BACKGROUND Heavy alcohol use during pregnancy can cause considerable developmental problems for children, but effects of light-moderate drinking are uncertain. This study examined possible effects of moderate drinking in pregnancy on children's conduct problems using a Mendelian randomisation design to improve causal inference. METHODS A prospective cohort study (ALSPAC) followed children fro...

We investigate variational methods for finding approximate solutions to the Fokker-Planck equation, especially in cases lacking detailed balance. These schemes fall into two classes: those in which a Hermitian operator is constructed from the (non-Hermitian) Fokker-Planck operator, and those which are based on soluble approximations to this operator. The various approaches are first tested on a...

If our universe underwent inflation, its entropy during the inflationary phase was substantially lower than it is today. Because a low-entropy state is less likely to be chosen randomly than a high-entropy one, inflation is unlikely to arise through randomlychosen initial conditions. To resolve this puzzle, we examine the notion of a natural state for the universe, and argue that it is a nearly...

Background: Anterior cervical surgery now represents one of the most frequently performed spinal procedures. Although a majority of these procedures are localized to the intervertebral disc space, removal of a vertebra or several vertebrae may be indicated if the site of epidural compression extends beyond the level of a disc space. Objectives: The aim of this work is to evaluate the clinical a...

The anisotropic magnetoresistance ~AMR! of nickel and cobalt bars of 1 mm length, 35 nm thickness, and width varying from 50 to 500 nm is studied. As the bar width is reduced from 500 to 50 nm, longitudinal MR change decreases from 0.8% to 0.2% and transverse MR change increases from 1.3% to 1.8% for the Ni bars; longitudinal MR change is zero and transverse MR change is constant at 1.6% for th...