BACKGROUND Polymerase chain reaction-based Xpert human papillomavirus (HPV) assay is a rapid test that detects high-risk HPV (hrHPV) infection. This point-of-care test is usually performed by collecting a cervical specimen in a vial of PreservCyt® transport medium. We compared HPV test positivity and accuracy between self-collected sample with a dry swab (s-DRY) versus physician-collected cervi...

An irrigation experiment was conducted with three cultivars (Hass, Ettinger and Fuerte) in the avocado plantation of the Akko Experiment Station, Israel, during 1974-80 to determine the effect of irrigation regimen in spring and autumn on tree growth and productivity. Two treatments (wet and dry) were tested in the spring and in the autumn. In spring the trees receiving the wet treatment were i...

Drought is one of the most important weather-induced phenomena which may have severe impacts on different areas such as agriculture, economy, energy production, and society. A number of drought indices have been introduced and used in various countries to date. In the current study, four meteorological drought indices including Percent of Normal Precipitation Index (PNPI), Standard Index of Ann...

The ecological problems caused by dry and wet deposition of atmospheric nitrogen have been widespread concern in the world. In this study, wet and dry atmospheric depositions were monitored in plant growing season in the coastal zone of the Yellow River Delta (YRD) using automatic sampling equipment. The results showed that SO4 (2-) and Na(+) were the predominant anion and cation, respectively,...

To avoid unnecessary waste of limited resources and to help prioritize areas for conservation efforts, this study aimed to provide information on habitat use by elephants between the wet and dry seasons in the Mole National Park (MNP) of Ghana. We compiled coordinates of 516 locations of elephants' encounters, 256 for dry season and 260 for wet season. Using nine predictor variables, we modeled...

To studyvertical gradients of arthropod species richness in tropical forests, adult chrysomelidswere surveyed with similar sampling effort by beating in four plots of 0.8 ha, representative of the canopy and understorey of one wet and one dry forest in Panama. Samples included in total 4615 individuals representing 253 species, and were of similar species richness at the two study sites. At bot...

Understanding the factors shaping species distribution patterns along tropical rainfall gradients is necessary to predict the consequences of climate change for tropical tree communities. Direct effects of water availability exclude wet forest species from dry forests, but the exclusion of dry forest species from wet forests remains unexplained. We tested the hypothesis that high light and nutr...

ROBO1 is a strong candidate gene for age-related macular degeneration (AMD) based upon its location under a linkage peak on chromosome 3p12, its expression pattern, and its purported function in a pathway that includes RORA, a gene previously associated with risk for neovascular AMD. Previously, we observed that expression of ROBO1 and RORA is down-regulated among wet AMD cases, as compared to ...

Plastic responses to multiple environmental stressors in wet or dry seasonal populations of tropical Drosophila species have received less attention. We tested plastic effects of heat hardening, acclimation to drought or starvation, and changes in trehalose, proline and body lipids in Drosophila ananassae flies reared under wet or dry season-specific conditions. Wet season flies revealed signif...