BACKGROUND Seasonal fluctuation in suicide has been observed in many populations. High temperature may contribute to this, but the effect of short-term fluctuations in temperature on suicide rates has not been studied. AIMS To assess the relationship between daily temperature and daily suicide counts in England and Wales between 1 January 1993 and 31 December 2003 and to establish whether hea...

An examination of the birth records of New York City for the years 1957-59 reported by Hewitt (1961) indicated that pregnancies which terminated in the summer months tended to be of shorter duration than those which terminated in the winter. February births showed the longest gestations and August births the shortest, the estimated difference being between one and two days. It seemed important ...

A fundamental yet elusive goal of ecology is to predict the structure of communities from the environmental conditions they experience. Trait-based approaches to terrestrial plant communities have shown that functional traits can help reveal the mechanisms underlying community assembly, but such approaches have not been tested on the microbes that dominate ecosystem processes in the ocean. Here...

The fluctuating rate of suicide associated with seasonal changes is present throughout the world. An evaluation of Slovene suicide and meteorological data confirm a significant fluctuation of suicide incidence between the same months of consecutive years from 1985 to 1993. This phenomenon has been observed in all months of the year, but especially during the spring months. The research results ...

The epidemiology and control of Brucella melitensis in Malta was analysed using herd test data made available by the Veterinary Service of Malta. The eradication scheme commenced in 1987 with the introduction of a test and slaughter scheme using the Rose Bengal test. Herds registered with Malta Dairy Products Limited (MDP) showed a herd prevalence of 23% in 1987 which fell to less than 1.5% by ...

The recent rapid evolution of new satellite services, including VSAT for internet access, LAN interconnection and multimedia applications, has triggered an increasing demand for bandwidth usage by satellite communications. However, these systems are susceptible to propagation effects that become significant as the frequency increases. Scintillation is the rapid signal fluctuation of the amplitu...