We analyze the e ects of a prevailing low interest rates regime on investment decisions of insurance companies and on the risk/return pro le of participating life insurance policies with di erent contractually guaranteed minimum annual return. Our analysis is based on German legislation and a stylized insurance company with two cohorts of insured persons having di erent minimal return guarantee...

The crucial question in the abortion debate is not when human life begins. Even many pro-choice advocates, from early on in the history of their movement, have quietly acknowledged that human life begins at conception. This after all had been the consensus of the medical community until Roe vs. Wade in 1973. But in a strategy of deceit, well chronicled by Curt Young, the reality of human life b...

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the Prince Edward Island Right to Life Association (RTLA) lobbied medical professionals, hospital boards, politicians, and neighbours to prevent the Charlottetown and Summerside hospital corporations, the only abortion providers on the Island, to eliminate their Therapeutic Abortion Committees. Because abortion committees were not mandatory and only hospital boar...

The evolution of pro-social attitude and cooperation in humans is under debate. Most of the knowledge on human cooperation results from laboratory experiments and theoretic modeling. Evolutionary explanations, however, rest upon fitness consequences. We therefore examined fitness correlates of pro-social behavior in a real life setting, analyzing data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (n = ...

OBJECTIVE Weight gain and growth in early life may influence adult pro-inflammatory and pro-thrombotic cardiovascular risk factors. METHODS Follow-up of a birth cohort in New Delhi, India, whose weight and height were measured every 6 months until age 21 years. Body mass index (BMI) at birth, during infancy (2 years), childhood (11 years) and adulthood (26-32 years) and BMI gain between these...

p53 is an important tumor suppressor, normally preventing cancer development via apoptosis. A genomic Arg72Pro substitution in the p53 protein has important influence on cell death via apoptosis, which could be beneficial. We therefore tested the hypotheses that this polymorphism influences longevity, survival after a cancer diagnosis, and risk of cancer in the general population. We examined a...

Edible coatings are an appropriate way to preserve the quality of horticultural crops and reduce post-harvest losses. In this study, treatments with proline (Pro), chitosan (CTS) proline-coated nanoparticles (CTS-Pro NPs) maintain decay strawberry fruit were examined during storage at 4 °C for 12 days. The strawberries treated Pro 1 5 mM, CTS 0.1% (w/v), CTS-Pro NPs (w/v) distilled water (contr...

BACKGROUND Much concern has been raised over pro-eating disorder (pro-ED) website communities, but little quantitative research has been conducted on these websites and their users. OBJECTIVE To examine associations between levels of pro-ED website usage, disordered eating behaviors, and quality of life. METHODS We conducted a cross-sectional, Internet-based survey of adult pro-ED website u...