers in Australia an...

Background: Osteoclasts mediate periarticular and systemic bone loss in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Osteoclast progenitor cells (OCPs) derived from the myeloid lineage are susceptible to regulation through Notch signaling. Murine marrow splenic OCPs, identified as CD45 + Ly6G - CD3 B220 NK1.1 CD11b lo/+ CD115 CCR2 cells, specifically increased arthritis. We previously an frequency of OCPs expres...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the association between the risk of ectopic pregnancy (EP) and the use of common contraceptives during the previous and current conception/menstrual cycle. METHODS A multi-center case-control study was conducted in Shanghai. Women diagnosed with EP were recruited as the case group (n = 2,411). Women with intrauterine pregnancy (IUP) (n = 2,416) and non-pregnant women (n ...

Weakly supervised object detection (WSOD) in remote sensing images (RSI) only require image-level labels to detect various objects. Most of the WSOD methods incline capture most discriminative parts rather than entire object, and number easy hard samples is imbalanced. To address first problem, a novel metric named objectness score (OS) proposed incorporated into training loss our model. The OS...

BACKGROUND Several ubiquitous polyhalogenated compounds (PHCs) have been shown to alter thyroid function in animal and in vitro studies. So far, epidemiologic studies have focused on the potential effect of a small number of them, namely, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and some organochlorines (OCs), without paying attention to other important PHCs. OBJECTIVES We investigated the relationsh...

OBJECTIVE We describe rates of unintended pregnancy among HIV positive couples in Lusaka, Zambia. We also identify factors associated with unintended pregnancy among oral contraceptive pill (OCP) using couples in this cohort. DESIGN Data were analyzed from couples randomized in a factorial design to two family planning intervention videos. METHODS Rates of unintended pregnancy were stratifi...

BACKGROUND Our study compares the efficacy of the combined contraceptive vaginal ring to oral contraceptive pills (OCPs) for hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian (HPO) axis suppression in egg donor in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles. METHODS Our retrospective cohort study includes patients from the Center for Assisted Reproduction (CARE) in Bedford, Texas undergoing IVF cycles as egg donors from J...