The Dutch cities Utrecht and Wijk bij Duurstede were founded by the Romans around 50 B.C. and the village Fijnaart and Graft-De Rijp around 1600 A.D. The soils of these villages are polluted with Pb (up to ~5000 mg/kg). Lead isotope ratios were used to trace the sources of Pb pollution in the urban soils. In ~75% of the urban soils the source of the Pb pollution was a mixture of glazed potsherd...

Overweight could be a major factor in determining the increasing rates of coronary heart disease in the Indian population, by its influence on blood pressure, diabetes and insulin resistance. We studied the prevalence of overweight in north Indian urban and rural population samples. The urban sample population (n = 3050) was selected using a multistage sampling with stratification for geographi...

INTRODUCTION Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is one of the most common endocrinopathies among women at reproductive age, but its pathology remains unknown. From epidemiological studies it is known that endogenous, mainly genetic and exogenous, environmental factors are of importance. OBJECTIVE The aim of the study was to compare the phenotype of women diagnosed with PCOS from urban and rural...

Sociological research often examines the effects of social context with hierarchical models. In these applications, individuals are nested in social contexts—like school classes, neighborhoods or villages—whose effects are thought to shape individual outcomes. Although applications of hierarchical models are common in sociology, analysis usually focuses on inference for fixed parameters. Resear...

Selection bias in cluster randomized trials may threaten the validity of the results. This bias may occur either at the level of the cluster or of the individual. We describe measures for maintaining comparability of intervention groups in a cluster randomized trial of a health education package to reduce dietary salt. The setting was 12 villages of the Ashanti region of Ghana. In total, 1896 v...

Extended time-series analysis of infectious diseases raises two issues: the spread of disease, and its persistence in space and time. Most studies are based on both data and models, corresponding to conditions encountered in developed countries. The present work sought to determine the impact of local heterogeneity on these two issues, regarding pertussis in tropical conditions. First, we teste...

This paper analyzes the impact of rural-to-urban migration on income inequality and gender wage gap in source regions using a newly constructed panel dataset for around 100 villages over a ten-year period from 1997 to 2006 in China. Since income inequality is time-persisting, we use a system GMM framework to control for the lagged income inequality, in which contemporary emigration is also vali...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Non-communicable diseases may reflect an evolutionary mismatch between our human ancestry and modern environments. To explore the mismatch hypothesis for Acne vulgaris, we studied the prevalence and severity of acne in Dogon adolescents in Mali, West Africa. METHODOLOGY We graded the prevalence and severity of acne in 1182 Dogon adolescents aged 11-18 years from nine...

Background and Objectives: Non-communicable diseases may reflect an evolutionary mismatch between our human ancestry and modern environments. To explore the mismatch hypothesis for Acne vulgaris, we studied the prevalence and severity of acne in Dogon adolescents in Mali, West Africa. Methodology: We graded the prevalence and severity of acne in 1182 Dogon adolescents aged 11–18 years from nine...