BACKGROUND The initial vanguard cohort of the U.S. National Children's Study was a pregnancy and birth cohort study that sought to enroll some women prior to pregnancy, and to assess exposures early in pregnancy. METHODS During the recruitment phase (2009-2010), geographically based sampling was used to recruit women early in pregnancy and women not currently pregnant, not using contraception...

Interest in euthanasia, also called “dignified death” or “death humanization” is relevant from the ethical and moral points of view, especially if it is oriented toward the detection of the motivations and conceptions of life subject to such practices. The movement of opinion in favour of euthanasia, currently active, has characteristic connotations and motivations, aimed at demanding legalizat...

We analyze the fertility and health effects resulting from the abolition of the Austrian baby bonus in January 1997. The abolition of the benefit was publicly announced about ten months in advance, creating the opportunity for prospective parents to (re-)schedule conceptions accordingly. We find robust evidence that, within the month before the abolition, about 8% more children were born as a r...

Obituaries from the New York Times are examined at three points to illuminate changing conceptions of death. The findings are twofold. Changes in the obituary demonstrate how the locus of social control over death has shifted from nature and God, to medicine and most recently to the individual. Additionally, it is shown that descriptions of biophysical aspects of the dying process are marginali...

this study is an attempt to apply the market timing andsecurity selection models to evaluate the performance of iranianmutual funds. the research shed light on the questions of ‘howsuccessful are mutual funds in earning excess returns over those of themarket?’ ‘do the excess returns during research period have anymeaningful trend for these financial intermediaries or is it the result ofthe abil...

A person is biased toward the future when she prefers, other things being equal, bad events to be in her past rather than future, or good ones past. In this paper, I explain why both critics and defenders of bias have failed consider best version view. distinguish external time from personal time, argue that construed terms latter. This conception avoids several standard objections. then a new ...