Birth To Son Research Articles

Parental occupational exposure to solvents and risk of developing testicular germ cell tumors among sons: a French nationwide case-control study (TESTIS study).

The etiology of testicular germ cell tumors (TGCT) is suspected to be related to prenatal environmental risk factors. Some solvents have potential endocrine disrupting or carcinogenic properties and may disrupt male genital development in utero. The aim of this study was to examine the association between parental occupational exposure to solvents and TGCT risk among their offspring. A French nationwide case-control study, TESTIS included 454 TGCT cases and 670 controls frequency-matched on region and 5-year age strata. Participants were interviewed via telephone and provided information on parental occupations at birth. Job-exposure matrices (JEM) developed in the French Matgéné program were used to assign exposure to five petroleum-based solvents, five solvents or groups of oxygenated solvents, and five chlorinated solvents. Odds ratios (OR) for TGCT and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were estimated using conditional logistic regression, adjusting for TGCT risk factors. Occupational exposure to at least one solvent during the year of their son's birth was 41% among fathers and 21% among mothers. Paternal exposure to at least one solvent showed OR 0.89 (95% CI 0.68-1.15). Exposure to perchloroethylene (OR 1.41, 95% CI 0.55-3.61), methylene chloride (OR 1.13, 95% CI 0.54-2.34) and diesel/kerosene/fuel oil (OR 1.17, 95% CI 0.80-1.73) disclosed OR >1 but with low precision. Our results suggest a possible modest increase in non-seminoma risk for sons whose fathers were highly exposed to trichloroethylene (OR 1.44, 95% CI 0.79-2.63). Maternal exposure to at least one solvent showed OR 0.90 (95% CI 0.65-1.24). When stratifying by birth year, men born in the 1970s experienced an increased TGCT risk following maternal exposure to fuels and petroleum-based solvents (OR 2.74, 95% CI 1.11-6.76). Overall, no solid association was found between parental occupational exposure to solvents and TGCT risk. The association found with maternal occupational exposure to fuels and petroleum solvents among older men needs further investigation.

How we handled our son's birth at the limits of viability after an unexpected pregnancy.

In this paper, Dirk-Jan and Hiske, the parents of an infant born at 24 weeks of gestation, provide an insight into their experiences of their sons's birth and making decisions at the limit of viability. They were faced with the risk of an extremely premature birth at 22 weeks of gestation. The delivery miraculously stalled, and the limit of viability moved closer. The couple received prenatal counselling about the treatment options after birth, which were initiating intensive care treatment or comfort care. Together with physicians, they made the decision to initiate intensive care treatment if the infant was born in the grey zone. Different values were considered important in their lives during the decision-making process.

Trying To Do It All: Being a Physician-Mother during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Trying To Do It All: Being a Physician-Mother during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

ПАРЕМІЇ РУМЕЙСЬКОЇ МОВИ НА ПОЗНАЧЕННЯ РОДИННИХ СТОСУНКІВ

The article analyzes paremias, which indicate family relations among Rumei, who migrated to the Azov Sea area from the Crimea in the 18th century. It is indicated that the traditional Rumeic family was patriarchal, the head of the family was always a man. This tradition, for the most part, persists till nowadays, despite the fact that as a result of globalization and europeanization, the emphasis is shifting in the family structure of the Rumei. A woman held a lower position than a man, but she was always his shield and support. The paremias indicate that if a woman possessed intelligence and cunning, then she could easily manage to direct the man for her own benefits. A lot of paremias reflect the attitude of Rumei to children. They say that the basis of the family has always been children, without them the house seemed empty and devoid of life. A special honor for a man was the birth of sons, who were to become the successors of his family. The article describes the relationship between the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law through paremias, which was not kind to the son’s wife. The article concludes by emphasizing the values that the parents tried to instill in their children, which is also reflected in the paremias of Rumei. Prospects for further research are seen in a comparative study of the paremias which indicate family relations in Rumeic, Modern Greek, Ukrainian, and Crimean Tatar Language.

Aristotle vs Galen: Medieval Reception of Ancient Embryology - Medieval Medicine and the 13th Century Controversy over Plurality/Unicity of Substantial Form.

In their embryology, Aristotle and Galen greatly disagreed on the role of human derived materials like menstrual blood and vaginal secretion (called by them female sperm or semen). This gap made those two ancients also disagree on their understanding of mother's role in the generation of the human body in her womb. During the Middle Ages, especially during the thirteenth century, the scholastics drew on those two ancient thoughts for some rational underpinnings of their philosophical and theological doctrines. However, the manners of adoption and assimilation were varied. For example, Albert the Great strived to reconcile the two in the image of Avicenna, one of the main and the most important sources of Galenist medicine in the thirteenth Century. By contrast, those scholastics who played an important role in the controversy over plurality/unicity of the substantial form, drew on their disagreements. For example, pluralists like Bonaventure, William of la Mare, and Duns Scotus appealed to Galenist medical perspective to underpin their positions and paved ways to decorate Virgin Mary's motherhood and her active contribution to the Virgin birth and to the manhood of her Holy Son. in contrast a unicist like Thomas Aquinas advanced his theory in line with Aristotelian model that Mary's role in her Son's birth and manhood was passive and material. Giles, another unicist, while repudiating Galenist embryology with the support of Averroes's medical work called Colliget, alluded to some theologically crucial impieties with which might be associated some pluralists' Mariology based on the Roman physician's model. In this processus historiae, we can see not only the intertwining of medieval medicine, philosophy, and theology, but some critical moments where medicine provided, side by side with philosophy, natural settings and explanations for religious marvels or miracles such as the Virgin birth, the motherhood of Mary, the manhood of Christ, etc. Likewise, we can observe two medieval maxims coincide and resonate: "philosophia ancilla theologiae" and "philosophia et medicina duae sorores sunt."

Dix-sept ans by Éric Fottorino

Reviewed by: Dix-sept ans by Éric Fottorino William Cloonan Fottorino, Éric. Dix-sept ans. Gallimard, 2018. ISBN 978-2-07-014112-8. Pp. 263. If you rearrange the letters in the name Éric, you can create crié (169), a word which effectively captures the tone of this novel. Lina was seventeen years old when she [End Page 232] gave birth to an illegitimate child, Éric, who narrates the story. At the time of her son's birth, she was so naïve that there are hints she might not even have known how children are produced. The news of her pregnancy horrifies Lina's pious mother, and the discovery that the father is Jewish sends the older woman over the top. Her anger is further fueled by a bigoted curé and the heartless nuns who deliver the baby. The plan is to give the unwanted child away, but in a rare burst of anger, Lina insists on keeping him. Their early years together are trying financially, but mother and child are extremely close. Eventually, however, Éric finds it increasingly difficult to express his feelings for her, and when the story opens, the middle-aged narrator is emotionally stymied before the woman he calls Lina. Only in the final sections, during a car ride from Bordeaux to Nice, do Éric's feelings begin to break free, and in the final scene, where Lina lies in a coma, the son takes the mother's hand and allows himself to begin telling her how much he loves her. Dix-sept ans really has two parts. The first focuses on Éric's complicated and confounding feelings, which flirt with nombrilisme. It is never clear what precipitated his distancing himself from Lina. His attempts at explanation lack coherence, as do his occasional epiphanies. When a woman explains to him that he is Jewish because,"Être juif, c'est avoir des enfants juifs" (151), this appears to be a revelation for Éric, if not for anyone else. The second, somewhat more interesting part of the novel concerns Lina, her family, and her social milieu. Despite coming from a hardscrabble background, Lina lives primarily in a dreamlike world. She can occasionally express, but never sustain anger. Her mother is certainly a religious bigot, but during the Occupation her then-husband and she sheltered a Jewish family. Lina's brother, Paul, is a taciturn, rather unstable figure. Yet during Éric's early years he is a worthy surrogate father. Later, Paul accepts his identity as a gay man, finds a loving partner and a talent for horticulture. Unfortunately, the relationship and the business flounder, and Paul takes his life. Lina's beloved father left his family and moved to Madagascar where he fell in love with une Malgache. In order to marry her, the father had to renounce seeing his daughter ever again. Lina's story is more compelling than Éric's, and her family's complexity of greater interest than the narrator's ceaseless soul-searching. While Dix-sept ans is finally a rather average novel, it contains the potential for a quite good one. William Cloonan Florida State University, emeritus Copyright © 2019 American Association of Teachers of French

Analysis of Mutation Rate of 17 Y-Chromosome Short Tandem Repeats Loci Using Tanzanian Father-Son Paired Samples.

Hundred unrelated father-son buccal swab sample pairs collected from consented Tanzanian population were examined to establish mutation rates using 17 Y-STRs loci DYS19, DYS389I, DYS389II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, DYS393, DYS385a, DYS385b, DYS437, DYS438, DYS439, DYS448, DYS456, DYS458, DYS635, and Y-GATA-H4 of the AmpFlSTRYfiler kit used in forensics and paternity testing. Prior to 17 Y-STRs analysis, father-son pair biological relationships were confirmed using 15 autosomal STRs markers and found to be paternally related. A total of four single repeat mutational events were observed between father and sons. Two mutations resulted in the gain of a repeat and the other two resulted in a loss of a repeat in the son. All observed mutations occurred at tetranucleotide loci DYS389II, DYS385a, and DYS385b. The locus specific mutation rate varied between 0 and 1.176 x10−3 and the average mutation rate of 17Y-STRs loci in the present study was 2.353x10−3 (6.41x10−4 - 6.013x10−3) at 95% CI. Furthermore the mean fathers' age with at least one mutation at son's birth was 32 years with standard error of 2.387 while the average age of all fathers without mutation in a sampled population at son's birth was 26.781 years with standard error of 0.609. The results shows that fathers' age at son's birth may have an effect on Y-STRs mutation rate analysis, though this age difference was statistically not significant using unpaired samples t-test (p = 0.05). As a consequence of observed mutation rates in this study, the precise and reliable understanding of mutation rate at Y-chromosome STR loci is necessary for a correct evaluation and interpretation of DNA typing results in forensics and paternity testing involving males. The criterion for exclusion in paternity testing should be defined, so that an exclusion from paternity has to be based on exclusion constellations at a minimum of two 17 Y-STRs loci.

Son preference, children’s gender and parents’ time allocation: evidence from China

ABSTRACTThis article investigates the effect of children’s gender on parents’ time allocation in developing countries due to the long-existing tradition of son preference. A collective model generates predictions concerning the impact of the birth of sons on family behaviour when son preference is treated as a premium in the father’s utility function. Using data from China, I show that, with more sons instead of daughters, the time spent by both men and women on housework rises, while men have to increase their work time in the labour market and women can reduce theirs. The results are consistent with theoretical predictions and are robust for use in further tests. For the possible endogeneity of children’s gender, I use the law forbidding the use of ultrasound-B to reveal the gender of a foetus as instrumental variables as the identification strategy.

Chaos Theories by Elizabeth Hazen

Reviewed by: Chaos Theories by Elizabeth Hazen Kevin Holton Elizabeth Hazen. Chaos Theories. Alan Squire Publishing, 2016. Chaos theory, a mathematical field studying deterministic randomness, is built on the notion that even without new variables, a tiny change in a given system can have massive effects on the outcome. Chaos Theories, by Elizabeth Hazen, puts the every day minutia of human existence into such terms, analyzing the consequence of a single missed alarm, one missing person out of billions in a time of massive population growth, or a moon that never formed. All these grand ideas are balanced against the narrative of her son's birth, the tiny variable that throws her vast cosmos into turmoil with outcomes as great as they are terrible. With poems appearing in Best American Poetry 2013 and Southwest Review, among other markets, and a style that blends science with song, similar to Kimiko Hahn, Hazen has clearly identified her literary niche. [End Page 37] The opening poem, "Chaos Theory," is this theory in motion, overviewing the idea without slogging through math. "All it takes for things to turn / is a blip, a shift minute as the flutter of wings, / the opening of a door, a telephone / unanswered," Hazen writes. Focusing on these tiny details, she goes on to say, "I wake each day to an alarm," but the poem ends with, "Even this sorry heart, / a periodic after all, pounds wildly / at entrances, exits, the memory of his touch, / try as it will to keep a steady beat." "Ghost Story" focuses more on these anxieties and phantom sensations. The open lines read, "What you heard / is not the same as what was said." Hazen describes the "catastrophe" of a crying child, and how "ghosts / can move through walls, inhabit your skin, reflect / like wavelengths, echoing light or sound, the idea / but not the thing." After several couplets describing the fear that comes with facing an illusionary figure, the narrator chastising herself to be braver because specters like this are not real, the final couplet reads, "The voice you hear is in your head. Over / and over she asks, Then why are you afraid?" Other poems are more rooted in the concrete science for which the collection is named. "Ceres" begins with a quote from NASA describing "gravitational perturbations from Jupiter" that kept Ceres from becoming a full planet. She describes the myth of Jupiter being able to limit Ceres due to her "lesser form," but reminds the reader of "her domain: growth, harvest, motherly love, / and like all mothers she is volatile." After ruminating on Ceres, Hazen writes of her own experience giving birth. "When he pushed through me, / gagging for that first breath, no equation could / contain his need, my relief, the bleeding." In the end, she praises Ceres's strength, writing, "however / the universe has failed you, you endure. […] You are exactly where you want to be." Section two opens with "Strange Attractors," in which Hazen describes how "chaos breeds patterns" in a bar late at night, where "I am strange and turbulent," reminding that "Movement / is a theory too." This more fluid application of science to the quotidian resurfaces in "Thanatosis," where she says "the alternative to fight or flight is tonic immobility," with the narrator reliving the time she hid in her mother's closet, in the pitch black behind her dresses. "While I'm inside this darkness I can see / no difference between death and immobility." This scene plays out again in "Closet," except set from a second-person perspective, addressing an unknown "you" who this time hides in the father's closet, where the narrator finds adult magazines. This discovery of adulthood within her childhood self culminates in the lines, "a word takes shape / like the answer to a question no one has asked you yet." Ghosts likewise return in "When I was a Girl" which begins, "My memory is a haunted house that will / not let me leave." The poem goes on about how this house watches her from every angle, observing her actions, trying "to prove I'm nothing but a neatly folded lie." However, the final two couplets reverse the overbearing tone, embracing a more...

The glorified mothers of sons: Evidence from child sex composition and parental time allocation in rural China

We study the effects of sons versus daughters on parental joint time allocation between the labor market and the household. Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey from 1989 to 2006, we apply a fixed-effects model to control for cross-household heterogeneity in son preference. We find that the birth of sons rather than daughters significantly reduces maternal time spent on household chores, which we argue represents an increase in maternal intra-household bargaining power. However, the effects of sex composition of children on paternal time allocation and maternal time on labor-market activities are weak or mixed. Results are robust to a series of sensitive analyses.

Parental and perinatal risk factors for sexual offending in men: a nationwide case-control study.

Prior studies suggest parental and perinatal risk factors are associated with later offending. It remains uncertain, however, if such risk factors are similarly related to sexual offending. We linked socio-demographic, family relations, and perinatal (obtained at birth) data from the nationwide Swedish registers from 1973 to 2009 with information on criminal convictions of cases and control subjects. Male sex offenders (n = 13 773) were matched 1:5 on birth year and county of birth in Sweden to male controls without sexual or non-sexual violent convictions. To examine risk-factor specificity for sexual offending, we also compared male violent, non-sexual offenders (n = 135 953) to controls without sexual or non-sexual violent convictions. Predictors included parental (young maternal or paternal age at son's birth, educational attainment, violent crime, psychiatric disorder, substance misuse, suicide attempt) and perinatal (number of older brothers, low Apgar score, low birth weight, being small for gestational age, congenital malformations, small head size) variables. Conditional logistic regression models found consistent patterns of statistically significant, small to moderate independent associations of parental risk factors with sons' sexual offending and non-sexual violent offending. For perinatal risk factors, patterns varied more; small for gestational age and small head size exhibited similar risk effects for both offence types whereas a higher number of older biological brothers and any congenital malformation were small, independent risk factors only for non-sexual violence. This nationwide study suggests substantial commonalities in parental and perinatal risk factors for the onset of sexual and non-sexual violent offending.

Parents toxiques, addictions et psychothérapie institutionnelle

AimsThe aim of this article is to present a clinical case in order to demonstrate how the compulsive use of toxic substances articulates with the shortcomings of the family environment. It also aims to show the pertinence of the treatment of addictions in psychotic patients within the multireferential setting of institutional psychotherapy. MethodThe analysis of the case of Léonard is based on metapsychological theories and the pluridisciplinary principles of institutional psychotherapy. More specifically, the article centers on the following: the Collective, and dissociated transfer, conceptualized by J. Oury; the Freudian theory of identification, melancholy and mania; Winnicott's concepts of the mirror and the transitional objet; the Complex of the Dead Mother by A. Green; the self-calming techniques theorized by the Psychosomatic School of Paris; the function of toxic substances as being pharmakon, namely poison and remedy, propounded by S. Le Poulichet; and theories disputing the purity of psychopathological structures (W.R. Bion, C. Chaperot, M. Czermak, R. Chemama, J.-D. Nasio). ResultsThe institution where I met Leonard encourages the free circulation of patients, their active participation in their cure, and cross-disciplinary treatments with special emphasis on sociotherapy, and constant work on the atmosphere, analysis and exploitation of multifocal transfers specific to psychotic patients. This approach appears to be liable to reduce both psychological alienation and social estrangement. The observation of Leonard, who has been testing this setting for 10 months after having experienced numerous years of individual psychotherapy, evidences tremendous emotional deprivation and animosity towards his parents, hidden behind the polished narrative of an idealized parental love. The patient, who is prone to massive absorption of alcohol and to several other types of self-intoxication, although he still does not seem capable of elaborating his emotions towards his progenitors, is beginning to gain some control over his compulsive behaviours as a result of his integration into the Collective setting. DiscussionClinical observation, backing up the anamnestic approach, leads to the hypothesis of an early withdrawal of the emotional involvement of Leonard's mother, who suffered from depression at the time of her son's birth, following the loss of her own father. This primitive disaffection most probably had disastrous consequences on her son's psyche, since a depressed mother is likely to be a psychologically “dead mother” (A. Green), a distorting reflection of her baby's internal image and a terrifying mirror of his destiny (W. Winnicott). The patient explains the calm that drugs provide him with, but refuses to admit that he derives any satisfaction from them, which suggests that the use of toxic substances is a self-calming strategy resembling the compulsive and repetitive movements or tics deployed by an infant whose mother is physically or psychologically unavailable and/or unwilling to satisfy his needs. The emotional abandonment of Leonard was probably compounded by a substantially absent father, preoccupied with success, money and his spouse's unfaithfulness. Suicide attempts with his father's painkillers or vehicle, along with the explicit perception of his father as toxic, could provide some understanding of Leonard's compulsive behaviour as being a means of expending his anger towards his father. Overall, the act of taking toxic substances appears as a form of self-medication liable to fill the narcissistic gaps caused by this dual deprivation in his early family environment, an effort to “do without” the other. Moreover, the coexistence of neurotic and psychotic mechanisms in Leonard's mental function encourages debate on the existence of pure, unadulterated psychopathological structures. ConclusionThis suggests a diagnostic hypothesis of partial dysthymic psychosis, that is to say a mainly psychotic structure with elements of mania and melancholy, dominated by foreclosure and compounded by neurotic features caused by the mechanism of repression. I suggest that the structuring of the patient was heavily influenced by his parents’ unconscious pact to forbid their son to be and to be born. Furthermore, the fragmented transference investments that psychotic patients tend to make without distinction towards any person who gravitates around them, as well as towards a wide range of objects, leads us to conceive the pluralistic setting of institutional psychotherapy as a setting of living objects able to pacify the internalized, noxious parents and replace the toxic, inhuman, fetishized objects.

Effects of Fatherhood on Male Wage and Labor Supply in Japan

Abstract Using data from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (JPSC) for the period 1994–2007, I examine the effect of childbirth on fathers’ wage rates and labor supply in Japan. I also compare the effects of fatherhood between different cohorts by dividing the JPSC sample into two birth-year cohorts (those born in or before 1960 and those born after 1960). The results show that the birth of children significantly increases hourly wage rates by 2.3% and annual work by 69 hours. Comparing these results to those of studies based in the United States and Germany shows that while the effect of childbirth on the Japanese male labor supply is large, it is relatively small on wage rates. The study also shows that childbirth has different impacts on labor market outcomes for the two cohorts. In the early cohort, the birth of children significantly increases wage rates, but has no significant effect on the labor supply. On the contrary, for the later cohort, the birth of children does not increase wage rates and there is a significant increase in the labor supply. Finally, I examine how the gender difference of children impacts labor market outcomes. Although its impact is not so large, the birth of sons has a larger effect than the birth of daughters.

Komentář Eusebia z Kaisareie k níkajskému vyznání víry. Rozbor Eusebiova Dopisu Kaisarejským

The article contains a Czech translation of the Letter to the Diocese in Caesarea (Epistula ad Caesarienses) written by Eusebius of Caesarea in 325 from Nicaea, after the Nicene Creed was adopted by the council. It consequently focuses on Eusebius' comments on the Nicene Creed, in which Eusebius draws attention to the new terminology of the Nicene Creed and attempts to expound it within his own theological position. Two of these new terms, the expressions from the substance of the Father and homousios with the Father, would seem to be particularly puzzling. Eusebius provides explanations in the letter of the two expressions at the expense of reduction or rejection of their usia part. From the substance of the Father is a phrase which according to Eusebius means nothing more than that the Son is from the Father. The uniqueness of the Son's birth before all ages is expressed by Eusebius with additional terms. Homousios is expounded as a word implying the most exact likeness between the Son and the Father. This is the usual way used by Eusebius to explain the quality of the relationship between the Father and the Son in his other writings. For Eusebius the Nicene Creed is an anti-Arian creed including those terms for which satisfactory explanations cannot be found in his own teachings (which remained unchanged both during and after the Council of Nicaea), nor in the teachings of other participants in the council (or at least Eusebius does not suggest this in his letter).

Cognitive ability correlates positively with son birth and predicts cross-cultural variation of the offspring sex ratio

Human populations show remarkable variation in the sex ratio at birth which is believed to be related to the parental condition. In the present study, the global variation of sex ratio at birth (SRB, proportion of male offspring born) was analyzed with respect to indirect measure of condition, the intelligence quotient (IQ). IQ correlates strongly with lifespan across nations, which makes it a good indicator of health of the large populations. Relation between three standard measures of average national IQ and SRB was studied using multiple linear regression models. Average national IQ was positively correlated with SRB (r = 0.54 to 0.57, p < 0.001). Further, IQ emerged as a powerful predictor of SRB after controlling for the effects of all the known covariates like fertility, maternal age, polygyny prevalence, wealth, son preference, latitude, low birth weight, and neonatal mortality in the regression models. These results suggest that the striking variation of offspring sex ratio across nations could be caused in part by the difference in general condition of populations.

The Lady with the Torn Hair Who Looks on Gladiators in Grapple: G. K. Chesterton's Marian Poems

This essay is at once a description and a defense of G. K. Chesterton's vivid poetic portraits of Mary as the Mother of the Church, the God-bearer inviting veneration by Christians of all sorts and conditions. In “The Nativity,” she is the Maiden whose Son's birth gives every child ultimate worth, and whose birth-pangs figure her earthly agony as well as her enduring mercy. In “The Arena,” she is the Lady who presides over a field of playful Christian battle—not as Nero beheld the blood sports of his Domus Aurea, but as the Virgin atop the golden dome of her own university, Notre Dame.

Testicular cancer risk according to county of birth and county of diagnosis in Norway, 1958–2007

Background. The etiology of testicular germ cell cancer (TGCC) is still poorly understood, but biological and epidemiological evidence suggest that TGCC originates early in life. The aim of the present study was to analyze heterogeneity in TGCC risk within Norway, comparing county of birth to county of diagnosis, in order to assess the relative contribution of risk factors acting early and later in life. A further aim was to present the Norwegian TGCC incidence rates (1958–2007). Material and methods. All TGCC cases (n = 7130) reported to the Cancer Registry of Norway, 1958–2007, were analyzed by county of diagnosis in 10-year intervals. The relative risk of TGCC based on county of birth, was estimated by Poisson regression analysis of all new TGCC cases (n = 1943), based on the mother's county of residence at the time of the son's birth, 1967–2007, obtained by linkage between the Cancer Registry and the Medical Birth Registry of Norway. Results. Between the first (1958–67) and last (1998–2007) 10-year period, the average incidence rate more than tripled from 3.3 to 10.5 per 100 000 person-years (world adjusted), respectively. The average incidence rate during 1968–2007 was highest in the county of Rogaland (8.6) and lowest in Hedmark (5.3), the ratio between them being 1.6. The relative risk of TGCC based on county of birth (1967–2007) varied between 1.43 (Møre og Romsdal) and 0.95 (Buskerud), giving a ratio of 1.5. Conclusions. The ratio between the relative risk in the highest and lowest county was basically similar when comparing counties of birth with counties of diagnosis. Thus, our data do not shed light on the relative contribution of risk factors acting early versus later in life. The incidence rate of TGCC in Norway is among the highest in the world, and the increase in incidence rate does not seem to level off.

Reluctant Accomplice: A Wehrmacht Soldier's Letters from the Eastern Front Konrad H. Jarausch, ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), xviii + 392 pp., cloth $35.00

Konrad Jarausch, the distinguished historian who edited this book, is the son of Konrad Jarausch, the German soldier whose letters compose most of it. The two never saw each other in person, as the father had to return to his unit three days before the son's birth and died in the occupied Soviet Union five months later. For many years, out of a mixture of resentment of his father's absence and rejection of his worldview, the younger Jarausch avoided close examination of the hundreds of surviving letters written from his father's postings in Germany, Poland, France, and the Soviet Union between the time of his call-up in September 1939 and his demise in January 1942. After his retirement as Director of the Center for Contemporary Historical Studies at the University of Potsdam in 2006 freed up his time and the lingering controversy in Germany over the extent to which Wehrmacht troops had participated in Nazi war crimes provided motivation, the younger Jarausch did an about-face and embarked on “a curious voyage of discovery that tested [his] loyalties as a son and [his] professionalism as a historian” (pp. vii–viii). The initial result, “Das stille Sterben …”: Feldpostbriefe von Konrad Jarausch aus Polen und Russland 1939–42, appeared in 2008. The English-language offshoot differs from its predecessor in two important respects: it contains about half as many letters, and its title and the editor's introductory essay, “In Search of a Father,” grapple more directly with the issue of the father's complicity.

The Most &lt;I&gt;Amazing&lt;/I&gt; 24 Hours

In this column, a mother shares the story of her son's birth with her prenatal yoga instructor. The mother was able to work with her labor, was well supported by her husband and doula, and negotiated successfully with the hospital staff to have a safe, healthy birth. She describes how difficult labor is and the ways in which comfort and support strategies help women manage contractions.

Female-biased sex allocation of offspring by an Apodemus mouse in an unstable environment.

We investigated the effects of population fluctuation on the offspring’s sex allocation by a weakly polygynous mouse, Apodemus argenteus, for 3 years. In acorn-poor seasons, heavier mothers invested more in sons, and lighter mothers invested more in daughters. In acorn-rich seasons, heavier mothers invested more in daughters, and lighter mothers invested more in sons. Maternal body condition and litter size affected the sex allocation. Furthermore, there was a maternal investment trade-off between a son’s birth mass and the number of daughters. Based upon the effect of population fluctuation on the lifetime reproductive success of each sex, we proposed the new “safe bet hypothesis”. This hypothesis predicts that frequent and unpredictable change in female distribution, which is often caused by abrupt fall in food condition, favors female-biased maternal investment to offspring by polygynous mammals and is applicable to many small mammals inhabiting in unstable environments.