The International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) was designed to allow comparisons between populations in different countries. ISAAC Phase One, reported here, used standardized simple surveys which were conducted among representative samples of school children from centres in most regions of the world. Two age groups (13-14 and 6-7 yrs) with approximately 3,000 children in e...

BACKGROUND Phase I of the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) was designed to allow worldwide comparisons of the prevalence of asthma symptoms. In phase III the phase I survey was repeated in order to assess changes over time. METHODS The phase I survey was repeated after an interval of 5-10 years in 106 centres in 56 countries in children aged 13-14 years (n = 30...

While rural living protects from asthma and allergies in many countries, results are conflicting in Latin America. We studied the prevalence of asthma and asthma symptoms in children from urban, semiurban, and rural sectors in south Chile. A cross-sectional questionnaire study was conducted in semiurban and rural sectors in the province of Valdivia (n = 559) using the ISAAC (International Study...

atopic eczema (ae) is a chronic inflammatory skin disease that affects children and adults, and  alters  quality  of  life.  previous  studies  have suggested several  socio-demographic   and environmental factors related to the prevalence of ae and other allergic diseases,  including acetaminophen use. in the present study, we report the rates of isolated ae, ae associated with asthma and ae a...

Isaac is a rule-based visual language for mobile robots using evidential reasoning and a fuzzy inference engine. A prototype inference engine for Isaac has been implemented, permitting experiments with the Isaac language. This paper discusses this inference engine, describes some preliminary experiences with programming Isaac rulesets, and proposes future optimizations and enhancements to the i...

Craig M. Burris (Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory), Dan Gonzales (RAND), Jimmie G. McEver, III (Evidence Based Research, Inc.), Isaac Porche (RAND), Heather Schoenborn (Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration), David T. Signori (Evidence Based Research, Inc.), and Stephen Sudkamp (Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laborator...