BACKGROUND health policy makers in many countries have expressed concern over the pressures that increased numbers of older people will exert on health care costs. Previous studies have shown that, in addition to increasing size of older populations, per capita expenditures have risen disproportionately among the old compared to the middle age groups. Documentation of such trends is essential f...

Loss of identity, in cases of both the living and the deceased poses a frequent problem for individuals and authorities. Reconstruction of biological profile of unknown individuals would be incomplete without age determination. Age determination can be performed based on developing dentition, growing skeleton or degenerative changes of the skeleton [1]. For adults, age can be estimated using in...

Food handlers play an important role in the transmission of norovirus (NoV) in food-borne outbreaks of gastroenteritis (GE). In a year-round prevalence study, the prevalence of NoV in catering companies without recently reported outbreaks of GE was investigated and compared to the observed prevalence in catering companies with recently reported outbreaks. Swab samples were collected from surfac...

A dataset of killer tornadoes is compiled and analyzed spatially in order to assess region-specific vulnerabilities in the United States from 1880 to 2005. Results reveal that most tornado fatalities occur in the lower–Arkansas, Tennessee, and lower–Mississippi River valleys of the southeastern United States—a region outside of traditional “tornado alley.” Analysis of variables including tornad...

A GOOD DEAL is now known about the incidence of plague in this country during the early modern period, but attempts to probe the wider impact of these epidemics on the general history of the era have been rare. This is curious, for plague occupies a prominent position in tlhe historiography of the later middle ages; but while the disease remained a major factor in the lives of Englishmen for ne...

OBJECTIVES Social capital, collective efficacy, and religious involvement have each been linked to population health. This study examined the relations between these measures and male/female mortality rates in Hungary. DESIGN Cross sectional, ecological study. SETTING 150 sub-regions of Hungary. PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS 12643 people were interviewed in 2002 (the "Hungarostudy 2002" survey...