background and aim: speech understanding almost never occurs in silence. verbal communication often occurs in environments where multiple speakers are talking. in such environments, babbling noise masks speech comprehension. consonants, in comparison to vowels, are more sensitive to noise masking. consonants provide most acoustic information needed for comprehending the meaning of the word. sin...

conclusions: premature stop codon in the s gene was observed in all countries with evaluable hbv genome sequences. co-existence of detectable hepatitis b surface antigen (hbsag) and s gene premature stop codon was inconsistent with other studies. investigations on yield truncated hbsag are suggested to determine if they can affect elisa hbsag results. background: we have previously reported on ...

OBJECTIVE To describe the trends in the prevalence of smoking, quitting and initiation among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women aged 18 years and over. METHODS Analysis of responses to smoking questions in national Indigenous surveys in 1994, 2002, 2004 and 2008. RESULTS Male Indigenous smoking prevalence fell significantly from 58.5% in 1994 to 52.6% in 2008, an absolute d...

Past research found that environmental uncertainty leads people to behave differently depending on their childhood environment. For example, economic uncertainty leads people from poor childhoods to become more impulsive while leading people from wealthy childhoods to become less impulsive. Drawing on life history theory, we examine the psychological mechanism driving such diverging responses t...

OBJECTIVE To describe the socioeconomic and geographic distribution of smoking behaviour in Canada among 19,383 individuals (51% women) aged 15-85 years. METHODS Current smoking and quitting were modeled using standard and multilevel logistic regression. Markers of socioeconomic status (SES) were education and occupation. Geography was defined by Canadian Provinces. RESULTS The adjusted pre...