BACKGROUND There is growing evidence that traffic-related air pollution reduces birth weight. Improving exposure assessment is a key issue to advance in this research area. OBJECTIVE We investigated the effect of prenatal exposure to traffic-related air pollution via geographic information system (GIS) models on birth weight in 570 newborns from the INMA (Environment and Childhood) Sabadell c...

Compact urban development would reduce urban sprawl, leading to shorter driving distances and ultimately less regional air pollution. But it would also mean greater housing density in a given area, potentially increasing the number of residences near major roadways. Given that exposure to traffic emissions near roadways is strongly associated with asthma and related symptoms in children, a new ...

Developing Domain Specific Languages faces with several challenging demands concerning problem domain/s and solution domain/s. Considering the recent explosion of Domain Specific Languages development it is obvious that certain problem domains are well covered with usable DSLs while others are in their infancy. Taking into the consideration the inherent complexity of underlining problem domains...

There is a clear desire to collect language resources of utmost realism with respect to spontaneity of speech and naturalness of emotion. This goal is difficult to obtain as a setting is needed that provides sufficient ‘emotional moments’ while these shall not be disturbed by the speakers’ awareness of recording. An obvious setting seems to be collecting surgeon’s speech during real-life operat...

The binding of polarons, or its absence, is an old and subtle topic. Here we prove two things rigorously. First, the transition from many-body collapse to the existence of a thermodynamic limit for N polarons occurs precisely at U=2α, where U is the electronic Coulomb repulsion and α is the polaron coupling constant. Second, if U is large enough, there is no multipolaron binding of any kind. Co...

Familial aggregations of nephrolithiasis were already noted in the early 19th century and over the intervening years there has been gradual progression in classifying the familial forms of nephrolithiasis. To date, there are at least 10 different monogenic conditions where those affected have a predisposition to nephrolithiasis. However, all of these rare conditions probably account for less th...

Compact urban development would reduce urban sprawl, leading to shorter driving distances and ultimately less regional air pollution. But it would also mean greater housing density in a given area, potentially increasing the number of residences near major roadways. Given that exposure to traffic emissions near roadways is strongly associated with asthma and related symptoms in children, a new ...

Water quality degradation in river systems has caused great concerns all over the world. Identifying the spatial distribution and sources of water pollutants is the very first step for efficient water quality management. A set of water samples collected bimonthly at 12 monitoring sites in 2009 and 2010 were analyzed to determine the spatial distribution of critical parameters and to apportion t...

The binding of polarons, or its absence, is an old and subtle topic. Here we prove two things rigorously. First, the transition from many-body collapse to the existence of a thermodynamic limit for N polarons occurs precisely at U = 2α, where U is the electronic Coulomb repulsion and α is the polaron coupling constant. Second, if U is large enough, there is no multi-polaron binding of any kind....