Over the centuries the health of populations has improved because science has helped us understand the main causes of disease affecting large populations from iodine deficiency to smoking and how technologies or strategies can be delivered to reduce hazards among those affected. At the same time the broader policy-relevant issue of population effects of exposure to risks has remained under-explored relative to our documentation of established diseases. During the last quarter of the twentieth century a number of works have addressed both the methodological and empirical aspects of population-wide impacts of major causes of diseases. This gradual establishment of risk assessment or risk quantification has been driven partly by the academic curiosity of individual researchers and partly by the demands of regulatory agencies and public policy for better quantitative evidence on the health implications of certain risk exposures. These efforts nonetheless have generally been within the disciplinary and methodological traditions of individual risk factors and in a limited number of settings. As a result the criteria for evaluating scientific evidence have varied greatly across risk factors resulting in lack of comparability across risk factors. This book provides a comprehensive assessment of the scientific evidence on prevalence and hazards and the resulting health effects of a range of exposures that are known to be hazardous to human health including childhood and maternal undernutrition nutritional and physiological risk factors for adult health addictive substances sexual and reproductive health and risks in the physical environments of households and communities as well as among workers. This book is the culmination of over 3 years of scientific enquiry and data collection collectively known as the Comparative Risk Assessment (CRA) project involving over 100 scientists applying a common analytical framework and methods to ensure greater consistency and comparability in using and evaluating scientific evidence across risks. As a result our understanding of the comparative extent of disease burden caused by various exposures worldwide has advanced and key areas of scientific enquiry to better inform policy needs to reduce risks have been elucidated. As public health researchers and practitioners evaluate policy alternatives for improving population health this book not only demonstrates the enormous potential for disease prevention but also provides a fundamental reference for the scientific evidence on some of the most important global risks to health.

Abstract Globally, almost three billion people rely on biomass (wood, charcoal, crop residues, and dung) and coal as their primary source of domestic energy. Exposure to indoor air pollution from the combustion of solid fuels is an important cause of disease and mortality in developing countries. Despite recent advances in estimating the health impacts of indoor smoke, there are limited studies targeted toward the design and implementation of effective intervention programs. We review the current knowledge of the relationship between indoor air pollution and disease, and of the assessment of interventions for reducing exposure and disease. This review takes an environmental health perspective and considers the details of both exposure and health effects that are needed for successful intervention strategies. In particular, we summarize the emerging understanding of the central role of household energy technology and day-to-day household activities in determining exposure to indoor smoke. We also identify knowledge gaps and detailed research questions that are essential in successful design and dissemination of preventive measures and policies. In addition to specific research recommendations based on the weight of recent studies, we conclude that research and development of effective interventions can benefit tremendously from integration of methods and analysis tools from a range of disciplines-from quantitative environmental science and engineering, to toxicology and epidemiology, to the social sciences.

"We provide evidence for the plausibility of the disparity estimation algorithm and the properties of the overall disparity map in the context of biological stereopsis. The algorithm is implemented on a network of TMS320C40 processors to obtain a processing time of one second for a 128-pixel $ times$ 128-pixel image frame." --