When I first met Alexander Grothendieck more than fifty years ago I was not only deeply impressed by his creativity, his knowledge and many other aspects of his mathematics, but I also wondered where all his amazing ideas and structures originated from. It seemed to me then as if new abstract theories just emerged in his mind, and then he started to ponder them and simply build them up in their...

How many inpatient paediatric units do we need? EDITOR,-In his article on paediatric inpa-tient units, Professor Taylor claims that many present paediatric units are too small to provide safe and cost effective care, do not meet required standards, and should combine into larger units providing specialist children's services.' We would disagree with him, at least with regard to rural communitie...

Various signs of placental separation are described in different text-books; no one sign alone is completely satisfactory, and some are misleading or belated in appearance. The fundus, for example, may rise, or there may be loss of blood, without separation; or the cord may continue to retract into the vagina-on applying supra-pubic pressure-after the placenta has become separated (a fact that ...

Age of puberty onset is considered to be of general public health relevance. A downward secular trend in age of puberty onset has now been repeatedly reported in both developed (1) and developing countries (2). Early puberty onset has been suggested to be a risk factor for a series of diseases in later life, including hormone-related cancer, type 2 diabetes mellitus, metabolic syndrome, cardiov...

Following on from the work of Goldstein and Gronberg, it is argued that under certain conditions, internal economies of scope form the bases for two types of agglomeration economy. These differ from two more familiar types, which are based on internal and external economies of scale. A further two types of agglomeration economy are shown to derive from different forms of external economy. The c...

Two striking worldwide phenomena over the past few decades are rapidly aging populations and a trend toward earlier retirement. Despite rising life expectancy, the average age of retirement has been declining (Bound, 2007, Blundell, Meghir and Smith, 2002). For example, from the 1950’s to 2000 the average retirement age for men in the United States declined from 68.5 to 62.6 years, and that for...