OBJECTIVES: Son preference and sex selective practices have resulted in a deficit of girls in several countries, primarily across Asia. Emerging evidence indicates that son preference survives migration to Western high-income countries. The objective of this study was to assess male-to-female (M/F) ratios at birth per mother's country of birth in Australia 1997-2016, in total and by parity, and by

In the context of the Circular Economy, there is a lot of discussion on how policies at European Union and member state levels could provide incentives for the design of more durable products. One potential policy approach is to mandate manufacturers to provide lifetime information to consumers at the time of purchase. This could be done through a specific labeling scheme, or by including such inf

Ecodesign policy for energy-using products so far has tended to focus on the energy efficiency requirements, but there is increasing interest in durability requirements as well. This exploratory study analyses whether and when long lifetimes are preferable when considering the trade-offs between durability and other important parameters such as costs and environmental impacts, examining the case o

This paper explores the evolution of Swedish stabilization policies through six policy regimes between 1873 and 2019. We focus on discretionary policy decisions by estimating policy shocks using a SVAR model. Through these shocks, we explore how stabilization policies have evolved over time and how policymakers responded to key economic events such as financial crises and wars. Our results show thThis paper explores the evolution of Swedish stabilisation policies through six policy regimes between 1873 and 2019. We focus on discretionary policy decisions by estimating policy shocks using a SVAR model. Through these shocks, we explore how stabilisation policies have evolved over time and how policymakers responded to key economic events such as financial crises and wars. Our results show th

On 12 July 2021 the World Health Organization (WHO) Expert Advisory Committee on Developing Global Standards for Governance and Oversight of Human Genome Editing published a set of reports entitled Human Genome Editing: A Framework for Governance and Recommendations. These reports provide valuable advice and recommendations on appropriate institutional, national and global governance mechanisms fo

Modern well-insulated and highly glazed buildings experience increased overheating, even in cold climates. The study focused on external and internal passive solar shadings on a south-oriented façade, having predetermined that external and internal shadings’ main function is solar heat gain and glare protection, respectively. A daytime-occupied office space with several external shading geometry v

To date, the assessment of hydrological climate change impacts, not least on pluvial flooding, has been severely limited by i) the insufficient spatial resolution of regional climate models (RCMs) as well as ii) the simplified description of key processes, e.g., convective rainfall generation. Therefore, expectations have been high on the recent generation of high-resolution convection-permitting

Rainfall intensity or depth estimates are vital input for hydrologic and hydraulic models used in designing drainage infrastructures. Unfortunately, these estimates are susceptible to different sources of uncertainties including climate change, which could have high implications on the cost and design of hydraulic structures. This study adopts a systematic literature review to ascertain the disreg

BACKGROUND: Proenkephalin A 119-159 (penKid) has been suggested as a marker of renal failure and poor outcome. We aimed to investigate the association of penKid on ICU admission with organ dysfunction and mortality in a mixed ICU population. In this retrospective, observational study, admission penKid levels from prospectively collected blood samples of consecutive patients admitted to four Swedis

According to the Stereotype Content Model (SCM), the content of stereotypes differs on two dimensions: communion and agency. Research shows that for stereotypes about the general gender categories of “women” and “men,” there is an ambivalent pattern of communion and agency, where high levels on one dimension are associated with low levels on the other. For sexual minority stereotypes, a gender inv

The current research addresses gender trouble (acts that question the naturalness of a binary gender system) in two parts of the recruitment situation: applicant attraction and evaluation. Experiment 1 (N = 1,147) investigated how different Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) statements in an organization description influenced organizational evaluations. The EEO statements emphasized gender as bin

In order to produce models for automatic controller tuning, this paper proposes a method that combines a short experiment with a novel scheme for approximating processes using low-order time-delayed models. The method produces models aimed to tune PI and PID controllers, but they could also be used for other model-dependent controllers like MPC. The proposed method has been evaluated in simulation

Lignin is one of the world's most abundant organic polymers, and 2-pyrone-4,6-dicarboxylate lactonase (LigI) catalyzes the hydrolysis of 2-pyrone-4,6-dicarboxylate (PDC) in the degradation of lignin. The pH has profound effects on enzyme catalysis and therefore we studied this in the context of LigI. We found that changes of the pH mostly affects surface residues, while the residues at the active

Spatially coupled serially concatenated codes (SC-SCCs) are a class of spatially coupled turbo-like codes, which have a close-to-capacity performance and low error floor. In this paper, we perform a comprehensive design space exploration, revealing different aspects of SC-SCCs and discussing various design trade-offs. In particular, we investigate the impact of coupling memory, block length, decod

Yield loss caused by insect pests remains a substantial problem in agriculture. Chemical control, with potential negative effects on non-target organisms, is still the main tool for pest management. For pest species with limited dispersal capacity, rotation of the crop in time and space has potential as an alternative management measure. This is particularly important in organic farming, where mos

This study addresses the postulate of non-conventionality of pantomime, inherent in pantomimic scenarios of language origin. Since lack of semiotic conventions does not preclude micro-conventions resulting from cultural differences, pantomimes should be easier to interpret when the actor and recipient share the same culture than between two different cultures. In the study, Italian and Polish amat

Having close-to-capacity performance and low error floor, even for small block lengths, make spatially coupled serially concatenated codes (SC-SCCs) a very promising class of codes. However, classical window decoding of SC-SCCs either limits the minimum block length or requires a large number of iterations, which increases the complexity and constrains the degree to which an SC-SCC decoder archite

This ethnographic study shows that women’s knowledge and practices involving food in Japanese Buddhist contexts circulate as gendered currency. It emphasizes how what we term “food literacy” cultivates aesthetic and affective senses of belonging among Buddhist practitioners. We argue that this embodied knowledge helps women negotiate their experiences of Buddhism and show how these experiences art