Colombia is one of the largest per capita mercury polluters in the world as a consequence of its artisanal gold mining activities. The severity of this problem in terms of potential health effects was evaluated by means of a probabilistic risk assessment carried out in the twelve departments (or provinces) in Colombia with the largest gold production. The two exposure pathways included in the r...

In this paper we develop mixed proportional hazard models in discrete time when there is cross sectional duration dependence because of the social interactions. To capture the cross sectional dependence, we use the lagged binary indicators of neighbors, which are weighted by the spatial weight matrix. We investigate the nonparametric specification for the baseline hazard and the unobserved hete...

Diabetes is associated with an increased risk of pancreatic cancer (PC) in Western populations. Uncertainty remains, however, about the relevance of plasma glucose for PC among people without diabetes and about the associations of diabetes and high blood glucose with PC in China where the increase in diabetes prevalence has been very recent. The prospective China Kadoorie Biobank (CKB) study re...

BACKGROUND Antiepidermal growth factor receptor (anti-EGFR) monoclonal antibodies (MoAbs) are indicated for the treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer patients, but some scientific issues concerning their efficacy are currently unsolved. METHODS A literature-based meta-analysis was conducted. Hazard ratios (HRs) were extracted from randomized trials for progression-free survival (PFS) and ...

More than 4 million Indonesians live in tsunamiprone areas along the southern and western coasts of Sumatra, Java and Bali. Although a Tsunami Early Warning Center in Jakarta now exists, installed after the devastating 2004 tsunami, it is essential to develop tsunami risk knowledge within the exposed communities as a basis for tsunami disaster management. These communities need to implement ris...

The aim of this paper is to estimate the cumulative effect of childhood household dysfunction (CHD) on alcohol related illness and death later in life and to test the interaction between CHD and socioeconomic background. The study utilised Swedish national registers including data of a Swedish national cohort born 1973-82 (n = 872,912), which was followed from age 18 to 29-40 years. Cox regress...

Landslide in alpine regions often causes heavy losses of both human lives and properties, most of the landslides are induced by heavy rainfall. In this paper, we put forward an early warning system of rain-induced landslide. From 2002, we carried on the demonstrative work of landslide monitoring and early warning in Yaan, Sichuan Province, China, and constructed the first county-scale landslide...

The term “golden rice” was coined by a Thai businessman who is active in initiatives aimed at reducing the birth rate, a major cause of the food security problem. As it turned out, the term “golden rice” has proven to be enormously successful in piquing the interest of the public. (I gave up tallying its mention in the popular media after more than 30 television broadcasts and 300 newspaper art...

INTRODUCTION A suicide trend that involves mixing household chemicals to produce hydrogen sulfide or hydrogen cyanide, commonly referred to as a detergent, hydrogen sulfide, or chemical suicide is a continuing problem in the United States (U.S.). Because there is not one database responsible for tracking chemical suicides, the actual number of incidents in the U.S. is unknown. To prevent morbid...

Patients who have been contaminated by chemical compounds present a number of difficulties to emergency departments, in particular, the risk of secondary contamination of healthcare staff and facilities. The Department of Health in the United Kingdom has provided equipment to decontaminate chemically contaminated casualties who present at emergency departments. The capacity of this equipment is...