Explore the vast range of titles available.

This article examines the legal and practical dimensions of religious education (RE) in Austria with a particular focus on interreligious education as an emerging pedagogical and societal response to increasing religious and cultural diversity. It begins by situating the discussion within Austria’s historical and constitutional framework, in which RE is governed as a res mixta—a joint responsibility shared between the state and legally recognized churches and religious societies (CRSs). The analysis highlights how this model of power-sharing is enshrined in both constitutional and ordinary legislation, granting CRSs extensive autonomy in the organization, content, and supervision of denominational RE. Despite the absence of explicit legal provisions for interreligious education, the article demonstrates that interreligious teaching practices can be implemented through cooperative arrangements between CRSs, particularly when aligned with national educational goals and international commitments to tolerance, religious freedom, and other human rights. It further analyses curricular references to interreligiosity across various denominational RE programs and discusses the institutional potential for integrating interreligious competencies into teacher training and school practice. Drawing on the example of the project Integration through Interreligious Education at the University Graz, a cooperative initiative between the Catholic Church and the Islamic Religious Society in Austria (IGGÖ) from 2017 to 2023, the article outlines how interreligious education was legally contextualized and contractually formalized. The article concludes that interreligious education, though legally unregulated, is both feasible and desirable within Austria’s current legal and educational framework. It calls for greater normative clarity and policy support to ensure the sustainability and broader implementation of such models, which foster mutual understanding and peaceful coexistence in a pluralistic society.

One of the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals of 2000 was to reduce maternal mortality by 75% in 15 y; however, this challenge was not met by many industrialized countries. As average maternal age continues to rise in these countries, associated potentially life-threatening severe maternal morbidity has been understudied. Our primary objective was to examine the associations between maternal age and severe maternal morbidities. The secondary objective was to compare these associations with those for adverse fetal/infant outcomes. This was a population-based retrospective cohort study, including all singleton births to women residing in Washington State, US, 1 January 2003-31 December 2013 (n = 828,269). We compared age-specific rates of maternal mortality/severe morbidity (e.g., obstetric shock) and adverse fetal/infant outcomes (e.g., perinatal death). Logistic regression was used to adjust for parity, body mass index, assisted conception, and other potential confounders. We compared crude odds ratios (ORs) and adjusted ORs (AORs) and risk differences and their 95% CIs. Severe maternal morbidity was significantly higher among teenage mothers than among those 25-29 y (crude OR = 1.5, 95% CI 1.5-1.6) and increased exponentially with maternal age over 39 y, from OR = 1.2 (95% CI 1.2-1.3) among women aged 35-39 y to OR = 5.4 (95% CI 2.4-12.5) among women aged ≥50 y. The elevated risk of severe morbidity among teen mothers disappeared after adjustment for confounders, except for maternal sepsis (AOR = 1.2, 95% CI 1.1-1.4). Adjusted rates of severe morbidity remained increased among mothers ≥35 y, namely, the rates of amniotic fluid embolism (AOR = 8.0, 95% CI 2.7-23.7) and obstetric shock (AOR = 2.9, 95% CI 1.3-6.6) among mothers ≥40 y, and renal failure (AOR = 15.9, 95% CI 4.8-52.0), complications of obstetric interventions (AOR = 4.7, 95% CI 2.3-9.5), and intensive care unit (ICU) admission (AOR = 4.8, 95% CI 2.0-11.9) among those 45-49 y. The adjusted risk difference in severe maternal morbidity compared to mothers 25-29 y was 0.9% (95% CI 0.7%-1.2%) for mothers 40-44 y, 1.6% (95% CI 0.7%-2.8%) for mothers 45-49 y, and 6.4% for mothers ≥50 y (95% CI 1.7%-18.2%). Similar associations were observed for fetal and infant outcomes; neonatal mortality was elevated in teen mothers (AOR = 1.5, 95% CI 1.2-1.7), while mothers over 29 y had higher risk of stillbirth. The rate of severe maternal morbidity among women over 49 y was higher than the rate of mortality/serious morbidity of their offspring. Despite the large sample size, statistical power was insufficient to examine the association between maternal age and maternal death or very rare severe morbidities. Maternal age-specific incidence of severe morbidity varied by outcome. Older women (≥40 y) had significantly elevated rates of some of the most severe, potentially life-threatening morbidities, including renal failure, shock, acute cardiac morbidity, serious complications of obstetric interventions, and ICU admission. These results should improve counselling to women who contemplate delaying childbirth until their forties and provide useful information to their health care providers. This information is also useful for preventive strategies to lower maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity in developed countries.

Racial disparities in health are well-documented and represent a significant public health concern in the US. Racism-related factors contribute to poorer health and higher mortality rates among Blacks compared to other racial groups. However, methods to measure racism and monitor its associations with health at the population-level have remained elusive. In this study, we investigated the utility of a previously developed Internet search-based proxy of area racism as a predictor of Black mortality rates. Area racism was the proportion of Google searches containing the \"N-word\" in 196 designated market areas (DMAs). Negative binomial regression models were specified taking into account individual age, sex, year of death, and Census region and adjusted to the 2000 US standard population to examine the association between area racism and Black mortality rates, which were derived from death certificates and mid-year population counts collated by the National Center for Health Statistics (2004-2009). DMAs characterized by a one standard deviation greater level of area racism were associated with an 8.2% increase in the all-cause Black mortality rate, equivalent to over 30,000 deaths annually. The magnitude of this effect was attenuated to 5.7% after adjustment for DMA-level demographic and Black socioeconomic covariates. A model controlling for the White mortality rate was used to further adjust for unmeasured confounders that influence mortality overall in a geographic area, and to examine Black-White disparities in the mortality rate. Area racism remained significantly associated with the all-cause Black mortality rate (mortality rate ratio = 1.036; 95% confidence interval = 1.015, 1.057; p = 0.001). Models further examining cause-specific Black mortality rates revealed significant associations with heart disease, cancer, and stroke. These findings are congruent with studies documenting the deleterious impact of racism on health among Blacks. Our study contributes to evidence that racism shapes patterns in mortality and generates racial disparities in health.

Given the acuity and complexity of AFE signs and symptoms, an immediate response by a multidisciplinary team including experienced specialists in obstetrics, maternal–fetal medicine, anesthesia, intensive care, and hematology is probably key for survival, as observed by Fitzpatrick and colleagues [1]. Because AFE is a diagnosis of exclusion, a precise case definition is difficult to establish. To some degree, the varying treatment modalities reported by Fitzpatrick and colleagues reflect the variation in presenting symptoms among the AFE cases included in their study. Because most of the cases had coagulopathy and bleeding, coagulation management and surgical interventions to stop the bleeding appeared to improve overall survival. Future research should therefore focus on genetic and clinical determinants of maternal susceptibility to such an aberrant response to amniotic fluid or fetal cells. Because a reliable diagnostic test for AFE is not currently available, better biomedical markers and other predictors are also needed to improve preventive and therapeutic interventions.

Few studies have examined the associations between sleep duration, shiftwork, and exercise to the infrequent menstruation, hyperandrogenism, and ovarian morphological changes observed in women with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). To examine whether lifestyle factors, including short sleep duration, insufficient exercise, and shiftwork, alone or in combination, are associated with the reproductive and metabolic abnormalities typical of PCOS in a healthy population. Prospective cross-sectional study of 231 women, including healthcare workers recruited for an annual health screen, healthy referral patients from the Women's Clinic and volunteers from the university community at the National University Hospital, Singapore, from 2011 to 2015. The women completed a questionnaire, including their menstrual cycle length, sleep length, frequency of exercise and shift work. Hyperandrogenism (hirsutism score, testosterone, sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG)), ovarian morphology and function (anthral follicle count, ovarian volume, anti-mullerian hormone (AMH)), and metabolic measures (body mass index (BMI), waist hip ratio (WHR), blood pressure, fasting glucose, fasting insulin and fasting lipids) were examined through anthropometric measurements, transvaginal ultrasound scans, and blood tests. No significant associations were observed between shift work, exercise or sleep duration and the androgenic and ovarian measures that define PCOS. However, women reporting fewer than 6 hours of sleep were more likely to report abnormal (short or long) menstrual cycle lengths (OR = 2.1; 95% CI, 1.1 to 4.2). Women who reported fewer than 6 hours of sleep had increased fasting insulin levels (difference in means = 2.13; 95% CI, 0.27 to 3.99 mU/L) and higher odds of insulin resistance (OR = 2.58; CI, 1.16 to 5.76). Lack of regular exercise was associated with higher mean fasting insulin (difference in means = 2.3 mU/L; 95% CI, 0.5 to 4.1) and HOMA-IR (difference in means = 0.49; 95% CI, 0.09 to 0.90) levels. Women with insufficient sleep are at increased risk of menstrual disturbances and insulin resistance, but do not have the hyperandrogenism and polycystic ovarian morphology typical of PCOS. Improved sleep duration may help reduce the risks of diabetes or infertility. Shift work, exercise or sleep duration appear not to impact the androgenic and ovarian measures that define PCOS.

Pulsar timing and laser-interferometer gravitational-wave (GW) detectors are superb laboratories to study gravity theories in the strong-field regime. Here, we combine these tools to test the mono-scalar-tensor theory of Damour and Esposito-Farèse (DEF), which predicts nonperturbative scalarization phenomena for neutron stars (NSs). First, applying Markov-chain Monte Carlo techniques, we use the absence of dipolar radiation in the pulsar-timing observations of five binary systems composed of a NS and a white dwarf, and eleven equations of state (EOSs) for NSs, to derive the most stringent constraints on the two free parameters of the DEF scalar-tensor theory. Since the binary-pulsar bounds depend on the NS mass and the EOS, we find that current pulsar-timing observations leave scalarization windows, i.e., regions of parameter space where scalarization can still be prominent. Then, we investigate if these scalarization windows could be closed and if pulsar-timing constraints could be improved by laser-interferometer GW detectors, when spontaneous (or dynamical) scalarization sets in during the early (or late) stages of a binary NS (BNS) evolution. For the early inspiral of a BNS carrying constant scalar charge, we employ a Fisher-matrix analysis to show that Advanced LIGO can improve pulsar-timing constraints for some EOSs, and next-generation detectors, such as the Cosmic Explorer and Einstein Telescope, will be able to improve those bounds for all eleven EOSs. Using the late inspiral of a BNS, we estimate that for some of the EOSs under consideration, the onset of dynamical scalarization can happen early enough to improve the constraints on the DEF parameters obtained by combining the five binary pulsars. Thus, in the near future, the complementarity of pulsar timing and direct observations of GWs on the ground will be extremely valuable in probing gravity theories in the strong-field regime.

According to this report, nearly half of children who became obese between the ages of 5 and 14 years had been overweight and 75% had been above the 70th percentile for BMI at the start of kindergarten. Focusing on early childhood obesity may be important in stemming the epidemic. Childhood obesity is a major health problem in the United States. 1 The prevalence of a body-mass index (BMI; the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters) at the 95th percentile or higher among children between the ages of 6 and 11 years increased from 4.2% in 1963–1965 to 15.3% in 1999–2000 2 , 3 and may have plateaued during the first decade of the 21st century. 4 , 5 Although trends in the prevalence of obesity are documented, surprisingly little is known about the incidence of childhood obesity. Examining incidence may provide insights into the nature of the epidemic, . . .

That the places we live, work, and play matter for individual and population health across the human life course is both incredibly consequential and relatively uncontested in modern social epidemiology. In a keynote address at the 2019 GEOMED meeting, Ana Diez Roux-an early proponent of applying the sociological neighborhood effects framework to the descriptive and explanatory tasks of epidemiology-summarized four evolving stages of conceptual thinking in the place and population health scholarship since the 1990s1: (1) places are context for health, (2) places are causes ofhealth, (3) places are effect modifiers or reinforcers of individual or social health-relevant processes, and (4) places are components of complex systems that dynamically produce and distribute experiences, exposures, and opportunities, which give rise to socially structured patterns of population health.This progression toward increasingly complex and dynamic thinking about relations between places and population health is evident in the growth and evolution of research examining how residential locale affects reproductive and perinatal health outcomes. In this issue of AJPH, Krieger et al. (p. 1046) make an important contribution to this body of research by asking whether the historical process of mortgage redlining in specific New York City neighborhoods predicts the risk for preterm birth among women residing in those neighborhoods and delivering liveborn, singleton infants in 2013 through 2017. By contrast to much of the neighborhood effects research focusing on temporally proximate or contemporary exposures and outcomes, Krieger et al. use the 1938 maps created by the federally sponsored Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) of investment \"risk\" guiding mortgage lenders as predictive exposures. These maps-where \"hazardous\" neighborhoods are outlined in red giving rise to the term \"redlining\"-codified the racialized government policy of public investment in White and middle-class communities and disinvestment in neighborhoods with Black, Puerto Rican, or foreign-born residents. Anyone doubting the explicit racialized motivation underpinning the map categories should peruse the comments and notes abstracted from the original maps as summarized in Table B of Krieger et al. (available as a supplement to the online version of their article at http://www.ajph.org).The inclusion of 1938 mortgage lending policy is not evoked in this study as a direct experience or exposure for women who are not giving birth until the second decade of the 21st century. Instead, Krieger et al. posit that this historical fact (the HOLC maps and their role in guiding mortgage lending) stands as an influential node in the spatiotemporally dynamic urban ecology of populations and places. The authors find modest empirical evidence that the 1938 HOLC categories predicted contemporary risk for preterm birth, independent of important individual demographic, socioeconomic, and health risk factors. These findings have implications for how we interpret cross-sectional analysis of geographic variation in health, how we conceive of the social causes of health and health disparities, and consequently what kinds of public health actions might plausibly disrupt the status quo ofhealth inequity.

The discovery of the first binary pulsar in 1974 has opened up a completely new field of experimental gravity. In numerous important ways, pulsars have taken precision gravity tests quantitatively and qualitatively beyond the weak-field slow-motion regime of the Solar System. Apart from the first verification of the existence of gravitational waves, binary pulsars for the first time gave us the possibility to study the dynamics of strongly self-gravitating bodies with high precision. To date there are several radio pulsars known which can be utilized for precision tests of gravity. Depending on their orbital properties and the nature of their companion, these pulsars probe various different predictions of general relativity and its alternatives in the mildly relativistic strong-field regime. In many aspects, pulsar tests are complementary to other present and upcoming gravity experiments, like gravitational-wave observatories or the Event Horizon Telescope. This review gives an introduction to gravity tests with radio pulsars and its theoretical foundations, highlights some of the most important results, and gives a brief outlook into the future of this important field of experimental gravity.

Pulsars are famed for their rotational clocklike stability and their highly repeatable pulse shapes. However, it has long been known that there are unexplained deviations (often termed timing noise) from the rate at which we predict these clocks should run. We show that timing behavior often results from two different spin-down rates. Pulsars switch abruptly between these states, often quasi-periodically, leading to the observed spin-down patterns. We show that for six pulsars the timing noise is correlated with changes in the pulse shape. Many pulsar phenomena, including mode changing, nulling, intermittency, pulse-shape variability, and timing noise, are therefore linked and are caused by changes in the pulsar's magnetosphere. We consider the possibility that high-precision monitoring of pulse profiles could lead to the formation of highly stable pulsar clocks.