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Multilevel modeling procedures were used to model longitudinal adolescent growth of the humerus, radius, femur, and tibia in boys and girls. Growth velocity variation is much higher among the girls and the tibia is the most variable of the four long bones.

This article discusses research from the Montreal Human Growth Research Center which examines the changes in facial midline soft-tissue thickness in French Canadian boys and girls between 10-16 years of age, and compares soft-tissue changes to changes in hard-tissue distances. Results show that boys have clearly defined adolescent spurts in hard-tissues and girls have only minor hard-tissue spurts, forehead thickness changes little for either girls or boys, the nose has the most soft-tissue spurts for either, small adolescent spurts for upper and maybe lower lip thickness appear in boys, and neither sex display clear evidence for spurts in the chin region.

This article presents a study comparing the conicity index with waist/hip ratio from a cross-sectional sample of 3 to 16 year-old Venezuelan children. Results show that most children presented a bi-conical shape, which was less pronounced in girls than in boys and was indicative of a central distribution of adiopisty, taking into account sex and age differences in body composition and onset of adolescent growth.

This article investigates the relationship between sexual maturity and blood pressure levels in male and female adolescents. Findings indicate that blood pressure measures were higher among sexually mature participants and that advanced sexual maturity for age is related to higher systolic blood pressure in both groups.

Menarche age was assessed in 93 adolescent females in a sample of public schools in East Hawaii. Native Hawaiian girls had significantly lower reported age at menarche than non-Hawaiian classmates. Age at menarche was significantly correlated with total fatness as measured by the sum of six skinfolds in girls who had reached menarche at least 2 years previous to measurement. When fatness was controlled in comparisons, the ethnic differences were not significant. Fat distribution, independent of fatness, was also significantly related to age at menarche. Socioeconomic, cultural, and admixture variables were not significantly related to age at menarche. Adiposity appears to be both a cause and a consequence of early age at menarche, with the relationship dependent on the elapsed time between menarche and measurement. This suggests that studies relating body composition to age at menarche must carefully control for the time interval between measurement and the date of menarche. KEY WORDS Growth and development, Maturation, Adiposity, Hawaii

Prefectural data of 17-year-old Japanese adolescents' body size were excerpted from the annual series of Reports on School Health Statistics (Ministry of Education) for the last 35 years, and were correlated with the mean annual temperature of prefectural capitals. A negative correlation was found for both height and weight. Thus, it can be stated that children in colder climates conform to Bergmann's rule that they are larger in their height and weight than children growing up in warmer climates. Partial correlation coefficients indicate that body weight is primarily related to the temperature. Further, the results of a multiple regression analysis, using temperature, daily energy intake (National Nutrition Surveys), and annual per capita income (Annual Reports of Prefectural Accounts) as the independent variables among the 12 districts (groups of prefectures) for the last 25 years, suggest that the observed Bergmann's phenomenon is related to geographical differences in nutrition; people in colder regions consume more calories than those in warmer regions.

A twelve-year longitudinal study of children and adolescents from Cracow, Poland is conducted to study the direction and sex dimorphism of subcutaneous fat distribution during ontogenesis. Less dynamic fat distribution is shown to lead to even fatness in girls.

A large number of Tsimane children and adolescents were surveyed to determine the changes taking place in the relationship between leptin and adiposity during development. The relationship was found to vary differently with developments in males, as well as in females.

Two adolescent populations from the south and the north of Europe were taken to determine the influence of sexual maturation status and body composition by comparing their cardiovascular fitness level. It was found that in late puberty, maturation was negatively associated with cardiovascular fitness level, body composition being the relevant modifying factor.

Two different strategies called household subsistence agricultural strategy (HSA) and household commercial agricultural strategy (HCA) was used on male and female adolescents from 16 peasant households to check if they could maintain energy balance during the annual scarcity season. The HSA females lost more muscle mass than the HSA males during the scarcity season, which shows more demanding work schedule throughout the year for females.

The skinfolds, circumferences and body breadths are used to assess the body size and shape of Akwesasne Mohawk youth between the ages of 10.0 and 16.99. It is found that Akwesasne youth have thicker skinfolds and larger circumferences than youth in the national surveys.

The cross-sectional data analysis of the samples of secondary school children belonging to Flemish adolescent group was conducted to study the secular trends in anthropometric characteristics, physical fitness, physical activity and biological activity. The physical characters like weight, stature show variation among different chronological groups.

An estimated of 4,143 Mexican and Egyptian adolescents girls were studied to determine whether early age at menarche varied across body mass index (BMI), socioeconomic level, and urban rural residence. It was found that menarche at an earlier age was most strongly associated with overweight and obesity in both Mexican and Egyptian adolescents, while urban residence and high socioeconomic level were associated with Mexican adolescents only.

Research in youth's oxygen consumption suggests aerobic fitness has generally not decreased in the US for this population group except in adolescent girls toward the end of the 20th century.

Attention is now focused on the hypothesis that poor nutrition in utero or during infancy `program' heightened risk for developing cardiovascular disease and its precursors, including hypertension, diabetes, and lipid abnormalities. While hundreds of studies have documented inverse relationships between fetal growth and adult blood pressure, far less is known about the relationship between fetal growth and later lipid metabolism. Cholesterol and fats are important substrate precursors for cellular growth, energy storage, and steroid hormone synthesis, demands for which vary widely based upon growth pattern and developmental stage. As such, plasticity in lipid metabolism in response to fetal exposures could have adaptive implications, in addition to more widely-acknowledged consequences for cardiovascular disease development. This paper presents evidence for long-term changes in lipid metabolism in relation to fetal growth in a sample of 310 male and 311 female Filipino adolescents enrolled in the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey (CLHNS), a one-year birth cohort study begun in 1982-1983. Multiple follow-ups were conducted during pregnancy, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, providing a lifetime of data for each respondent, including information on diet, activity level, socio-economic indicators, and growth patterns. Biochemical outcomes for the present analysis come from the Cardiovascular Risk component of the survey, which measured blood pressure, plasma lipid profiles, insulin, glucose, and leptin in 1998, when respondents were a mean age of 15 years old. In this population, individuals born thin, as indexed by BMI at birth, have alterations in lipid metabolism as adolescents, which will be explored in relation to postnatal growth patterns and future risk for cardiovascular disease.