Families with lower socioeconomic status are less likely to adopt household smoking bans (HSB). The aim of this study was to determine whether socioeconomic disparities in HSB prevalence in Italy decreased 7-9 years after the introduction of the Italian ban on smoking in public places. A longitudinal, 12-year, two-wave study was conducted on a sample of 3091 youths aged 6-14 years in 2002; 1763...

Hillslopes have complex three-dimensional shapes that are characterized by their plan shape, profile curvature of surface and bedrock, and soil depth. To investigate the stability of complex hillslopes (with different slope curvatures and plan shapes), we combine the hillslopestorage Boussinesq (HSB) model with the infinite slope stability method. The HSB model is based on the continuity and Da...

We propose that the giant HI ring recently discovered by HIPASS for S0 galaxy NGC 1533 is formed by unequal-mass merging between gas-rich LSB (low surface brightness: “ghost”) galaxies and HSB disks. The NGC 1533 progenitor HSB spiral is transformed into a barred S0 during merging and the outer HI gas disk of the LSB is transformed into the giant HI ring. We also discuss two different possibili...

We use a model of galaxy disk formation to explore the metallicities, dust content, and neutral-gas mass density of damped Lyman-α (DLyα) absorbers. We find that the [Zn/H] abundance measurements of DLyα systems now available can be reproduced either by a population of low surface brightness (LSB) galaxies forming at redshifts z > 3, whose chemical contents evolve slowly with time and whose sta...

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) and the HSB (Humidity Sounder Brazil) form an integrated cross-track scanning temperature and humidity sounding system on the Aqua satellite of the Earth Observing System (EOS). AIRS is an infrared spectrometer/radiometer which covers the 3.7 15.4 μm spectral range with 2378 spectral channels. AMSU is a 15 chan...