This paper shows new evidence of a steady long-term decline in age of male sexual maturity since at least the mid-eighteenth century. A method for measuring the timing of male maturity is developed based on the age at which male young adult mortality accelerates. The method is applied to mortality data from Sweden, Denmark, Norway, the United Kingdom, and Italy. The secular trend toward earlier...

BACKGROUND Mental health problems have become more common among young people over the last twenty years, especially in certain countries. The reasons for this have remained unclear. The hypothesis tested in this study is that national trends in young people's mental health are associated with national trends in young people's labour market. METHODS National secular changes in the proportion o...

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES To examine the differences among secular, traditional, and religious Israeli oncology nurses' intrinsic religiosity, extrinsic religiosity, spiritual well-being, and attitudes toward spiritual care. DESIGN A comparative, descriptive study. SAMPLE 148 Israeli Jewish nurses drawn from the membership of the Israeli Oncology Nursing Association. METHODS Nurses completed mai...

Data on menarcheal age were collected on girls admitted to the University College of Swansea over a 12-year period. It appears that the downward trend in menarcheal age ceased in girls born about 1946 (the 1965 student intake) and that an upward swing may have since occurred. This change in the secular trend is not due to the association of menarcheal age with family size or of position in sibs...

1 N umerous papers have documented an increase in extreme precipitation events in the US over the past 30 years or so. The fundamental cause of this trend is a subject of active research. The purpose of this study is to examine the meteorological factors that underlie the trend, specifically to determine the contributions of the major types of meteorological precipitation-producing systems to t...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Secular increase in human height and performance occurred in Europe throughout the 20th century despite the temporally worsening access to nutrients during and after World War II. This pattern is paradoxical under the assumption of the major impact of pre- and postnatal growth conditions for determination of adult size and human capital. METHODOLOGY We examined the a...