In this issue, Simpson and colleagues report a large-scale ecological study that reminds us of the importance of physical environmental factors in the development of atopic dermatitis. The mechanisms through which these factors influence AD development are incompletely understood, but further research in this area is likely to yield substantial insights into this very common childhood dermatolo...

ISSUE ADDRESSED The aim of this paper was to examine the eating behaviours, physical exercise and television viewing of secondary school students, and to investigate their relationship with parental monitoring and family cohesion. METHOD The study was conducted at a secondary school in Auckland, New Zealand, in 2005. Questionnaires were administered to 433 students aged 13-16 years, spanning ...

This chapter deals with an important citizen right: the ability to walk from home or work to the transit stop, or wait at a bus stop or on a station platform without the fear of being victimized. Crime and fear of crime unfortunately affect many aspects of everyday life in our cities. Transit crime is a rather persistent but underreported trend that scares and intimidates riders – particularly ...

We introduce a simple and effective technique for light-based importance sampling of dynamic environment maps based on the formalism of Multiple Importance Sampling (MIS). The core idea is to balance per pixel the number of samples selected on each cube map face according to a quick and conservative evaluation of the lighting contribution: this increases the number of effective samples. In orde...

A recent news release by the National Endowment for the Arts’ characterized an agreement between four federal agencies (Health and Human Services, Administration on Aging, Housing and IJrban Development, and the Departinent of Agriculture) aimed at “improving the design of facilities in order that older people may live with dignity in an environment that takes their need into consideration. ” W...

BACKGROUND Although several environmental factors predict mammographic density, estimates of its heritability have been quite high. We investigated whether part of the presumed heritability might be attributed to differential sharing of modifiable risk factors in monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins. METHODS We measured percent and absolute mammographic density using mammograms from 257 ...