This descriptive, cross-sectional study was carried out to explore the frequency of contamination with TORCH agents in neonates with congenital malformations in a referral centre in Gorgan city, Islamic Republic of Iran. Blood samples were taken from 64 neonates and their mothers over a 20-month period in 2003-04. Serologic tests showed that 4/64 infants born with congenital malformations (6%) ...

Background At present of the limitation of the current case finding strategies and the global urgency to improve tuberculosis (TB) case finding, a renewed interest in active case finding (ACF) has risen. World Health Organization (WHO) calls for research on TB screening among low-income countries because of the limitation of the passive case finding strategies. We aimed to evaluated Active Case...

We present a cost-benefit framework to analyze the interaction between hydropower and salmon in a dynamic context. The framework is used to derive cost-benefit rules for projects that affect wild salmon survival. Our approach is illustrated with data from an ongoing project regarding a potential salmon passage-hydropower conflict in the northern Swedish river Umeälven and its largest salmon pro...

In this paper we study international river pollution problems. We introduce a model in which the agents (countries) located along a river derive benefit while causing pollution, but also incur environmental costs of experiencing pollution from all upstream agents. We find that total pollution in the model decreases when the agents decide to cooperate. The resulting gain in social welfare can be...

Online retailing is dominated by a channel structure in which a retailer either buys products from competing manufacturers and resells to consumers (wholesale scheme) or lets manufacturers directly sell to consumers on its platform for a commission (platform scheme). Easy access to publicly available third-party information such as product reviews which facilitate consumers' purchase decisions ...