Adequate knowledge of climatic change over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) with an average elevation of more than 4000 m above sea level (a.s.l.) has been insufficient for a long time owing to the lack of sufficient observational data. In the present study, monthly surface air temperature data were collected from almost every meteorological station on the TP since their establishment. There are 97 sta...

Some studies have found that health care workers have an increased risk of tuberculosis, whereas other studies have reported the opposite. This study examined data of Finnish health care workers (HCWs) for the incidence of tuberculosis disease. Cases of occupational tuberculosis in Finland were analysed over a period of 30 yrs (1966-1995). Control subjects were all other incident tuberculosis c...

SIR–Reid et al. reported on the long-term survival of persons with cerebral palsy in the Australian state of Victoria. They found that rates, predictors, and causes of mortality were in line with reports from other countries. They also found that ‘contrary to expectation, no improvement in survival was seen over the 40 years of the study.’ We wish to raise two issues, possibly related, regardin...

Western cultures have witnessed a tremendous cultural and social transformation of sexuality in the years since the sexual revolution. Apart from a few public debates and scandals, the process has moved along gradually and quietly. Yet its real and symbolic effects are probably much more consequential than those generated by the sexual revolution of the sixties. Sigusch refers to the broad-base...

Probably no other field of statistical physics at the borderline of soft matter and biological physics has caused such a flurry of papers as polymer translocation since the 1994 landmark paper by Bezrukov, Vodyanoy, and Parsegian and the study of Kasianowicz in 1996. Experiments, simulations, and theoretical approaches are still contributing novel insights to date, while no universal consensus ...

in the nineteenth century, with the rise of the literary schoolsin france and giving heed to oriental literacy and mysticalworks, the commentators and translators of ibn sina began towork on his treatises. since they knew ibn sina as anaristotelian philosopher, the following question was raised:why has aristotelian ibn sina given heed to mysticalattitudes? in response to the question whether or...