The role that vitamin D plays in pulmonary function remains uncertain. Epidemiological studies reported mixed findings for serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D)–pulmonary function association. We conducted the largest cross-sectional meta-analysis of the 25(OH)D–pulmonary function association to date, based on nine European ancestry (EA) cohorts (n 22 838) and five African ancestry (AA) cohorts (n 4290) in the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology Consortium. Data were analysed using linear models by cohort and ancestry. Effect modification by smoking status (current/former/never) was tested. Results were combined using fixed-effects meta-analysis. Mean serum 25(OH)D was 68 (sd 29) nmol/l for EA and 49 (sd 21) nmol/l for AA. For each 1 nmol/l higher 25(OH)D, forced expiratory volume in the 1st second (FEV1) was higher by 1·1 ml in EA (95 % CI 0·9, 1·3; P<0·0001) and 1·8 ml (95 % CI 1·1, 2·5; P<0·0001) in AA (Prace difference=0·06), and forced vital capacity (FVC) was higher by 1·3 ml in EA (95 % CI 1·0, 1·6; P<0·0001) and 1·5 ml (95 % CI 0·8, 2·3; P=0·0001) in AA (Prace difference=0·56). Among EA, the 25(OH)D–FVC association was stronger in smokers: per 1 nmol/l higher 25(OH)D, FVC was higher by 1·7 ml (95 % CI 1·1, 2·3) for current smokers and 1·7 ml (95 % CI 1·2, 2·1) for former smokers, compared with 0·8 ml (95 % CI 0·4, 1·2) for never smokers. In summary, the 25(OH)D associations with FEV1 and FVC were positive in both ancestries. In EA, a stronger association was observed for smokers compared with never smokers, which supports the importance of vitamin D in vulnerable populations.

Cost-effective extension strategies are needed to promote widespreadadoption of agricultural technologies in developing countries. Integratedpest management (IPM) practices, for example, can offer economic, health,and environmental benefits but remain largely underused. This studyevaluates the current IPM dissemination program implemented by theBangladesh Department of Agricultural Extension and uses a linearprogramming model to examine alternative strategies to improve IPM adoption.Results suggest that technology transfer programs may increase their impactby reallocating funding from intensive but costly interpersonalcommunication methods (i.e., farmer field schools) to less intensive methods(i.e., mass media and field days) that reach broader audiences.

The inconclusiveness of the literature on the role of loss of parent in influencing psychiatric disorder in adulthood is well known. A number of reasons involving sampling, location and other methodological features, are given to account for these contradictory findings. A study specially designed to cope with these features is then described and basic results are reported. These indicate that, in a sample of women aged 18–65, loss of mother before the age of 17, either by death or by separation of one year or more, was associated with clinical depression in the year of interview. Loss of father by death was in no way associated with current depression, but separation from father showed a trend which, however, did not reach statistical significance. Control for other possible confounding factors did not change this patterning of results; these were further supported when psychiatric episodes earlier in adulthood were examined. Examination of the caregiving arrangements in childhood suggests that it is ‘lack of care’, defined in terms of neglect rather than simply hostile parental behaviour, which accounts for the raised rate of depression. Such ‘lack of care’ is more frequent after loss of mother than after loss of father.

This paper addresses the critique which maintains that loss of parent in a sample of female adults plays no role in determining current depression over and above that of low social class position with which such loss is associated. It examines a series of variables which combine to determine current social class position and which seem to stem from lack of adequate replacement care following loss of mother. The experience of a premarital pregnancy and the way in which women cope with it emerge as critical in this process. The relationship of low social class to the onset of depression is discussed in the light of better-known vulnerability factors such as low confiding in, and undependability of, marital partner, employment outside the home and number of children. It is concluded that a current low social class position, far from explaining away the association between loss of mother and current depression, may itself be brought about by a chain of circumstances stemming from the loss. Once again, the quality of replacement care is shown to play a critical role.

Many of the criticisms of our work made by Tennant & Bebbington in the current edition of this journal touch on issues which have already been discussed in our recent book Social Origins of Depression. We do not think that any of their points pose significant threats to our aetiological model of depression. We welcome this opportunity to clarify their questions about our data, and to use their re-analysis of our material as a basis for a wider discussion of certain general aspects of the statistical analysis and interpretation of data and the pitfalls which await the unwary.

The diagnoses were reviewed of 866 women interviewed in 5 community surveys carried out by the Bedford College team. The diagnoses matched commonly held conceptions of who is a case in terms of both severity and type of syndrome. Two methods of replicating the diagnoses are presented, one based on discriminant function analysis and the other based on a simple checklist.

Rare pebbles of granite have been discovered in the raised Patella beach at Butterslade, Gower, South Wales. Their petrography, trace element geochemistry and the Rb/Sr whole rock age of 55 ± 5 Ma confirm that they are derived from the Lundy granite which is about 49 km to the southwest of Gower. Amino acid analyses of fossil gastropods in the Patella beach have provided an age of 210000 years. Various hypotheses of transportation of pebbles from Lundy and Pembrokeshire to Butterslade are considered. Erratics from Pembrokeshire were probably transported by Pleistocene ice into the area while clasts of Lundy granite were moved by progradation of beach deposits northeastwards towards Gower during glacio-eustatic marine transgressions in the Pleistocene.

Two previous reports on a female population sample in Outer London, UK, had identified certain environmental experiences–such as lack of adequate replacement care after parental loss in childhood, premarital pregnancy, and low social class and poor emotional support in adulthood–as key factors intervening between childhood loss of parent and depression in adulthood. A third paper introduced a measure of the cognitive set of situational helplessness-mastery which was associated, on the one hand, with current depression and, on the other, with loss of mother in childhood. This article examines the relationship between these other factors and situational helplessness both in childhood and in adulthood. Most are highly associated with the cognitive set, but the relationship between childhood helplessness and loss of mother appears to be differentially mediated according to whether the loss was by death or separation. A series of multivariate statistical analyses aims to integrate all the findings so far reported on in this sample into a biographical model of the developmental pathways from childhood loss of mother to current depression.

Two population enquiries in Walthamstow and Islington, London, have shown that loss of the mother before the age of 17 years, either by death or separation for a year or more, doubles the risk of depressive and anxiety disorders among adult women. Furthermore, there was a particularly high rate of adult depression among those whose mothers died before they were 6 years old, and this was associated with a measure of childhood helplessness. There was no such link of either adult disorder or childhood helplessness with age at loss under 6 years for those losing a mother by separation. Two possible explanations were explored for these contrasting results. That concerning the adequacy of mourning of the mother's death received no support. However, evidence indicated that experience with the mother before the loss (usually affected by ongoing illness) explained the link of adult depression or anxiety with her early death. The failure of age at loss to relate in the separation group was probably due to the fact that among them age of separation was not a good indication of the quality of maternal care before age 6. Indirect evidence emerged which suggested that quality of early attachment (before age 6) to the natural mother before any loss relates to childhood helplessness. This in turn relates to a higher risk of disorder in adult life.