OBJECTIVES Sunlight exposure of the skin is known to be the most important source of vitamin D. The aims of this study were: (i) to estimate vitamin D status amongst sunlight-deprived individuals (veiled Arab women, veiled ethnic Danish Moslem women and Danish controls); and (ii) through food intake analysis to estimate the oral intake of vitamin D necessary to keep a normal vitamin D status in...

When people recurrently interact in familiar settings, social conventions may develop so that people tend to disregard alternatives outside the conventional norm. For rational players to usually restrict attention to a block of conventional strategies, no player should prefer to deviate from the block when others are likely to act rationally and conventionally inside it. We explore concepts tha...

Particulate matter is one of the most important indoor air pollutants involved in a number of adverse health effects, such as premature deaths and increased mortality of infants and other parts of sensitive population. This paper focuses on investigation of metal substances of suspended as well as settled particulate matter in indoor environment. The monitoring of particulate matter concentrati...

BACKGROUND beta-thalassemia is the most common inherited single gene disorder worldwide, and glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency is the most common human enzyme deficiency. The goal of this study was to compare the frequency of beta-thalassemia trait and G6PD among the Moslem and Jewish populations in Shiraz, southern Iran. METHODS We examined 201 Moslems and 187 Jewish subjec...

Escherichia coli, an important indicator of the presence of fecal material, was isolated from indoor and outdoor environments in Mexico City. The heterogeneity of E. coli was represented by 89 serotypes, most of them coming from settled-dust indoor samples; 21% of them presented antibiotic multiresistance. The numbers of plasmids were higher among the antibiotic-resistant strains. The results o...