A New Look at the Asian Fertility Transition

The significance of the Asian fertility transition can hardly be overestimated. The relatively sanguine view of population growth expressed at the 1994 International Conference for Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo was possible only because of the demographic events in Asia over the last 30 years. In 1965 Asian women were still bearing about six children. Even at current rates, today’s young women will give birth to half as many. This measure, namely the average number of live births over a reproductive lifetime, is called the total fertility rate. It has to be above 2— considerably above if mortality is still high—to achieve long-term population replacement. By 1995 East Asia, taken as a whole, exhibited a total fertility rate of 1.9. Elsewhere, Singapore was below long-term replacement, Thailand had just achieved it, and Sri Lanka was only a little above. The role of Asia in the global fertility transition is shown by estimates I made a few years ago for a World Bank Planning Meeting covering the first quarter of a century of the Asian transition [Caldwell (1993), p. 300]. Between 1965 and 1988 the world’s annual birth rate fell by 22 percent. In 1988 there would have been 40 million more births if there had been no decline from 1965 fertility levels. Of that total decline in the world’s births, almost 80 percent had been contributed by Asia, compared with only 10 percent by Latin America, nothing by Africa, and, unexpectedly, 10 percent by the high-income countries of the West. Indeed, 60 percent of the decline was produced by two countries, China and India, even though they constitute only 38 percent of the world’s population. They accounted, between them, for over threequarters of Asia’s fall in births.

Recent data indicate that black women are at greater risk of severe morbidity and mortality from postpartum haemorrhage, both before and after adjusting for comorbidity.

Recent data indicate that black women are at greater risk of severe morbidity and mortality from postpartum haemorrhage, both before and after adjusting for comorbidity. Causes of increased risk of severe morbidity and mortality related to postpartum haemorrhage in black women in the USA are poorly understood and warrant further research. There is a need for tailored maternity services and improved access to care for women from ethnic minorities

Whales, dolphins, and porpoises of the western North Atlantic: a guide to their identification

This is an identification guide for cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises). It was designed to assist laypersons in identifying cetaceans encountered in the western North Atlantic Ocean and was intended for use by ongoing cetacean observer programs. This publication includes sections on identifying cetaceans at sea as well as stranded animals on shore. Species accounts are divided by body size and presence or lack of a dorsal fin. Appendices cover tags used on cetacean species; how to record and report cetacean observations at see and for stranded cetaceans; and a list of contacts for reporting cetacean strandings. (Document pdf contains 183 pages - file takes considerable time to open

Gravitational Wave - Gauge Field Oscillations

Gravitational waves propagating through a stationary gauge field transform into gauge field waves and back again. When multiple families of flavor-space locked gauge fields are present, the gravitational and gauge field waves exhibit novel dynamics. At high frequencies, the system behaves like coupled oscillators in which the gravitational wave is the central pacemaker. Due to energy conservation and exchange among the oscillators, the wave amplitudes lie on a multidimensional sphere, reminiscent of neutrino flavor oscillations. This phenomenon has implications for cosmological scenarios based on flavor-space locked gauge fields.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, 1 animation; replacement matches published versio

Reaching a stationary global population: what we have learnt, and what we must do

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The University of Missouri goes to India

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