OBJECTIVE To investigate the associations between use of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) and smoking during pregnancy and infantile colic in the offspring. METHODS We used data from maternal interviews (from pregnancy and at 6 months post partum) from the Danish National Birth Cohort (1996-2002). We included 63 128 live-born singletons with complete information on nicotine exposure during ...

The Institute of Social Studies is Europe's longest-established centre of higher education and research in development studies. Postgraduate teaching programmes range from six-week diploma courses to the PhD programme. Research at ISS is fundamental in the sense of laying a scientific basis for the formulation of appropriate development policies. The academic work of ISS is disseminated in the ...

As communist regimes throughout Central and Eastern Europe have fallen one by one under the weight of economic failure and popular discontent, the task of transforming these countries into stable and vibrant liberal democratic societies has commanded the attention of many Western governments and international organizations. Given the rapid and extremely destabilizing deterioration in the levels...

Newly mated queens (NMQs) originating from monogyne red imported fire ant (Solenopsis invicta) colonies and following a mating flight, initiate new colonies by sealing themselves in a nuptial chamber and relying solely on their own fat and crop reserves, as well as no longer needed wing muscles to rear their first workers (claustral colony foundation). This method of colony-founding is rarely s...

PURPOSE Tannery workers are exposed to hazardous chemicals. Tannery work is outsourced to newly industrialized countries (NICs) where attention into occupational health hazards is limited. In this study, we investigated the skin exposure to hazardous chemicals in tannery workers and determined the prevalence of occupational skin diseases (OSDs) at tanneries in a NIC. METHODS A cross-sectional...

Leaf maturation from initiation to senescence is a phenological event of plants that results from the influences of temperature and water availability on physiological activities during a life cycle. Detection of newly grown leaves (NGL) is therefore useful for the diagnosis of tree growth, tree stress, and even climatic change. This paper applies Constrained Energy Minimization (CEM), which is...

EAST Asian economic integration appears on the brink of becoming de jure, not de facto. From the 1980s, East Asia developed high levels of intraregional trade in response to market forces, not preferential trade agreements (PTAs). One reason was rising incomes in Japan and the newly industrialised economies (NIEs) of Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, creating an incentive for these econom...

Objective Describe a case of cloaca prenatally diagnosed in one of a set of monoamniotic twins. Study Design Retrospective review of a case. Results Cloaca is one of the most complex and severe degrees of anorectal malformations in girls. We present a discordant cloaca in monoamniotic twins. Fetal ultrasound showed a female fetus with a pelvic midline cystic mass, a phallus-like structure, a pr...