In this issue Health by Numbers explores asthma hospitalizations and emergency department (ED) visit rates in relation to Healthy People 2010 (HP2010) goals. Two HP2010 objectives for asthma are specific to hospitalizations and ED visits. Objective 24-2 sets the following targets for asthma hospitalizations by age group: (1) an age-specific rate of 25 per 10,000 children under age 5 years, (2) ...

The likelihood of a crash or crash potential is significantly affected by short-term turbulence of traffic flow. For this reason, crash potential must be estimated on a real-time basis by monitoring the current traffic condition. In this regard, a probabilistic real-time crash prediction model relating crash potential to various traffic flow characteristics which lead to crash occurrence, or “c...

We study consequences of regulatory interventions in limit order markets that aim at stabilizing the market after an occurrence of a "flash crash". We use a simulation platform that creates random arrivals of trade orders, that allows us to analyze subtle features of liquidity and price variability under various market structures. The simulations are performed under continuous double-auction mi...

The rare species Lymnastis novikovi Michailov, 1998, described from the single female specimen collected in Ukraine, is redescribed on the basis of new material. We provide the illustrations of the general habitus, the median lobe and its internal sac and describe the habitat of L. novikovi, to increase information about this species. A key to European Lyinastis species is given. The current di...

Ameroseius is the largest genus of the mite family Ameroseiidae (Mesostigmata), with a worldwide distribution. Ameroseius norvegicus Narita, Abduch & Moraes n. sp. is described based on the morphology of adult females collected from litter in a strawberry field, in Norway. The new species is most similar to Ameroseius ulmi Hirschmann. A key is provided to separate them as well as other similar ...

W ith nearly two-thirds of the population afflicted, the Nuu-chah-nulth Indians of Vancouver Island in British Columbia have one of the highest rates of arthritis in the world. Often passed down family lines, the genetics of arthritis in this unique population was studied extensively during the 1980s by Richard Ward, now head of the Institute of Biological Anthropology at the University of Oxfo...

The genus Trechosiella Jeannel, 1960 (Carabidae: Trechinae) is revised. In addition to the known species T. laetula (Péringuey, 1898), T. scotti (Jeannel, 1937), T. basilewskyi Jeannel, 1960 and T. katicola Jeannel, 1964, T. endroedyyoungai spec. nov., T. oligophthalma spec. nov. and T. scotti swartbergensis subspec. nov. are newly described. Trechosiella laetulaperingueyi (Jeannel, 1926) is re...

We introduce an approach to revealing the likelihood of different population histories that utilizes an explicit model of sequence evolution for the DNA segment under study. Based on a phylogenetic tree reconstruction method we show that a Tamura-Nei model with heterogeneous mutation rates is a fair description of the evolutionary process of the hypervariable region I of the mitochondrial DNA f...